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Great Country Farms

Community Supported Agriculture, CSA, Produce Farm, U-Pick, Field Trips in Loudoun County, VA

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CLOSED for the 2019 season.

Winter Office Hours: Tuesday-Thursdays 10am-4pm
540-554-2073
18780 Foggy Bottom Road, Bluemont, VA 20135

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Grassing up

March 10, 2015 by Mark Dewey

Wheatgrass flats ready for the market.

Wheatgrass flats ready for the GCF market.

It’s supposed to be good for you to a degree that makes you wonder whether it’s too good to be true. Some of the claims are hard to believe:

“Wheatgrass juice fights body odor! Wheatgrass juice blocks tooth decay! Wheatgrass keeps gnats out of your eyes!”

And relieves arthritis, and reduces inflammation, and protects against certain cancers.

Really?

“Having recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, with all the chemo and meds I’ve been placed on I felt my body needed something outside of medical science to help fight this terrible disease,” said Samuel P. “I found it in freshly squeezed wheatgrass. I’ve never felt so good in my body and my mind.”

“I started drinking wheatgrass four weeks ago,” Pam said, “and what a difference it has made! The first thing I noticed was my energy levels increased dramatically. Also, I have suffered from chronic leg cramps for 45 years, every night, and since I’ve been on the wheatgrass I have not had any cramps. It’s miraculous after suffering all these years!”

I’ve read dozens of accounts like that. Some of them are hard to believe, but hard-won beliefs are the kind that change lives.

My first experimental dose.

My first experimental dose.

We’ve been growing wheatgrass in the greenhouse at the farm for a month or so. The grass in the picture above is about ten days old, and what you see there is enough grass for maybe 70 servings of juice, like the one to the right, which I swallowed half an hour ago because I want to find out for myself. Luckily, I don’t need relief from any serious illness or affliction, but I am 55 years old, and I’m increasingly aware of my body’s pains and failings. I hope my awareness, and the fact that I’m not looking for any particular result, will make me a good test case.

For the last 27 minutes or so, I’ve been enjoying a state of intensified alertness: imagine drinking a lot of coffee fast without feeling jittery or wanting to bounce your leg. It’s like that. Mark Zurschmeide calls it energy, as Pam did above, and some of the sources I’ve read suggest that the energy comes from a sudden spike in your blood’s capacity to carry oxygen to your brain and throughout the rest of your body. Other sources dispute that claim, but It does feel like my brain is getting better air.

Since human stomachs don’t have the microbes required to dissolve the walls of the cells that contain the drop of precious liquid produced by a leaf of wheatgrass, you have to crush the leaves with a juicer, so my new life with wheatgrass started with a new machine. We chose the Omega 8006.

Tomorrow I plan to drink my shot before I exercise to see if it improves my endurance. I’ll let you know. In the meantime, have a look at our juicer. 

 

 

Filed Under: Big Pictures, On Foggy Bottom Road Tagged With: drinking wheatgrass juice, great country farms, Omega 8006, wheatgrass juice, wheatgrass juice benefits, wheatgrass juice claims

Appalachian Outdoor Readiness Fills Group Site Void in Purcellville

February 27, 2015 by Mark Dewey

This new Purcellville outfitter is GCF's latest Public Group Site.

This new Purcellville outfitter is GCF’s latest Public Group Site.

When I moved to Western Loudoun 14 years ago, you couldn’t buy a stitch of clothing anywhere this side of the outlet mall in Leesburg. Not so much as a tee shirt or a pair of socks. And if you wanted rain gear, or a headlamp, or a water bottle, or any piece of equipment conducive to outdoor life on the Blue Ridge, you had to go all the way to Reston. I looked and looked, and then I hoped and hoped that someone would see the mercantile connection between the Appalachian Trail, which is ten miles west of Purcellville, and the rapid influx of people who might want to buy stuff to use on the trail, or on the Shenandoah River, or in the woods behind their houses. Wasn’t that why many of those people had moved to the country? Years passed. Eventually, I quit hoping and started spending my equipment money in Winchester. IMG_1059

Well, thanks to Chuck and Cindy Izzo, — many thanks! — I don’t have to do that anymore. They’ve tucked a first-class outfitter into a charming space under the old mill by the railroad tracks — their upstairs neighbor is Magnolias.

I hadn’t thought to look there.

Among other things, Appalachian Outdoor Readiness & Essentials offers the largest selection of Kuhl clothing I’ve seen anywhere except online. They sell plasticized topographical maps, solar chargers that fit in your pocket, and carbon-fiber hatchets that are light enough to carry in your pack and heavy enough to cut through your car door. Parachute cord that doubles as fire-starter if you un-weave the outer sheath? They have that. They also have water purifiers, sleeping bags, and essential oils. And socks.

Chuck and Cindy come to the outdoor equipment business from a background that’s not what many people naturally associate with boots and backpacks: the army. Both of them are veterans who saw tours of duty in Iraq, where their knowledge of Arabic made them especially valuable. They came to the Washington area to put their language skills and service experience to work in the intelligence industry. After Chuck’s employer was acquired by a large conglomerate which wanted him to spend most of his time on Capitol Hill, he and Cindy decided to turn their passions into an unusual business venture: not just gear for outdoor recreation, which is basically a way to have fun, but also supplies and suggestions for enduring circumstances that are the opposite of fun.

“While some stores focus only on selling outdoor products, Appalachian Outdoor Readiness & Essentials adds the emergency readiness and disaster preparedness factor to the mix,” their website explains. Cindy sees their store as an endeavor in yin and yang “because Chuck’s side deals with being prepared in the physical sense while [my] side takes care of preparedness in terms of health and wellness.”

IMG_1055The Izzos have found that many people who enjoy outdoor activities are also interested in natural wellness techniques, such as the use of essential oils. “That also applies for people who are into emergency preparedness,” Cindy says, “because the essential oils enable them to truly manage and be in control of their own wellness. It’s really been a great fit.”

In addition to courses in wilderness first aid and survival, Chuck offers disaster readiness assessments. “We look at sources of water available, the structures on the site, as well as the location of the site in relation to risk variables like flood plains, major evacuation or migration routes, potential hazardous areas, etc. We then make recommendations designed to enhance emergency preparedness for either evacuation or sheltering in place.”

And in June, Chuck and Cindy will begin serving as GCF’s newest Public Group Site — the only site west of Catoctin Circle in Leesburg.

It would seem, by the way, that I’m not the only outdoorsman in the area with long-neglected gear needs. “Our most popular items have probably been our water purification filters,” Chuck says, “but we’ve done pretty well across the board. From our Kuhl brand apparel, to our Wise Emergency food supplies. Our Osprey brand backpacks have been very popular as well.”
And don’t forget the Darn Tough socks.

Filed Under: Big Pictures Tagged With: Appalachian Outdoor Readiness & Essentials, Chuck Izzo, Cindy Izzo, disaster readiness, essential oils, hiking gear, Kuhl, mountaineering grear, Osprey, Outdoor gear, wellness supplies, Wise Emergency

Nine Generations at Georges Mill Farm

February 20, 2015 by Mark Dewey

Saffire at the height of her reign.

Saffire at the height of her reign.

“That’s Saffire,” Molly Kroiz explained, nodding at the goat who’d turned to look us over. “She used to be the queen, but there was a coup d’etat last summer, and Hannah deposed her. For a while she was depressed, and her milk production dropped, but eventually they formed a kind of coalition government, and now she seems okay again.”

Saffire had apparently retained the right to look at strangers before anyone else did.

She wasn’t looking for danger. Threat-management fell to Conway and Loretta, the two Great Pyrenees who met us at the gate, sliding their enormous paws under the yellow wire that ran above the fence line at the height their noses reached when they stood on their hind legs.

“Loretta’s a jumper,” Molly explained, as she opened the gate and ducked under the electrified wire, with nonchalance I admired, since she was carrying Mabel, a three-month-old human being encased in a down garment that Molly referred to as a sausage suit.

winter-farm-med-L

It was cold. Georges Mill Farm sits on hills that fold in toward each other, forming a chute that accelerates wind from the north, and we were standing in the middle of that chute. Fortunately, the dogs, who had stood down from the gate when they realized that we intended to enter, were leaning against our merely denim-covered legs, great white lap rugs.

Conway and Loretta warm Janet's legs.

Conway and Loretta warm Janet’s legs.

Saffire and Hannah govern a flock of 23 does, each of which produces a gallon of milk a day in lactating season, from the end of March through the beginning of December. “We don’t milk them while they’re pregnant,” Molly explained. The first newborns are due on February 28, with the others arriving on a schedule of deliveries staggered over the next six weeks.

“We’re expecting forty to fifty babies,” said Sam, Molly’s husband. “Some of the does will have twins.”

Sam traces his lineage back to John George, who leased 240 acres from George William Fairfax in 1786 and built a mill on Dutchman’s Creek, the Potomac tributary closest to the German Settlement. Fairfax required that George should “plant upon the Demised Premises one Hundred good Apple Trees and two Hundred Peach Trees at least thirty feet Distance from each other, and the same will enclose with a good sufficient and Lawfull fence, and keep them all well pruned; and that he [John George] and they [his family] shall and will Erect and Build a good Dwelling house twenty feet by sixteen, and a Barn twenty feet square, after the manner of Virginia Building.”

Map by Eugene Scheel.

Map by Eugene Scheel.

Those trees and that barn were the beginning of a stewardship tradition that reaches the ninth generation of the George family in the person of young Mabel.

The barn where Sam and Molly milk their goats and make their cheese was probably built by Samuel George, John’s grandson, around the time of the Civil War. The barn cuts into a hill, so that its lowest level is exposed to the south but protected underground to the north, creating a shelter that’s warm in the winter and cool in the summer. The goats eat and sleep there, and twice a day they clamber up a ramp to the milking parlor on the second floor, where a milking machine serves four goats at a time. Ten goats are the most that it makes sense to milk by hand, Molly explained; once you get to eleven, the machine is more efficient, even though cleaning it after each use takes a lot longer than washing a pail.

The Kroizes started their flock in the spring of 2012, with two does and two doelings. Last year their small herd produced roughly 3,500 gallons of milk, which Sam and Molly crafted into about 2,000 pounds of high quality cheese in five varieties. They sold some of it to the finest restaurants in the area, and the rest went to members of their small CSA, which will partner with Great Country Farms this year to offer our members a cheese add-on.

So how does goat’s milk compare to cow’s milk?

“It’s similar in composition to cow’s milk,” Molly said via email, “except the fat globules are smaller, which means that the cream doesn’t separate, so goat’s milk is naturally homogenized. I find goat’s milk to be slightly sweeter than cow’s milk, but it doesn’t really have any more lactose (sugar) than cow’s milk does. Because of the difference in fats, many people find goat’s milk easier to digest. The proteins are also different, so people who are allergic to cow’s milk can drink goat’s milk — but people who are lactose intolerant can’t.”

Sam Kroiz walks among different strata in goat society.

Sam Kroiz walks among different strata in goat society.

Unlike cows, goats maintain a complex social structure. “I could tell that Hannah had taken over because she started pushing Saffire around,” Molly said, “things like making her get up from where she was lying, or pushing her away from food. There is the added complication that each queen goat seems to have an ‘enforcer’ who does a lot of dirty work — sort of like the vice president, or something. For Saffire it’s a goat named Fiona, and for Hannah it’s a goat named Meg. So when Hannah took over, Meg was really mean to Saffire, physically meaner than Hannah was.

“It was really interesting to see Saffire’s behavior when she was deposed because the non-dominant goats are used to being pushed around and they know to get out of the way. But Saffire’s always been dominant in our herd, so she didn’t know how to deal with it — she vocalized a lot of complaints every time she was forced to get up or leave the barn or whatever, and she sulked.”

Relationships among different species on the farm tend to be more harmonious. The goats give the dogs a chance to practice their instincts for guarding and herding. The chickens eat bugs and parasites that might otherwise afflict the goats. The pigs eat the whey that separates from the curds that go into the cheese Sam and Molly make.

“We are committed to building a sustainable farm ecosystem,” they write on their website. “By providing our goats with high quality feed and forage and keeping them healthy, we ensure a supply of milk that makes fantastic cheese.”

To secure a share of that cheese for the up-coming season, contact Sam and Molly at Georges Mill Farm.

"Picnic Woods," a semi-soft, bloomy rind cheese named a road near the farm.

“Picnic Woods,” a semi-soft, bloomy rind cheese named for a road near the farm.

Filed Under: Eat, Local Farming Tagged With: Georges Mill Farm, goat behavior, goat cheese, goat farming, goat social structure, goat's milk, John George, Molly Kroiz, Sam Kroiz, Samuel George, The German Settlement

GCF Kale Watch Week Three: Spinach

February 13, 2015 by Mark Dewey

IMG_1030

Spinach roots convert starch to sugar when temperatures drop below freezing, so the stems, which are close to the roots, taste especially sweet.

I picked the spinach in that bowl on February 10, which is the dead of winter on the Blue Ridge, but the leaves I pulled from the ground were not dead. The big leaves with the red streaks on their stems had probably been alive for three or four weeks, during which time the temperature had dropped as low as 12 degrees now and then, and the little crinkly ones were basically newborns — that is, they had emerged from rootstock during a few hours on Monday and Tuesday when temperatures crept into the forties.

To express my wonder at the resilience of those leaves, I was going to write the harvest date on them in dark balsamic vinegar and then photograph them — their life deserved commemoration — but by the time I had poured the first two digits, I realized that the full date would hide the subtle spinach flavor under too much vinegar, so I stopped pouring and covered the numbers with sunflower seeds and a couple of Craisins.

That was dinner.10982337_10153129121134185_2853593772418185950_n

“These leaves,” I told my dog, “shouldn’t be able to grow in an open field at this time of year.”

He quivered in excitement at the natural phenomenon the spinach represented.

“I’m not saying it’s a miracle that they’re alive,” I granted, “only that they shouldn’t be, and yet they are.”

He inched closer to my chair, closer and closer, in flagrant violation of established dinner table etiquette, believing I suppose that the meal we shouldn’t be able to eat would nullify such trivia as behavioral covenants.

And why not? How often does a meal of food that shouldn’t exist show up on your table?

IMG_0948Well, three or four times a week, if you have access to the spinach patch at Great Country Farms, but my dog lives in the moment, so I offered him a leaf.

He snatched it from my hand and ran into the kitchen, where he skidded to a halt, shook his head vigorously, and spit the leaf out on the floor.

It had a lot of vinegar on it. I hope he doesn’t associate that flavor with miracles.

Temperatures this weekend are supposed to drop to three degrees. If the spinach survives that kind of cold, I’m going to pick as much as I can and offer it to the sick, the forsaken, the broken-hearted, and the bored.

Maybe I’ll take some to Martin’s and sprinkle it into the bins on the salad bar.

Because either everyone deserves a miracle or no one does.

Filed Under: Eat, On Foggy Bottom Road Tagged With: balsamic vinegar, cold weather gardening, greens, spinach, temperatures, winter crops, winter greens

Wheatgrass Might Be the Greenest Super Food

February 11, 2015 by Mark Dewey

10929008_10153071524159185_5137759522964276944_n

Plats of wheatgrass in the greenhouse at Great Country Farms.

A small but passionate group of juicers believes that wheat grass has remarkable healing powers. Some say the chlorophyl acts like concentrated hemoglobin. Some say it’s distilled solar energy in drinkable form. Some say it will clean your mitochondria and fill the holes in the walls of your cells.

According to one source, wheatgrass juice contains 19 amino acids and more than 90 minerals, which may be why it’s touted for a broad spectrum of health benefits, from stimulating circulation to preventing tooth decay. It seems to work primarily by increasing the level of oxygen in your blood and reducing inflammation and toxic waste.

“Wheatgrass is one of the most potently healthy substances on earth,” asserts Ross Bridgeford, author of The Alkaline Diet “…Since I’ve been using wheatgrass I’ve noticed my energy levels go sky high, my skin clear up, and colds, coughs and illnesses disappear forever.”

“If we look at oxygen as a bullet to kill cancer cells,” argues researcher Webster Kehr, “then we should look at wheatgrass as a shotgun blast at treating cancer. The number of ways it deals with cancer is incredible. First of all it contains chlorophyll, which has almost the same molecular structure as hemoglobin. Chlorophyll increases hemoglobin production, meaning more oxygen gets to the cancer. Selenium and laetrile are also in wheatgrass, and both are anticancer. Chlorophyll and selenium also help build the immune system. Furthermore, wheatgrass is one of the most alkaline foods known to mankind. And the list goes on.”

Nevertheless, as Bridgeford notes, “for some reason [wheatgrass juice] is still not mainstream.”

Photo by Steven Depolo

Shots of distilled sunlight, a.k.a wheatgrass juice. Photo by Steven Depolo.

That reason may be that the list of benefits ascribed to its consumption is so long and so dramatic that it’s hard to believe.

The British web site BootsWebMd, calls the chlorophyll mystique a myth. “It’s claimed that the chlorophyll in wheatgrass will boost oxygen transport around the body. In reality, whilst chlorophyll has a similar molecular structure to haemoglobin (but with magnesium at its central core, rather than the iron found in haemoglobin), it is broken down by natural digestive processes, and has absolutely no effect on oxygen transport at all.”

I threw back my first shot of wheatgrass juice five years ago at a hippie coffee shop in Shepherdstown WV. It was the end of a long day, and I didn’t think I’d make it home without a dose of the working-man’s vitamin C, caffeine, which was available in concentrated form as espresso or in the 16-ounce timed-release style. I chose the latter.

“If you want a real energy boost,” the floppy-hatted owner said, “you should try wheatgrass juice.”

He must have been able to tell that I used to wear a feather earring.

I asked what manner of beverage that might be, and I settled in for a spiel, the details of which I no longer recall, but its convincing power was doubled by a woman who slipped through the door in the middle of it, nodded to the man behind the juicer, and stood patiently while he snipped grass from a flat tray and cranked it through an auger. After naming a few of the elixir’s more believable, easier-to-swallow virtues, he held up a glass of thick, green fluid — really thick and really green.

“Most people start with half a shot and work up to a whole one gradually,” he said, at which point the woman reached past me, took the glass, gulped the fluid down, and passed the glass back to the owner, who set about filling it again.

“Or to more than one,” the woman said. “I drink two a day.”

She explained that before she started drinking wheatgrass juice she’d suffered from some chronic ailment — I don’t remember what it was — which nothing had relieved, except the wheatgrass juice. “It changed my life,” she said. Then she drank her second shot, gave the owner a five-dollar bill, and slipped back into the night.

I told the floppy-hatted fellow to set me up.

The skeptic in me wonders if the green elixir really changed that woman’s life or if her life simply changed when she began to drink the green elixir. But the part of me that I prefer, the hopeful part, is shopping for a juicer.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uplKLB2A-M

Filed Under: Big Pictures, Eat, On Foggy Bottom Road Tagged With: anti-oxidants, benefits of wheatgrass juice, chlorophyll, detoxifiers, wheatgrass juice

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