Ludwig

When Susan Vidal left her job as a cartographer for the federal government, she thought she’d be a pumpkin farmer. She and her husband had bought their farm as a getaway from Northern Virginia and future retirement home before they finally moved there full-time and began their commercial operation with one acre of pumpkins eight [...]

Famous fruit

The Shelton family loves apples. “We make apple pancakes all the time,” says Chuck Shelton, one of three Shelton sons who retired from full-time employment in North Carolina to manage Vintage Virginia’s apple orchard, Rural Ridge, and its new cidery, Albemarle Ciderworks, along with his sister, founder Charlotte Shelton, his 90-year-old father, Bud Shelton, and [...]

Love your peaches

The closest many of us around here get to actual agriculture is at the pick-your-own fruit farms and orchards, of which we have several in the area. Strawberries, apples and pumpkins are all ripe for the picking at various places when in-season, but we really have the Chiles family and their peaches to thank for [...]

Happy goats make good cheese

Gail Hobbs-Page, who is an activist for small farms and a vocal proponent of local food —the “Vote with your Fork” section of the CaroMont Farm website and blog links you straight to government officials on the topics of small farm agriculture—is a great spokesperson for the movement. As a trained chef (most recently at [...]

Top tomatoes

L’étoile Executive Chef Mark Gresge is a big fan of Megan Weary’s tomatoes, and not just because the beautiful Striped Germans, Cherokee Purples and other heirloom varieties as well as classic Romas and cherry tomatoes that she and her husband Rob cultivate at their four-year-old Roundabout Farm in Keswick are flavorful in a way that [...]

Microgreen thumb

Planet Earth Diversified is a study in the new science of small farming. Arriving at the Stanardsville site, you’re struck by both the primitiveness and dirtiness with which small scale agricultural businesses must survive, but also, the creativity and innovation. On the one hand, there are the fields of crops, the noisy chickens, the old [...]

NEW C-VILLE COVER STORY: Food & Drink Annual 2009

For many, many reasons, for the good of our communities, our environment, our bodies

October 2009: As an oak grows

It’s a well-known phenomenon, and Thomas Jefferson was a prime example: builders, carpenters and architects whose own homes are perpetual projects. Like a chef too tired to cook his own dinner, those who spend their days building and designing other people’s places typically have precious few hours and little energy to spend on their personal [...]

Best death watch

Like to speculate on the next big fail? Lately, the bell seems to be tolling for our only daily newspaper, whose debt-riddled parent company—Richmond-based media conglomerate Media General—has been drastically cutting costs in a desperate attempt to ride out a perfect storm of financial doom: increasing competition from free content on the Internet, a global [...]

Best indication that we are out of touch with the desires of the public

We die a little inside each time a reader sends a message to Restaurantarama asking why Charlottesville doesn’t have one of these chains, but hey, at least it gives us a mission to raise your restaurant expectations. And here we’ll try again: Despite what the advertisers tell you people over and over and over again [...]

Best reason to designate a driver

As beer lovers, we are thrilled that in less than two years two new local breweries offering handcrafted, small batch microbrews from classic lagers to artisan stouts, have arrived on the scene, but as law abiders lacking the ability to teleport, we’re a little miffed that they’re the hell out in Nelson. Does the free [...]

What do Media General’s financial woes mean for The Daily Progress?

It’s obvious from the “History” section of its website that Media General is proud of its past.

Coffeehouse revitalizes languishing Crozet landmark

“I think I’ve touched every inch of this room,” says Lynelle Lawrence, pointing out improvements with paint-stained fingers as we tour the ground floor of the 100-year-old building

“Meet the Farmer Dinner” goes local at Barboursville Vineyards

We are a town of locavores. Not even a torrential downpour on treacherously winding Route 20 could keep a crowd of 110 from venturing out to Palladio Restaurant at Barboursville Vineyards last night to celebrate and enjoy our local wine and foodstuffs at the second annual “Meet the Farmer Dinner.”

Give the gift of clean water

March 22 through March 28, diners at many local restaurants will be encouraged to donate $1 for tap water they usually enjoy for free in support of UNICEF’s Tap Project for World Water Week.

Second Mudhouse coffee shop on the way in Crozet

Uncle Charlie’s space will become a cupping room, adding a sixth spot to the Lawrences’ coffee empire.

Crush wineshop hosts closing sale

As Restaurantarama reported a few weeks ago, Paul and Nan Coleman are selling their retail wineshop Crush to a new owner who plans to turn the vintage building in Belmont into a cozy restaurant this spring.

Rethinking the ‘‘I’’ in design

Alloy Workshop was formed two years ago this January as a partnership between licensed architect and contractor, Dan Zimmerman, and licensed contractor and carpenter, Zach Snider. In the past year, the firm has added a graphic design studio headed by Zimmerman’s wife, Serena Gruia, to the mix. The firm now has two architects (Zimmerman and [...]

Farm econ 101

They look so cute, right? Those local farmers at the market with their little trucks and fresh tomatoes and healthy, sun-kissed complexions. Makes you want quit your desk job, right? Well, before you leave the safety of your regular paycheck to get back to the land, you better love, love, love to seed and hoe. [...]

Raw possibilities

We know many of you want to eat as local and seasonal as possible. Like us, however, you may open your weekly CSA box with a bit of dread, thinking you couldn’t possibly eat another zucchini or bunch of greens that week. Or maybe you just stare into the box in puzzlement, thinking to yourself, [...]

Recipes from three local chefs

Rice Hall Blue Moon Diner Spaghetti Squash and Leek Pancakes 1 spaghetti squash, roasted 2 leeks, washed, julienned and lightly fried 4 eggs 1 cup cream 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour 1/2 tsp. allspice 2 Tbs. sugar 1 Tbs. salt Cut spaghetti squash in half and roast open side up at 425 degrees until [...]

September 08: Do fence me in

Looking for a new form of exercise that doesn’t conjure images of a hamster wheel? How about a little duel? Local musician and violin teacher Kari Caplin went that route when she took up the sport of fencing a year ago. She’d wanted to find an alternative athletic activity for her daughter, and while watching [...]

September 08: Tanning: Who can you trust?

Here’s a new one: Tanning beds are good for your health—that is, if you trust a full-page ad placed by the Indoor Tanning Association (ITA) in The New York Times a few months ago. The ad, followed by a T.V. media blitz in major markets, is grounded in the release of scientific evidence that exposure [...]

August 08: Payback time

Just because you’re successfully weathering the current credit crises, armed with your reliable FHA-backed loan and your unsexy but stable fixed interest rate, doesn’t mean you should rest easy. You are losing money just sitting there! By the time you make that last mortgage payment decades down the road, you ultimately may pay more than [...]

Virginia: the scorecard

There are lots of things we Virginians think we are (e.g. better than West Virginia) and lots of things we think we aren’t (e.g. a bunch of gun-toting, tobacco-chewing, suburban-sprawl-loving hicks). Also, lots of things we wish we were (e.g. home to a major professional sports team), and lots of things we wish we weren’t [...]

Be glad Virginia doesn’t…