Pippin Hill Farm and Vineyards – DAYS 127-130: citadels and doors, bulldozer cookie delivery, passing of the keys

For just over half a year now we have built Pippin Hill–and yesterday with the spectacular (and intense) hanging of the grand entry doors, the finishing of the main venue floor and the entry of an army of cleaning and kitchen staff, interior decorators, final inspections and removal of our wood stock and tools from [...]

Community Character & Economic Vitality What’s the connection?.

Charlottesville Tomorrow (www.cvilletomorrow.org) is sponsoring a conversation about the future of the Albemarle County / Charlottesville Community entitled “Community Character & Economic Vitality What’s the connection?” .  The event is featuring a special presentation by Edward T. McMahon.  Ed McMahon is a Senior Fellow with the Urban Land Institute and recently published a book on [...]

Albemarle Garden Club Field Trip at Bundoran Farm

Lief Riddervold, Bundoran Farm’s Natural Resources Manager, led the Albemarle Garden Club on a horticulture event of a different sort on October 21st. On a trail up Israel Mountain the fall colors were spectacular in the late morning sunlight. Spicebush, hickory, birch and others were bright yellow with black gum and maple providing bright red. [...]

Trail Maintenance Day

Bundoran Farm residents, future residents and team members spent part of May Day, working on trail maintenance along Israel Mountain.  In addition to working hard to clear and clean up one of the many trails that run through the managed forest of Bundoran Farm we had a great time socializing and learning about the wonderfully [...]

Construction Commences on Heimgartner Residence

Bundoran Farm and more importantly, the Heimgartner Family, reach another significant milestone yesterday.  Construction started on Ken and Ida Heimgarnter’s new home at Bundoran Farm. Situated on a knoll over looking Plank Road and the  surrounding protected pastures and forested ridges of this Albemarle Virginia rural real estate, the Heimgartner’s homesite is perhaps one of [...]

Big Ol’ Country Cookout at the Batesville Store

The Batesville Store, located a short drive down Plank Road from Bundoran Farm, is one of the many things that make this part of Albemarle County so unique and special.  In addition great food, it’s one of the many nuclei of the Batesville/North Garden area.   Whether meetings friends for lunch or be listening to [...]

Feed Your Inner Policy Wonk!

For those of you with more than a passing interest in rural preservation, we offer our final report on the Baldwin Center’s inaugural symposium: Residential Development and the Working Landscape.  With support from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, participants in the two-day gathering looked at the problem of farmland loss, evaluated the existing preservation [...]

Bundoran Farm Sighting!

After environmentally-conscious developers, gentleman farmers and Norwegians with a sense of humor, we’ll have to add one more supposedly mythical creature to the Bundoran Farm menagerie.  Always-bubbly Natural Resource Manager Leif Riddervold pulled off this grab shot of an elusive resident of Israel Mountain, after Bundoran residents Grady and Diane Lewis reported some unsolicited shrub-trimming [...]

“Bundoran Farm Space Center” – A Place with Space

Too often in today’s world our open spaces are either overly programmed or overly protected. Open space ripe for enjoyment are typically reserved or programmed for one thing and one thing only (baseball fields, golf courses, etc.). If they aren’t a single use space, they might be so protected that you can’t do anything on [...]

What a Great Weekend!

This past weekend was one of those weekends that makes me feel blessed and grateful to live in the Charlottesville area — a place with some many interesting things to do and people to hang out with. I started my weekend off on Friday evening at the opening reception of “Our Water, Our Future” at [...]