Tag Archives: Jim Hilleary

Record Support for Clean Streams

Free flowing streams of clean water

Free flowing streams of clean water

Only a few months back, the Loudoun County Soil and Conservation District, by a unanimous vote by the Board of Directors authorized $580 thousand dollars to underwrite the cost of best management practices (BMPs) for Loudoun County farmers and landowners, to keep our water free of waste and to resist the erosion of our top soils.

At its last meeting, only days ago, the Board approved eight cost share grants totaling an additional $146 thousand dollars.  The voting Directors were James Christian (Chair), James Wylie (Vice Chair), John Flannery (Treasurer), Marina Schumacher, and Jim Hilleary.

This year the Board has authorized about $726 thousand dollars of the Million Dollar grant authorized for Loudoun County from down state.

This is the largest dedication of funds to clean water and rich soil this district has achieved, and we have more authorized funds yet to approve. Continue reading

Eat local

Paul Mock's Lettuce

Paul Mock’s Lettuce

Increasingly, folk want to eat local, safe, fresh, organic greens and meats with no additives or pesticides or antibiotics or GMOs for fear of what is known and yet unknown about their effects.

While runaway development everywhere threatens this effort to go green and fresh, pricing small farmers out of the market, nevertheless, the public appetite for good and better food is growing, and people are prepared to pay more to eat better.

At a Rural Innovation Confab in Winchester last Thursday, Lovettsville’s goat cheese meister, Molly Kroiz, said “real cheese tastes better, and people are tired of eating Kraft singles.”

Molly said cheese is a “combination of science and art” and allows for experimentation that lends a pleasurable flavor from how you make it, and where it’s made. Molly’s place is a farmstead meaning that she milks the Alpine goats, who forage on her rich pasture, and at this same farm, her husband Sam and she make the cheese. Molly said, “This quality is called, ‘Terroir,’ the taste of place.”

Some talk as if California is a “local” market, but a market truly local allows a farmer who favors craft to produce food that can be distributed close to the farm and consumed fresh. Continue reading