This week marks the season’s end for the Lexington Farmer’s Market. There will be one more market date on the wednesday before Thanksgiving, but after that, where are you going to find local foods during the winter months? “Local Food Forager” Tara Miller has come up with an answer: a winter farmer’s market called “Farm to You”. The basic idea is that twice monthly, you’ll be able to get get fresh local food from Farm to You. There will be the option to pick up your order directly at the Farm to You hub on Waddell Street, or if you’re in Lexington, you can get your order delivered direct to your home.

Broadview Ranch is working with Farm to You in hopes of providing another way for customers to get our grass-fed beef, truly free-range eggs, and exquisite acorn-finished pork. Look for our products along with such items as artisan cheeses and butters, coffee, baked goods, root vegetables, chard, kale, collards, and salad greens.  To find out more, contact Tara at staramiller@hotmail.com or 540-460-2990.

In addition to Farm to You, there’s another farm-to-table venture in Rockbridge County, Cheese to You.  Megan Mary Hall is offering artisan American and Old World cheeses on a subscription basis.  If you were lucky enough to attend last week’s opening reception, you got to enjoy some of the delicacies that she will be offering.  (The Ewe Blue was incredible!)  For more info, contact meganmaryhall@yahoo.com, phone: 540-463-4389, cell: 540-319-3129.

These are great ways to bring excellent foods into your kitchen and support family farms at the same time.  The money we spend at Farm to You and Cheese to You will stay in our communities, making it easier for businesses like this to thrive and continue to deliver delicious, high-quality food for us and our families.

Happy Pig

The inevitable happened last Saturday. After 3 months of contentedly staying in their pig glens, rotated from paddock to paddock every two weeks or so, happily contained by two low strands of electric fence, the pigs made a break for it.

The rains last Friday softened the soil making ideal rooting conditions for the pigs. So ideal that they rooted up piles of soil completely covering the fence. Either late in the day on Friday or early Saturday the entire herd of 29 pigs escaped with nothing between them and 5000+ acres of mountain land. My son-in-law, Devan, after coming in from roaming the farm on his ATV, asked the long dreaded question, “Where are the pigs supposed to be?”. He had seen tracks and signs of rooting far back in the woods. He had also spotted a few pigs near the Upper Barn where the pigs had lived until they were big enough to go out into the grazing paddocks.

I headed out to the upper barn with visions of chasing the pigs though the mountain for months, and maybe never getting them all back. When I arrived at the barn about half the pigs were milling around. That is when our pig socialization training paid off. All summer we have been taking our salad trimmings, excess/spoiled garden produce, cracked eggs, etc. to the pigs. Each time I gave them a treat I would give my hog call and the pigs would come running. The same thing happened on Saturday. I opened their old pen in the barn, flushed out a few chickens that were milling around and hollered SOOOUUUUEEEE HERE PIG, PIG, PIG. The pigs milling around the barn when right in the pen. I called a few more times and in a few minutes the rest of the pigs came running over the hill and into the pen.

On Sunday Bryn and I finished the electric fence around the pigs 7 acre woodland paddock. Now we had to get the pigs from the barn to their new paddock in the woods. Yesterday evening all available family (eight of us in all) gathered for a pig dive. I went in front calling and leading the pigs to their new paddock with the rest of the family encouraging the stragglers, to our great suprise this actually works. The pigs are now in the woods contentedly munching the acorns that this weekend’s winds and rain brought down, and once again the time spent in training/conditioning happy, well socialized livestock has paid off big time.

Lee, Lucy and Karri

Broadview Ranch would like to welcome its newest farm hand Lucy Katherine Atwood, Born September 14th, 2009, 8lbs 5 oz, daughter of Lee and Karri Atwood. We may have to wait a few years before we can put her to work. CONGRATULATIONS LEE AND KARRI!

House at Broadview in 1932

My Grandfather “Tex” Tilson then the head football coach at W & L bought the first 426 Acres of Broadview Ranch in 1932 from Peoples National Bank. The bank had foreclosed on the farm several years before and during the time of bank ownership the farm had been poorly cared for. Much of the land was badly eroded from years of plow farming, and grown up in brush from years of neglect from the bank. People told my grandfather that some of the fields could never be recovered from the brush and brambles that covered them. Whoever those people were, they must not have known my Grandfather very well. Grandpop threw into the farm the same energy and enthusiasim that he used for leading W&L to Southern Conference Championships. He attacked the brush with a vengance and with little thought as to whether the large amounts of labor involved would be profitable in the short term. He introduced cattle grazing to the farm and hailing back to his childhood in Texas named the land Broadview Ranch rather than Broadview farm. Where crops were still raised he introduced contour plowing and strip cropping long before they were common practice in Rockbridge Conty.

If Grandpop instilled anything in his family it is a deep love for the land. When riding his horses over the land, which he did practically everyday of his life, he never failed to pause on a hilltop to take in the beautiful broad views and exclaim that the good Lord has blessed us with this farm. But greater than his love for the land was his love for his family. Much of the work ,planning and planting that my Grandfather did, especially later in his life, he knew that he would never see its end result. But he did it, he spent money on it, and he cared for it for the benefit of his children, grandchildren and yet unborn great grandchildren. Now Tex Tilson’s great great grandchildren are starting to arrive, the 5th generation of our family on Broadview to share the love of the land and the love of each other in this special place. Oh, there is one other thing Tex Tilson loved to do and that was to show people around the farm, come on out and we will be happy to show you around too.