| Today | Wednesday | Thursday |
|---|---|---|
 Thunderstorm 86°/68° |  Chance of a Thunderstorm 88°/64° | Chance of a Thunderstorm 77°/57° |
Let's talk about an endangered species. I could talk about the Delmarva fox squirrel (Acipenser brevirostrum) or even the bog turtle (Clemmys muhlenbergii). Instead, I will first briefly mention the Blue Ridge Mountain dwellers (Montanus habitus), who went extinct in the 1930s when the federal government resettled them to make way for the Shenandoah...
Read More »
The Farm Bureau national lobby group’s recent decision to file a lawsuit in federal court to stop the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from limiting the amount of toxic pollutants that flow into the Chesapeake Bay is both shortsighted and ill advised. Efforts to prevent the EPA from regulating such pollution will damage the environment...
Read More »
The recent spate of brush fires caused a scare, or at least some anxious moments, for many a Rappahannock County resident Dry leaves and grass, high winds and low humidity combined to leave the county vulnerable. No structures were lost nor were there injuries. There are some things homeowners can do to protect their...
Read More »
If it turns out that nature is indeed your mother, then Lyt Wood is pretty sure she wishes you’d call more often.
Wood, a Rappahannock citizen for going on 35 years now, will turn 59 this summer during the 25th annual Rappahannock Nature Camp -- a two-week day camp for 8- to 12-year-olds he helped...
Read More »
With the budget battle raging in Big Washington, just about everyone I know in Rappahannock — Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative — agrees that it is irresponsible to keep running huge federal deficits, as we have for the last 10 years. To keep living on borrowed money, we’re essentially robbing our children and...
Read More »
When I was a kid, I fancied myself to be a great tracker. When I was roaming the forests and meadows near my suburban home, I imagined I was a Native American, since we kids learned from Westerns that they were the best trackers. The goal was to find and observe animals, and ultimately...
Read More »
Meeting before a partisan crowd of about 40 at the high school auditorium, the Rappahannock County Board of Supervisors took two unanimous actions Monday night in the matter of two of AT&T’s five proposed cellular installations. One was unanticipated, the other clearly unwanted by those partisans.
Read More »
The head of the American Bird Conservancy has a talk at the library Friday; the Redds add another color to their Sunday jazz concert at the Theatre in Washington; the county's first-responders give out their annual awards for service; memorial dinner for Christine Timbers Saturday features the Dark Hollow Boys bluegrass band.
Read More »
Even as a kid, I was an avid frog watcher. Even before the Spring Peepers’ chorus heralded the arrival of spring, I’d pull on my boots and go to still-icy pools to listen for the sound of Lithobates sylvaticus, the Wood Frog, kicking off the annual frog-breeding cycle. The Wood Frog, a forest dweller,...
Read More »
The North American Raccoon (Procyon lotor) is smart, curious, bold, omnivorous, and opportunistic -- like a small bear in a mask. Our relationship with them has been a conflicted one. We’ve been captivated by the raccoon’s antics, confounded by some of its behavior and annoyed at its skillful thievery. Not only have we captured...
Read More »
The numbers are now in: 296 acres were recorded as conservation easements in Rappahannock County in 2010. These were fewer acres than in previous years, but nonetheless bring the total amount of land protected by conservation easements here to more than 28,600 acres, or 17 percent of the total land. As measured by a...
Read More »
When something is being shoved down my throat I want to know why. I hear some say we will get broadband Internet with AT&T’s cell tower plan. I hear others say cell phone service. Others say it will help our volunteer fire and rescue teams. But I don’t hear specifics. I see maps that...
Read More »
Rappahannock citizens concerned about AT&T’s application to erect two more 199-foot cell phone towers in the county attended an “informational” meeting on Monday to voice their concerns and hear their options. The meeting sponsored by the Rappahannock League for Environmental Protection (RLEP), the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC) and private citizens, came in the waning...
Read More »
An important town hall meeting for Rappahannock farmers is being held at the Link in Sperryville on Jan. 25 from 10 to 3 p.m. Holistic Management International (holisticmanagement.org) is partnering with the county to put on this program on the principles and tools HMI practices throughout the country. While the Jan. 25 workshop will...
Read More »
The Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) has announced the availability of special funding for livestock stream exclusion practices in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
Read More »
In 1962, forward-thinking leaders in Rappahannock County adopted a zoning ordinance that would help protect the scenic and rural aspects of this county. Landowners throughout the county voluntarily down-zoned their properties to protect the county from being suburbanized. Since then, private landowners have voluntarily protected more than 28,500 acres of land through voluntary conservation...
Read More »
With much appreciation for the Planning Commission, the Board of Supervisors and the tremendous responsibilities of both groups, I respectfully disagree with their collective decision to approve the first installation of AT&T’s proposed cell tower infrastructure. My basis is simple: installing 199-foot cell towers (placing 12 panel antennas and related ground equipment located within...
Read More »
There is nothing subtle about them. The height of the AT&T 199-foot cell monopoles proposed in Sperryville and at the high school are a jarring contrast to Rappahannock’s rolling hillside and mountain vistas. The 3-foot balloons used this past Saturday simply do not accurately represent the multiple 12-foot platforms being proposed at the top...
Read More »
Like most county residents, we are eager to have faster Internet service. That said, we were surprised on Saturday morning to see the height of the proposed cell tower on Woodward Road. As most readers know, AT&T is proposing a 199-foot cell tower in Sperryville, and the company raised a test balloon last Saturday...
Read More »
A Jan. 25 program at the Link may be an eye-opener for farmers as it will explore holistic management practices. The program has been spearheaded by Cliff Miller, a longtime farmer in Sperryville who raises cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens at his Mount Vernon Farm, where for the past decade he has made concerted...
Read More »
Do you miss that old-time bluegrass? Many people associate bluegrass with Kentucky, but when I was a boy, the pastures in Rappahannock were full of bluegrass while the hayfields were brimming with orchard grass, the predominant seed and hay crop. Now, bluegrass in a pasture field is hard to find, and orchard grass seems...
Read More »
When Rappahannock County resident Ann Harman was 5 years old, she never dreamed her fascination with bees would lead to a career, international recognition, and a humanitarian award. But it did. “Some of my earliest memories involve bees,” Harman said. “I watched them fly flower to flower, and I even helped them sometimes.” Harman...
Read More »
I’m really not a winter person. As the days get shorter, the nights longer, and the temperature drops, all I want to do is hibernate. I like to be lulled to sleep by a full chorus of cicadas, crickets, tree frogs, and the occasional whip-poor-will, so I find the winter nocturnal silence, with the...
Read More »
The Rappahannock County Planning Commission last Wednesday unanimously voted to recommend approval of AT&T’s application for the first of five proposed cell towers in the county. The matter will come before the board of supervisors for a final vote at its Jan. 3 meeting. The vote Wednesday night came after roughly half of the...
Read More »
A kid-friendly Rocknoceros heads for the Link in January; the Visitors Center posts its winter hours; RCCA gives $20,000 to the county for farmland preservation; Scrabble School gets a visit from a member of the family that made Rosenwald schools possible; more.
Read More »
You like birds. You want to see them up close. You’d like to help them survive through the winter. For any or all of these reasons, you’ve decided to feed your wild feathered neighbors, but doing it so that you and the birds get the most out of it can be complicated.
Read More »
The Planning Commission tabled an application by AT&T last Wednesday for its recommendation to the Rappahannock County supervisors on the first of several cell towers AT&T wants to build in the county — to allow anyone interested to attend a “balloon test” now scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 4. Though one of the commission’s better-attended...
Read More »
Customers of Rappahannock Electric Cooperative, the electric utility that serves many people in this area, are not just customers. They’re also members and owners of the cooperative, much like a stockholder partly owns a corporation. As REC’s CEO, Kent Farmer, told members at the REC annual meeting near Fredericksburg in August, “we work for...
Read More »
Jazz pianist Bill Harris brings some musical history to life; RCCA's annual meeting is Nov. 14; join the annual Christmas bird count; mischieviously musical Pluck performs at the Theatre.
Read More »
Rappahannock County residents were among recipients of awards presented Oct. 21 by the Culpeper Soil and Water Conservation District.
The annual awards dinner honors those who have demonstrated leadership in the stewardship of local soil and water resources. The awards presented were Educator of the Year, Forest Stewardship, Bay Friendly Farm Awards in each...
Read More »
A lot of us in Virginia enjoy feeding hummingbirds, putting our nectar feeders out in the spring at the first sign of their arrival, and taking them in after the last hummer disappears for its long trek south in the fall. While at my brothers’ in Southeast Alaska this fall, we were watching rufous...
Read More »
The county could lose its local Virginia Cooperative Extension (VCE) office under a restructuring of the state agency that serves as a resource to farmers, ranchers and gardeners. Under the plan, the number of extension offices statewide would be reduced from 106 in local communities to 22 regional offices. The cost-cutting restructuring was put...
Read More »
The hope is that headline — with the implication that we were wrong! — makes everybody happy. But if everyone’s mad at us, we must be doing something right. There’s some comfort in that. Otherwise, the last couple of weeks have been anything but comfortable here at the Rappahannock News. It all started with...
Read More »
Except for poison ivy, thorny vines and the occasional venomous rattlesnake, the Virginia Piedmont forest is usually not too hazardous. This autumn, however, danger has been raining down from above. The instigators are trees, releasing acorns and nuts — a bumper “hard mast” crop, by early estimates. Mast is the fruit (with seed inside)...
Read More »
As the sesquicentennial of the Civil War approaches, I find myself revisiting great American historians, most recently Avery Odelle Craven. The Organization of American Historians annually awards a prize in his name to the best original work on the Civil War and Reconstruction: the Avery O. Craven Prize. Yet Craven is perhaps best known...
Read More »
As a conservation-minded farmer, I strongly support the Chesapeake Clean Water Act, and have written and called my senators expressing my support. Your article, didn’t speak for farmers like me. The Virginia Farm Bureau isn’t the voice of all Virginia agriculture, and the opposition between farmers and environmental groups...
Read More »
Few would dispute that the Chesapeake Bay, known as the 'Great Shellfish Bay' by the Algonquians, has changed since Captain John Smith explored its pristine waters in 1607. Once teeming with aquatic life, massive oyster beds, waterfowl and virgin forests, North America's largest estuary is showing signs of stress.
Home to some 3,700 species,...
Read More »
Last Friday, Mount Vernon Farm moved its cattle to the lush fields adjacent to the Link community center in Sperryville, where they grazed to their hearts’ content. Later in the week, traffic on U.S.. 211 had to pause for a few minutes while they were led across to another of the farm’s pastures. And...
Read More »
A zen retreat; sheep -- and other wooly pursuits -- on Main Street; master naturalists in the Thornton; master gardeners at the Coop; and apple butter the old-fashioned way at Beech Spring.
Read More »
Wakefield Country Day School’s sixth-grade class is participating this academic year in the “Trout in the Classroom” program. The effort is being led by teachers Margaret DiDomenico and Jeff Perry. The “Trout in the Classroom” program began in New York and has made its way across many of the eastern states. In Virginia, it’s...
Read More »
Follow Us