Arrive Magazine - May/June, 2009

much as he can grow. One area restaurant has been buying 35 pounds a week of his greens. They want 200 pounds a week. Young wants to grow that much but isn’t yet sure how he can do it.

“I do want to get bigger,” he says. Except that right now he is the entire operation—he does the planting, tending, growing, harvesting and washing. He throws blankets over the greens at night to keep them warm, for Pete’s sake, and he knows exactly how the operation is going and can vouch for every aspect of it.

“Once it gets beyond what I can give attention to, I can’t guarantee quality,” he says.

Although Young wants to go from two greenhouses to 10, for now he has

t wo—t wo that he knows in and out—in where the greens and edible flowers are grown, and out where you find the strawberries and the birdbath and the Tibetan peace flags and the hammock, the picnic table and the friendly neighbors—in their own Quonset huts—and the wind chimes chiming.

From Table to Table You will want more good greens after visiting Young and his greenhouses, and you will be in luck. Patowmack Farm in Virginia, about an hour from D.C. and just about half an hour from Young, serves greens as well as other local foods. Some are so local they’re grown on-site.

Beverly Morton Billand and her husband, Chuck, own Patowmack Farm. Billand says she started growing organic food 23 years ago.

“I had five daughters and I thought if I could feed my children, I’d be OK,” she says. “I wanted to make sure they could eat healthy. And also teach them sensitivity to the land, to animals, where their food comes from.”

She can feed them—and now you, as well—at the restaurant she opened on her farm 10 years ago.

“From farm to table,” she says. “We grow as much as we can.”

What she grows includes legumes, spinach, broccoli, cabbage, tomatoes, okra, winter squashes, pumpkins, kales,

Wild About Alpacas

Angel Forbes Simmons’ family has been living and farming Villa de Alpacas Farm in southern Maryland for more than 200 years. She had wanted to set up a new farm on the fields where her family used to grow tobacco, and whatever she farmed had to be ecofriendly and self-sustaining.

“I thought about shiitake mushrooms,” she says. “Wine, grapes, goat cheese.”

But alpacas won the day, and these days Simmons keeps more than 90 of them on her farm. These alpacas are friendly, too, which is a little unusual. Generally, alpacas tolerate human attention, but not very many race up to people and insist on a neck rub.

“They’re wonderful animals,” says Simmons. “Gentle, wise old souls. Once you’ve been around them for any length of time you miss them.”

Rolling hills surround another alpaca venue, Alpaca Full Moon Farm in Marshall, Va., about an hour from D.C. Owners John and Lee Lane welcome visitors and host formal open houses three times a year. But if it’s eating and drinking you’re after, just up the street is Barrel Oak Winery. The winery serves wine flights and snacks, and—because they also have an outpost of Alpaca Full Moon Farm’s alpaca wares—sweaters, blankets and scarves.