The following story appears in the Summer 2010 Piedmont View

Alumni of PEC's Exploring the Small Farm Dream courses are breaking ground this growing season.

Holly and James Hammond wanted to farm, but it took years to get their start. Back in their first year of marriage, in 2002, the young couple started a community garden for their condominium complex in Phoenix, Arizona.

James and Holly Hammond are starting their first season at Whisper Hill Farm in Rapidan.

She starts a sentence: "When we started working in the garden..."

"We just fell in love with it," he says.

"And I was like, man, I miss the farm."

She was raised on a you-pick vegetable farm in Arizona. He spent a lot of time, growing up, on his grandfather's farm in North Carolina.

They started spinning out ideas for a farming life, maybe in the Southeast, where they both had family. Then, Ms. Hammond says, about three years ago, "I sold my business. James quit his job. We sold our house. We just moved. We just went for it."

They had a few false starts, working on one farm, then another. Things didn't work out. They got frustrated, took a break and hiked the Appalachian Trail.

"We knew we wanted to farm, but we just didn't know how to go about trying to get into it," Mr. Hammond says.

As interns at Waterpenny Farm in Rappahannock County they started finding some answers-learning how to grow organic produce and how to run a farm business.

They also heard about the Exploring the Small Farm Dream course being held by the PEC and the Local Food Project at Airlie, drawing on the expertise of successful local farmers as guest speakers. The four-session course guides participants through a decision-making process about starting a farm-related business.

The Hammonds took the course last November. By this spring, less than six months later, they'd already gotten some ground under the feet of their small farm dream-a spread of bottom land along the Robinson River, in Rapidan, in Culpeper County. On a brilliantly sunny day in April they were tending to plants in the greenhouse they had built on the hill by their house-including 3,000 aromatic tomato starts, soon to go in the ground.

They're raising about three acres of vegetables, herbs and cut flowers-free of chemicals-with plans to sell them at farmers markets in Charlottesville, Warrenton and Culpeper.

By the time they signed up for the Exploring the Small Farm Dream course last fall, they were already in touch with landowners Mike and Betty

Long about potentially leasing the land in Rapidan. "Because we knew it was a possibility, we were trying to make a decision on whether to go for it or not," says Mr. Hammond. "As we were starting to go through the budget and all the different steps in class, it was really timely because it was exactly what we were doing for real."

This spring, as the first growing season at their farm-Whisper Hill Farm-was getting underway, with green and purple lettuces flourishing in a checkerboard pattern down one long row and the soil prepared for a greenhouse full of plants, Ms. Hammond said, "We feel really fortunate because through that whole period of uncertainty, something like this was exactly what we were hoping for."

Making Connections

So far, PEC has led or co-led the Exploring the Small Farm Dream course three times in the Piedmont-twice at Airlie Center near Warrenton and once at Piedmont Community College near Charlottesville-and plans to hold it again in Warrenton this fall and in Charlottesville this winter. A total of about 150 people have participated in the course and related "Hosting the Small Farm Dream" seminars. The course is part of PEC's Farm and Food Connection, a network of programs that include farmland preservation, Buy Fresh Buy Local, resources for farmers and support of market outlets like the Forest Lakes Farmers Market and the Charlottesville Local Food Hub.

Among the participants in our first Exploring the Small Farm Dream course, in 2008, were Betty Long and her son-in-law John Paul Visosky. The Long family, which owns considerable acreage among the Piedmont's rolling hills, wanted to make productive use of their land. After taking the course, they started looking into partnerships with small farmers-eventually connecting with Holly and James Hammond.

Mollie Visosky says that for her mother and husband, "The whole concept of leasing land to help small farms was a takeaway from the course."
For their part, the Hammonds didn't even know that such lease arrangements were an option before their experience at Waterpenny, which holds a long term lease from nearby Mount Vernon Farm-a partnership that has been examined in each course, with farmers from both Waterpenny and Mount Vernon serving as guest speakers.

Leasing the land for Whisper Hill Farm helped the Hammonds to overcome one of the major obstacles that new farmers in this region face-the high cost of land. To help more landowners explore the possibility of partnering with farmers who need land, the PEC held two "Hosting the Small Farm Dream" seminars last year.

Ramona Huff, who raises heritage breed beef and pork at Gryffon's Aerie in Albemarle County, spoke at the seminars as well as the most recent course. A few years ago, Ms. Huff lost her lease on a farm in Louisa and found herself in urgent need of several hundred acres. After scouring eight counties for somewhere she could go with 300 cattle, she ultimately found a prime spot-260 acres of pastures with beautiful views, which are protected by a conservation easement. Soon, she plans to expand her growing farm to 200 more acres in Albemarle.

She says that leasing can be a good option for farmers. While paying a mortgage on a farm could be overwhelming, leasing is affordable and makes the farm more profitable. But it's important to establish terms that serve the interests of both the landowner and the farmer, she says. She advises getting a long-term lease and regarding it as a business agreement, with clear, specific terms.

Ms. Huff says that that the "Small Farm Dream" events are making it easier for farmers and landowners to enter into productive partnerships, as they become more aware of their options. "It's good that PEC is reaching out and putting pieces of the puzzle together," she says.

Another participant in the first Exploring the Small Farm Dream course was Abby Harper, who later partnered with Ms. Visosky to launch The Fresh Link, a local food distribution business based in Locust Dale, in Madison. Ms. Visosky says, "We saw that there was a lot of interest on the small farmers' side, but there was a deficit of people interested in taking on the marketing challenge and the distribution challenge." Now, the Fresh Link is a thriving business that connects restaurants in D.C. with thirty family farms in the Piedmont, among them Whisper Hill Farm.

Visionaries

When the first Exploring the Small Farm Dream course was held near Warrenton, Brian and Mihr Walden made the drive from their home south of Charlottesville for each of the four sessions.

The Waldens-whose baby, Silas, turned one year old this spring-manage about 500 acres of land at their own Steadfast Farm and on property leased from neighbors. Much of this land, where curving hills hide and then reveal mountain views, is used to pasture cattle. The Waldens sell their grass-fed, organically raised beef at the Charlottesville City Market among offerings that include cut flowers, mushroom logs and homemade baby clothes.

But a relatively small field of dark green wheat growing on a hilltop plays a large role in their vision for their farm-as a groundbreaking provider of locally grown, affordable grains, legumes and oils.

These staple foods have been almost entirely unavailable from local farms up to now, but that's changing. This growing season, the Waldens are raising about 10 acres of wheat, beans and lentils, in addition to another 10-20 acres of wheat at a partnering farm in Nelson County. Their crops could also include barley, oats, corn and canola.

As demand grows, the Waldens can see an increasing number of farmers joining a cooperative to grow and sell grains and more local mills emerging to produce flour. "If you're able to provide something for people that they think is right-ecologically grown, local grains-they're going to go for it," Mr. Walden says.

The Waldens are selling CSA and RSA (consumer- and retail-supported agriculture) shares for grains, legumes and oilseeds this year, and find that response has been positive.

Looking back, Ms. Walden says, "One thing we took away from the course is to find that starting place and grow from there."
"The course definitely stimulated thought in all the areas that we needed to pay attention to," Mr. Walden says. "And anything that jars the imagination is good."