Country Zest & Style Winter 2022 Edition

WINTER 2022

30-SOMETHINGS:

THE FUTURE IS NOW

Will Driskill, Isabella Wolf, Sebastian & Sophie Langenberg And More 30s Inside Personalities, Celebrations and Sporting Pursuits

110 E. Washington St. | P.O. Box 1380 | Middleburg, VA 20118 | 540.687.5588 | sheridanmacmahon.com

ALL’S WELL FARM MARSHALL, VIRGINIA

Prime Fauquier County location on the Atoka Road | 88.34 acres with bold Blue Ridge views | Neoclassical brick home with slate roof completely updated & expanded | 5 BR, 5 full, 2 half baths, 5 fireplaces, gourmet kitchen | 10 stall barn with attached indoor arena | Pool, pool house, tenant house | Beautiful gardens | Superb condition

$7,500,000 Paul MacMahon 703.609.1905

50 WEST VINEYARDS MIDDLEBURG, VIRGINIA

Existing farm winery established in 2015 | 38.47 acres recorded in two parcels | Hilltop setting with magnificent views | 2,500 sq ft wine tasting room, main level consists of tasting room, seating areas, kitchen, restrooms | 2nd story more seating areas & bathroom | Club House of 5,100 sq ft contemporary style, wine tasting bar, seating areas, bathrooms, large deck, terrace & pool | 40 x 60 Butler building, large parking area | Unique opportunity

$3,950,000

RUTLEDGE FARM MIDDLEBURG, VIRGINIA

Premier Middleburg estate | Main house of stone and frame construction circa 1740 w/addition in 1820 | 6 BR, 3 1/2 BA, 5 FP, high ceilings, moldings & detailed woodwork | Equestrian facilities are unmatched | 85 lush acres. 4 barns totaling 27 stalls | 14 paddocks | Derby field | 218 x 80 indoor arena | 250 x 150 all-weather outdoor arena | 80’ lunging arena | Polo field (or 2 grand prix fields) | 4 board, double fencing & automated nelson waterers | Other improvements include 3 BR, 2 1/2 BA guest house | Farm office attached to 3 BR house | Machine shed | Carriage house w/apartment | Stone spring house/office | 3 BR apartment | Pond with gazebo

$6,000,000

(also available with 113 acres for $7,000,000)

HALFWAY FARM THE PLAINS, VIRGINIA

Privacy and 107 acres between Middleburg and The Plains | Residential enclave of great character within a rich array of natural resources | Classic Virginia stone and stucco c. 1820 | 4 bedrooms, antique floors and rich pine paneling | Two guest houses, stone cottage, farm manager’s house, 2 stables, machine shed and work shop | Extensive Little River frontage and 2 ponds | Tremendous views

$3,975,000

Paul MacMahon 703.609.1905 sandra bravo GreenberG 202.308.3813

helen MacMahon 540.454.1930

MASON FARM, LIGHTRIDGE FARM ROAD

LONG BRANCH

ALDIE, VIRGINIA

20+/- acres in fast growing Loudoun location | Currently zoned TR3UBF | Willowsford, South Riding, Stone Ridge, minutes away | New county high school next to property | Currently improved by 2 residences, 2 ponds | Northstar Blvd around corner

$3,462,000 Paul MacMahon 703.609.1905

THE PLAINS, VIRGINIA

Gorgeous 71 acre parcel in a wonderful location between Middleburg and The Plains | Rolling land with stone walls and 2 ponds | Enchanting property | Property is in conservation easement and may not be divided further

$1,950,000 helen MacMahon 540.454.1930

Paul MacMahon 703.609.1905

JOHN MARSHALL HIGHWAY MARKHAM, VIRGINIA

162.89 acres | 3 recorded parcels in Markham, VA | Frontage on Goose Creek, land rises to great views, mountain meadows on upper portion | Access over Railroad and creek | Excellent hunting land, surrounded by large tracts

$997,160 Paul MacMahon 703.609.1905

MILL HOUSE WARRENTON, VIRGINIA

Heart of Warrenton Hunt Country on Springs Road minutes to town | “Mill House,” main house circa 1900 | 3 bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths | Stone and stucco exterior, hardwood floors | Property also includes (8572 Springs Road), original mill, converted to a tenant house with 2 bedrooms, 1 bath | Much of the mill components still exist | Could be charming office or guest house | 3.5 acres | Property sold “AS IS” condition

$695,000 Paul MacMahon 703.609.1905

FREE STATE ROAD MARSHALL, VIRGINIA

5+ acres in a great location south of Marshal | Good access to Route 66 | Not many small parcels available in this part of the county | Nice mature woods and creek running through the property | Septic permit from 2000 on record with the health department for 3 bedroom septic will need to be renewed but all the information is available

$175,000 helen MacMahon 540.454.1930

For Chef Pete, Cruising to a Delicious Destination

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6507 Main Street, The Plains, VA 20198 www.artsintheplains.org

Sunday, February 20th, 5:00 PM Paragon Philharmonia

By Leonard Shapiro

t’s not at all difficult to pinpoint when Pete Smith’s fascination for food began percolating, then coming to a full boil when he was still in high school in his native Jacksonville.

RINGING IN THE YEAR Join us for an afternoon of sublime chamber music featuring Schubert’s monumental “Cello Quintet.”

For tickets please visit: http://artsintheplains.org/

His travel agent mother always believed in taking her children on a short cruise to learn how to read a menu, order a meal, and proper table manners.

Sunday, February 27th, 5:00 PM Grace Church Concert Series

“I was ten,” said Smith, known at Middleburg’s Salamander Market as Chef Pete. “We went to the Bahamas, June 7, 1990, and it was three days. That was a big turning point in my life. I learned about food, hospitality, how to use the right utensils. The chef on the ship was AfricanAmerican; that made a big impression on me. I also learned how to swim in a salt water pool.”

THE KING’S SINGERS From Darkness

Chef Pete Smith at He also learned that preparing food Salamander Market could very well be his life’s work. In high school, he enrolled in a work-study program in culinary arts. That lead to a scholarship at the Southeast Culinary Institute in St. Augustine and an internship with renowned Chef Matthew Medure at his restaurants in Jacksonville and Ponte Vedra Beach.

After finishing at the culinary institute, Smith began working full time for Medure. By 23, he was the youngest head chef in northern Florida, and also the first African American chef in the region.

Between 1999 and 2005 he ran his own catering business he called Sweet Pete’s and started one of the first food trucks in Jacksonville. After seven years, he wandered over to St. Vincent in the Grenadines in the eastern Caribbean to work at the posh Buccament Bay resort.

When the financially strapped resort closed in 2016, Smith returned to the U.S. as chef at the Sea Island Resort, sated his entrepreneurial instincts when he moved back to Jacksonville to open his own restaurant, then became head chef at the Olde Pink House restaurant in Savannah.

He started at Salamander last October after one of his colleagues at Sea Island, Salamander chef Bill Welsh, asked him to do a food tasting at the Middleburg resort. One taster that day was its owner, Sheila Johnson.

“She loved it,” Smith said. “And it was the first time I ever got a standing ovation at a tasting.”

He soon was offered the head chef position at the Salamander Market, and now lives in The Plains and is learning to love the area as much as his tasting patrons loved his food.

In addition to revising the breakfast and lunch menus and overseeing the Market’s kitchen, he also plans and executes the menus for the two special, reservation only dinners a month, holds tastings and teaches cooking classes.

“I’m trying to transform the market into a destination for tourists and for locals,” he said. “I want to support local farmers and give all our guests a beautiful experience.”

His style of cooking?

“French techniques with a Southern flair,” he said.

An example?

“My foie gras and barbecued short ribs over a pimento cheese risotto.”

Magnifique, y’all.

The King’s Singers are the British a cappella vocal ensemble founded in 1968 named after King’s College in Cambridge, England, where the group was formed by six choral scholars.

For tickets please visit: http://artsintheplains.org/

Sunday, Mar. 20, 5:00 PM Paragon Philharmonia SPRING CELEBRATION

Miriam Burns, conductor

Boyce Piazzolla Walker Copland

Symphony No. 1 Primavera Porteña Lyric for Strings Appalachian Spring

For tickets please visit: http://artsintheplains.org/

Sunday, April 24th, 5:00 PM Grace Church Concert Series AMIT PELED CELLO GANG

Brahms Andante from Symphony No. 3 Schumann Cello Concerto in A minor Mancini The Pink Panther For tickets please visit: http://artsintheplains.org/

Country ZEST & Style | Winter 2022

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ZES ST T & Sty t lel

Country

e

of NOTE

ZEST & Style ZES ST TStytlel &

Country

Personalities, Celebrations and Sporting Pursuits

for the hummingbird.

© 2021 Country ZEST & Style, LLC. Published six times a year

Distributed and mailed throughout the Virginia countryside and in Washington and at key Sporting Pursuits and Celebrations

e

MAILING ADDRESS: P.O. Box 798 Middleburg, Virginia 20118 PHONE: 410-570-8447 Editor: Leonard Shapiro, badgerlen@aol.com Art Director Meredith Hancock Hancock Media Contributing Photographers: Doug Gehlsen, Crowell Hadden, Sarah Huntington, Missy Janes Douglas Lees, Karen Monroe and Tiffany Dillon Keen

Contributing Writers: Daniela Anderson Emma Boyce Sean Clancy Philip Dudley Mike du Pont Carina Elgin Valerie Archibald Embrey Jimmy Hatcher M.J. McAteer Peter Leonard-Morgan Joe Motheral Jodi Nash Tom Northrup Melissa Phipps Pat Reilly Linda Roberts Eugene Scheel Anita Sherman John Sherman John Toler Leslie VanSant Jimmy Wofford Louisa Woodville

For advertising inquiries, contact: Leonard Shapiro at badgerlen@aol.com or 410-570-8447

ON THE COVER We have a small studio, though it looks quite large when looking from the outside and seems rather spacious on the inside.

However, the actual staging area is fairly tight, with the determining factor being the width of the backdrop. This issue of ZEST has four wonderful subjects on the cover who all had to be fit into the frame of the camera as well as the confines of the backdrop. To complicate things, I wanted to have them arranged around an antique table.

You may not believe it, but I’m about 15 feet away from this cover shot.

The distance allowed me to compress the composition and get them all into the photo while keeping anything outside of the background out of the image. The camera was my trusty Nikon D850 with a Nikon 24-120 f4 lens. The image was shot at 110 mm, which compresses the composition, and set at f8. Photo by Doug Gehlsen, styled by Karen Monroe of Middleburg Photo. / Country Zest and Style

/ @countryzestandstyle

/ @countryzestand1

www.countryzestandstyle.com 4

ZE

BE ON THE LOOKOUT through this Country issue of

Country

He appears in two ads and the first two readers to find him (one each) will receive a gift from THE RED TRUCK Rural Bakery, with locations in Warrenton and Marshall. Send your reply to badgerlen@aol.com

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IT’S FABULOUS FEBRUARY

t’s February, time to celebrate my favorite month of the year. Multiple family birthdays and anniversaries, Valentine’s Day, Super Bowl Sunday and, for Country ZEST, it marks our fourth year publishing.

For the Middleburg area’s vibrant African-American community, it’s also time to celebrate Black History Month. We’re including a number of stories relating to that important topic, including pieces on the vital work being done by the Afro-American Historical Association of Fauquier County in The Plains and the 60th anniversary of the desegregation of Loudoun County’s public schools.

We’re also focusing on another demographic—men and women in their 20s and 30s, many educated in local schools, public and private. They’ve returned to this area to raise families, pursue careers and contribute to many worthy causes.

All are second or third generation.

As for the next generation, there’s a story on the Piedmont Symphony Orchestra showcasing three immensely talented teenage musicians at its annual Young Artists concert, Feb. 13 at Highland School. For the first time, the PSO also has added a young composer element. The orchestra will perform a movement from one of his works, and Russian Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf.

(On a personal note, growing up, P&W was not my favorite. My parents often recalled once taking me to Carnegie Hall for a performance, with dancers on stage to visually enhance the music. But my folks had to deal with a hysterical four-year-old—me—every time the wolf showed up.)

But I digress.

John Sherman’s hilarious Letter From Paris is a must-read on a near-disastrous rehearsal dinner when he and wife Roma owned the Ashby Inn. Same for a feature on a local dentist with a collection of electric guitars, all lovingly hand-made by him. He plays them, too.

Middleburg has some real straight-shooters, including three members of one family who are sporting clay champions. There’s a terrific tale from Jimmy Hatcher on another intriguing outdoor pursuit—sled dog racing—and a confrontation on a local country road between Huskies and horses that thankfully ended up with no harm, no foul.

We love local students writing for the magazine, with delightful contributions from an aspiring Wakefield ballerina and a budding Foxcroft race car driver.

Finally, we’re welcoming two additions to our formidable freelance contributors.

Joe Motheral, a prolific Leesburg-based writer with numerous articles and several books to his credit, makes his ZEST debut. So does Eugene Scheel, a renowned Waterford historian, author and mapmaker who knows more about our unique corner of the countryside than anyone on the planet.

So here’s hoping you enjoy our winter issue. As always, we’re delighted to add a bit of ZEST to your reading pleasure.

Leonard Shapiro Editor badgerlen@aol.com

MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

THANK YOU TO ALL OUR CLIENTS, COLLEAGUES, FRIENDS AND FAMILIES THAT MADE 2021 A SUCCESSFUL YEAR! LD

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Opening The Door To Horse Country For Generations 2 South Madison Street | PO Box 500 | Middleburg, VA 20118 | Office: 540-687-6500 | thomasandtalbot.com

Young Musicians Will Take Center Stage

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By Leonard Shapiro

Garretson said. “And giving a budding young composer a chance to have his music performed by a national orchestra and to work with our musicians is something we’re very excited about.”

Said Quader, “Our mission is very much wrapped around sharing what we do with as many people as we can. It’s also important that we not only recognize, but also showcase future talent.”

Many young musicians who have participated in past competitions have gone on to careers in music— teaching, performing and now composing.

One of Quader’s favorite success stories involves former Highland student Davóne Tines, a talented violinist who played with the PSO while still in high school. He eventually graduated from Julliard, the iconic performing arts conservatory in New York, where he shifted gears to become a fine opera singer who now tours professionally.

The three 2022 finalists are pianist Sarah Kim, 15, a freshman at Episcopal in Alexandria; pianist Christian Henriksen, 16, who is home-schooled and lives in Fredericksburg, and violinist Noelle Fiegl, 15, who attends the Fredericksburg Area Young Musicians School and lives in Spotsylvania. Noelle earned second place at last year’s PSO Young Artists competition.

“We interact with students, we educate and we inspire,” Hueter said. “To see young people take advantage of their training, it adds so much to their lives as they go on. It’s a tremendous plus.

And it’s very satisfying to see the quality of these young performers.”

t’s always one of the most highly-anticipated and popular events on the Piedmont Symphony Orchestra’s (PSO) concert calendar, and the upcoming annual Young Artists Competition definitely lives up to its advance billing every year.

Scheduled on Sunday, Feb. 13 at 3 p.m. at the Michael A. Hughes Center for the Arts located at Highland School in Warrenton, the 2022 event also will feature a full orchestra performance of the Prokofiev masterpiece, Peter and the Wolf, with founding Emeritus Conductor Michael A. Hughes narrating this timeless fairytale.

The concert also includes appearances by three highly talented area musicians who are finalists in the Young Artists Competition for the renowned PSO, which is partially funded by the Virginia Commission for the Arts.

The finalists were selected by a panel of judges from dozens of entries submitted by up-and-coming young musicians from 11 Virginia counties. Another judging panel at Highland will determine first, second and third place scholarships, and all three finalists and many others who entered clearly have promising musical futures.

The Feb. 13 event also will include a Visual Art Contest, with the artwork of students from across the area set to the music of Peter and the Wolf.

And this year, there’s an intriguing new element— the PSO Young Composer Showcase that features the work of Marcus Edvardsson. He lives in Nashville

and composed a piece that will be premiered and performed by the PSO. They will play the “Winter” movement of his work called “Requiem.” Marcus has already met with PSO Conductor Glenn Quader, PSO Concertmaster H. Lee Brewster and Matthew Gattuso, the orchestra’s Principal Second Violin, to refine his composition for the Feb. 13 concert.

Marcus came to the attention of the PSO through one of its board members, and Quader, PSO president Kate Garretson and board chairman Ernie Hueter have all enthusiastically embraced the concept of adding a young composer element to the PSO’s mission.

“One of PSO’s core issues is educational outreach,”

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MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

Violinist Noelle Fiegl was runner-up in the 2021 Piedmont Symphony Orchestra Young Artists Competition.

Fauquier Habitat for Humanity builds

beautiful, energy-efficient homes.

Are you ready to move from a rental into a new home with an affordable mortgage?

Attend one of Fauquier Habitat's mandatory virtual applicant information sessions Participants must complete the eligibility questionnaire at www.fauquierhabitat.org/own-a-home to receive the meeting link.

Country ZEST & Style | Winter 2022

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Crafted With Old World Care N

The elder Knepper has decades of experience in the construction field. In addition to Old World Woodworking, he also heads up OzConstruction LLC, out of Leesburg, putting together the likes of restaurants and medical clinics. He credits his wife, Renee, for embarking on his entrepreneurial journey and starting his own business 30 years ago.

By Anita L. Sherman

eed a bookcase to fit a special spot in your family room? What about bookshelves for an entire library?

At Old World Woodworking, located at Halfway near The Plains, no project is too great or small they won’t welcome crafting.

And crafting is the key thanks to long-time master cabinet builder Dave Fox, who has more than 40 years of experience creating beautiful works made of wood.

Smell the lumber. Let the fine dust floating through the air and lit by sunlight flooding the workshop magically envelop the senses. Wonderful things are happening here.

The dynamic woodworking duo of Dave Fox and Scott Knepper take great pride in their craftmanship and working with customers.

Sitting comfortably in their reception area, Fox, Scott Knepper and his son, Andrew (Scott) Knepper talk enthusiastically about their passion – building and working with wood.

“That [OzConstruction] is all in the field work,” said Scott Knepper. “You’re working on site. With Old World Woodworking, the focus is on residential customers and their specific needs, so I decided to open up a separate shop.”

The location was found rather serendipitously in 2019.

“We travel on (The Plains Road) a lot, dine at Girasole, and were looking for a place with rural character. When we found that this building was on the market, it seemed the perfect fit for us,” said Knepper who later learned from a longtime resident that the

Photo by Anita L. Sherman

The Land Trust of Virginia helps families conserve their natural resources, farmland, and open space for the benefit of present and future generations.

DEL WILSON, P.T., O.C.S.* MARY WILSON, P.T., O.C.S.* * Board Certified Orthopedic Clinical Specialist

DEL WILSON, P.T., O.C.S.* American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties DEL WILSON, P.T., O.C.S.* MARY WILSON, P.T., O.C.S.* * Board Certified Orthopedic Clinical Specialist

DEL WILSON, P.T., O.C.S.* American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties MARY WILSON, P.T., O.C.S.*

MARY P.T., O.C.S.* 204 WILSON, E. FEDERAL ST.

American BoardP.O. of Physical Therapy BOX 893 Specialties

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204 E. FEDERAL ST. P.O. BOX 893 WILSON, DEL MIDDLEBURG, VA 20118 www.middleburg-pt.com

540-687-6565

P.O. BOX 893 MIDDLEBURG, VA 20118

* Board Certified Orthopedic Clinical Specialist

* Board Certified Orthopedic ClinicalST. Specialist 204 E. FEDERAL

MIDDLEBURG, VA 20118

Learn more at landtrustva.org.

American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties

204 E. FEDERAL ST. 540-687-6565 P.O. BOX 893

MIDDLEBURG, VA 20118 www.middleburg-pt.com P.T.,540-687-6565 O.C.S.*

www.middleburg-pt.com

MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022 MARY WILSON, P.T., O.C.S.*

540-687-6565

* Board Certified Orthopedic Clinical Specialist www.middleburg-pt.com American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties

While considered part of The Plains, Old World Woodworking is located in the hamlet of Halfway, on Halfway Road, equidistant between The Plains and Middleburg, Virginia.

Photo Courtesy

building was once used as a cabinet shop in the 1970s.

“We named it Old World because we feel we’re reinventing an old spirit that once existed here. We still use a lot of hand equipment. It’s pretty amazing.

“He’s the last of a dying breed,” Knepper said of Fox, another great find. “He’s the calm and quiet one.

We’re a really good fit.”

Originally from Bend, Oregon, Fox has been honing his woodworking skills for decades, and was thrilled when asked to work at Old World. “I get to be creative,” said Fox. “You’re going into people’s homes to talk with them about their projects. They need to trust you.”

Beaming profusely, Knepper couldn’t be happier about another huge value-added asset to his business— working with his son, Andrew Scott (who goes by Scott).

The younger Knepper has been at his father’s side from a young age when his mother would put him in overalls to tag along with dad to job sites. That led to working long hours alongside his father as a teenager. Now 22, he’s finishing his degree in construction management and technology at Arizona State and eventually plans to work full time at Old World Woodworking.

“He’s always loved it and now he’ll be apprenticing with Dave to learn as much as he can from him,” said Knepper. “That and his research and marketing savvy will add a lot to the business.”

“We’re a team. We all work together.

And working with wood is so fulfilling.

We’re excited to be here.”

Old World Woodworking, 2788 Halfway Road, The Plains, VA. www. oldworldwoodworkingtheplains.com

Whether a single bookcase or luxury library with coffered ceiling, no task is too small or large at Old World Woodworking.

Photo Courtesy

Country ZEST & Style | Winter 2022

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Straight Shooter Teresa Condon Right on Target

A

By Jodi Nash

talented equestrian, she grew up in Massachusetts and was “horse crazy” from the start. A 3-day event rider, in 1991 she moved to Virginia to train with Torrance Watkins, the renowned Olympic gold medalist, and later in her career, with Mike Plumb, an eight-time eventing Olympian.

In 1993, she started working at Great Meadow in The Plains, eventually becoming executive director, managing the property and events, sponsors, marketing, and day-to-day operations, while also acting as race director for the Virginia Gold Cup. Serendipitously, her path crossed with Britton Condon, an expert “sporting clay” competitor and a top shot in the U.S. also ranked No. 7 in the world. They started dating, eventually married, and she was quickly exposed to a whole new competitive arena.

Photo by Middleburg Photo

Teresa Condon

Antique Arms, Edged Weapons & Armor Since 1957

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Middleburg, VA 20117 Middleburg, VA 20118 Tel. 540-687-5642 Fax 540-687-5649 Email: info@davidcondon.com www.davidcondon.com

MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

Serendipitously, her path crossed with Britton Condon, an expert “sporting clay” competitor and a top shot in the U.S. also ranked No. 7 in the world. They started dating, eventually married, and she was quickly exposed to a whole new competitive arena.

“I’m not much of a cheerleader, so I jumped right into it,” Teresa recalled. Though she had no familiarity with firearms, she had no trepidation about learning, and her horse events were gradually replaced with sporting clay competitions.

Though any shotgun can be used, Teresa, Britton, and their 19-year-old son, Forbes, all shoot an off-brand Krieghoff 12-gauge. The Krieghoffs are personal friends and former sponsors for Britton’s competitive sporting clay career.

Sporting clays can be fairly compared to golf with a shotgun. No two courses are alike, and terrain and foliage dictate how targets are presented. Targets may be thrown from any angle or distance, and are designed to simulate the shooting of ducks, pheasants and other upland birds in the wild.

“Shotgun sports became a family affair, and the kids tagged along,” Teresa said, adding that Forbes, a freshman at Virginia Tech, also grew up competing.

He won a U.S. Open national junior championship in the same year his dad won his class.

It’s the closest thing to actual field shooting of all the shotgun sports, and perhaps for this reason, is not yet an Olympic sport, as are skeet and trap shooting.

“It’s very difficult, with more varying targets,” Teresa said.

Competitors typically shoot in squads of two to six and move over a course with 10-15 stations. Specialty targets can be used to provide the illusion of speed or distance to simulate the ways of game birds, and all targets can be thrown as singles or pairs.

“He’s a member of the A squad shooting team at Tech now,” Teresa noted with pride. Daughter Blythe, a junior at Liberty University, also is a “natural shot,” but music is her passion, particularly singing opera.

Over the years, shotgun sport events have taken the family around the country and to England, France, Portugal, Spain, and Australia. Teresa, who left Great Meadow after Blythe was born, has competed intermittently while raising her children.

“I loved being a wife and mother, it was my first priority,” she said.

Over the past three years, with the kids away at college, she’s had the luxury of focusing seriously on her own competitive shooting career.

She’s now also a National Sporting Clays Association (NSCA) certified Instructor, offering lessons at a small, private shooting ground in Delaplane, where she practices. She has about 30 students, both adults and children, and enjoys sharing her skills and experience.

“It’s the safest sport in the world, and you can participate from age 10 well into your 80s,” she said.

“There’s no limit on how well you can do if you work harder and practice more. I’m just kicking in now.”

For Teresa’s next act, check in at David Condon, Inc.: Antique Arms and Armorer in Middleburg in a few months. Her father-in-law, David Condon, has been operating the shop for 45 years, with Britton also a vital part of the business.

Teresa has a novel approach in mind on how to become part of the operation, but that’s another story, so stay tuned.

Country ZEST & Style | Winter 2022

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The Ice Was Nice and Thick in the Mid-1800s

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by the size of the ice house at Oatlands, it took quite a few. (The Oatlands ice house is the stone structure with a slanted roof at the end of the brick bank barn known as the “Carter Barn”.)

By Lynne Kaye

alk about climate change.

A new book, “The Diary of Elizabeth O. Carter, Loudoun County, Virginia, 1860-1872,” offers a new and very different understanding of one of the hot button issues of 2022.

Ice harvests were dangerous, 24-hour-a-day, allhands-on-deck affairs.

Elizabeth Carter recorded that the 1861 ice harvest began on February 8, a day that was “3 degrees below zero at 6:30 A.M.” The harvest continued through February 11. Ice sheets periodically cracked and broke, plunging men and horses into the freezing water. Prior to the Civil War, enslsaved men provided much of the labor for Virginia’s ice harvests.

The entries in Elizabeth Carter’s diary paint a picture of a Virginia climate back then that more closely resembles that of New England today, particularly her descriptions of the annual ice harvests in the mid-19th century.

On December 22, 1862, Elizabeth Carter described the first step in harvesting ice— checking the ice on the family’s “ice pond.” That day, she recorded “getting ice about 4 inches thick.” By January 8, 1863, the ice had thickened enough to be harvested, probably at least eight inches thick and sturdy enough to hold several tons of weight.

That depth of ice is astounding considering that, today, local ponds rarely freeze thick enough to support the small amount of weight of even one ice skater.

Back then, pond ice was thick enough to harvest. A grid was etched in the ice using a specially designed, horse-drawn “ice plow.” Workers, usually enslaved men, used the grid as a guide for cutting blocks of ice using single-handled, five-foot long hand saws. Sawed blocks were pried out of the ice sheet using thick, metal

The ice house at Oatlands in Leesburg. “breaker bars.” A typical block of ice was a 22-inch square that could weigh between 250 to 300 pounds.

Individual ice blocks were floated on top of the water to the shoreline, where they were hoisted out of the water. The blocks then were loaded onto a waiting horse or ox-drawn wagon.

Wagon loads of ice were driven from the ice pond to the ice house. There, the blocks were unloaded and stored, surrounded by straw for insulation. The ice house at Montpelier, for example, required 70 wagon loads to fill.

While Elizabeth does not say how many wagon loads it took to fill her family’s ice houses, judging

Heat was the greatest enemy of an ice house.

Luckily, Virginia summers were cooler in the 1860s than they are today. Imagine living in a Virginia where 90-degree summer days were rare. That’s the climate Elizabeth Carter recorded. During the 13 summers covered by her diary, she only recorded seven days with a high of 90 or above.

Surely, it kept the ice nice in ice houses all around.

Lynne Kaye is a member of the Middleburg Sustainability Committee and has been instrumental in developing the town’s cigarette butt recycling agenda as well as the recently passed EV (electric vehicle) charging station program. She serves as the treasurer on the executive committee at Oatlands.

Local Leadership. Local Assets. Local Needs.

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Cup of COFFEE

A New Year, a New Approach

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beginning of each month, take a day, a moment, to think about what you did right over the previous month and what you want to do right in the next month.

By Sean Clancy ow’s the writing?

I’m asked that often. All writers are asked that often. All writers ask that often.

Let’s face it, New Year’s resolutions are hard to keep, too big, too audacious, but perhaps 12 monthly resolutions would be easier. It’s not about declaring resolutions, that’s easy. It’s more about changing habits, staying focused, taking incremental approaches to change or improving habits, your trajectory. We’ll see. Twenty-three days to go.

This year, like all years, I’m trying to write every day. So far, so good. I use this in my response, actually.

January 14, 2022.

Here it comes.

Writing every day. Not writing well every day but writing every day.

My comrade nods his head, understanding the sentiment.

January 2, 2022.

Sean Clancy

Good morning. Happy New Year.

I’m trying a new approach, writing first thing in the morning before the day runs off, blows the turn and heads for the hills. Barn duty this morning as Covid continues to wreak havoc with all aspects of life. Nine horses waiting their turns.

We aborted our trip to Alabama, a day early, as Covid wreaked havoc there as well. We feel fine. We shall see.

January 5, 2022.

Put the blade on the tractor. Find the snow poles. Where’s the shovel? Fill up the car. Start the truck, let it run, prop out the wipers. Got milk? Bread? Coffee?

Load the porch with firewood. The generator’s plugged in and gassed up. Hay in the sheds, the mangers.

“Snow on a farm should be fun,” says Miles, 13.

Yes, son, it should be fun. We’ll try to make it fun while trying to keep nine horses, a goat and a cat alive and well.

I hear him all morning long.

“People don’t understand, everything you do with a horse is a calculated risk. Turn them out. Work them. Run them. Graze them. Everything you do is a calculated risk.”

The late great Thoroughbred trainer, Allen Jerkens, calculated risk with horses all the way to the Hall of Fame.

I’m no Allen Jerkens and our nine-strong string on Snake Hill Road in Middleburg is a long way from Sky Beauty, Onion, Prove Out, Kelly Kip, Emma’s Encore, Admiral Vee, Wagon Limit, Shine Again and Beau Purple but, alas, we make calculated risks all day long. Annie, Rob Massey and I make calculated risks about how many scoops of beet pulp, timothy or alfalfa or both, little paddock or round pen, ring work or road work or hack the hills, green Rambo or blue, shut the windows for warmth or leave them open for fresh air, bring them in when they look antsy or let them blow off some steam…

January 20, 2022.

I manage an evening run, the training center loop, 5 miles up and down hills, 22 miles so far for the year. I’m not promising anything, no declarations of 1,000 miles, no promises of marathons. This year, I simply plod, one step after another step. It’s all I’ve got. I hadn’t made my traditional loop through the Middleburg Training Center for months, perhaps, since before Saratoga last summer. I know it well, know where and when my breath will take over my thoughts, know the flitter and flutter of the deer at the bottom of the hill, know the weather-beaten Centennial Farm sign, know the ridges, the ruts, the rainedout washes of the dirt road that cushions my feet falls. At least a little.

January 23, 2022.

January 8, 2022.

My friend the hawk has returned. Perhaps, a red-shouldered hawk, although I’m no Audubon. He comes here most mornings, huddles on the top board of the back paddock. Turns his head and inspects, a traffic cop on a quiet street. Then he flies off, glides a few feet above our frozen ring and slows to a stop on the top board of the other back field. He lands a few feet from Eagle Poise. Like old friends, they acknowledge, almost a nod, an acceptance. The life, the beat, of the farm.

It’s the time of year to regroup, reload, reset for the coming new year.

In our world, January offers the only respite from the wheel. A few yearly resolutions have been made, but what about monthly resolutions? At the

I need to write something for Badger Len. Yeah, the ZEST editor, Len Shapiro. What have I got? What have I got?

And when it snows, the decisions, the risks are magnified. It’s constant.

Most of the time, you get the decisions right, the risk right. Sometimes, you get them wrong. I’m sure The Chief had an adage for that, too.

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Sunday. Low, 14. High, 39. Snow, 100%. Winter Storm Watch. Heavy snow/mixed precipitation possible. Total snow accumulations of 3 to 6 inches are most likely, with up to 8 inches. Ice accumulations of one to two tenths of an inch are possible. Winds gusting as high as 45 mph. Snow may fall at 1 to 3 inches per hour late Sunday afternoon into Sunday evening, resulting in nearly impassable roads. Visibility may be reduced to a quarter mile or less.

January 24, 2022.

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Bluewater Market Has Survived and Thrived

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The Rooster Hut is housed in a handsome, old stone building, and Kozich refers to it as his baby. He likes that it has fewer moving parts than the store and catering service; he just has to cut and portion the meats and seafood once they arrive at the shop.

By M.J. McAteer

hristina Kazmierski and Michael Kozich, the owners of the Market at Bluewater Kitchen in Upperville, share one salient feature that’s apparent the moment you talk to them--a passionate appetite for the food business.

All three aspects of the business showcase their commitment to healthy, locally-raised and grown food. They proudly talk about the quality of their suppliers, most within a 45mile radius of Upperville.

Even back in high school, Christina said she dreamed about starting her own catering business, and later learned a lot about the hospitality industry by working for Middleburg’s Salamander Resort and Spa.

“We’ve forged great relationships with several farms,” Kozich said, including Long Stone Farm in Lovettsville and TMR Michael, after graduating from the Farm right in Upperville. The Wagyu beef Culinary Institute of America, went on in their burgers comes from Ovoka Farm Photo by M.J. McAteer to earn his cooking chops at, among in Paris, Virginia. And Kozich has made Michael Kozich and Christina Kazmierski other restaurants, the prestigious Michel “coastal meets country” by having fresh Richard’s Citronelle in Washington, D.C. seafood shipped over-night from markets in North Carolina and Florida.

Not surprisingly, the two foodies met when both were working at the same Offerings at the Rooster Hut will feature “whatever is fresh,” including regional restaurant, and it wasn’t long before starting their own business was on the menu. delicacies such as rockfish, crabs and oysters.

They started out catering events for 15 or 20 people out of their home. They Between the Kitchen and the Hut, customers can find all they need for a meal. soon realized that they needed to go bigger to make a living, so they moved And the market carries an extensive collection of coffees, wines and craft beers. their operations to the kitchen at Buchanan Hall in Upperville. They stayed Most offerings are affordable, but “if a customer ‘needs’ a $130 bottle of wine, we for four years, until, in 2019, the shuttered convenience store in the village have it, ” Kovich said. came up for rent, and they decided to go for it. The result is the Market at Bluewater Kitchen, their combination boutique grocery store, hot and cold “When you commit and put your best foot forward, it’s been cool to see what takeout and catering firm. we’re capable of as a team,” Kazmierski added. “And to see that other people love A wise pivot to grab-and-go foods saved the day during COVID and they have and respect what we are doing. It’s made all the hard work worth it.” remained open and even keep all staff employed. This past December, they expanded by adding a fresh meat and seafood outlet, the Rooster Hut, next door.

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Julien and Cassandra with daughters Eva and Maïa.

A Vintage Shop Blends Wine, Art and Antiques

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By Miles Kresic

ficionados of antique furniture and fine wines will be delighted to know that Vintage, a new shop in Marshall, now features plenty of both, and a whole lot more. The business opened its doors on Jan. 27 and is located on Frost Street just off Main Street.

It’s the latest project of founder and owners Julien and Cassandra Lacaze, with antiques imported directly from France and wines selected both from local vineyards and far and wide, foreign and domestic.

Julien, 34, was raised in the restaurant business and grew up in France. He decided he wanted to change directions when he and Cassandra had their daughters Eva, three, and Maïa, a new arrival in 2021.

“I wanted to have more time for the family,” he said. “The restaurant schedule was a little overbearing at times.”

Lacaze was the Julien in one of Middleburg’s more popular restaurants— Julien’s Cafe—a French restaurant (of course) that his parents, Jean-Michel and Francoise, first opened in 2009. When they retired and moved back to France, he moved on to other pursuits. He has since dabbled in real estate, renovating homes and working at a local winery, Slater Run, where he and Cassandra first met.

The idea of their new venture in Marshall is to blend displays of fine wine with interior design and antique furniture. The building offers a massive space, including room for a wine cellar display and a small art gallery.

“It’s going to be generally more unique antique pieces, things that you wouldn’t find everywhere,” Julien said, adding that he got his start in interior design by renovating houses. From there, he said, it was only natural to start importing antique furniture.

“We liked the interior design aspect of things and so we picked up the family business,” he continued. “My parents used to import furniture and home decor and things from France so we decided to see if we could bring back the old family business. We went overseas and we pulled the trigger and said, ‘let’s do it.’

We started buying things and we have a warehouse in Nerac, France where my parents live.”

As well as featuring its own imported furniture, Vintage will have booths displaying the antique wares of other local dealers. The Lacazes are planning to have a small art gallery in the space featuring local artists. And the Vintage wine club will have its own special events starting in February.

In the weeks before they formally opened, Julien and Cassandra spent hours renovating the shop, even exposing ceiling beams in the main display room just inside the front door to add to the antique atmospherics.

“We’ve done a lot of work here,” Julien said. “We’re very excited about it.”

Vintage is located at 4238 Frost Street in Marshall. For more information and store hours, visit vintagemarshallva.com.

Charles Carroll IV, MD

Geraldine Carroll

Charles Carroll IV, MD Orthopedic Surgery, Hand, Upper Extremity Surgery and Rehabilitation 109 W, Marshall Street, Middleburg, VA 20117 540-326-8182 | Email: orthomd@ccarrollmd.com

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Country ZEST & Style | Winter 2022

17

For the Bowersock Family, A Final Chapter

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By Vicky Moon

n Thursday evening December 2, 2021 a disturbing e-mail arrived in some Middleburg in-boxes. The subject line read: The Deed is Done. Then came the following: If you are reading this the deed is done!

I decided it was time to join Carol. I hope you will understand that It was not a decision made in haste but one that I have thought about for several years now. Although my general health is still remarkably good for someone who has smoked for 65 years, my back scoliosis has caused me to loose 7 inches in height. In 1989 I went to both OHSU and Salem Spine Specialists who tried several procedures to reduce the pain. Unfortunately none were successful.

As a result of this I had to give up 99.9 percent of everything I enjoyed doing! I can still drive a car (of course when I get somewhere I can't stand or walk without severe pain) and I can watch TV. If you want a definition of boredom - that is it.

And frankly, that is why I truly hope you will understand. Although the expression is "Bored out of one's mind" my mind is still remarkably good for a 78 year old.

I have chosen to use the same exit procedure that Carol used. have asked my fabulous nephew, Justin Bowersock, to send this out to you in the hope that you will understand. Be assured I will put in a good word when your time comes.

Photo courtesy

Frances and Carol Bowersock enjoyed every moment.

The jarring e-mail was signed by Frances Bowersock. Everyone in Middleburg who had the privilege to know her and her late twin sister, Carol, was terribly saddened by this news. But many of their old friends and neighbors surely were smiling, as well. To know the twins also was to have many side-splitting memories of their countless exploits.

“They were a hoot,” said long-time friend as well as a tennis and golf partner Betsy Allen Davis, the former mayor of Middleburg. She laughed when she recalled the day the twins, long-time volunteer members of the Middleburg Rescue Squad, transported a black snake in their ambulance and brought it in to a local hospital emergency room.

What follows is adapted from my book, Middleburg Mystique: A Peek Inside the Gates of Middleburg, Virginia, published in 2001: Carol Bowersock, mayor of Middleburg from 1992-96, walks over from her home one block over on

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Photo courtesy Photo © by Vicky Moon

The Bowersock twins were devoted volunteers with the Middleburg Rescue Squad, including duty in early June at the Upperville Horse Show in case of any injuries.

Marshall Street. She has her prized dog, P. Zechariah, a Welsh Corgi, in tow. “That’s his registered name,” she says, adding, “That way we can call him Prozac for short.”

For years, Bowersock and her twin sister Frances, both 50ish, shared a house they called “Headquarters.” They ran errands for clients. In the garage, their close friend Markey Love operated an elegant floral business focused on weddings and parties in big white tents and things like that. Not to complicate matters too much here, but Markey’s sister, Allie Love, was formerly the town manager.

But back to the Bowersocks. Before moving out to Oregon, their main mission in life was with the Middleburg Rescue Squad. They were volunteers for 20 years. Night and day they jumped in an ambulance to assist with a horse-riding accident, kidney stone attack or even labor pains.

The call of their life came through when their parents, the esteemed Justin and Betty Bruce Bowersock, made their final exit by committing suicide together. (But much more on that later.)

Miss Bowersock and Prozac greet Sally Godfrey and Stella (as in A Street Car Named Desire, I am told). The dogs sniff each other while their owners chat. Ms. Godfrey runs a flower service called Centerpiece from her home/office across the street from the Bowersocks.

She does essentially the same thing that Markey Love does, but everyone is friendly and there are more than enough parties for the four florists in this town, which by the way is four blocks long. (Maybe five if you want to stretch it.) Customers arrive in a variety of vehicles and the SUV is definitely the car du jour. A vanity license plate is optional but one proud citizen displays the “20118” zip code. And on the hood of many cars, a colorful hood ornament, a fox or favorite

Photo © by Vicky Moon

These books were standard reference for members of the family.

Dinner at The Cottonwood Café in the aptly named Sisters, Oregon with Frances Bowersock (far left) and Carol Bowersock on the right in pink.

Photo © by Vicky Moon

Frances Bowersock used to follow the Corgi contingent in the Middleburg Christmas Parade to “Pick Up Poop.”

dog or other animal--everything from a goat to a pig.

Cost of these adornments range from $45-300.

In April, 1990, Justin DeWitt Bowersock III, a retired Washington banker, and his wife, Betty Bruce Van Antwerp Bowersock, made a final exit that stunned most of the locals. The Bowersocks, both 82 and married for 60 years, were vibrant members of the community. Some did not and do not realize they had lost two sons: Justin D. IV, their oldest son, was killed in a vehicle accident at the age of 16 in 1949. The second son, Chiles, religion editor of the Baltimore NewsAmerican, died of cancer at the age of 35 in 1972.

But their vivacious twin daughters, Frances and Carol, volunteers for the Middleburg Rescue Squad, discovered their parents at their 143-acre Rock Hill Farm near The Plains. The Bowersocks had been 20-year members of the Hemlock Society, an organization that believes in the personal choice of suicide. They ended their lives with a lethal cocktail of Seconal, Darvocet and vodka martinis. When the Bowersocks seemingly felt the quality of their lives was faltering, they made plans to “call it a day.”

Three months prior to their demise, Justin Bowersock had a series of small strokes. Then a mishap at home left him in bed with a bad back. Betty Bowersock was suffering from emphysema and was overwrought about having to give up her regular tennis game. Bank accounts and real estate had already been put in the twins’ names. Everything was detailed, including a notebook with extensive commentary on their final wishes...cremation and no memorial service.

“People were incredibly supportive,” Carol Bowersock, [who made her Final Exit in November, 2019] said at the time. “There’s a real sense of community about Middleburg. it involves not just the town residents but people who live all around here. It’s not a place, it’s a feeling.” And when all the Bowersocks’ wishes were carried out and their farm was sold, the new owner was none other than airline executive Stephen M. Wolf and his wife, Delores.

(But, that’s a story for another time.)

MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

Country ZEST & Style | Winter 2022

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Whether you are planning to remodel your kitchen, transform your master bath, finish a basement or build an addition, you need more than a contractor. You need a partner you can trust with the possession that says the most about what you value and the way you live.

Photo by Big Ben

A gaggle of teenagers from around Middleburg were in a fantasy football league during the NFL season.

The loser was to perform in front of the Safeway to collect money for Seven Loaves. Brooks Jenkins, left, a freshman at Highland, came in last. He picked up a guitar, started singing (terribly) and helped raise $250 in donations in two hours. His friend, Ben Wegdam, offered moral support.

Photo by Lisa Catlett.

Call this daughter, like mother. Audrey Wilson,16, was honored with “Best Design” in Middleburg Garden Club Greens Show last December just after her ever talented mother Bridget Wilson was featured in the Holiday issue of ZEST,2021.

Photo by Middleburg Photo.

Barry Michael Magner and Kelly McCready of Middleburg were married on New Year’s Eve at Airlie in Warrenton. Barry has been training dogs on multiple government research contracts and Kelly works remotely for Amazon Web Services.

They enjoy fox chasing, cooking, farming and hiking with their four dogs, playing cards and hosting dinner for friends.

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The Middleburg Photo team of Karen Monroe and Doug Gehlsen had an outing that morphed into a research trip to Little Washington to Patty O’s Café. It’s the latest creation of celebrity chef and owner Patrick O’Connell, also the mastermind of The Inn in Little Washington. What to expect? “Attention to detail with a relaxed menu, exuding a warm and friendly atmosphere.

Don’t forget to stop in the bakery.”

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Physical Therapist Mary Wilson Making a Wheel Difference

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By Leonard Shapiro

ot long after they finished their formal training, Del and Mary Wilson, the caring proprietors of Middleburg Physical Therapy, spent a year volunteering at a hospital in Romania back in the mid-1990s.

That’s where Mary first got involved with helping provide wheelchairs for disabled patients. She filled out an application to acquire one from a charity, and also learned about another wheelchair organization called Wheels for the World.

Mary Wilson, second from left, in Brazil with a recent wheelchair recipient.

She was intrigued about their work, and “once my year there with ‘Europa pentru Europa’ was done, I tucked it into the back of my mind for use once my children were grown.”

Wheels for the World is a Los Angeles-based, faith-based nonprofit that provides wheelchairs—all donated in the U.S.—to the disabled in developing nations who desperately need them. (Medicare and Medicaid provide Americans wheelchairs every five years as needed, but many countries don’t have that opportunity.)

After a conversation with her friend and fellow Bible study participant Amy Smith, Wheels for the World somehow came up, along with its inspirational founder, Joni Eareckson Tada. It turned out Amy and her husband, Dan, a Leesburg attorney, knew Tada and offered to introduce her to Mary.

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That happened two years ago, in a somewhat serendipitous meeting. A Baltimore native, Tada had ridden horses in Middleburg as a youngster before being seriously injured in a diving accident that left her a quadriplegic at age 17.

Her husband, Ken, also had a Wilson connection—his grandparents owned a cotton farm in Clovis, California, Del and Mary’s home town.

Mary enthusiastically volunteered to join up. Last October, she travelled to Brazil, spending ten days working to get patients seated into the proper wheelchairs, and doing some physical therapy, as well.

In Brazil, 250 people got wheelchairs, some brand new donated by manufacturers, but most used, though fully reconditioned. They’re restored by inmates at 15 federal, state, and private correctional facilities in 10 different states.

“A lot of them are lifers,” Mary said. “One of them said, ‘I’ve taken so much from people. This is my way to give it back.’”’

Recipients’ disabilities run the gamut—spinal cord,, cerebral palsy, Parkinson’s, amputations, among others. Each wheelchair must be customized based on an individual’s special needs. A 6-foot-3, 200-pound man needs a different chair than a 5-foot-3 130-pound woman, let alone a six-year-old child.

Since 1994, Wheels for the World has seated over 200,000 people in wheelchairs, and in 2022 will operate in 22 developing countries.

“We also train the people who get the chairs how to use them and how to take care of them,” Mary Wilson said, adding that she and her fellow volunteers also offer therapy and training so patients can do it on their own or with help from a friend or family member.

“In Brazil, one girl’s parents had never tried to do any range of motion work with her. She had cerebral palsy. We got her on the mat and trained the parents how to work with her.

“We had a quadriplegic who had been in the bed for two years. He was 6-feet and scared to death. We had to convince him to sit in the chair. In his old chair, he just slouched. We sent him home in an ideal chair for him, and it really does make a difference.”

Just like Mary Wilson and her dedicated colleagues at Wheels for the World.

MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

Moonstruck Geologist Played a Vital Role at NASA

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By Joe Motheral

r. Farouk El-Baz lives with his wife Patricia in Leesburg, but he’s also quite familiar with the moon.

As a geologist on the Apollo lunar missions from 1967 to 1972, he and his colleagues determined the safest lunar landing sites. El-Baz was secretary of NASA’s Landing Site Selection Committee consisting of 28 scientists who developed the rationale for choosing the safest site and the scientific objectives for the six lunar landing missions.

He chaired astronaut training in visual observations and photography and served at the mission operation control room at the Johnson Space Center at Clear Lake City, Texas. He and his team were successful in pinpointing each Apollo landing site.

“It was especially satisfying,” he said, “particularly because none of the participants had been there, or experienced anything like it. It was even more so because I became a U.S citizen in 1970.

“We had no idea what it looked like and what should we seek there,” he recalled, adding that NASA planned three unmanned missions to transmit helpful information. For example, the unmanned Ranger mission was to crash on the moon to see how its surface behaved. The other two took multiple images of the surface.

“I concentrated my efforts on the 2,000-plus images sent by Lunar Orbiter,” El-Baz said. “I began to classify the lunar surface features and study their locations for landings.”

Dr. Farouk El-Baz landed a critical NASA role in Apollo moon landings and is shown here with Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

He was was trying to find a “flat enough surface to allow the craft to land perfectly upright, which would ease a perfect launch at the end. We wanted it to be free of large blocks that might interfere with a safe landing.”

He played a key role in the Apollo 11 moon landing mission, and later Apollo missions. He came up with the idea of displaying touchable moon rocks at a museum and also became friends with all the astronauts, some of whom studied geology under his guidance.

A native of Zagazig, Egypt, El-Baz, now 84, attended renowned Ain Shams University in Cairo where he studied geology because “I had been fascinated by natural rock land forms on Boy Scout trips during my school years.”

In 1960, he was offered a scholarship for graduate study in the U.S. and attended the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy in Rolla. He earned masters and doctorate degrees in geology that included one year

studying at MIT. Soon after, he joined the Apollo team.

El-Baz has received a number of awards, including the Egyptian Order of Merit, First Class; Apollo’s Achievement Award and has seven honorary degrees.

He’s also a fellow of the U.S. Academy of Engineering and the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World which he represents at the United Nations.

NASA once sent a film crew to cover one of his teaching exercises. The sound man was particularly interested in lunar features and later became coproducer of Star Trek, The Next Generation.

“When they needed a name for that shuttle,” ElBaz said, “he suggested mine.”

He’s now working on two books, “one on my improbable life journey, the other on my proof that my ancestors, the ancient Egyptians, selected the form of their monuments after natural landforms in their western desert.”

Clearly, though, he’s mostly a man of the moon.

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Land Trust of Virginia Had a Very Good Year

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n 2021, the Middleburg-based Land Trust of Virginia (LTV) staff completed 16 easements for a total of 3,041 acres, compared to 1,765 acres in 2020 and 1,730 acres in 2019.

These easements expanded LTV into six new Virginia counties, including Shenandoah, Page, James City, Augusta, Bath and Lee. In total, LTV holds over 26,000 acres across 24 counties in Virginia and holds more easements than any other private land trust within the state.

Some of LTV’s 2021 easement highlights include: • Shield’s Point, an 827.9-acre property in James City County placed into conservation thanks to landowner Hunter Vermillion. This easement was its largest easement of the year and LTV’s second largest easement ever recorded.

Countless water resources were conserved, including nearly two miles of frontage on the Chickahominy River, 156 acres of wetlands, and 505 acres of floodplain.

• Clear View Farm, an 87.27-acre property in Louisa County, donated by landowner Ed Richardson.

Owned by the Richardson family since 1754, this property qualifies as a Century Farm. Originally a tobacco farm until the 1970s, Clear View Farm then became a very successful Red and Black Angus cattle operation until 2010. Richardson specialized in seedstock, meaning he bred pedigreed cattle registered with their breed association. He won the Denver Stock Show with one of his top cows a remarkable seven straight times.

Shield’s Point, an 827.9-acre property in James City County, was placed into conservation easement thanks to the generosity of landowner Hunter Vermillion. Photo by Casey Jensen, EcoCap Va. • John Stevenson’s and Amber Bromley’s 422-acre property in Shenandoah County. It was the site of Fisher’s Hill Battle, where the Army of West Virginia, under the command of Union General George Crook, arrived after their secretive flank march and from where they launched an attack that would crush the Confederate left and win the battle for the Union.

• Airmont Meadows is a 78-acre property in Loudoun County donated by landowner, Chuck Kuhn. The property was slated to become a 23-lot subdivision but will now

remain in one piece as a working farm. This is an important piece of conservation in development-stricken western Loudoun.

“This was no small feat for our staff to accomplish,” said LTV Executive Director Sally Price. “Like other private land trusts, we have seen a rapid increase in new easement inquiries, fielding more calls this year than ever before. There has been a palpable shift in the public’s mindset as we grapple with current world events. The need for nature and open space is ingrained in us all, and our work ensures these places remain for our future.”

58th Annual

DAFFODIL SHOW TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 2022

2 P.M. - 5 P.M.

PRESENTED BY

THE UPPERVILLE GARDEN CLUB BUCHANAN HALL 8549 JOHN MOSBY HWY UPPERVILLE, VIRGINIA 20184 CHAIR BARBARA SHARP 410-736-2333 bsharp@rstarmail.com To all striving garden artists who work with nature to create gardens as our art…

Horticulture Schedule Approved by the American Daffodil Society All Amateur Growers Are Invited to Exhibit Daffodil Boutique: Gifts, Art and More Afternoon Tea The Public is invited to participate with flowers from your garden!

Check out our website for schedule.

Donations Appreciated

www.uppervillegardenclub.org 24

MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

Carry Me BACK

Hold Your Horses, It’s All Mush for the Dogs

By Jimmy Hatcher

Your Life is Now

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think we were talking about the early 1970s.

Chip and Cary Embury were in the horse business at Kentfield Farm, then owned by Glenn and Dixie Nofsinger and later

by Caro and Jordan Bentley when I used to board my horses there.

Embury decided he wanted to try the sport of sled dog racing, but found the roads around Kentfield far too busy to train his Alaskan Huskies on them. Instead, he proceeded to take them to Crenshaw Road, also known as The Polo Field Road. It runs from Route 50 to Chip Embury running his team at the Ely, Rectortown. His training sled Minnesota “Race of Champions” in January had wheels, since snow was 1981, where they set the course record in the mostly scarce in Virginia. But 7dog Class. In 1981, Embury won the “ISDRA” the brakes only stopped the [International Sled Dog Racing Association] Gold Medal for the 7-dog Class. sled’s wheels, and not the dogs.

Embury chose Sunday afternoons on Crenshaw for his training program. One day, his dogs were all hooked up and ready to roll by 2 p.m. Unfortunately, that very same Sunday, Paul Mellon, ex-MFHA of Piedmont Hunt, had invited Billy Wilbur, past master of the Warrenton Hunt and now acting field master of the Piedmont Hunt, and Charles Whitehouse, Master of the Orange County Hunt, to come over for lunch. That would be followed by a pleasure ride, also set to start at 2 p.m., but because the surrounding fields were wet, they set off down Crenshaw Road.

"The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life.“ — Jack London, book Call of the Wild, 1903 At that time, Mellon owned farms on both sides of Crenshaw. On this particular day, he and his riding pals would go south down Crenshaw. At the same hour, right after lunch, Embury and his sled dogs took off from the opposite direction and headed north.

Wilber once said their outing became a small disaster when they trotted around one corner, only to see sled dogs coming toward them at full run. There were no collisions, and no one on horseback was unseated, but the frightened horses reversed themselves and were suddenly off to the races in full panic mode, and also at full gallop.

Years later, Wilber recalled that he was thinking at the time that Mellon was going to inflict pure holy hell on Embury. But Wilber, who had almost pulled his horse up, said Mellon galloped by with a smile on his face and shouted, “Faster Billy, they’re catching us.”

As for Chip Embury, that Crenshaw Road training surely paid off. The wheels eventually came off his sled, replaced by blade runners, and he and his dogs found their way to Alaska in 1984 and also competed in many major races there and around the country. No horses ever got in their way.

The rolling hills of Virginia’s horse and wine country offer the ideal backdrop to revel in romance. Awaken your culinary senses, indulge in transformative spa treatments and take in the mountain air on a morning horseback ride as you connect with nature, and the one you love.

888.598.6340 SalamanderResort.com

Country ZEST & Style | Winter 2022

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Leesburg’s Glenfiddich House Has Some History

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Harrison Hall became a temporary hospital during the Battle of Ball’s Bluff. Miller wrote:

By Joe Motheral

t noon on September 4, 1862, a horsedrawn ambulance pulled up in front of Harrison Hall on North King Street in Leesburg.

Entry on Thursday night, November 21, 1861…

We were startled early in the morning by a sharp and brisk cannoning, but it had been common for us to hear firing…About there was a great cry that the Yankees were within a mile of town. We saw several wounded prisoners taken by, some wounded frightfully, one poor man with the blood streaming from his face, some with arms and legs wounded and another with his jawbone crushed.

According to early records in the files of what was later known as Glenfiddich House, “A soldierly figure with both wrists in splints, walked up the long box (woods) bordered brick path and was welcomed.”

That was General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate armies. He had come to Leesburg— passing through on his way to his headquarters in Frederick, Maryland—to initiate the “Maryland Campaign” that included the battle of Antietam.

Lee reportedly was injured when a messenger, his horse in full gallop, came to a screeching halt. Lee’s horse, Traveller, spooked, and Lee fell, breaking one wrist and spraining the other.

The Harrisons of Harrison Hall, were friends with General Lee. The original part of the house was built circa 1767, with a larger section added in 1840 in an Italianate style. There was a succession of owners until around 1980 when a fire destroyed much of the home and town officials considered tearing it down.

She had gotten word that Col. Erasmus Burt from a Mississippi unit had been wounded seriously.

She wrote:

Glenfiddich House on King Street in Leesburg. with a diary dated 1861-62 written by then 19-yearold Virginia Miller, a niece of the Harrisons. It also contained Confederate $5 bills and a Confederate uniform.

A copy of Virginia Miller’s diary offered a glimpse of daily life at the outset of the Civil War. For example:

He was wounded in the right hip. Most anxiously and carefully did we prepare his room for him…and as I stepped forward to take his sword and belt from the doctor, can I ever forget the gentle, kind way in which he called my name and held out his hand. They took him upstairs, but a mark of his suffering remained behind in the blood which stained the floor.

And how did Harrison Hall become Glenfiddich?

Author James Dickey and his family rented the house from 1966 to 1968 when he wrote the final draft of Deliverance and was serving as Poet Laureate of the Library of Congress. The name Glenfiddich originated with the LeHanes, who owned a farm in Loudoun County named Glenfiddich.

Lou LeHane, founder of Miles, LeHane Consultants, decided to buy it from David Trone and restore it. They did salvage a trunk in the attic

Wednesday, February 19, 1862….Yesterday Llall and I started on a shopping expedition and after he left, we went back to Hattie’s. Uncle Matt had a large dinner party, we stayed until quite late.

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MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

MODERN FINANCE

Electric Vehicles: Driving Toward the Future

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By Philip Dudley

here’s a new industrial revolution unfolding right before our eyes as the rise of electric vehicles (EV) takes center stage.

The internal combustion engine (ICE) is enemy No. 1, with many states and even nations around the globe, are pledging to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Philip Dudley Legacy auto manufacturers also are behind the curve because as pure play EV manufactures such as Tesla have a huge, first-mover advantage.

It’s complicated, but there are many avenues to gain investing exposure to the EV revolution when estimates are that nearly 30 per cent of cars sold by 2030 will be electric.

While Henry Ford was a visionary more than a hundred years ago, billionaire Elon Musk has been this century’s Photo by Dmitry Novikov on Unsplash pioneer, not to mention one of the wealthiest men on the planet. Manufacturing an ICE car is extremely difficult, but an EV car takes higher quality steel, lithium and semiconductors, not to mention flawless execution in the factory to ultimately produce an even lower margin product.

And then there’s lithium, also known as an alkali metal, required for the production of batteries. Battery technology is what separates the wheat from the chaff, and the early winner is Tesla. Still, as the EV market grows, all the players need lithium, so pay attention to this commodity.

Supply chain issues are currently plaguing much of the manufacturing space. New (EV) and legacy (ICE) companies each have their particular strengths and weaknesses, with the best supply chain management prevailing.

Another technological area drawing lots of attention is so-called “autonomous driving.”

Imagine a world with an electric vehicle that doesn’t require a human operator. Is this holy EV grail? One might assume yes, because Apple reportedly is developing a fully autonomous EV that will be available in the not too distant future, complete with all manner of other Apple products. No doubt, this is possibly the most complex car engineering project in history.

Is an EV a computer on wheels? I would argue yes, particularly taking into account the amount of semiconductor chips needed for one vehicle—approximately 1,400. And this growing demand bodes well for the semiconductor industry, which has always been notoriously cyclical but now is emerging as structural.

So do your homework and get in the EV game. There are many ways to gain diversified investment exposure: a company that mines lithium, supply chain management software, semiconductor chips, autonomous driving technology and auto manufacturing. Just ask yourself, what would Elon do?

Country ZEST & Style | Winter 2022

27

CMSP is offering

Piano, Voice, Cello, Violin, Guitar, Sax, Flute, Clarinet & more!

The Community Music School of the Piedmont

piedmontmusic.org

540-592-3040

Lessons offered at Trinity Episcopal Church in Upperville with additional locations in Fauquier, Frederick and Loudoun

28

At Hill, It’s The Path

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By Leonard Shapiro

few years back, Treavor Lord, the Head of School at Middleburg’s Hill School, was attending the wedding of a former student when he ran into a couple of other young men who had been in the same class. And for one of them, it had not always been easy.

Still, he had managed to survive, and eventually thrive. “The school taught us what was important,” he told Lord that day. “It helped us learn how to do things the right way.”

Hill has been doing that since 1926, Photo by Dorsey DeButts when the Junior Kindergarten through Hill Head of School Treavor Lord, Eighth Grade school was first founded.

And over the years, it has also adapted an Director of Enrollment Kelly Johnson and teacher John Daum. important philosophy, best summarized as “preparing the child for the path, not preparing the path for the child.”

It’s a slogan and a concept that both Lord and Kelly Johnson, Hill’s Director of Enrollment, often talk about when they meet with the parents of prospective Hill students. And, Johnson said, they both often hear from former students that, “Hill School was always there for me. It’s where I learned the value of hard work and the effect that it can have on the rest of your life.”

“Kelly and I both meet with nearly every prospective parent,” Lord said. “It’s a little unusual, but very important. I want to be certain that we are clearly communicating what Hill’s mission and philosophy is so that families can make the right decision about whether we are the right school for their family.

“Our mission is simple – to help children grow into happy, successful adults. It’s really what all parents and good teachers want. Our program of Total Education (strong academics surrounded by meaningful participation in the co-curriculars of Music, Art, Theater, and Sports) helps to build a strong foundation for our students.

They get to participate in programs they have a natural interest or passion for and, equally important, they participate in programs that might not come as easily to them. That helps them develop the character traits of determination, perseverance, and humility that will be important to them in their adult years.”

Johnson added “When the adults in a child’s life are aligned – their parents, their teachers, their extended “family” - children thrive. This partnership with parents and providing children the skills to navigate the path versus making the path easy to navigate will help children face joy, accomplishments, challenges, and setbacks, with equal enthusiasm and resolve.

Abby All, a 2016 Hill graduate and now a sophomore at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va., knows about struggling.

“I was in the public school system from kindergarten to third grade,” she said.

“I really was struggling academically, and then my parents enrolled me at Hill, which really helped me grow.”

She also found her own particular paths over the next five years.

“I was exposed to so many different things—theater, art, music, sports, and that was really crucial in being able to transition to high school (Foxcroft). It showed me the importance of academics, but it was also important to do other things that will help structure who you are.

“As I got into the upper school, you also had to push yourself to succeed. But there was such an incredible support system. The people there just will not allow you to fail.”

Will Driskill’s path to get to Hill seemed almost pre-determined, if only because his mother, Lizanne, and his uncle, the late Chip White, were both graduates of the school. But he also cherished his own experience going from kindergarten all the way through eighth grade.

“The biggest thing was that, aside from the academics, you were able to participate in a wide variety of activities,” he said. “Some schools just shove things down your throat. Hill allows you to decide what you like, what your passion is, and then gives you an opportunity to make it happen.

“I was never pushed to do certain things. They guided me and helped me and eventually provided a bunch of different paths I could follow.”

Will, now 23, has taken a path since college to pursue a real estate career. And to do it in his hometown.

“Hill School helped me understand that Middleburg was a place to be loved and cherished and a place where I really wanted to be.”

Abby and Will clearly were prepared for the path at Hill, and they took it.

MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

STUDIO LUXE:

A Welcoming Boutique for One and All

The new location for Studio Luxe at 92 Main Street in Warrenton affords customers a larger browsing space.

Studio Luxe owner Brandi Norrell thrives on fashion and looking your best.

T

One of the popular items at Studio Luxe are these fun, furry pom-pom slippers with a sole hearty enough that you could wear them to the grocery store if you’re in a stylin’ mood.

By Anita L. Sherman

here’s a bright spot at 92 Main Street in Old Town Warrenton.

Bright in many ways. The space at Studio Luxe, a women’s boutique, is open, inviting and cheery. And the owner, Brandi Norrell, is bubbly and effusive. Her smile says it all. She loves what she does and it shows.

Opened in 2019, her retail establishment has quickly become a community favorite for finding trendy, sophisticated, sparkly and fun clothing and accessories. And the price tags won’t break the budget.

Originally from Raleigh, North Carolina, Norrell has called Virginia home for the last 20 years. She created a buzz in Warrenton when she first opened at 9 S. Fifth Street. That location now houses her second shop, Little Luxe, catering to younger fashionistas.

“I know girls’ fashion,” said Norrell speaking of young and older women. “It needs to be fun and playful, whether you’re a size extra small or plus-size. We all deserve to feel beautiful and good about ourselves.”

Norrell usually greets each customer by their first name and her shop is a feelgood place to visit. That’s how Norrell wants it.

“It’s about building relationships and connecting with the community,” she said, “everybody feels welcome and there’s always something here to find.”

Working with more than a hundred vendors, Norrell’s scouting trips often include Atlanta and California.

“I buy what I like,” she said. And what she likes resonates as the racks are filled with colorful dresses, skirts, slacks, blouses, and wraps in a variety of styles, textures and fabrics. If a holiday is approaching, there are sparkly tops.

Sunglasses, headbands, hats, purses, scarves and jewelry abound Fashion has always been in her blood, and opening Studio Luxe was a leap of faith.

Owner Brandi Norrell has two locations in Old Town. Studio Luxe and Little Luxe for younger girls.

Step inside Studio Luxe at 92 Main Street. You won’t be disappointed if you’re looking for a boutique bargain.

“I hadn’t done retail before,” said Norrell, who’s educational background includes an MBA in strategic leadership. She did a lot of work in youth advocacy and coaching and still maintains Cheers To Today, a motivational social media site offering inspirational messages to kick start your day.

A visit to Studio Luxe excites the senses. There’s plenty to see and touch, soft, jazzy music in the background and calming scented candles. And, if you need to ponder a decision or chat with a friend, there’s a welcoming couch that offers a cozy haven.

It’s all part of the ambiance. The walls are graced with inspirational and fun framed quotes all available for purchase.

At the same time that she moved Studio Luxe to 92 Main Street in October 2021, Norrell opened Little Luxe, similar in style but catering to young girls.

“We opened both at the same time…and it’s been great,” she said of her staff of eight part-time employees who rotate between the two locations.

While both boutiques are clearly focused on the ladies, there are a number of male customers…all those husbands, brothers and boyfriends who know where to shop. “Wish List” parties make gift giving easy.

Studio Luxe also hosts “sip and shop” gathering events throughout the year and “pop-ups” where they will have a presence at other locations.

Norrell is a shining example of a successful, woman owned business. Her light is reflected in her entrepreneurial savvy and style...her unique panache.

“When you walk in and look around…this is what the inside of my heart looks like, how it makes me feel,” she said.

Studio Luxe, Women’s Boutique, 92 Main Street, Warrenton. Monday-Thursday, 105; Friday, 10-6; Saturday, 10-4; Sunday, 12-4. Little Luxe, Tween Boutique, 9 S. Fifth Street, Warrenton, VA. Thursday, 10-5; Friday, 10-6; Saturday, 10-4; Sunday, 12-4.

Country ZEST & Style | Winter 2022

29

A Music Man with the Touch of an Artist

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“One of them asked me ‘how much did you pay for this, like $3,500?’ I said ‘no, I made it.’ To me it’s just a form of art.”

By Leonard Shapiro

rowing up in Fresno, California, just like many teenagers around the world back in the 1960s, Middleburg dentist Gregg Helvey was enamored with an up-and-coming English musical group calling themselves The Beatles.

Helvey said that over the years “I’ve only bought three guitars in my life. Two of them I tore down and rebuilt them to change the sound dynamic. All of mine sound different, and it’s all due to their electronics.”

As a skilled dental practitioner, Helvey obviously has uniquely magical, nimble hands, one reason his guitar-making seems like a natural fit for a man used to working in the close quarters of a sensitive human mouth. He’s also been helped in his guitar making with how-to videos he watches on You Tube. None are for sale.

It seemed only natural to start taking guitar lessons, but he also was fascinated by the instrument itself. So much so, he managed to craft one from scratch by himself back then. It’s now proudly displayed at his office on Marshall Street.

There are other far more complicated electric guitars on walls all around as well, each also designed and built by Helvey. The garage at his Middleburg area home is loaded—his family members would likely say overloaded—with countless machines and tools to support his rather eclectic (and electric) hobby. And that’s where he also goes to play and sing all by his lonesome, loving every minute.

Photo by Leonard Shapiro

Gregg Helvey makes the guitars that make his music.

After graduating from Georgetown’s dental school in 1976 and spending two years in the Air Force, Helvey and his wife, Anne, came to Middleburg in 1978 after he purchased the practice of retiring local dentist. The family, including sons Gregg and Joseph, lived in the village and he served one term on the Middleburg Town Council and seven years on the Planning Commission.

Music always remained a passion, and about ten years ago, he decided to get back into creating guitars, this time electric. He’s made ten, each with a slightly different design, all with their own distinctive sound.

“I’ve had some patients who were semi-pros with guitars and they tried them out for me to see if I was on the right track,” Helvey said recently.

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“I do it because it’s fun, and it’s relaxing,” he said. “I make up my own music. I record myself, then I usually say ‘oh my god, this is just terrible.’ But then my wife will listen and she’ll say, ‘hey, that’s pretty good.’”

Helvey has his own musical heroes, including masterful Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and of course, The Boss, Bruce Springsteen.

“Keith Richards changed the way you play it,” Helvey said, adding that in the 1920’s, instrument manufacturer Gibson came up with an inexpensive six-string guitar “A lot of musicians were playing banjos that were five strings so they took off the sixth string and played with five. Richards only plays with five strings in a lot of his music, and no-one does it better.”

Helvey also has other artistic interests. During Covid, he started to paint.

Along with a few of his electric guitars, there’s a lovely framed painting he did of Mount Vernon displayed prominently on another office wall.

Magical hands indeed, and clearly multi-talented, as well.

MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

Keeping Traditions Alive to a Tea

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Greer’s Antiques GREER’S ANTIQUE CONSERVATION Quality you can trust n

By Linda Roberts

s a child, Allison Ritter enjoyed serving tea to her dolls using pieces from the lovely china tea sets her mother collected.

As an adult, Ritter is still serving tea, but these days, she’s pouring it for adults and sometimes to children accompanying their mothers, in her classic tea room on Main Street in downtown Berryville.

The Tea Cart transports guests to Britain to enjoy a leisurely two hours over lunch or afternoon tea with the opportunity to savor scones, delicate sandwiches and special desserts while, of course, sipping a favorite cup of tea.

Photos by Linda Roberts Visitors have the option to select from a wide Teapots of every imaginable variety of loose-leaf teas, served in a delicate style at The Tea Cart. teapot and poured into an exquisite china cup.

“We try to create an experience here,” Ritter said with a smile, adding, “This is what sets us apart.”

Obviously Ritter’s vision is hitting the mark. Some visitors are driving to Berryville from as far away as Richmond and Pennsylvania to drink in the atmosphere at The Tea Cart while enjoying a traditional British menu of select teas and delicious tidbits prepared Allison Ritter pauses for a snapshot by chef Jennifer Brewer. with the Queen at The Tea Cart.

Reservations are recommended because The Tea Cart often is booking six weeks in advance for weekends and serving 250 to 300 guests per week Wednesday through Sunday. Weekends are particularly busy with special occasion events, such as birthday gatherings and bridal parties.

Once a publicist for food brands and restaurants, Ritter moved from Los Angeles with her husband and two young boys to join forces with her mother, Sue Whitbeck of Berryville. Together the mother-daughter duo is tackling the tea room business with great success. Although leaving a successful career was difficult, Ritter hasn’t looked back and has found herself promoting what she intended to create—“a relaxing, leisurely and elegant experience.

The guest experience begins when greeted at the front door and invited to select a hat from a stand holding fanciful bonnets of many colors, shapes and sizes. After all, a proper tea party is not complete unless guests don a hat for the occasion.

At that point, you and your party are ushered to an elegantly appointed table where lovely china plates, teapots, cups and saucers and linen napkins await. At the conclusion of their experience, guests have the option to purchase the often vintage or perhaps contemporary place settings, including the teapot, should they wish to savor a moment and reflect on their outing at The Tea Cart at their own home.

The Tea Cart’s staff goes through what the guest should expect at each setting, an experience that Ritter calls “an absolute ritual.

“It is such an escape,” she said. “You are transported into another country’s ritual and try foods and perhaps teas that you hadn’t sampled before.”

A highlight of the visit is always a photo opportunity with a life-size figure of Queen Elizabeth that can be moved around the room.

“It’s important to keep up these traditions,” Ritter said. “I am so grateful to continue providing this experience. It’s at the forefront of my contribution (to society).”

The Tea Cart is located at 16 W. Main Street in downtown Berryville. For additional information and to make reservations visit www.theteacartva.com.

Join us for our 2nd Annual

Holiday Open House www.greersconservation.com

November 8 & 9, 2014 37627 Allder School Road 10am-4pm

Purcellville, VA 20132 540.338.6607 www.greersconservation.com greersant@gmail.com

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Open Monday - Friday 9-4 & Weekends by Appointment Museum Level Conservation and Custom Furniture for 44 years

37627 Allder School Road Purcellville, VA 20132 540.338.6607 greersant@aol.com Regular hours are by appointment only

Country ZEST & Style | Winter 2022

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New Technology

BRINGS BLACK HISTORY TO LIFE

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By John T. Toler

he Afro-American Historical Association of Fauquier County, headquartered in The Plains, is a notable example of how an organization focused on discovering and preserving the past has been able to grow and advance its mission with the latest technology.

The AAHA traces its beginnings to the efforts of Karen Hughes White and Karen King Lavore. In the late 1980s, they began researching information about their own families, using the resources available at the time in order to find “…anything to shed light on the lives of those who came before us.”

These sources included official county records found in heavy volumes in the county record room, microfilm, microfiche and floppy discs, and census data found on CDs. Pertinent information was also accessed at the Library of Virginia and other museums.

These efforts created an extensive body of knowledge focused on the African American experience in Fauquier County, and the founding of the AAHA in 1992. By June, 1997, the AAHA had a small office in the American Bird building in The Plains that was open to the public on a limited basis.

Donations from community sources – as important now as they were in the early days – provide a unique part of AAHA’s wealth of information. These include a large collection of funeral programs, reference books donated by retired librarians, church records, school board minutes, school censuses, and family bibles containing notations of births, marriages and deaths.

AAHA also purchased material the staff found in other places, as well as donation of certain objects from people who have visited Africa, or were from there.“When you have people from Fauquier who are collectors of certain items they want to donate, the shelves start to quickly fill up,” said White.

In 2001, the AAHA moved into a larger office in a building on Loudoun Avenue in The Plains, and over the years has expanded into most of the available space. Under White’s leadership as president, the staff has grown as well, including Collections Manager Norma Logan, Grants Administrator Angela Davidson, Marketing Coordinator Robert Doane and Community Outreach Coordinator Christine Taylor Lewis.

And these days, modern computer technology has been a huge help.

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Photo by Hugh Kenny, PEC.

Staff involved with building and sharing the AAHA ‘s growing body of information include (from left) Aysha Davis, who handles Digital Programs and Audience Development; Director and President Karen Hughes White, Grants Administrator Angela Davidson and Community Outreach Coordinator Christine Lewis.

Fauquier native Jerry Williams IV provides IT support. His work includes the Virtual Museum project, which was launched in December 2021.

Through a grant from the Virginia Association of Museums, in 2000 the AAHA purchased Past Perfect museum software, which included the modules for basic archives, objects, library, photographs and museum membership.

“We used the ‘scatter-gather’ feature, where we could ‘scatter’ new information on a CD or floppy disc, take it home, update the computer there, and bring it back,” recalled White, who lives in southern Fauquier. “We got to the point where we could work remotely and send the information in, but I never could, because my internet is much slower and didn’t meet on the same wave. It still can’t… not to the fullest.”

The Worldwide Web was a major resource.

“As Ancestry.com and other search engines became available, we started subscribing,” said White. “We started with straight Family Tree Maker, and later upgraded to Family Tree Maker.3. Now I think we’re on Family Tree.2020.”

Starting in 2000, creation of the AAHA website has been a collaborative effort. The first version was an online virtual exhibit created by volunteer Laurae Lyster-Mench using Past Perfect software. Updates have been made regularly, managed by local tech companies and White’s daughter, Ebonee Davis Sanders, who has a degree from Strayer University in Computer Networking.

To call the AAHA website a “work in progress” is an understatement. Easily searchable databases include 1867 Voters, African American Marriages, Born Free and Emancipated, Bible Records, the AAHA Archives – and more are coming.

The Know Their Names database is currently being developed and is in its first phase for testing, which includes an interactive, searchable experience on the website. It will allow visitors to access to AAHA research and data in real time as it is entered.

The goal is to have a completed platform for research and data entry in late 2022 or early 2023.

The AAHA’s new Interactive Story Map offers a wide range of information in a well-organized and easy-to-use format. It’s a collaborative project of the AAHA and the Piedmont Environmental Council, which also provided photographic support. The Fauquier County GIS Department assisted with mapping, and funding was provided by the PATH Foundation.

Clicking on “View Our Interactive Story Map” on the AAHA homepage takes you to an overview explaining the project, then to the three primary categories: Fauquier County’s African American Communities, Churches, and Schools.

This is followed by Explore the Map, which provided specific details about those categories in an interactive format. Each subject is indicated on a map by a number; placing your cursor over the number calls up the identity of the subject, and clicking on it leads you to a detailed narrative and vintage photographs of the subject.

The final link, Learn and Share, gives instruction on how to use other information available on the AAHA website, as well as how to submit additional information, stories or photos for inclusion. Visitors are encouraged to contact elected officials and ask them to support “…greater recognition of these important, but often overlooked, communities and historic resources.”

It’s remarkable what the AAHA has been able to accomplish with just a small part-time staff, its board of directors, and dedicated volunteers.

The importance of what they do was recently recognized by the Fauquier County Board of Supervisors, which named the AAHA Scott District’s 2021 Citizen of the Year.

“This recognition acknowledges our mission of documenting and preserving the history of the African American presence in Fauquier County, not limiting them to one community, district or one period of time,” said White. “It also speaks to Supervisor Holder Trumbo’s understanding of the richness of Fauquier’s history, and our mission to network and make this information available to all.”

MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

WANT TO MAKE THINGS JUMP IN 2022?

CALL CRICKET R CT DE RA N U NT CO

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Glen – Ora

Claytonville

Innisfree Farm

Rock Ridge

130 acres $6,150,000 Rich in history, Glen Ora, ca. 1815 is the epitome of a very private and charming Hunt Country Estate, restored and renovated for today’s lifestyle. In the Orange County Hunt Territory, the estate features courtyard stables and gorgeous views.

102+ acres $4,600,000 Boyce – This exquisite Country Estate is surrounded by some of the finest estates in Clarke Co. and enjoys stunning Blue Ridge Mountain views. Designed for elegant living and grand entertaining.

Protected by a VOF Easement.

53 acres $4,500,000 Marshall – 6 BR/6BA stucco & stone home with spectacular views of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Lovingly cared for with a wonderful mix of formal rooms and comfortable spaces. Features salt water pool, guest house, pond and barn.

94+ acres $3,750,000 The Plains – French Country manor with magnificent views of the Blue Ridge Mountains. 5 BR / 6 BA. 5 fireplaces. 1st floor primary suite. 22-stall center aisle barn, fenced paddocks and riding ring. Access to I-66 & Dulles International Airport.

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White Oak Farm

WILLWYN FARM

Bonnie Glen

The Orchard

93+ acres $3,600,000 Middleburg – 1st time offering of this wonderful ‘Hanback built’ home with spectacular Blue Ridge Mtn views. 5 BR / 5.5 BAs. 4 fireplaces, hardwood floors. Pool & mature landscaping. 2 BR / 1 BA tenant house, 6 stall barn w/paddocks. 2 ponds.

37 acres $3,495,000 This captivating farm posses all the charm of horse country. Nestled down a deadend road this property has rolling, open pastures and a restored 1700’s stone main house. Also a log and stone guest house, and a marvelous horse facility.

24.59 acres $2,350,000 Middleburg – Renovated w/over 6,000+ sq ft. classic c. 1915 farmhouse with 2 primary suites, 2 BRs, 4 full BAs and 3 half-baths.

Meticulously maintained, a wonderful mix of old and new. Barn, paddocks, run-in shed, spring fed pond. Great ride out.

4.82 acres $1,850,000 Middleburg – Largest residential parcel “in town!” Built by local master builder WJ Hanback. 3/4 BRs, 3 full BAs, details include bay windows, built-ins, hardwood floors and fireplaces. Fenced garden extensive landscaping, pond and mature trees.

Cricket Bedford (540) 229-3201 Real Estate Professional As one of the top selling agents in the area, Cricket views every property as it is—unique.

She instinctively knows exactly what it takes to successfully match buyers and sellers.

Add experience, perseverance and personality to the equation and there you have Cricket Bedford. Get a jump on the Spring market, call Cricket.

THOMAS & TALBOT ESTATE PROPERTIES

Opening The Door To Horse Country For Generations 2 South Madison Street | PO Box 500 | Middleburg, VA 20118 | Office: 540-687-6500 | thomasandtalbot.com

A future farmer.

NOBODY HERE BUT US

CHICKENS M

arshmallow is a 2-year-old Ameraucana Chicken which belongs to Sophie and Sebastain Langenberger at their 30-acre farm, Poplar Path outside of Middleburg. She lays five to six blue-green eggs a week during the summer. She is very sweet natured and loves treats, as they all do.

Chickens are very food motivated animals. It was Sophie’s idea to first get egg layers, but they quickly have become one of her favorite animals. “They have so much personality and bring a lot of fun to the farm,” she noted.

They also raise about 50 meat chickens in two batches, one in the spring, one in the fall, every year. Sebastain processes them after about eight weeks. “It’s a lot of work but eating sustainably is very important to our family,” he told Country ZEST, “and I take a lot of pride in knowing all the meat we eat is either raised by us or another local farm when we buy beef and pork in bulk.”

And finally, there’s Berend, 17 months. He has loved animals and been outside from the very beginning. From the moment he wakes up, he is running to the door asking to go outside to say hello to the chickens and goats, even if it’s very cold. It takes a lot of coaxing to get him to eat breakfast and get dressed first. He is famous at the barn for wanting to pet every horse within reach. He’s visited a friend’s Shetland pony and he already knows how to get a handful of sweet feed to get him to come over for a visit.

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Photo by Doug Gehlen Middleburg Photo

Marshmellow

MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

Come on out, the weather is fine.

Berend, Sophie and a fine feathered friend.

OK you guys made me spill.

Can someone say the word scrambled?

Father and son memories are very important.

WHEN YOU’RE READY TO MOVE TALK TO WILL R CT DE RA N U NT CO

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The Old Winery

Poe’s Run

Hume Parcel 2

Five Points Rd.

44 acres $3,495,000 Rectortown – Turn-key estate protected by conservation easement, which allows for develop-ment of equestrian facilities.

Views of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a 7-acre fenced vineyard with vistas of rolling hills, woods and pastures all around.

50 acres $2,000,000 Flint Hill – Charming historic home, ca.

1700’s with spectacular landscaping designed by James van Sweden - gardens, terraces, stone walls and pool. 3 stall barn, paddocks and pastureland along the Jordan River. Property has Exceed internet.

50 acres $950,000 This parcel of land is located in a superb location, just minutes from the quiet town of Hume. Excellent frontage on Hume Road and views of the surrounding landscape. Escape the hectic city life and build your dream estate.

1 acre $800,000 Cottage nestled between large farms in sought after location just minutes to either Middleburg, Marshall or The Plains.

Traditional country home on the outside offers a sophisticated, contemporary design within.

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Stonewall Ave.

Hound House

Federal St.

Ada Road

.26 acres $699,000 Fully renovated home in the charming village of Middleburg. Light and bright with newly remodeled kitchen. French doors lead to 2 level deck with built in seating.

Walk into town to enjoy shopping, dining, community events and more.

.04 acres $495,000 Middleburg – 2 BR / 1 BA cottage centrally located one block North of main street in historic Middleburg. Lovingly restored to accentuate the wonderful c. 1910 antique features, this home is filled with charm!

Walk to restaurants, shopping and more.

.46 acres $390,000 This Charming cottage, ca. 1900, is a short walk to the gracious Ashby Inn and restaurant. Its village zoning offers Airbnb potential and its location offers access to High Mountain Farm Broadband. Hiking, riding, dining, wine tasting and shopping.

10 acres $150,000 This wooded parcel is the ideal location to build your getaway home! This parcel provides plenty of privacy while also being just minutes to the town of Marshall or the Plains, VA. Location also provides easy access to either I-66 or Route 17.

Will Driskill (540) 454-7522 Real Estate Professional A third-generation Middleburg resident with a passion for the Piedmont area he grew up in, William “Will” Driskill is deeply connected to the local area. In addition to being a dedicated realtor, he is an avid horseman, tennis player, distance runner and gardener. His diverse skill set makes him perfectly suited to helping any client find their dream home. Get ahead of the Spring market, talk to Will about your new listing.

THOMAS & TALBOT ESTATE PROPERTIES Opening The Door To Horse Country For Generations

2 South Madison Street | PO Box 500 | Middleburg, VA 20118 | Office: 540-687-6500 | thomasandtalbot.com

It’s Family, It’s Horses, It’s Home

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ill Driskill, 23, is the third generation of his family to live in the Middleburg area.

His mother, Lizanne White Driskill, is the daughter of the late Nanette and George White, the founder of a fencing company Lizanne continues to run. Will’s father, Bill, has been with Core and Main commercial builders for 27 years and is currently a company vice president. Will’s sister, Holland, 21, is a student at Elon University.

“I was born and raised here” Will said, “and have always loved the area.”

Will went to the Hill School from kindergarten through eighth grade and graduated from Highland School in Warrenton. He attended Hampden-Sydney in Farmville, Virginia, and took courses in government and foreign affairs. He also had “an amazing opportunity to attend a program called Semester at Sea. While on this ship, I traveled to 12 countries and three continents.”

Now, he’s settled in as a real estate agent in Middleburg at Thomas and Talbot Estate Properties and describes his new career as “very hands on,” adding that it allows him to help clients find their dream home while also giving him the opportunity to build valuable relationships that last a lifetime.

A rider since the age of seven, Will loves the outdoors and being able to “ride over this beautiful countryside. It provides me with a different way of viewing the land that not many people get to see. Having had the opportunity to ride most my life, I understand the importance of open space.”

He currently owns one horse purchased from a racehorse trainer in Rapidan County. “The main reason I purchased my horse was so that I could continue to ride cross-country, my biggest passion.”

He’s also excited about being a co-listing agent for the 152-acre Chilly Bleak farm near Rectortown.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to ride across this farm on many occasions and I love the history and charm,” he noted. “Now that I have an opportunity to co-list the farm with John Coles, I really get to see the inside and out of the property. It brings you back in time with its history and character.”

Along with his work in the buying and selling of large estates, “I enjoy getting to educate people about the importance of preservation and why it makes this area the place it is today.”

And, what does he like best about Middleburg?

“It’s a very charming town and I love the horse country aspect.

Everyone knows everyone and that’s what makes the town special.”

And what will the town look like in 20 years?

“I believe Middleburg will continue to grow. Covid has brought a lot of change to the area and I believe that over the next few years we will continue to see people moving to the town and farms being bought and sold.”

Will is also a supporter of the Piedmont Environmental Council, Goose Creek Association, and the Virginia Will Driskill Steeplechase Association.

“They are all important for the continued preservation of land and to make Middleburg the place it is.”

MAKE THE SWITCH TO

Country ZEST & Style | Winter 2022

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It’s Sophie’s Choice to Help Save the Land

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ophie Langenberg, 28, grew up in Fauquier County, attended Highland School and graduated early from Fauquier High. She started riding when she was “very little” and got her first pony for Christmas at age nine. “It’s one of my favorite childhood memories,” she recalled.

While at the University of Virginia, she played polo and earned a biology degree. She often attended Twilight Polo at Great Meadow and was thrilled to continue playing and have a chance to learn more about the game. Better yet, that’s how she met her husband, Sebastian Langenberg.

“I will always be grateful to the sport that introduced me to Sebastian,” she noted.

Sophie moved to Middleburg with her family in 2010 and “I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.”

Since last August, she been the communications and educations manager for the Land Trust of Virginia (LTV). Growing up in the area, she was well acquainted with LTV and its important conservation work. Her goal is to “maximize opportunities to educate the wider public about conservation easements and promote us as the leading private land trust in Virginia.

“I love running into friends and neighbors every day when I check our mail or go into the coffee shop. But we also have access to amazing art, music, food, events and more. There’s something for everyone, even if you don’t love horses.

But as someone who does, it’s all the better. Middleburg can feel as small town or big city as you want to make it.”

Sophie and Sebastian have just two polo ponies now. They’re hoping one will be reserved for their bouncing baby boy, 17-month-old Berend.

“Working with horses taught Sebastian and I a lot of important lessons,” Sophie noted. “And we want to instill those values in Berend.”

When asked what Middleburg might be like in 20 years, Sophie replied: “I think Middleburg will have its challenges learning how to grow gracefully. This area is so special because of its history, and its love of doing things the old-fashioned way. As time goes on, new people move here with different sensibilities. I hope we can maintain what keeps us such a special part of the world.”

And her major concerns?

“As someone who works in conservation, of course development is a main concern.

We’re lucky so many landowners had the foresight to preserve their land many years ago but there is always more work to do. I’m proud to play a role in that process.”

Looking forward, Sophie hopes their son will have her same love of the outdoors and wildlife.

“It’s why we live here. I love the MOC Beagles for teaching children how to be good stewards to the land and how they partner with other groups, like Blue Ridge Wildlife Center and Goose Creek Association, so that the children are exposed to a variety of ways they can stay involved. Berend has already been to a few of their events, and I can’t wait to hunt together in a few years.”

Photo by Doug Gehlsen Middleburg Photo.

Sophie Langenberg with her son, Berend Langenberg.

Berend’s red and black playsuit from Little Lambkins in Middleburg.

MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

At Home in the Countryside

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hirty-one-year-old Sebastian Langenberg grew up in nearby Amissville, attended Wakefield School in The Plains and graduated from Wakefield Country Day School in Flint Hill. He’s also a graduate of the University of Mary Washington with a degree in Classics and “I knew I wanted to stay here and have a farm where I could raise my family.”

He also started to play polo at age ten and still competes. And that Classics degree led him to another more scholarly pastime. He can read and write ancient Greek, and has taught classes for youngsters on the same subject.

The most challenging part of my work is to serve, educate, inspire, and inform during a global pandemic in a way that is sustainable and non-polarizing in a charged political environment. It is my work and life’s blood to bring everyone together—to learn from and listen to one another, uphold academic rigor, reenforce bonds, break down walls, and find truth in the past, present, and future.

Sebastian and his wife, Sophie, purchased land just outside town in 2015 and named it Poplar Path. They’ve now accomplished their goal of staying in the area with their 17-month old son, Berend. “We’re so lucky to have achieved that dream and hope to give Berend a similar upbringing to my own,” he noted.

A real estate agent for the past seven years, he’s now team leader of the Langenberg Real Estate Group at Middleburg Real Estate.

“I like working with first-time home buyers and helping them navigate the process to find the home of their dreams. I take my job guiding them very seriously.”

In 2021, Sebastian completed 24 transactions in six counties. “There were a number of families moving to the area from the city,” he added, “and I was happy to help them learn more about our rural way of life.”

Sebastian knows plenty about life in these parts and he’d like to see his son enjoy similar experiences.

“A lot of people have known me since I was very little. Seeing me now with a child of my own still throws people for a loop. It means a lot to me to raise Berend in a place where I know we have love and support from our friends and neighbors.”

As Berend grows up, Sebastian hopes Middleburg “will be the same,” at least in terms of being able to ride, fox hunt, go to the races at Glenwood and watching the Christmas Parade.

That said, “encroaching development” remains a concern, but conservation efforts “protect us but more has to be done to ensure that future growth comes about the right way.”

In addition to his work and family Sebastian, donates time and eggs to the local charity, Seven Loaves.

“The thought of a local family, especially children, having food insecurity is very hard for me to imagine. I regularly donate our eggs to the food bank and contribute financially. I would encourage all Middleburg residents to make it part of their routine to donate an item or two when they go grocery shopping.”

Photo by Doug Gehlsen Middleburg Photo

Sebastain Langenberg with Marshmallow.

Attire from Country Classics, C. & D. Rigden and Son of Middleburg.

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This Valentine's Day weekend Land Trust of Virginia & Goose Greek Association present:

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Please join us in sending a valentine to our Earth!

7 p.m. Virtual event is live, including a short intro by Sally Price of LTV and Lori Keenan of GCA

Virtual Event Land Trust of Virginia and Goose 2040 will be accessible to registrants until Creek Association bring Friday, you theFeb. 11 at 7 p.m. – Monday, February 14, 2022 at Midnight.

Monday, Feb. 14 at Midnight acclaimed film, 2040, a story of hope that looks at the very real Suggested $5 donation possibility that humanity could reverse global warming and Registration required to attend at improve the lives of every living Please join us in sending a 2040goosecreekassociationltv.eventbrit thing in the process. It is a e.co.uk to‘could our Earth! positivevalentine vision of what be’, or contact Kerry Roszel at (540) 687-8441 instead of the dystopian future or Kerry@landtrustva.org. we are so often presented.

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Country ZEST & Style | Winter 2022

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that run 300 years deep.

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MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

Montana and Middleburg: A Perfect Fit

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Montana Lanier Ruffner

Photo courtesy of Buchanan Hall and Big Sky Events.

Friends and family make Wednesdays at the Buchanan Hall Farmer’s Market an outing with music, food, drinks and must-buy fresh flowers and produce.

ontana Lanier Ruffner has the best answer of all when asked what brought her to the Middleburg area.

“I never left lol,” the 29-year-old noted.

And how long has she lived here?

“Twenty-nine years.”

Montana went to Hill School from kindergarten through the eighth grade, then on to high school at Foxcroft, with four more years at Radford University.

She majored in recreation parks and tourism with a concentration in special events and a minor in business marketing.

It was the perfect preparation for her current career, as the director at Buchanan Hall in Upperville and managing owner of Big Sky Management & Events, LLC. Montana likes the mix of working with clients and guests, the actionpacked events days, which peak May 18 - Oct. 26 every Wednesday from 4-8 p.m. at Buchanan Hall for the weekly and increasingly popular farmer’s market. She also does work on fundraising and membership. And in her spare time (hah!), Montana has a horse to pleasure ride in Clarke County.

“All of this combines to allow me an exciting career where I’m surrounded by people celebrating and supporting others,” she said. “From shopping local at the Buchanan Hall Holiday Bazaar, to supporting local agriculture at the farmers market.”

As for the future of this area, Montana noted her concern about overdevelopment.

“This area is such an enclave where community is at the forefront. It’s imperative that we monitor growth…This happens through work and volunteerism. My goals are to sustain a piece of my hometown to allow for the next generation.”

Montana also participates with The Hill School Alumni Association as a board member.

“The world relies on the next generation, the future,” she said. “To create a bright future for the Piedmont we need to invest in the future leaders.”

At the Land Trust of Virginia Garden Party, Montana was a committee member and volunteer.

“If you love this area, you owe a major thank you to conservation efforts from organizations like LTV. They are protecting the rural vistas of which prevent uncontrolled growth and protect the lands for equestrian activities, habitats for native flora and fauna, and so much more.”

Additional work for Montana is “Piedmont Pride,” which she started last year with the support of Virginia Tourism Corporation/Visit Virginia/ Visit Gay VA. She presented one of the first LGBTQ+ friendly groups and held a smashing event.

It was called the “Piedmont Pride Drag Brunch” and held at Buchanan Hall and offering attendees “a moment in time to feel celebrated, safe, and loved.”

It goes along with one of her favorite quotations from the late Richard “Dick” Peard, a rector at Trinity Episcopal Church in Upperville. “When you find your place in the world,” he said, “remember to help others find theirs.”

Who in the area do you admire and why?

Photo courtesy of Buchanan Hall and Big Sky Events. Photo courtesy of Buchanan Hall and Big Sky Events.

Mark your calendars for Buchanan Hall Farmer’s Market starting this May.

The Piedmont Pride Drag Brunch at Buchanan Hall celebrated a vibrant local community.

“Tom Northrup, headmaster emeritus, for creating an environment of faculty and staff at Hill School that truly gave me a safe refuge to find solace and growth. I am eternally grateful for the lessons that I learned there. Mr. Jack Bowers’ daily chicken soup for the soul readings stick with me to this day. It makes me so happy knowing that there is another generation that also gets to experience a truly magical place and go forth into the world to be the future.”

Country ZEST & Style | Winter 2022

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A Field of Dreams for Bernadette Boland

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ernadette “Bernie” Boland, 25, comes from a family of seven: five girls and parents Elaine and Brad Boland. They’ve lived in Middleburg for twenty years, since her mother’s dream of a owning a farm was fulfilled.

“My mom always wanted a farm in an area that experienced all four seasons,” she noted. “My aunt and uncle were touring around one day when my dad received a call from them saying that ‘if Elaine wants a farm, Loudoun County/Northern Virginia is the place to be.’ So mom and dad packed us five girls up and we moved from the West Coast to Middleburg so mom could have her farm.”

Following school at Middleburg Elementary and Our Lady of Hope Catholic School until the 8th grade, “Bernie” attended high school at Loudoun Valley in Purcellville.

Photo © by Vicky Moon

Bernadette Boland

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She then “dabbled in a college career for a year and a half after high school graduation.”

Now she helps her mother run their farm shop and bistro, Fields of Athenry Farm & Side Saddle Bistro, located in the village. “We specialize in pasture raised meats and private events,” she added.

As hard as operating a family enterprise can be, working in their business has been especially satisfying. “I have skin in the game in ways I wouldn’t working for someone else,” she added. “There’s a different sense of accomplishment, excitement, and contentedness when you’re accomplishing business goals.”

She adores Middleburg.

“I love that I can walk into establishments, bump into people I know and be greeted with a warm, sincere greeting and reciprocate that. There’s such a strong sense of community and camaraderie.”

Like some other of ZEST’s other 30-somethings, she rides and has an upcoming four- year-old Irish horse she plans to take hunting this fall. In between work and her horse, “Bernie” spends time with her best friend, Mackenzie Taylor.

“This girl works so hard and is tough as nails. We met a few years ago and it’s been amazing going through our 20s together. It’s nice to have a friend the same age operating and running a business to bounce ideas off one another and just vent without judgement.”

As for Middleburg in the next 20 years?

“I’m not sure the small-town feel will ever go away. I hope the sacredness of our town with its historic values remains what it is today while also working to maintain land conservation within its area.

“I hope my generation and the ones younger than mine don’t take for granted the quality of life that Middleburg has to offer.”

She and her family often have hold charitable military events at their business to raise funds for the Navy Seal Foundation in honor of her cousin, Chief Petty Officer Charles Keating IV. He was killed in action in May, 2016.

“People lately seem to forget that freedom doesn’t come free,” Bernadette Boland added.

MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

ALL IN THE (MacMahon) FAMILY

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rian Daniel MacMahon is keeping it all in the family. Let’s begin with his name. Brian is his fraternal grandfather’s middle name and Daniel is his maternal grandfather’s middle name. And then there’s the last name, MacMahon, part of the Sheridan MacMahon real estate business founded in1980 by his grandmother, Ann MacMahon.

“My grandmother took on real estate as a second career while raising a family, relocated to a new area and grew a very successful business that continues to grow today,” he recalled.

Brian, 33, was born and raised in the area. He went to Hill School and then to high school at Notre Dame Academy (later renamed Middleburg Academy). “I received a lacrosse scholarship to St Leo University in Florida where I played for a year before transferring to Mary Washington, where I continued to play lacrosse and majored in business administration.”

He recently returned to Loudoun County after spending a decade in Arlington. He and his wife, Maura Hughes, moved to the country because “it’s a return home,” he noted. “I really missed my family and the lifestyle that Middleburg provides. I had been working for a large real estate firm and made the decision to come work for my family business.”

He’s now a broker and works alongside his grandmother, his father Paul MacMahon, Aunt

“Moving is a huge, important decision and getting to help people through that process is very fulfilling.”

Photo © by Vicky Moon

Brian Daniel MacMahon Helen MacMahon and others.

What does he like best about Middleburg?

“The history, open space and community feel.”

And, he thinks Middleburg in 20 years “will be a more modern version of what it is now. There will be changes but I’m hopeful that it will maintain its

values and principals.”

Brian’s biggest concern for Middleburg is “smart growth. Loudoun County is rapidly growing and there’s been and will be changes, but I think that it’s important growth does not ruin the charm and character of the town.”

Brian remains a great supporter of The Hill School “I think they’re an important part of the town and appreciate what I learned while I attended there.”

His mother, Marion MacMahon, had horses and ponies but rode very little. They did have “just about every farm animal imaginable.” She still raises goats.

Marion also serves as the vice-president of Seven Loaves in Middleburg and Brian helps whenever possible. “They do a ton for food insecurity throughout the area which has been increasingly prominent since the start of Covid.”

Identified by friends and co-workers as hardworking, dependable, low key and honest to a fault, Brian has been working with several buyers. The firm’s current listings include Rutledge Farm, All’s Well Farm, 50 West Winery, and Halfway Farm.

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Country ZEST & Style | Winter 2022

Junior Kindergarten through 8th Grade Middleburg, VA Since 1926

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iddleburg is home these days for Isabella Wolf, a multi-talented woman who has traveled the world as a talented professional polo player.

Now, 30, “Issy” was born here and noted that “what’s kept me here is the wonderful community and the equestrian culture in the area.” She’s a graduate of the University of Virginia with a degree in Spanish literature and a minor in Latin American studies.

She played polo in college and was on the school’s two-time national collegiate championship winning team. And then, it was off to see the world.

“I lived in many different places expecting to find somewhere that rivaled the Middleburg area,” she said. “That never happened for me. I certainly loved many of the places I lived in, but I couldn’t quite see them as home. Middleburg is my home.”

Her father, retired orthopedic surgeon Bill Wolf, and mother, Francesca Spano, first put her on a horse as a toddler. Her stepmother, artist Elizabeth Guarisco Wolf, has done exquisite sculpture of horses and her sister, Alexandra Wolf, 29, is a health care consultant.

Issy started riding lessons “at about three years old” and took her first polo lesson at age nine. That’s when she also met fellow 30-something ZEST cover subject Sebastian Langenberg. “We ended up playing together through high school.”

She occasionally does some riding in the countryside and has ten horses for polo, most of them off-the-racetrack thoroughbreds she’s trained herself.

Issy describes her career as “multi-faceted.” In addition to playing polo professionally and training polo ponies, she’s a real estate agent at Thomas & Talbot Estate Properties and also does social media for Tri-County Feeds, Fashions, and Finds in Marshall as well as several other local businesses.

“I love that my careers overlap,” she added. “My equestrian friends might be looking for a new property, or perhaps a real estate client wants to live in horse country and become a part of the equestrian community. I’m able to find them a home, and connect them with the right people in the horse world.”

Issy has some real estate closings in the next 30-60 days as well as some pocket listings. She currently shares the Miller property listing with John Coles and Will Driskill. This 100-acre Classic Revival Mansion of Mountain View, circa 1910, is nestled in the Francis Thornton Valley of Rappahannock County.

“The thing I love most about Middleburg is that it’s managed to maintain its small-town charm in a world that’s becoming increasingly homogenized,” she noted. “We’ve been able to conserve the actual character of this town, full of local small businesses.

“There have been some changes over the years, but I can still easily recognize the town where I grew up. Another thing I love about Middleburg is that every time I go to a coffee shop in town, I see someone I know and we get to catch up.”

Issy also is particularly enthusiastic about The Middleburg Humane Foundation, the Windy Hill Foundation, and the Piedmont Environmental Council.

“You can support any of these causes easily by donating on their websites or by volunteering your time,” she said. “I love supporting these charities specifically because they thread together to safeguard the people, animals, and land that make up the tapestry of our community.”

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MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

VIRGINIA HORSE RACING SCHEDULE

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Rappahannock PTP in Boston, VA

March 19: Warrenton Hunt PTP at the Airlee Race Course March 26: Piedmont Fox Hounds PTP in Upperville April 9:

Old Dominion Hounds PTP in Ben Venue

April 24:

Loudoun Hunt PTP in Leesburg

April 17: May 1:

Blue Ridge PTP in Berryville

Middleburg Hunt PTP at Glenwood Park

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NSA Sanctioned Steeplechase Meet Schedule April 23:

Middleburg Spring Races

May 7:

Virginia Gold Cup Spring Races

April 30:

Foxfield Spring Races

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Thoroughbred Racing Schedule July 11 - September 7:

Pari-mutuel racing at Colonial Downs in New Kent, VA

Racing every Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday at 1:30 PM

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Harness Racing Schedule August 31 - September 3:

Shenandoah County Fair in Woodstock

September 16 - November 5: Shenandoah Downs in Woodstock (pending VRC approval)

(details at shenandoahdowns.com)

Foxcroft Student Just Keeps Zooming Along

P

By Meredith Kepley

eople are often shocked to learn that I’m a race car driver at age 17 and in my junior year at Foxcroft School in Middleburg.

My journey started with a dream and continues moving quickly toward reality with the support of my family, community, and my school.

My parents were familiar with NASCAR, and my dad occasionally watches races on television.

I never paid attention because I thought cars going in circles for hours was boring.

Flash forward to the summer of 2017, when family friends invited us to the Xfinity Series of stock car races at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina.

As soon as I heard the roar of the engines, I was hooked. Drivers for the Monster Energy Cup Series — the best of the best in stock car racing — were practicing at the time. I knew that some day I wanted to get behind the wheel of a race car from the moment I heard, “Drivers, start your engines!” on the public address system.

I had no idea how to start. But watching a local news channel in 2019, we heard about an up-andcoming driver competing in Legend cars with NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity program. We reached out to his family and met up at the Summer Shootout, one of the biggest events for Legend cars.

experience, but difficult not to compare myself to the younger drivers with more racing experience.

During the Thursday Thunder series at Atlanta Motor Speedway, I earned my first two podium appearances and was ecstatic to finish third and began seeing some growth in my racing techniques. Before the year ended, I even tested out a regulation stock car for the first time.

Foxcroft has been extremely supportive in allowing me fulfill my racing passion.

They’ve introduced me to alums with ties to NASCAR, and have helped me meet some of racing’s biggest names. Last May, I visited Kyle Busch Motorsports, Joe Meredith Kepley has a lot of followers among her Gibbs Racing, and met several people at Foxcroft classmates.

NASCAR headquarters.

They introduced us to AK Performance, the team Foxcroft’s Exceptional Proficiency I now race with and I finally got behind the wheel of (EP) program also allows me to miss class to a Legend car in September, 2019. Without any racing pursue my racing dreams, and helps me keep up experience, I was years behind other kids my age. with my work while away from school. Without But in January, 2020, I ran my first race at Charlotte EP, I wouldn’t have been able to spend a week Motor Speedway. racing Winter Nationals.

With little practice, I struggled, but at least I The school recently invited me to bring my race finished. Due to Covid, I only competed in a handful car to campus, maybe even interest other classmates of races that season. Then, in 2021, we purchased my in racing. Students, faculty and staff have offered first race car and I competed in 25 races. fantastic encouragement and given me even more We traveled up and down the east coast, incentive to keep zooming along in fulfilling my from Virginia to Florida. It was a huge learning racing ambitions.

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MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

Vineyard VIEW

Tasting the Wide World of Wine in Leesburg

By Peter Leonard-Morgan

S

tepping into the recently established Gvino Enoteca Fine Wines in Leesburg’s Market Station, one immediately feels the sensation of having been magically transported to the beautiful Lombardy region of Italy, home of its co-founder, Giacomo Galimberti.

Photo by Peter Leonard-Morgan Giacomo grew up by Lake Como, and together with his Giacomo Galimberti, co-owner of Gvino Enotewife, Kristen, a Loudoun Coun- ca Fine Wines, in Leesburg’s Market Station. ty native, dreamed of opening a specialist wine shop. The store’s name is derived from Giacomo’s initial and, of course, the Italian for wine—as in vino—plus Enoteca which, literally translated, means wine library, a widely used term in Giacomo’s homeland for a place to browse, enjoy tastings and purchase fine wines.

The adventure began when Giacomo, who had worked in far-flung places including London, Dubai and Copenhagen, was transferred to Washington’s Cafe Milano as its certified sommelier in 2017. Fortuitously invited to a concert by friends, Giacomo met his bride-to-be, Kristen MacCormack, and the seed of an idea grew into their new venture. It opened this past September 10.

Giacomo expertly selects wines from around the world, and at all price points, which are elegantly displayed. Customers receive a warm welcome walking in the door, and are invited to sign up for regular emails announcing special tasting events and other happenings. Conveniently, Gvino Enoteca is open for walk-in tastings on Fridays and Saturdays between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m., an ideal way to discover new and different wines to suit specific tastes and preferences.

There’s nothing better than discovering special foods to accompany good wine.

That’s why Giacomo and Kristen sought out a quality supplier of traditional Italian meats to offer their customers. That search resulted in a relationship with Richmond-based Terra Di Siena, which proudly offers “flavors of the old world brought to your front door.” In this case, to Gvino Enoteca.

A recent tasting experience consisted of four excellent wines, ranging from $17 to $22.

It began with an absolutely delightful 2020 Villa Sparina Gavi di Gavi, one of this writer’s favorite white wines. Estate grown and bottled, and only permitted to be called Gavi if grown in a vineyard within the Gavi commune, Piemonte, the Cortese grape results in a wine with lovely balance and acidity. The bottle is a work of art in itself.

Next up was the first of three reds, a 2019 Fidelity by Nick Goldshmidt, Alexander Valley, Sonoma California. This bright, structured blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc presents aromas of fresh blueberries and cherry.

The third wine was a wonderful 2019 Condado De Haza “Vino Tinto” from Spain’s Ribera del Duero Denominación. This full-bodied red is made with the Tempranillo grape, and aged under malolactic fermentation in American oak barrels. Hints of licorice were detected and quite pleasant.

Last, an Italian wine in a beautiful bottle—a 2019 Lu Rappaio from the Masca Del Tacco winery, in the Pugliese Primitivo di Manduria viticultural area, founded in 1949. This full-bodied and intense red wine exhibits aromas of berries and spices and would be a wonderful accompaniment to a good steak.

Stop by Gvino Enoteca on a Friday or Saturday to enjoy a tasting, or set up a personal tasting event with a group of friends. There’s nothing quite like it.

Join us April 23rd at Glenwood Park for the Middleburg Spring Races

Photo Courtesy of Middleburg Photo

Race Day Schedule: 10am – Gates Open 11:30am – Stick Pony Races 12pm – Opening Ceremony 1pm – First Race

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Visit: Middleburgspringraces.com or call 540-687-6545 Follow us on Facebook and Instagram

Gvino Enoteca is located at 203 B Harrison Street SE, Leesburg

Country ZEST & Style | Winter 2022

47

Profiles in1962 Courage:

Integrating Loudoun’s Public Schools

T

By Eugene Scheel

his new year marks the 60th anniversary of Black and White students learning together in the same Loudoun County public school classrooms.

It happened in 1962 because two men of dissimilar backgrounds objected to Black citizens being relegated to second-class status.

Father Albert Pereira played a vital role in the desegregation of Middleburg’s businesses and the Loudoun County School system.

Photo by Howard Allen

48

MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

William McKinley Jackson, head of the Loudoun NAACP and Father Albert Pereira, priest of three Catholic Churches, St. John the Apostle, Leesburg; St. Francis de Sales, Purcellville; and a fledgling congregation that met at the new Middleburg Community Center (MCC).

(At Middleburg there often were more gapers than worshippers because President John F. Kennedy and family attended Sunday mass there. Their weekend Middleburg retreat was at Glen-Ora farm.)

One never referred to William McKinley Jackson as “Will” or “‘Bill.” He was “Mr. Jackson” and actually preferred the full name.

Tall and lanky, and comfortable in work clothes, Mr. Jackson was a builder, on his own since 1944, and named for the last president to have fought in the Civil War. Mr. Jackson’s father had worked for President McKinley, and told him his son, born in 1900, would have McKinley as a middle name. President McKinley reportedly had always been more than fair to his African-American workers, including two from Middleburg. And William McKinley Jackson vowed to work for the betterment of his race in ways unthinkable before the close of World War II in 1945. That year Mr. Jackson began his 25 years as NAACP president.

Albert Pereira was Portuguese and educated in the best European schools. In an interview decades ago, he told this writer he was in a taxi in Vienna the night of March 11, 1938, when Nazis terrorized the Jewish section as Austrian police watched and did nothing. He sent off a letter to The New York Times, but it never was printed.

Later, he berated several Nazis of his own age for their treatment of Jews. One countered with words Father Pereira vividly recalled forty years later: “I have been four years to your Southland, and what we do to Jews is no worse than what you do to Negroes.”

From that day on, he vowed to correct the situation. In early March, 1940 he sailed to the U.S. on the Conte de Savoia, one of the last passenger ships to leave Europe, and soon began his pastoring in Virginia.

Father Pereira’s first assignment ended after he welcomed African-Americans into his Roanoke congregation. The Diocese of Richmond then encouraged the priest to seek the Lord’s guidance at Holy Cross Monastery in Clarke County.

A few weeks after the initial February 12, 1961 mass attended by President Kennedy and family at the MCC, Halle Flournoy’s lunch-counter help refused to serve two Howard University students.

They then asked Mr. Jackson to help them organize a demonstration to embarrass the president.

Mr. Jackson demurred and contacted Father Pereira. They then met with town businessmen, Mayor Edwin Reamer, and the two village

pharmacy owners.

offices to get a “blue consent slip.” None did.

“Our reception was a lukewarm one,” Father Periera recalled, but then Fauquier Democrat managing editor “John Eisenhard called and told me the entire Washington NAACP and Congress of Racial Equality were planning a bus cavalcade to Middleburg on the weekend the president was to receive mass.”

Together, in late winter 1962, Mr. Jackson and Father Pereira were thinking about plans to integrate the new high school in Purcellville slated to open that fall.

John W. LaVall, Mr. Jackson’s pastor at Shiloh Baptist, agreed with Jackson that it was imperative not to embarrass the president. They convinced the Bradfield and Flournoy drugstore owners to serve African-Americans.

A call from Mr. Jackson to the D.C. groups informed them the two businesses were now serving everyone. That Saturday, April 9, 1961, two Howard University students sipped Cokes at the Bradfield and Flournoy lunch counters.

The segregated MCC, built at a cost of more than $600,000 in 1948, continued to rankle Mr. Jackson. In 1951, a “New Colored Center,” the two-room Grant School, with an outdoor basketball court, opened at a total cost of $58,721.

The MCC had a public swimming pool—the White public. On hot summer nights, some Black children occasionally climbed the fence for a midnight or early-morning swim. Howell Jackson, spokesperson for the MCC, called Mr. Jackson and accused him of “putting them up to it.”

“I didn’t, but wish I did,” Mr. Jackson recalled.

He then reminded Howell Jackson that some government funds were used to build the MCC and suggested they have a meeting to discuss the issue of desegregating the facility, with a lawyer present to record the terms.

Howell Jackson agreed to desegregate as soon as Loudoun County desegregated its public schools, an improbable possibility to Howell Jackson’s way of thinking. After all, in August, 1956, Loudoun’s board of supervisors had unanimously passed a resolution forwarded by Commonwealth’s Attorney Sterling M. Harrison.

“In the event the integration edict is imposed upon the public school system,” it read, “there will not be forthcoming any funds for the maintenance and operation of any school.”

Howell Jackson also knew that in April, 1956 the Loudoun School Board had refused the request of African-American teachers to hold their Douglass High School graduation exercises at the new Loudoun County High School auditorium.

Father Pereira had told Mr. Jackson that he doubted the board of supervisor’s threats would hold up in court. Indeed, in 1959, the appointed Loudoun School Board voted to allow Black students to enter schools for Whites if the parents of the Black students came to the school board

At the Goose Creek Friends Meetinghouse in Lincoln, they met with a group of concerned women, several of them Quakers and each strongly believing that children of all races should be learning together.

A few months later, a new board of supervisors decision raised hopes. On July 16, 1962, Waterford farmer and board member James E. Arnold voiced Father Pereira’s thoughts, and he persuaded the board by a 4-1 vote to rescind its 1956 edict that would close public schools.

By that date Mr. Jackson, Father Pereira and the Lincoln ladies had decided that given the broad scope of what they were planning, only the brightest Black students would initially integrate the school.

Eight years had passed since the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision to integrate American schools “with all deliberate speed.” Loudoun public-school officials had done nothing save for authorizing the blue consent slip.

So the Lincoln group turned to Mr. Jackson, and he began contacting Black parents in the Loudoun Valley. Might they want their children at the new high school? Most were not sure. But after a few weeks, he had some positive replies.

Father Pereira spoke with St. Francis de Sales’ venerable black parishioner, Helen Lee Gross, and she also began canvassing Black areas of the county. She also received favorable replies.

Somehow, the news leaked out that on September 4, when the new Loudoun Valley High School opened, Black children would be among those entering.

On radio broadcaster Frank Orrison’s Newsbeat show, his booming bass voice announced: “They’re integrating the new high school in Purcellville. I don’t know if you’re going to be there, but I’m going to be there.”

Father Pereira recalled that he “nearly went through the roof,” when he heard those words, concerned there might be potentially violent protests. But the school opening was uneventful.

No local newspaper made mention of it, nor did Peggy Drummond’s “Lines from Loudoun,” the popular African- American social column in the Loudoun Times-Mirror.

The school’s first yearbook, the Loudoun Valley Leif, pictured two African-American students and 613 white students. The 1963-1964 yearbook, now named Saga, pictured 31 black students. The National Honor Society welcomed four, among them a Black school valedictorian George Allan Brown.

Country ZEST & Style | Winter 2022

49

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50

A FIELD TRIP FOR THE BIRDS

By Leonard Shapiro

O

n a recent gorgeous morning, about 20 members of the Fauquier and Loudoun Garden Club gathered near the Mt. Zion Baptist Church not far from Gilberts Corner for an informative and fascinating field trip.

In fact, it was a trip to a field, specifically what is known as Roundabout Meadows, a rolling pristine Virginia landscape filled with native plants, shrubbery, grasses and wildlife. That includes a wide variety of birds—quail, Eastern meadowlarks, Bobolinks, among many others—who call this pretty place home.

Middleburg’s Missy Janes has been spearheading the club’s conservation efforts with the help of other club members.

Amy Johnson She described the project as “part of a at Roundabout community effort for the benefit of all to Meadows learn and enjoy what our area has to offer Photo © by Leonard Shapiro and why it’s important to preserve land.”

With contributions from the Garden Club of America and Garden Club of Virginia, the Journey Through Hallowed Ground and the Oak Spring Foundation, “we created a 30-page report about the geology, cultural history, and flora of this piece of land and the many stories it can tell,” Janes added. “We planted a tree buffer at the edge of the traffic circle and planted a swath of native plants along the entry path and boardwalk that leads to the kiosk we also funded.”

Dr. Amy Johnson offered a passionate presentation to the group on the importance of preserving such wide-open spaces, assuring the continued presence of wildlife large and small, up in the air or burrowed down in the ground.

Johnson is the program director for the Virginia Working Landscapes (VWL), a Smithsonian-led research initiative and also is affiliated with the Piedmont Environmental Council. She cultivates a network of private landowners, citizen scientists, national governing organizations, state agencies and research scientists to collectively investigate the impacts of conservation management and land use on biodiversity.

In addition to research, VWL has a strong outreach program that communicates research findings and best management practices through landowner meetings, lectures, workshops and farm tours.

Johnson’s research is raising awareness on the importance of bobwhite quail conservation initiatives for conserving habitat for steeply declining species and is also providing insight into the benefits of native warm-season grasses for overwintering bird communities.

“My research on is about how we can have grazing and adjust the timing of making hay to optimize their reproduction,” she said. “We also don’t want to do any harm to the farming process and what they have to do to maintain their fields.”

Roundabout Meadows attendees received an illuminating handout on what landowners and farmers can do to assure the well-being of native grassland and shrubland bird species.

For example, it’s recommended to delay field maintenance until mid-July, the better not to disturb nesting birds. If circumstances require an earlier cut, it’s recommended for late May, with a 65-day waiting period before the next cut.

Other recommendations include increasing cutting height to a maximum of 6-8 inches to leave protecting cover for nesting grassland birds; incorporating native grasses and legumes in fields to provide foraging opportunities and protective cover, and hanging nest boxes for cavity-nesting species like American Kestrels, Barn Owls and Eastern Bluebirds.

“These working grasslands are home to some of our nation’s most threatened species of birds throughout the year,” the handout reads. “With over 80 percent of Virginia’s grasslands currently held in private hands, the survival and well-being of these vulnerable species depends entirely in the decisions made by private landowners.”

MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

The Potter’s House Making a Comeback

T

One of the Women of Worship who started the Potter’s House mission is the current coordinator, Carolyn Colbert. She and her husband, John, are constantly on call to people in need of anything the mission can provide.

By Pat Reilly

he Potter’s House in The Plains is now a run-down building surrounded by a low wall that barely separates it from Loudoun Avenue near the corner of Route 55.

For more than 15 years, bags of donated clothing and furniture were available on Saturdays free of charge to anyone in need. The house served the “hidden” part of the community, as First Baptist Pastor Timothy Ahl Sr. explained, and threw its light far and wide like a beacon of hope. Then Covid and a lack of repairs shut it down last November.

At the time, few knew that a permanent facility is being planned that will be a source of pride for the community, and a welcoming place for other nonprofits and volunteers.

The old house, believed to be the first owned by an African-American in the town, will come down and in its footprint will be a memorial garden. A multipurpose building with graceful, open porches will rise back from the road. A wooded walkway will lead to a quiet place with a pavilion amid striking natural beauty with birds and other wildlife to attract quests.

The mission also will expand, with counseling, self-development classes and mental health care. The

“I hope and pray what we continue to do won’t change,” she said. “People give us so much and it’s been such a blessing. It’s a joy just to see people’s faces. I don’t get tired doing this; I do it in my sleep.”

She also has “four wonderful ladies who help.”

The Potter’s House is going be dramatically different following a major renovation after a groundbreaking this spring food pantry “Peas and Grace” from nearby Grace Episcopal Church will join the repurposing of items the Women of Worship from First Baptist Church have always provided.

Pastor Ahl said the new facility is estimated to cost $3 million, but he’s certain that with continuing community generosity, they’ll break ground in May. A neighbor, John B. Adams Jr., has already donated contiguous land. A Grace congregation member enlisted an architect friend from Charlottesville to join the project.

Pastor Ahl calls the Rev. Weston Mathews at Grace Church a “jewel, an ally and an asset” to the project.

A board has transitioned from the ad hoc committee that envisioned the plan.

Over several weekends before Christmas, they worked from the porch with no heat, water or indoor plumbing. One Saturday, children were invited to shop for gifts for their parents, wrapped and giftbagged by volunteers from both churches. The next weekend, parents shopped for the children. Pastor Ahl estimated 1,000 people came, adding that 80 percent of Potter’s House clients are Hispanic, the other 20 percent African American and Caucasian.

“These are the people that work the farms around here,” he said.

Neighboring businesses, such as Baileywyck Antiques and the Front Porch restaurant, have contributed gift cards and toys for the special programs. And now, he’s urging the community to help support the transformation of this beloved and important institution.

For more information, go to tfbctheplains.org and look for the Potter’s House page.

Design-Build • Remodeling • Additions • Custom Homes • Showroom GoldenRuleBuilders.com | 3409 Catlett Road, Catlett, VA | 540.788.3539 Country ZEST & Style | Winter 2022

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At Cupcakes and Lace, It’s Sew Perfect

By Carina Elgin

A

simple sign that reads “Learn to Sew” sits on the left heading east on Route 50 in historic Aldie, below a cheerful white and tan Victorian house. Venture on to the charming wrap-around porch, climb up the stairs, and discover a world very far removed from the brawny boxes of steel horseshoes, “nippers” and rasps of the main floor shop, the Mid-Atlantic Farrier Supply.

Mrs. K, also known as Devon O’Neal Kukis.

The multiple rooms on the second floor are the home of Cupcakes and Lace Craft and Sewing Studio, brimming with purple and pink work stations, punctuated with unicorns and American Girl dolls. While young men are always welcome, this is undeniably the perfect habitat for creative young ladies.

Cupcakes and Lace is the brainchild and passion of Devon O’Neal Kukis, known to her students as Mrs. K. After growing up in Northern Virginia, she headed to New York City to attend a major fashion college, and started Cupcakes and Lace during her summer vacations. After graduation, she moved back to the area and, in 2017, she found the studio space in Aldie and opened a business with the goal of helping young girls learn imagination, focus, perseverance, resourcefulness and more, through sewing.

Devon thanks her beloved grandmother for teaching her to sew at the age of 8. “Grandma” is now 94, living in Wisconsin and Texas, still sewing doll clothes for neighborhood kids and small craft fairs.

“She gave me my first doll when I was a little girl and taught me how to sew doll clothes,” Devon said. “I was hooked on dolls and sewing ever since. My studio offers lots of doll classes where the girls love to make mini items for their dolls or teddy bears. So the doll love lives on!”

Additionally, Cupcakes and Lace offers Covid-careful private or twoperson sewing lessons, with a machine or by hand. Devon continues to offer summer camps, birthday parties and Girl Scout Badge projects, as well as selling sewing kits that can be delivered locally for free. (Coming soon: nationwide shipping as great gifts for grandkids!)

Members of Aldie’s Waldron family are enthusiastic regulars. Busy mom, Brooke, executive director of the Sprout Therapeutic Riding Center, said her children “have loved working through the processes of creating, from planning, to design, to the work and even wearing their cool creations.

“As a working mom and business owner, I’ve appreciated that they offer programs on days when school is out and I have to work. I know they are happy, busy and learning great skills.”

Daughter Linleigh, 12, added, “There are stations where you get to work on your own creations. They have endless supplies and there is always a theme but you can personalize your work. I like to add my own ideas and be creative.

I feel successful there because I get to try new things.”

Her younger sister Avery, 10, said, “The teachers are good at explaining things and they come up with fun ideas that I’ve never tried before. It was nice to have all the supplies right there and someone to show me each step. When I’m done with my projects I feel accomplished and proud of what I created.”

540.349.0631 • jbwilson@npcf.org www.npcf.org 52

There’s no doubt that what Grandma passed to Mrs. K, and Mrs. K now passes on to many young people through sewing, are memories and skills that will last a lifetime.

For more information on Cupcakes and Lace, including a video studio tour, go to www.cupcakesandlace.com.

MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

PATH Foundation Paves the Way

By Anita L. Sherman

B

usinesses, nonprofits and government agencies have taken a significant hit during the pandemic.

Most have been slowly emerging, but often need help. Charitable giving has been compromised, but PATH President Fauquier County is fortunate to and CEO Christy Connolly have an organization with a legacy of philanthropy that grows stronger with each passing year.

Since 2013, the Warrenton-based PATH Foundation has invested more than $50 million in the community through grants, programs and partnerships. Serving a three-county area – Fauquier, Rappahannock and Culpeper—PATH has helped provide much needed resources.

The foundation looks to boost the health and vitality of the areas it serves. It invests in nonprofits and government agencies that share their focus and have similar goals to promote healthy citizens and the places they live, growing economically vital communities, and capitalizing on strong nonprofit collaborations.

“We provide free office space to several nonprofits, space for the Fauquier Free Clinic, as well as provide the PATH Resource Center with the Center for Nonprofit Excellence,” said director of communications Amy Petty. “The Warrenton

Books on the Bus (BOB), with funds from the PATH Foundation, is an outreach program in Fauquier County that promotes well-being and success for children and their families. office helps strengthen nonprofits. The PATH Volunteer Hub matches volunteers with area organizations. And at PATH Community Link, help is available here in English and Spanish to connect the community to resources.”

Keen on effective stewardship, PATH looks for prudent fiscal management policies, accountability for goals and measurable outcomes and effective and innovative leadership.

Recently named PATH board chair, Betsy Dietel is a senior partner with Dietel and Partners, a philanthropic advising firm. She has a 30-year career in nonprofit management, community organizing and fundraising.

President and CEO Christy Connolly has served

more than 20 years with the foundation. She was on board during its initial growth helping with board development, strategic planning and marketing.

“We’re thankful to invest in our community through programs like FRESH at Fauquier County Public Schools, the 4P Food Hub, residential recovery with Herren Wellness at Twin Oaks, telehealth counseling for Fauquier Free Clinic patients, support of affordable housing efforts, collaboration on ways to alleviate food insecurity, and many more,” said Connolly. “With a strong volunteer board of directors and great community partners, we’re excited to see what the future will bring.”

Nonprofits and government agencies in Fauquier, Rappahannock and Culpeper can take advantage of several grant cycles offered throughout the year. Flexible Funding Grants are designed to help communities in four focus areas: health, childhood wellness, mental health and senior services.

PATH’s endowment is slightly more than $250 million. Its funding relies on the generosity of individuals, local groups and businesses, corporations and multigenerational family philanthropy. Grants can range from a few thousand dollars up to $75,000 depending on the grant category.

Always looking to connect the community, the PATH Resource Center provides information and services through volunteer opportunities, local resources and support for nonprofits. Their location on Walker Drive also offers meeting room spaces.

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Hardly the Retiring Type Advocating for Children I

By Megan Catherwood

n her golden years of retirement, Fauquier resident Christy Willis is able to ride her horse, Cahoots, most days. She’s been riverrafting in the Grand Canyon, horseback-riding in Portugal, and rejoiced in her stepson’s recent wedding.

She’s also had ten children—that is ten children assigned to her as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA).

Willis serves as a “CASA,” as program volunteers are known, in Fauquier, Rappahannock, and Warren counties. This makes her one in a nationwide army of 93,225 citizen soldiers trained to be the voice of children who have experienced abuse or neglect.

CASA Children’s Intervention Services, the nonprofit she’s affiliated with, is one of 27 such programs in Virginia and 950 throughout the U.S. The local organization also serves Prince William County.

In 2014, Willis, as 30-year director of disability support services at George Washington University, took early retirement to care for and be with her late husband, who was in ill health and later passed away.

In addition to now finding fulfillment in helping children, Willis discovered CASA to be an extremely satisfying career extension.

“I’m drawn to the idea of bringing people together for the best interests of the child, the piece of my past work that I always loved the most,” Willis said. “The DSS (Department of Social Services) workers in particular, they are so overworked and have massive amounts of territory to cover. The level of their commitment is mindboggling.”

Each of her cases has presented differently, but all center on the goal of family reunification. Willis routinely interacts with parents who, with court oversight, work to remedy situations that brought their children into foster care so they can safely be returned home.

“It’s always been clear that these parents love their children,” she said. “Even when I’ve made suggestions to the court that were not in accord with parents’ desires, I’ve been able to establish good working relationships and provide them with encouragement that’s always well-received.”

The children have all been extremely polite and perceptive, Willis noted.

“Certainly, the trauma does filter through. Often they’ve had to be the parent, so there can be a certain maturity. I’ve come to realize the importance of just being there, with all the changes in personnel and placements. You may think, ‘oh, am I really making a difference’ and then a child will recollect some small

54

Christy Willis thing you did for them. It makes you realize it’s all very worthwhile. Overall, you just do your best to gather as much detail as you can about the child’s situation to pull the story line together so the judge can make a well-informed decision.”

while maintaining the independence that’s unique to our role.”

Personality traits are more critical than any particular background, Willis said. “It’s really important to be able to step outside yourself and be a neutral, non-judging party. We’re trained to engage in all these relationships and establish trust, but also to be able to step back and just observe.”

Bound by strict confidentiality rules,Willis nevertheless has found anonymous ways for locals to assist. When an appliance broke during the early days of the pandemic and the single, minimum wageearning mother had no way to do laundry, Willis coordinated with her builder-contractor neighbor and the case social worker to deliver a used washer.

On occasion, Willis has picked up groceries from Seven Loaves to bring on home visits, appreciating the food pantry’s generous no-questions-asked response.

CASA Executive Director Lori Battistoni, a former child advocacy attorney, counts Willis among the program’s best advocates.

“Christy doesn’t shy from tough cases and works hard to provide a balanced, unbiased perspective.

She does a remarkable job of collaborating and communicating with everyone involved in her cases

Even in the seemingly idyllic Northern Piedmont area, Willis has learned “there is a lot of poverty hidden in these hills.”

“I find joy in the work that I do,” Christy Willis said. “I’m so pleased I found CASA.”

MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

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Tremelo: A New Bar With a Musical Touch

T

Les Hauts de Lagarde White Bordeaux.

By Leslie VanSant

He also likes music. And obviously puns.

he tremelo bar is a long, thin bar attached to the bridge or tailpiece of an electric guitar. It can be depressed to increase the tension of the strings and produce such effects as vibrato, portamento, and dive bomb. Some people call it the whammy bar, and it was made famous by Jimi Hendrix, David Gilmour, Jeff Beck and especially by Eddie Van Halen.

The pizzas at Knead Wine are all named for famous guitarists.

And the new place is named the Tremelo Bar. The feel inside the space is minimal and bright.

When it opens in February, casual lunch and dinner will be served. There’s a formidable wine list and a well-stocked bar. The menu will feature international flavors and small plates.

It’s also the name of a new bar and restaurant in Middleburg, the second location in town for Knead Wine proprietor, sommelier, and head pizza chef, Jarad Slipp.

Slipp, 46, grew up in Maine. He skipped his last year of high school, choosing to follow a career path in the culinary and hospitality industry. Since then, he’s spent time in kitchens, cellars, classrooms and managing the front of houses in New York, London, Washington, Paris and Italy. Along the way he earned degrees from the Culinary Institute of America and the Italian Culinary Institute for Foreigners. He’s also a Master Sommelier.

Slipp envisions a somewhat casual, neighborhood place, with great food, drink and music. Guests might stop in for a glass of sherry, roasted Marcona almonds and olives before heading to full dinner elsewhere.

Or maybe to refuel with a cocktail and some truffled popcorn after a day of shopping in town.

Jarad Slipp will soon open a new Middleburg eatery.

“I always knew I wanted to have my own restaurant,” he said. “You could say I’m living the dream.”

On a recent visit to the space at 19 East Washington Street, he shared his future vision of private dinners and wine events. The outside space is shared, but “upstairs I can seat forty. To start, it will be lunch and dinner. But phase two will include breakfast.”

He found his way to Middleburg from Washington, taking a job at RdV Vineyards in Delaplane. Like many who start reverse commuting from D.C. to the Virginia Piedmont, he fell in love with the place and now calls it home.

He obviously knows his way around a kitchen, how to find and combine ingredients into taste sensations.

He prefers high quality, fresh ingredients, which means the menu changes. Try the Knopfler pizza, with roasted butternut squash, mozzarella, maple-balsamic, sage and toasted pistachios. And that pizza goes nicely with

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MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

He’s also hiring.

If you enjoy Knead Wine, the Tremelo Bar also should be satisfying, a lovely place to sit down, enjoy a drink and something to eat in a relaxed casual setting where the focus is definitely on the food.

News & NOTES

Goose Creek Project Now Underway

T

he Goose Creek Association (GSA) has launched a multiyear effort to get the scenic river back to good health.

The Commonwealth designates Goose Creek a scenic river, with a watershed over 385 square miles in Loudoun and Fauquier. It provides drinking water,a beautiful setting for walking and kayaking, and a habitat for wildlife.

Flowing north into the Potomac, it passes through heavily developed areas, and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality designates Goose Creek as “impaired” due to its degraded water quality and multiple instances of E. coli contamination.

Last August, the GSA began a long-term project, “Goose Creek Watch,” to get the river back to good health and off the impaired list. It brings together conservation organizations from the across the region.

Plans include a stream monitoring program to test water quality; riparian buffers to filter water sediment and runoff; expanding riparian buffers to Alexander Madison Nance has been reduce erosion, prevention of E. coli named as the new executive director contamination; mitigating fertilizer of the Virginia Piedmont Heritage Area runoff from farms; advocating against Association. inappropriate development; public education programs; and canoe trips to remove litter from Goose Creek.

The program began with six new monitoring sites, including chemical monitoring by Friends of the Shenandoah River using their lab at Shenandoah University, and offering an overall view of the water quality and a starting point for planning the work.

The GSA will work with the Loudoun and Fauquier County soil and water districts, Loudoun County Preservation and Conservation Coalition, the Piedmont Environmental Council, and the Goose Creek Scenic River Advisory Committee. The project is funded by the GSA using donations and grant money.

Meanwhile, the Virginia Piedmont Heritage Area Association (VPHA) has announced the hiring of a new executive director, Alexander Madison Nance.

He’s been an active member of the organization since he and his wife, Jane Latham, purchased a 19th-century farmhouse outside Middleburg in 2020. He grew up in the Virginia Piedmont, developing a passion for local history and preservation at an early age.

Nance has worked as a military analyst with the federal government for the past five years, and before that spent five years as an officer in the U.S. Army with two separate tours overseas. He has a bachelors in international politics from Georgetown and a Masters in public policy from the University of Virginia.

Nance will be responsible for the active management of the association’s daily business, development, fundraising, membership, and preserving the integrity of the historic landscape of the Virginia Piedmont Heritage Area.

On a more entertaining note, the VPHA also is sponsoring a concert “This ‘Ol Country Girl: The Music of Patsy Cline” Saturday, February 12 at 7 p.m. at the historic Bush Tabernacle Roller Rink Purcellville. Live music will be performed

by Bess Putnam, Amy Potter, and the Virginia Pickers Collective.

Tickets are $35 each, $60 for couples, with children 12-and-under free.

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This article by Emma Boyce originally appeared in Country ZEST in Spring 2020 and has been updated for this issue.

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Two Brave Men Honored by as Civil Rights Stalwarts

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By Emma Boyce

ames Smith still recalls the afternoon, nearly sixty years ago, when he walked into Bradfield’s drug store on West Washington Street.

He was just a young man then. Inside the store, he moved to find an attendant, stepping briefly on a small, black square painted on the floor.

A woman stopped him and pointed to the ground: African-Americans weren’t permitted beyond the square.

“The woman said to me, you have to stand in this black square,” said Smith, now retired and in his 80s. “I told her no, I’m not standing on this square. I’m out of here and I left and I never went back.”

Too many of these shameful stories marked the struggle for equal rights. Like many of his contemporaries, Smith, “Smitty” to friends, knows them all too well.

In 1961, not long after that incident, Lena Washington and William McKinley Jackson, head of the Loudoun chapter of the NAACP, asked Smith and three other young African-Americans, including Roger Dodson, Clarence Grayson, and Smith’s longtime neighbor, Reverend William Swann, to stage a sit-in at the lunch counters of three establishments in Middleburg.

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“I knew it was going to be risky because it was scary times back then,” said Smith. “But these things had to happen. Somebody had to do it and we went on and did it.”

Each establishment, including Halle Flournoy’s Middleburg Pharmacy on Madison St., had refused to take their orders. As instructed by Jackson, the group left peacefully. A few weeks later, Jackson contacted the men for a second sit-in.

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54 Photo by Emma Boyce

This building on South Madison Street was once the Middleburg Pharmacy.

MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

President John F. Kennedy, then renting a country house, Glen-Ora, just outside Middleburg, was coming to town. This time, they would stay until they were served or cuffed.

The NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) planned to send busloads of civil rights activists to Middleburg.

According to local historian Eugene Scheel, Father Albert Pereira, the celebrant at the Middleburg Community Center where the Kennedys attended Catholic mass, met with town officials and restaurant owners in hopes of defusing the situation.

The combination of the activists and Photo by Emma Boyce the embarrassment of a pro-civil rights James “Smitty” Smith with a copy of president coming to a segregated town the town proclamation from Mayor forced the business owners to rethink Bridge Littleton. their positions. That day in 1961, Smith, Swann, Dodson, and Grayson drank Cokes at the counter of Middleburg Pharmacy for the first time. Other establishments capitulated and Middleburg became desegregated.

“I wasn’t nervous, I was glad to do it,” said Rev. Swann, who for the last 37 years has served as pastor of the First Ashville Baptist Church in Marshall. “We realize now how much of an accomplishment it was.”

Afterwards, both Smith and Swann said they could feel a change in atmosphere.

“We’ve come a long ways and we have a long ways to go,” said Smith, who still remembers the dirty looks they received all those years ago. “You never know how it is until you feel it yourself. It hurt deeply.”

In 2020, nearly 60 years later, Middleburg Mayor Bridge Littleton presented Smith and Rev. Swann official town proclamations, recognizing their brave efforts. Littleton said he grew up often visiting Smith’s house as a child, but had no idea both men had been at Flournoy’s that afternoon.

Mayor Bridge Littleton with Rev. Wil“God made us all so that nobody is alike,” liam Swann in 2020, when Littleton said Smith. “Why the hatred against each presented Rev. Swann an official other? It’s getting better, but we have a little- town proclamation, recognizing his ways to go yet.” brave efforts of desegregation.

Photo by Emma Boyce

The Sona Bank, now the Primis Bank, next to the Safeway, was once Bradfield’s drug store on West Washington Street.

Country ZEST & Style | Winter 2022

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MIDDLEBURG COMMON GROUNDS

TIRTHAS-The Thin Places Where Earthly and Divine Meet Photos by Sundar Sighram

Breakfast & Lunch Served All Day

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Home and Garden Tour Sunday, April 24 1pm–5pm Monday, April 25 10am–5pm

D

ana Westring has an eye for the picture-perfect vine, shrub, tree and flower in the mesmerizing seven-acre gardens he designed and studiously tends at his home base near Marshall.

His exquisite taste extends to interiors, where his decorative art includes hand-painted murals and more. And now, after seven years of travel to India, sketching and painting all the way, his elegant artwork will soon be on display.

“I went to India the first time with a group of friends,” he said. “I was seduced by the beauty and mystery of the place. I stayed an extra week and then began planning trips to paint and draw after that.”

A book on Dana Westring’s work will be released on Amazon in late March.

A book on his artwork will come out in late March, with an exhibition of his work on view and for sale at The Garden Museum in London April 26-May 5.

Join the Leesburg and Fauquier-Loudoun Garden Clubs as we invite you to a self-guided tour of beautiful gardens and homes on historic Cornwall Street in downtown Leesburg. $40 in advance $50 on the day of tour Full ticket price includes admission to St. James’ Episcopal Church sanctuary, four gardens, three with private homes!

To purchase tickets go to www.leesburggardenclub.org or www.vagardenweek.org

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The children loved to meet the artist.

MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

Dana Westring at work in India as a friend watches from above.

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Middleburg Mayor Off to a Great Start YOUNG PEOPLE’S CONCERT: Peter and the Wolf SUNDAY, February 13, 2022 - 3:00 PM The popular PSO Young Artists Competition showcases the talents of three talented young instrumentalists performing on stage with the orchestra. Our annual Visual Art Contest features the artwork of students from across the area set to the concert theme of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. PSO Founding Conductor Emeritus Michael A. Hughes narrates this timeless fairytale. We are also proud to announce the premiere of the PSO Young Composer Showcase!

Sarah Kim

Noelle Fiegl

Christian Henriksen

UPCOMING PSO PERFORMANCES: THREE’S A CHARM SUNDAY, APRIL 24, 2022 - 3:00 PM HAPPY BIRTHDAY PSO! 25th Anniversary Celebration Concert SUNDAY, JUNE 12, 2022 - 3:00 PM FOR TICKETS, INFORMATION & COVID POLICIES:

www.piedmontsymphony.org The PSO is Generously Funded in Part By:

Luminescence Foundation & The Ben-Dov Family

The Margaret Spilman Bowden Foundation Nicolaas and Patricia Kortlandt Fund The Wise Foundation The Phillip A. Hughes Foundation

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The Crossfields Group

At the groundbreaking from the right in pale blue jacket to left: Cindy Pearson, Bud Jacobs, Chris Bernard, Mike Turner, Mayor Bridge Littleton, Phillip Miller, Darlene Kirk, Tony Buffington, Sheila Johnson, Peter LeonardMorgan, Phyllis Randall, Caleb Kershner, Kevin Daly, Danny Davis, Rhonda North, Will Moore and Sylvia Glass.

M

iddleburg Mayor Bridge Littleton already has had a very busy new year, but a highlight will always be his fine speech at the groundbreaking ceremony for the new Town Hall on Jan. 24.

Among the town and county dignitaries in attendance that 38-degree day were Loudoun Board of Supervisors Chair Phyllis Randall, Supervisor Tony Buffington, who represents the Blue Ridge district which includes the town.Salamander Resort founder Sheila Johnson was also on hand.

“This is a very exciting moment for the town of Photo © by Leonard Shapiro Middleburg as we begin construction of the new Town Middleburg Mayor Hall,” Littleton told the crowd. “Our current town hall Bridge Littleton honored was built in 1964 when the staff numbered just four Fun Shop owners Betsy people. It has served us well for over 50 years, but Davis and Page Allen for with a team of 17 and expanded responsibilities, the 65 years in business. time has come to bring the needed infrastructure and facilities to better serve our community’s needs.

“The town’s mission statement reads: ‘It is the mission of the Middleburg Town Council to provide its citizens, businesses, and visitors with superior public services in a fiscally prudent and socially responsible manner while sustaining Middleburg’s historic character, natural beauty, and small-town charm.’ ” “This town hall is a direct fulfillment of that mission – a generational project that will allow us to better serve those values, effectively, safely, and prudently….The town hall will serve our community for decades to come, with large outdoor open spaces, ample indoor gathering areas, and meeting rooms for community groups and businesses to use for free and let their visions become realities.”

Photo © by Leonard Shapiro The previous week, at a regular Town Council Antwan Montford remeeting, Mayor Littleton recognized and honored three ceived a glowing town proclamation thanking very special people with official town proclamations. him for his outstanding Former Mayor Betsy Davis and her sister, Page service at the Middleburg Allen, the owners of The Fun Shop, Middleburg’s post office. He and his venerable local “department store,” were on hand to wife, Analyn, and their accept the proclamation marking the business’s 65son, six-year-old Amare, year anniversary. It was originally started by their late are relocating to Florida. mother, Nancy Allen, and has always been a mustvisit for locals and tourists alike.

Antwan Montford, an immensely popular figure at the Middleburg Post Office, was also honored. An Army and combat veteran who served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, Montford began working at the post office two years ago, making countless friends along the way. He and his wife, Analyn, and their son, six-yearold Amare, are relocating to his native Florida.

Lucky Florida.

For a complete transcript of Mayor Bridge Littleton’s speech at the groundbreaking, go to www.middleburgmystique.com.

MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

At Wakefield, a Scholarship Made All the Difference

H

Jeri Tidwell Photography

Wakefeld senior Carol Rector

By Caro Rector

alfway through eighth grade, I was getting set to begin my daunting high school years at the enormous public school in my area.

Though it was overcrowded and seemed overwhelming to me, I thought it was my only option. A short time later, a friend suggested to my parents that we consider looking at a private school, something we had never seriously considered.

We visited several area schools, assessing tuition, academics, and most important, their student life and everyday environment. After our Wakefield tour, my heart was set. The beautiful hilltop scenery was astonishing, the welcoming feel from the students and staff was unmatched, and their focus on academics, while also valuing fun activities and inclusive sports teams, assured that I would soon feel right at home.

What truly sealed the deal was the Archwood Scholarship, an opportunity unique to Wakefield, providing an invaluable head start in the Upper School for first-time students applying for ninth grade. The scholarship goes to one individual who shows talent and interest in a specific academic subject, sport, visual and performing art, or activity outside of school.

Applicants submit an essay, film, piece of music, art project, or any other creative rendering that showcases their special talent. The scholarship encourages students from other schools to enter, with a 50 percent annual tuition break for all four years in the Upper School.

Applying for ninth grade, I learned about the scholarship and wrote an essay about my life as a ballerina, including my training at the Washington School of Ballet and ambassadorship for an international pointed shoe company. I also knew Wakefield would allow me to pursue dancing while I also focused on academics.

Not long after I applied, I received word I’d been selected for the scholarship, and it has changed my life. Over the next four years, I met with the other three Archwood Scholars from grades above and below me.

We often talked about what this scholarship meant to us. Their imdividual talents ranged from basketball to mathematics.

This group became a way to connect with students from other grades. Wakefield’s diverse community enabled me to create many lifelong friendships.

These days, I’m a senior applying to colleges, and I can see what an advantage Wakefield has provided. My resume is filled with so many activities I never would have imagined were possible. I competed in varsity tennis and soccer, serving as captain of the tennis team as a senior.

I did volunteer work at a local church, earned the underclassman Writing and junior thesis awards and even danced in our school musical this year.

I now feel confident moving on to the next phase of my life and prepared for any task I may encounter in college. Attending Wakefield has been one of the most invaluable experiences of my life, and the Archwood Scholarship made it possible. I’m forever grateful.

Helping Families and Friends Honor Their Loved One 106 E. Washington St. P.o. Box 163 Middleburg, VA 20118 540-687-5400 FAX 540-687-3727 4125 Rectortown Rd P.O. Box 111 Marshall, VA 20116 540-364-1731 WWW.ROYSTONFH.COM Country ZEST & Style | Winter 2022

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PROPERTY Writes

The updated main residence dates back to the 1700s.

Willwyn Farm: History and Horse Heaven

T

he captivating farm called Willwyn oozes all the charm of horse country. Nestled down a dead-end road between Middleburg and Purcellville, this property of rolling, open pastures is anchored by a meticulously restored 1700s stone main house, along with a log and stone guest house, updated outbuildings and a marvelous horse facility.

Originally part of a 655-acre land grant, Quaker families came and settled here building what was the original three-room house that remains part of the main house.

In 1999, the current owners set out to create an exquisite masterpiece with spectacular architectural designs and features. They began restoring the main house and property, all while carefully honoring its historical past.

An old corn crib has been adapted for re-use as a garage.

The 37-acre compound through stone gateposts features a stately circa 1780 stone main house, now more than 5,300 square feet of exquisitely updated living spaces.

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The view of the 37-acre property from high above.

MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

A thoroughly modern and totally upgraded kitchen, granite tops included.

The fully renovated log cabin serves as the comfortable guest house.

The equine faciliity is first class.

Primary Suite

A spacious formal dining room.

This cozy room has a perfect view of the indoor ring.

Timeless features remain: the walnut three-story staircase, heart pine flooring, a solid marble mantel piece, five fireplaces, with one believed to have been the original cooking stove. In addition, meticulous care was taken to install custom-made windows to replace all throughout the main residence. The current owners more recently restored a two-bedroom log and stone guest house.

riding ring (150’ x 75’). Willwyn Farm has 12 paddocks, two with run-in sheds. There’s also a large equipment shed and a separate driveway for the barn to allow privacy for the main house.

Willwyn Farm also offers a first-class equestrian facility.

This incorporates a renovated nine-stall bank barn and a custom designed 13-stall center aisle barn built in 2005 with an attached indoor arena (196’ x 72’) and an outdoor

Located in the heart of horse county, Willwyn Farm provides easy access to Middleburg and Purcellville, along with Dulles International Airport and downtown Washington, D.C.

Other important features added include FIOS high-speed internet to the main house, guest house and barn. And both the main house and the barn have back up generators.

Country ZEST & Style | Winter 2022

The 196’ x 72’ indoor arena is ideal for year round training.

WILLWYN FARM PURCELLVILLE, VA. Thomas & Talbot Middleburg, Va. Price: $3,495,000 Listing Agent: Cricket Bedford 540-687-6500 or 540-229-3201 cricket@thomasandtalbot.com 65

A Letter From Paris

The Wedding Rehearsal From Hell

I

By John Sherman

t had been a very warm September these many years ago. The upcoming Friday was reserved by a notable member of Middleburg's gentry.

His daughter, who lived in New York, was to be married the next day. The Ashby Inn had hosted many, many of these rehearsal dinners.

No problema.

Our protocols required a tent to be brought in, our hedge against unforeseen elements. It was a grand blue and white striped affair. Tables for ten, cloths, chairs and standing heaters (just in case) arrived Thursday. The buffet menu was set—the unadventurous tenderloin and scallop potatoes, then profiteroles. Flower arrangements would arrive the next day. Routine.

Friday the temperature fell 20 degrees.

By noon, the clear plastic sides of the tent had been dropped and tethered. Extra Sterno cans were stashed behind the buffet. Staff working the party were advised to dress warmly.

Peter Nicoll, whose restaurant days go back to Middleburg's L'Auberge in the 1970s, was scheduled to work with me that night. Peter was right out of central casting: tall, rail thin, sharp features with the bearing of a captain of the guard. Add a pleasant, but compelling, accent from his native Britain.

I can't imagine anything happening on a restaurant floor that Peter hadn't dealt with. Until, perhaps, that night.

Most of the party arrived by limousine. They were not from around here. For many of them, such affairs were held at the Waldorf or the Plaza, Manhattan venues that were warm and crowded with servers. Not the cold darkness of some hick town in Appalachia.

The ladies were of a piece, as if they had emerged en masse from Bergdorf's dressing rooms. Spaghetti straps holding up little black cocktail dresses gave little protection when what was needed was a Hudson blanket. Their swains arrived in dark suits.

Slicked back hair was de rigeur back then. To their credit, they bravely lent their jackets to the ladies.

The bar was alive, giving off some warmth. The kitchen was setting up the buffet, doubling the Sterno. The tables sparkled with silverware and orchids. Only the mother of the bride had a frown.

A deep, forbidding frown.

The heaters were struggling with the size of their challenge. About a half hour in, I watched the nearest one lose its glow, then go dark. Helpless in mechanical crises, I found Peter. He walked over and fiddled with propane connection. The glow came back. The evening was saved.

In the sequence of one-two punches, the second came a half-hour later as guests were yucking at a slide show of the couple in a dancing contest. One of the servers, Martha, her face stricken, reported a ground squashiness in one of the corners. I knew in a second what was happening. I thought about

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hijacking one of the limos and heading for Dulles, destination wherever.

Of course, the septic system had balked. The odor was on its way. Our only break was that the growing swamp was somewhat removed from the tables. The young were dutifully eating and chattering, but it was obvious the chill inside was capping the evening's earlier effervescence.

The mother of the bride, in her fur, was clearly in distress, which was clearly headed toward hostility.

These Mama Bears start to growl at the least threat to perfection.

She had no idea what was coming.

There was no faucet we could turn to bring a sudden end to the nightmare upon us. I imagined the heels of those Pradas covered in mud as the party began pressing toward the entrance. I could hear the foul mouth of Papa Bear as he threatened not to pay.

Who could blame him? My pathetic defense would be that it was not unusual for a surprise Canadian cold front to move in and the septic field to fail. All part of the package.

While I was frozen in private despair, Peter started for the entrance and the kitchen's herb garden. I did not witness this septic disaster as the mother of invention.

He returned with a bundle of uprooted sage plants.

Turning his back on the party, he stripped away what he needed. Two or three of the staff provided a loose shield as Peter, standing on a folding chair, laid his pile on top of the nearest heater.

Soon the sage began giving off a scent, but not the usual odor of sage. A server, Martha, immediately said "pot," which, given the crisis, seemed perfectly acceptable.

The profiteroles were left on plates. No one wanted coffee. The general mood was "let's blow this joint.”

Be my guests.

The inn gods, a quixotic lot, seeing that we were

Photo © by Leonard Shapiro

Peter Nicoll, the sage of The Ashby Inn on our knees, relented. No one had to tie their napkins around their noses. The Pradas emerged like new. The bill was silently paid.

Mama and Papa Bear were not invited to the ceremony, as Peter Nicoll bowed to receive the inn's Croix de Guerre for heroism under fire.

MIDDLEBURG SUSTAINABLE COMMITTEE| Winter 2022

MIDDLEBURG REAL ESTATE

ATOKA

PROPERTIES

S I M P LY B E T T E R .

33846 FOXLEASE LN | UPPERVILLE

19492 SHELBURNE GLEBE RD | LEESBURG

$9,500,000 | Magnificent Foxlease Farm on 160+/- acres in Hunt Country is a one-of-a-kind equestrian facility: 2 horse barns (12 stalls / 17 stalls), 3 run-in sheds, machine shed, hay barn, riding ring, multiple fenced paddocks, 2 silos, rolling hills and trails to ride out. Beautiful stone center building added to the 19th-century home.

$5,200,000 | This tranquil 229.52+/- acres estate of significant historic importance offers a main house, guest house, and several out buildings in an 18th century setting. Nestled in the shadow of Mount Gilead, the property overlooks 35 acre Oliver Lake to the east, and has broad views to the west of the Blue Ridge. Add’l acreage available upon request.

Peter Pejacsevich 540.270.3835

Scott Buzzelli 540.454.1399

Scott Buzzelli 540.454.1399

Peter Pejacsevich 540.270.3835

40213 DOE RUN LN | PAEONIAN SPRINGS

21173 TRAPPE RD | UPPERVILLE

$3,000,000 | This 6 bed/6-full bath & 2-half bath, 6,766 sqft contemporary farmhouse-style compound of 3 buildings, including a main house, guest house, guest tower and detached garage is located on 17+/- acres near Rt 7 & 9 with views of the Blue Ridge Mountains and woods. The property was fully renovated between 2014 & 2020.

$2,950,000 | Day Spring farm offers 100 acres in the hills & foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The federal style brick farmhouse, pool, pool/guest house, 12-stall horse stable w/ 1-bedroom apt., chicken coop, workshop, & riding ring are surrounded by open, lush and green pastures with 4-board fencing, automatic waters, large run-in sheds & outstanding views! Piedmont Hunt territory & not an easement.

Scott Buzzelli 540.454.1399

Peter Pejacsevich 540.270.3835

Kristin Dillon-Johnson 703.673.6920

COMMERCIAL & RESIDENTIAL

LEEDS MANOR RD | MARKHAM/DELAPLANE

36933 & 36939 CHARLES TOWN PIKE | HILLSBORO

BUILDERS-DEVELOPERS-INVESTORS! Rare opportunity to purchase 6 contiguous parcels at the intersection of Leeds Rd & Ravens Ln with the some of the best views the region has to offer. Sizes from 6-12+/-ac, each with an approved certified perk location, and easy access via a subdivision road. Electric available. Easy access to Route 66 and US 17. Close to Appalachian trail & G. Richard Thompson Wildlife Management Area.

$1,300,000 | A unique commercial and residential offering, the Hill Tom Market and adjacent stone building, located in the heart of Hillsboro on route 9 are now available for sale! The stone building includes a great room/reception room, family room, 2 kitchens, 6 bedrooms or offices, and 2 full bathrooms. Renovations to the stone building in 2021.

Rocky Westfall 540.219.2633

Scott Buzzelli 540.454.1399

Peter Pejacsevich 540.270.3835

S I M P LY B E T T E R . | M I D D L E B U R G R E A L E S TAT E . C O M OFFICE LOCATIONS IN MIDDLEBURG, MARSHALL, PURCELLVILLE, LEESBURG, ASHBURN, WINCHESTER AND CHARLES TOWN CORPORATE: 10 E WASHINGTON ST, MIDDELBURG, VA 20117 | 540.687.6321 | LICENSED IN VA, WV & MD (WV BROKER JOSH BEALL)

THIS VIEW NEVER GETS OLD R CT DE RA N U NT CO

Heronwood

Llewellyn

550 acres $23,500,000 Upperville – The entire estate is being offered for the first time since 1983. Handsome main residence, exquisite gardens, spectacular private 18 hole golf course, world class stables and magnificent Blue Ridge Mountain views.

Convenient to Dulles and Washington, D.C.

260 acres $5,500,000 Steeped in history and features a stunning first floor primary suite, grand rooms, chef’s kitchen & wonderful porches. Also: guest cottage, 2 tenant houses, machine shop with 2 BR apartment, barns and fenced fields. Easement potential.

John Coles | 540-270-0094

John Coles | 540-270-0094

ER ACT D R UNNT CO

W NE

ER ACT D R UNNT CO

Claytonville

Legacy Farm

Chilly Bleak

Old Winery

102+ acres $4,600,000 Boyce – This exquisite Country Estate is surrounded by some of the finest estates in Clarke Co. and enjoys stunning Blue Ridge Mountain views. Designed for elegant living and grand entertaining.

Protected by a VOF Easement.

450 acres $4,500,000 Marshall – Stretching from 5 Points Rd in the Plains, to Rectortown and Frogtown Roads. Protected by an Easement with the Virginia Outdoors Foundation. Located in Prime Orange County Hunt Territory, a most prestigious location.

152 acres $3,600,000 Marshall – Open, gently rolling pastures and fields in prime Orange County Hunt Territory. Historic home dates to 1820. 5 BR / 5 BA with stone terrace and pool. Two Stables - 15 stalls and 6 stalls, Kraft Walker, 8 paddocks, 6 fields, 3 cottages.

44 acres $3,495,000 Rectortown – Turn-key estate protected by conservation easement, which allows for develop-ment of equestrian facilities.

Views of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a 7-acre fenced vineyard with vistas of rolling hills, woods and pastures all around.

John Coles | 540-270-0094

John Coles | 540-270-0094

John Coles | 540-270-0094The

ED

ER ACT D R UNNT O C

Deerfield Farm

John Coles | 540-270-0094

C DU

RE

George Miller House

FT Valley Rd.

Five Forks Farm

129 acres $3,300,000 Upperville – Impeccably restored brick manor house, ca. 1844. Perennial gardens and orchard, guest house with theatre, guest/pool house, pool, 5 bay garage, workshop, 2 ponds, fenced fields and paddocks.

100 acres $3,000,000 This estate is waiting for someone with the eye for interior finishes to bring it to life. Minutes from the charming village of Sperryville and enjoys convenient proximity to Culpeper Regional Airport and Warrenton-Fauquier Airport.

148+ acres $2,964,000 Two lots of land for sale in the heart of Rappahannock county. The smaller parcel is 49.6 acres and the larger parcel is 98.6 acres. The land offers privacy, some of the best views and a large stream, just minutes from Sperryville.

39+ acres $975,000 Woodville – Charming home with log walls and exposed beams. Convenient to Culpeper, Warrenton, Little Washington, Shenandoah National Park, Sperryville and Luray. Nature lovers paradise. 8 stall barn and a small guest house.

John Coles | 540-270-0094

John Coles | 540-270-0094

John Coles | 540-270-0094

John Coles | 540-270-0094

Offers subject to errors, omissions, change of price or withdrawal without notice. Information contained herein is deemed reliable, but is not so warranted nor is it otherwise guaranteed.

THOMAS & TALBOT ESTATE PROPERTIES

Opening The Door To Horse Country For Generations 2 South Madison Street | PO Box 500 | Middleburg, VA 20118 | Office: 540-687-6500 | thomasandtalbot.com