About 80 people attended a VOF-sponsored forum in Fredericksburg on March 13 to discuss the issue of natural gas extraction on conservation easements. The four-hour forum featured presentations from the Shenandoah Valley network, Virginia Petroleum Council, and Northcentral Pennsylvania Conservancy. Nearly two hours were devoted to questions and comments from the public, including several environmental…
Editor’s note: This piece was published in the February 3, 2014 print edition of the Virginian-Pilot, in response to the paper’s criticism of VOF’s policies about oil and gas extraction on conservation easements. In its January 27 editorial “Conservation, Not Fracking,” the Virginian-Pilot asserted that two years ago the Virginia Outdoors Foundation “changed its easement…
The Virginia Outdoors Foundation conserved 56,697 new acres of open space in 2013 — its fourth-greatest year ever. VOF recorded nearly 200 easements in 62 localities, including a 7,312-acre easement in Halifax County that protects one of the largest contiguous private properties in Virginia east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The property has nearly 10…
The Virginia Outdoors Foundation recently protected its 700,000th acre of open space thanks to a conservation easement donated on a 116-acre Bicentennial Farm in New Kent County. It’s VOF’s second easement in New Kent County. The other easement is on Crawfords State Forest. Silver Hall Farm has been owned and operated by the Binns family…
One of Warren County’s oldest conservation groups recently protected its 150-acre property with a conservation easement donated to the Virginia Outdoors Foundation. For nearly 85 years, the Warren County Chapter of the Izaak Walton League of America has been promoting clean air, soil, woods, waters, and wildlife in the Northern Shenandoah Valley. The chapter’s property…
Jim Craun celebrated a 100th birthday in June. Not his—his barn’s. The barn is one of several buildings that Mr. Craun has restored on his family’s 165-acre farm in Augusta County. The cavernous interior is barely enough to contain his memories of summers spent working there as a boy, when his grandparents owned the place….
In 1760, about 30 years before construction began on the White House in the District of Columbia, a Mennonite settler named Martin Kauffman II built his own little White House in Page County, Virginia. Kauffman constructed the building as a residence and Mennonite meeting house, locating it at the foot of the Massanutten Mountains, along…
Ed Cook was just a boy when he fell in love with the Bath County farm he now owns. Back then, the property belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Law, who had owned it for 50 years. The young Cook admired the land and dreamed of one day owning a property like it. In 1949, he…
Oak Grove Plantation, a bed & breakfast just outside South Boston in Halifax County, works hard to minimize its environmental footprint. Some of the steps it has taken include recycling, composting, installing energy-efficient storm windows, offering optional linen service, drying laundry on clotheslines, collecting rainwater with rain barrels, and using compact fluorescent lighting. The inn…