By Hunter Kennedy | April/May 2009 | Features

The Smartest Farm

Almost thirty years ago, one forward-thinking Virginia family decided to make a life out of going green. Today they're still breaking new ground

All morning, a steady cold rain shrouds the north bank of the James River, inundating the 480 acres of rolling pasture around Brookview Farm. This late October downpour has stripped the locust and mulberry trees of much of their bright foliage, and the dirt drive separating the brick farmhouse from the surrounding fields has been churned to mud. But it cannot dampen the enthusiasm of owners Sandy and Rossie Fisher as they begin the morning’s long list of chores. This is the first rain the Fishers have seen in months, and they are delighted to have it.

“Look, the pasture’s already greening up,” declares Rossie. It hardly matters that this green is now visible in only the faintest shades. As the rain drums on the porch’s metal roof, she explains that the drought has been so severe here in Goochland County, just twenty-five miles west of Richmond, that the farm’s largest natural spring has run dry for the first time in memory. Her soft-spoken husband quietly adds that if the drought had gone on any longer, they would have been forced to sell off much of the herd. Clearly these are not easy times to be a farmer, an occupation that demands resilience and initiative on a daily basis along with the occasional stroke of luck.

Donning his oilskin jacket and trademark felt hat, Sandy leads the way through the slick grass to check on Brookview Farm’s various operations, which include 250 certified organic grass-fed cattle, 400 free-range chickens, and a farm store selling organic eggs by the dozen and beef by the pound. Just past the brick outbuildings housing the farm’s office and store, we stop at a massive former dairy barn built into the hillside. The upper level is full of huge circular bales of organic hay, while the lower half houses a fleet of tractors retrofitted to run on bio-diesel fuel. When you see a fourteen-foot-wide 1980 Eagle composting tractor that can run all day on soybean oil, you know you’re touring the future of Southern farming.

Leading the Way
Just a few months before, the Fishers were recipients of the American Farmland Trust’s 2007 Stewards of the Land award, which “recognizes farmers who lead by example on their own farms while actively working to promote land stewardship in their community.” This was the first AFT award given to a Virginia farm family, and it seemed especially appropriate that the honorees were farming less than fifty miles from Monticello, where Thomas Jefferson introduced many of American agriculture’s most important innovations. Often overlooked in the long list of his accomplishments is the fact that Jefferson was among the first to implement crop rotation, contour plowing, and the use of fertilizer at his farm at Monticello, all concepts now fundamental to modern farming. More important, the American yeoman farmer was central to Jefferson’s vision for the new republic, which considered the small farmer’s enlightened stewardship of the land integral to a successful democracy.

“Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens,” declared Jefferson in a 1785 letter to John Jay. “They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands.”