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Planning and Zoning Terms

Planning and Zoning Terms

Definitions and descriptions of important terms and concepts …
Crozet House under construction

Controlling the Costs of Growth

Uncontrolled growth can cause taxes to skyrocket, but with good planning and the use of proffers and other tools, communities can accommodate growth without a budget crisis …
Revolutionary Soup sign

Revolutionary Soup: Pushing for a Food Revolution

When Will Richey bought Revolutionary Soup in downtown Charlottesville five years ago, he started working with local farmers to provide as many of the restaurant's ingredients as possible — from fresh, flavorful salad greens to …
Gail and baby goat

Caromont Farm: Farmstead Cheeses with the Flavor of Virginia

Gail Hobbs-Page was given her first pair of goats as a young child growing up on a farm in North Carolina. Her father gave her the animals because he wanted to try goat's milk. Little …
Retreat Farm sheep

Retreat Farm: Healthier Food, Healthier People

Frank and Cindy Gillan manage 100 acres of the beautiful Retreat Farm in Rapidan, VA. When the Gillans came to the farm almost 12 years ago, they started with a small vegetable garden. Today, that …
Leesburg main street

Better Comprehensive Planning

Every locality in Virginia must express its goals in a Comprehensive Plan, a twenty-year vision which must be reviewed and/or revised every five years. These documents are of foundational importance for communities that wish to …
Potomac Vegetable Farm farmers

Potomac Vegetable Farm

The vision of “the American farm” has long been that of the family farm — a plot of land that is worked and managed by a family, and then passed down from generation to generation …
A chef plates a dish.

The Wine Kitchen

A few years ago, Jason Miller and Michael Mercer noticed a hole in Leesburg’s restaurant scene. The quaint town was surrounded by farms and vineyards, and yet there was no farm-to-table restaurant — no restaurant …
Baby basil

Waterpenny Farm: Sustainable Farming Offers a Sustainable Lifestyle

Rachel Bynum and Eric Plaksin of Waterpenny Farm in Sperryville, V.A., were drawn to farming for a number of reasons, but, for Bynum, the lifestyle of small-scale farming was a major factor in her career …