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Shop at home MIDDLEBURG Pgs. 20-21
VOL. 5, NO. 52
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Farmers Feel Changing Holiday Demand During Pandemic
NOVEMBER 26, 2020
AG: Academies Admissions ‘Discriminatory’ BY RENSS GREENE
BY PATRICK SZABO
rgreene@loudounnow.com
pszabo@loudounnow.com
Thanksgiving 2020 went on as planned and provided Loudoun’s poultry farmers with just as much business as ever. But with fewer family and friends seated around dinner tables, those farmers will have to reconsider their business models for next year. As for the Christmas tree industry, the outlook for this season is still up in the air. The COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent government-mandated restrictions and effects on societal norms have actually helped the farmers who raise turkeys for Thanksgiving and other meat year-round, contrary to what it’s done to other industries. Elaine Boland, the founder and owner of Fields of Athenry Farm in Middleburg, said that’s because of “panic buying.” She said that when the pandemic took hold of the nation in mid-March, demand for her farm-raised, hormone- and steroid-free meats quadrupled overnight and stayed that way for the next two-anda-half months. “Just like toilet paper and paper towels, they were just stockpiling,” she said about the meat orders she was receiving. She said business spiked so much that she had to spend $100,000 on improvements to her operations—to purchase new computers, develop a new website to handle increased web traffic, to lease a second refrigerated truck and to buy two new freezer units. Boland said that while her team be-
Patrick Szabo/Loudoun Now
Blue Mojo Farm Owner Eddie Beuerlein captures one of his heritage-breed turkeys to slaughter for Thanksgiving. Although many people wanted smaller birds this year, Blue Mojo’s are always on the larger size—about 25 pounds.
fore the pandemic was packaging 30 to 50 orders a week, by March they were packaging 170 orders in a week and working 14- to 16-hour days, seven days a week. She even had to put a cap on the amount of ground beef customers could purchase, since many were ordering 50 to 100 pounds of it at a time. Now, orders are back down to 60-80 a week, Boland said. The same was true for Blue Mojo Farm
CHANGING DEMAND continues on page 15
AG REPORT continues on page 37
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ECRWSS Postal Customer
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“So very happy we switched to Hunt Country. My only regret is that we didn’t do it sooner. How much money we would have saved…However, we finally made the right choice about our propane. For years I have been receiving offers from other companies offering low rates, only to find out you have to enter a contract with them. It never made sense to me that you could drive around town and shop for fuel for your car, but not for your home. It’s nice to see that a business owner understands this and caters to the customer. We received our first delivery this past Saturday and the owner himself brought it out. The service was excellent. Of course, I’m not surprised,
in Aldie, which raises ducks, ostriches and heritage-breed turkeys, which were once wild and can fly and breed on their own but take longer to raise. Owner Eddie Beuerlein said that since the pandemic took hold in March, he has been inundated with requests for birds. “Pretty much anything we had avail-
An investigation into admissions policies at the Academies of Loudoun by Attorney General Mark Herring’s Division of Human Rights has found they had a discriminatory impact on Black and Hispanic students, backing up assertions by the Loudoun NAACP when it requested the investigation. The investigation was launched in last 2019 after a request by the Loudoun NAACP, alleging discriminatory admissions policies at the Academies of Loudoun, after a year in which only one Black student was included in the inaugural class. The School Board launched an overhaul of the admissions policies at the Academies of Loudoun in August to address those complaints and address the racial gap in the Academy of Science and the Academy of Engineering and Technology. Those changes, which altered the testing requirements and promote a geographic allocation of available seats, are under challenge in federal District Court by a group of parents alleging they discriminate against Asian students seeking admission. The Attorney General’s determination, released Friday, found in part that while the school district’s admis-
previous propane provider was much higher priced. The staff was rude and didn’t seem to care if you gave them business or not. When I was shopping around for a new company, thankfully I found Hunt Country. The staff is friendly, professional, knowledgeable and genuinely cared that you gave them your business. Hunt Country prices are consistently lower than their competitors. I highly recommend that you call Hunt Country Propane, if you
Less • Local • Honest
540-687-3608 | huntcountrypropane.com
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