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Protecting Rappahannock’s beauty and natural habitat
Rolling green hills, sparkling ponds, and blooming gardens cover the landscape of Rappahannock County. Conserving this natural beauty is a top priority for most residents, as the area is one of the most highly protected in Virginia.One recent addition to this cause is 422 acres recognized as the first apple orchard in the county. Dating back to the 1760s, the property now known as the Farm at Sunnyside, went into a conservation easement with the Virginia Outdoors Foundation on August 28.
Owned and operated by Nick and Gardiner Lapham of Sunnyside Holdings, LLC, the farm is a certified organic farm and will continue to be protected from development for good.
“There are a lot of people in Rappahannock County who spent time on this farm growing up. It was a pretty well-known farm in the county,” said Nick Lapham.
Originally owned by the Woods family, the farm was sold to David Cole in 1996. Cole added much of the infrastructure that is present on the farm today and was also a forward-thinker in the organic movement.
“He had the farm certified as an organic farm with a focus on orchards and vegetables,” said Lapham. “He planted an entirely new orchard and put in a number of ponds, so he really did a lot.”
In 2006, Cole sold the farm to the Laphams, after moving back to Hawaii. Having grown up in Washington, D.C., working in the environmental protection field, and coming to Rappahannock since infancy, Lapham wanted to maintain and conserve the property.
Since gaining control of the farm, one of his main goals was to see it be protected from development.
“We wanted to see it protected so it could never be chopped up into bite-size pieces,” Lapham said. “In the terms of the agreement, we also put a limit that there will never be a building above the 100 foot contour line, which protects all of these woods from ever having a house in them. If there was, it would be visible from all of the view shed.”
The easement also protects the main house on the farm, which was built around 1785 and is listed on the National Historic Register.
“Right now, there are eight dwellings on the property, so the easement restricts that number at eight permanently. We’re also capped at the square footage or built space that can be put on the land,” Lapham said.
Putting land into easement has been the Lapham family mission for many years. With this recent conservation victory, nearly 20 percent of Rappahannock County is now in easement, according to Lapham.
“To be part of this is really exciting for us. To be able to do something to permanently protect this property with all its historic values, cultural values, and habitat qualities because it borders Shenandoah National Park, it’s very much a part of what we want to do,” Lapham said.
Another of the Lapham family’s goals is to integrate the farm back into the county.
“One of the things we want to do is give people who live in the county an opportunity to be more a part of the farm. That was sort of our philosophy from the start,” Lapham said.
Subscriber program
The Laphams have been managing work on the farm since December 2007, taking some time at first to learn the farm business. Just this year, they created a community supported agriculture program which invites residents to subscribe to the farm.
“They come to the farm once a week and pick up a box of produce. We currently have 32 subscribers and it just gives people in the community a chance to come to the farm and see where the food is grown, plus it saves on fuel costs,” Lapham said.
Although the subscriber program was experimental this year, it turned out to be a great success and the farm hopes to gain more subscribers next season.
“There’s between 40 and 45 different kinds of vegetables that you’ll get, a lot of them are very seasonal,” Lapham said. “In the spring, you get asparagus, radishes, and kale, and you move into summer and get lettuces, tomatoes, and squash for example.”
The farm tries to provide subscribers with a mix of different organic produce, which also includes herbs and fruits such as pears, blackberries, and cherries. Apples are of course prevalent in the fall.
“It’s very difficult to manage apple orchards organically because you are obviously limited to what you can put on the apple trees to deal with fungus and insects,” Lapham said. “But one of our real goals for this farm was to demonstrate biological diversity and show that you can run a viable farm while you’re protecting a working ecosystem.”
Produce from the Farm at Sunnyside is sold at two farmer’s markets in D.C. The farm’s vegetable production and market manager, Emily Cook, oversees the growth and sale of the farm’s organic produce.
“So many people think of the health aspects of growing organic, but I think recently people have started to discover the link between organic and environmental protection,” said Cook. “Especially here on this farm, we have this pristine watershed and we have a responsibility to keep it clean.”
Director of Farm Operations, Michael Clune, follows the Laphams' philosophy as well and works to keep the farm land protected for the future of Rappahannock and its residents.
“We’ve been active in the local food movement by going to meetings with other farmers in the area and working to link the agricultural community to the conservation community,” Clune said. “There are a lot of those groups in the county. We want to demonstrate that there’s a lot of common ground there.”
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