Twenty years ago, Holmes Welsh and his brother, Sam, could look out the windows of their neighboring farmhouses and see acres of green.

Together, they made a living on the 270-acre dairy farm near Leesburg their family had owned since the 1760s.
Twenty years ago, the Welsh’s neighbors were also dairy farmers and Loudoun was dotted with nearly 100 dairy farms.

“If you ran out of some paper towels, you could run down to the neighbors,” Holmes Welsh said. “Of course, that’s all changed. Everyone disappeared.”

As the decades wore on, land values rose, and taxes did too. Coupled with the growing cost of equipment and maintenance repairs, it was a struggle for the Welshes to turn a profit. The brothers saw the writing on the wall, he said.

“You’re trying to be efficient and you’re still losing money,” he said. “You just kind of sense that you couldn’t keep farming forever.”

Facing mounting pressure from their bank to repay loans, the Welsh family decided to quit farming and sell off land lots in 1992—when only eight working dairy farms remained in the county, Welsh said.
Now, only one dairy farm remains, owned by the Potts family in Purcellville.

From milk to wine

Farming in Loudoun isn’t in any danger, said the county’s rural resources coordinator, Gary Hornbaker. It just doesn’t look the same as it used too.

In the past 10 years, Loudoun’s vineyard population has soared from a handful of wineries to 24. Although the county does not have access to up-to-date farming statistics, Hornbaker knows from talking to farmers that wine and grape production is on the rise. So too are polo, thoroughbred horse farms and Christmas tree farms. Horse feed and sod and turf sales are growing, and cattle farms remain steady because they allow for Loudoun residents to qualify for land-use tax benefits, Hornbaker said. Additionally, Loudoun still ranks in the top five counties for hay production in Virginia, he said.

“Agriculture is still one of the largest business bases in the county,” Hornbaker said.

Vineyards take root

Lewis “Lew” Parker didn’t have familial farming roots in Loudoun. But 30 years ago, he tried his hand in it and planted one acre of grapes. They died.

“We didn’t know anything about planting in Virginia,” Parker said.

Still, he persisted at a time when dairy and wheat production were at their peak in Loudoun. The agriculture extension office advised Parker against planting a vineyard because it was risky, he said.

But he served on the Loudoun Economic Development Department’s viability committee and saw that traditional farming was becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.

Parker launched Loudoun’s first vineyard, Willowcroft, in 1981, as traditional farmers were leaving the business.

Income turnaround for grapes takes three to five years, which was not a pattern of cash flow traditional farmers were used to, Parker said.
Holmes Welsh said he never considered converting to grape production and, if he had, it probably would have been 10 years too late.

Mike and Diane Canney, owners of Sunset Hills Vineyard in Purcellville, wanted to maintain the 20-acre farm they purchased in 1999 as an open-space environment – like the old Loudoun – for future generations. The winery is in a circa-1870 Bavarian barn that the Canneys restored and opened in 2008. The preservation of the barn was important to them because too many pieces of Loudoun’s history are lost, Diane Canney said. Nearly 20,000 people visit Sunset Hills annually – a significant contribution to tourism business.

“The attraction of businesses to Loudoun and the sustainability of the rural economy is an important axis,” Parker said.

‘Finished’ products, tourism

“Farmers, for the most part, live a solitary existence,” said Warren Howell, the county’s former agricultural development officer with the Economic Development Department. “You put a lot of effort, heart and soul and spirit into your job, and you want to have some recognition for it.”

Ten years ago, the Economic Development Department made a push to increase Loudoun’s agricultural output by changing the products farmers produced, Howell said.

Previously, farmers produced milk, wheat, corn and hay – items that were not finished-product commodities. Instead, the department urged farmers to sell finished products that sold for more money. Wine instead of grapes, for example.

“What we’re seeing is the evolution of a new type of agriculture,” Hornbaker said. “It’s not silos, it’s not dairy farms, but when you put the small-scale operations together, it makes a lot of money.”

Smaller-scale, higher-value farming would sustain the agricultural industry in the county in the future, he said.

Some of the farms left in the county have found money in inviting tourists onto their property. Great Country Farms in Bluemont, Wegmeyer Farms in Hamilton and Fields of Flowers in Purcellville are among farms offering pick-your-own products. Farms like these require less acreage to produce a product, but can profit through tourism as they provide entertainment for families and out-of-town visitors.

Where we’re headed

While farms have evolved, budget cuts have begun to threaten the relationship between the government and farmers.

As the agricultural development officer, Howell was the symbol for agriculture in Loudoun, and farmers saw in him that the county had a commitment to them, he said.

But as the Loudoun Board of Supervisors faced deep budget cuts, Howell’s position was frozen after his retirement in December 2009, leaving the rural economic community without representation in the county government.

Along with Howell’s former position, the rural department’s marketing manager position is also on the chopping block, putting the department’s job of promoting and marketing a sustainable economy and quality of life on the shoulders of fewer people.

As the county’s population continues to grow, Howell would like to see the county’s remaining open land untouched and instead concentrate new home construction in areas that are already developed, possibly through a building-rights swap system that would enable landowners to sell their development rights and build elsewhere in the county, Howell said.

“In the future in Loudoun,” Welsh said, “there is going to be more and more people and less and less agriculture, and that’s just going to be the name of the game.”

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