Sitting on the wraparound deck of the Brightwood Farm
cottage makes you feel like you're up in the trees. The Robinson
River winds through in the valley below, and the loudest sound you
hear is the cicadas' buzz. Inside of the cottage, large windows
still let you enjoy the view and the vibrant green of the summer
canopy. The cottage is a very cleverly planned 600 square feet,
with every nook and cranny serving some purpose. Susan and Dean
Vidal designed their guest cottage around an A-frame that the
farm's previous owners built in 1974. One of the Vidals' ideas for
the farm, from the time they moved there 10 years ago, was to share
the beautiful farm they had found.
Because of their relationship with the previous owners,
the Vidals didn't want to tear down the A-frame, so they added on a
kitchen and eating nook, a bedroom, two sleeping lofts, and the
wraparound deck. Dean and Susan's daughter, who is now a full-time
green carpenter in Colorado, worked on the cottage addition and
restoration with her boyfriend. They reclaimed American chestnut
and maple from a barn to build the hardwood floors, and added green
features like double-glazed windows, energy-efficient walls, and a
clean-burning Jotul wood stove.

When I visit Brightwood Farm, a London couple is staying
at the cottage. They tell me, "This is paradise for us. Right now
our flat in London is so noisy, there's always construction and
drilling going on. Nobody can afford to move right now, so everyone
is doing construction work." They say their son, Oscar, at 17, "is
usually on Facebook at home, but he loves it here." When Susan and
I walk up to the cottage, Oscar is running back from feeding the
goats. He looks really happy. Susan tells me, "It's not just the
kids who love feeding the animals. The adults love it too. And
collecting eggs!" Susan invites guests to help as much or as little
as they like.

For breakfast, Susan gives guests a choice of a
cook-your-own meal where she provides the ingredients, or a
prepared continental breakfast. The ingredients, Susan says, are
"really local things" -- Brightwood Farm's own eggs and fresh
berries in season, sausage and breakfast meats from the Vidals'
neighbors, muffin or pancake mix, and farm-made jam.
The Farm
As Susan Vidal tells it, she and her husband Dean used to
be "regular suburban people." But after their children left home
and they became inspired by a trip to French wine country, the
Vidals agreed they didn't want to stay around the congested DC
Beltway forever (they used to live in Arlington, VA). The Vidals
decided to buy a farm where they could grow wine grapes. A search
around Virginia's best wine-growing counties led Dean and Susan to
Brightwood Farm in scenic Central Virginia, just east of the Blue
Ridge Mountains. The farm sits on 100 hilly acres, with 35 acres of
pasture where the previous owners raised beef cattle. Susan tells
me: "Before, I worked as a cartographer. It was a great job. But
farming is a much better fit for me than working in a cubicle. I
always had trouble with that." Dean, an engineer, still commutes to
his job.
The Vidals also enjoy the help of a
few interns who come to them through ATTRA (National Sustainable
Agriculture Information Service) and WWOOF (World Wide
Opportunities on Organic Farms). The interns live on the farm --
either in a three-year-old insulated, four-season yurt with a
woodstove, or on a tent platform.
Although the Vidals originally set out to make Brightwood
Farm into a winery, they quickly realized that they wanted to do
much more than just grow wine grapes. From the beginning, the
Vidals have grown their farm through diversification -- their
primary enterprises are now laying hens and berries. They also
raise goats, sheep, vegetables, ducks, and donkeys. When I ask
Susan how they learned to farm, she says, "We just kind of launched
ourselves into it. We started everything small, and learned by
doing."
In the Vidals' first few years of farming, they grew an
acre of pumpkins following Virginia Cooperative Extension's
recommendations for pumpkin cultivation. Brightwood Farm was not
organic then, and Extension's guidelines involved regular spraying
of synthetic fungicides and pesticides. As Susan explains, "The
sprays kept the pumpkin leaves nice and green, but the fungicides
dripped down into the soil and killed the soil microorganisms. Our
yields decreased each year as soil fertility declined. You can kind
of prop up the production if you keep adding more fertilizers, but
we didn't want to do that." The Vidals transitioned Brightwood Farm
to a certified organic farm in 2007.
True to their diversification
strategy, the Vidals currently grow five kinds of raspberry and
four varieties of blackberry. The Vidals grow diverse plant
varieties to improve their chances of getting good yields despite
attacks from insect and disease -- certain varieties might be more
resistant to one pest, while another variety is resistant to a
different pest. The Vidals also look for plant varieties that
thrive without chemical inputs. In addition to the berries, the
Vidals raise a diverse collection of vegetables. They grow some
vegetables at Brightwood Farm, where they have a shade house that
holds salad greens much of the year, and a hoop house for growing
warm weather crops. They grow the bulk of their vegetables (which
mostly go to restaurants) on 10 acres of a neighboring
property.
Brightwood Farm is also a small winery, just as the Vidals
originally planned, but the wines they make are different than what
you might expect. Susan tell me, "We're still working on the grape
part. It's a challenge doing grapes organically. In the meantime we
started making blackberry, elderberry, and elder flower wine ... We
do dry wines, so they're not the run-of-the-mill fruit wines,
either." After Susan offers me samples of their wines, I can vouch
that Brightwood Farm's fruit wines are not only unusual, they're
also really delicious.
Dean Vidal makes all of the wine for
the farm in 15-gallon batches in the state-certified commercial
kitchen in the basement of their house. In the kitchen, the Vidals
and their workers also make jam and process dried herbs for
tea.
With their livestock, the Vidals choose specific breeds
for their vitality and versatility -- heritage chickens for eggs
and meat, easy-keeping Spanish meat goats, and they've recently
started raising dual-purpose Tunis sheep. They look for animals
that do well on average pasture, without needing much supplementary
grain.
Brightwood Farm's 120 laying hens live in a movable house
that allows Susan to easily shift the hens to fresh pasture as soon
as they've clipped short the grass in their current spot. Susan
says, "We generally go for the older, dual-purpose breeds, because
after they stop laying they become stew hens." The Brightwood
chickens' breeds have wonderful old names like Speckled Sussex and
Buff Orpington, some of which are rare breeds that farmers like
Susan are trying to bring back from endangered status. Susan also
enjoys raising her own chicks. She tells me, "We have to buy in
purebreds some years because we have no way of selecting the best
layers. But this year, I'm looking for broody hens that want to sit
-- I'm looking for volunteers!"

The Vidals' Spanish meat goats also have a remarkable
lineage. Spanish meat goats, now rare, are descendants of the goats
brought to America by early settlers, mainly the conquistadors and
missionaries of the Southwest. These Spanish goats were abandoned
or escaped their farms, and lived in the wild for many generations
before being re-domesticated. As a result, they are easy keepers,
and great moms - they have very little trouble kidding and nursing.
Spanish goats' mixed heritage also means the goats come in
different colors. As Susan says, "It's fun when they're born 'cause
you never know what color they're going to be." The goats have a
furry, friendly guardian dog, named Athena, to protect them from
predators like coyotes. Each group of animals on the farm enjoys
the protection their own guardian dog. Susan says fondly, "We
couldn't do it without the dogs!"
The Vidals originally brought donkeys to the farm to
protect the livestock from predators. "But," says Susan, "They were
hard on the little goats." The Vidals now rely on the three donkeys
for fertility. "Since we're organic," says Susan, "We rely on
non-commercial fertilizers. And, the donkeys like the guests and
the guests like the donkeys."

The Vidals sell their produce, wine, meat, and eggs at two
very different farmers' markets, Charlottesville (where there are
around 100 vendors and Brightwood Farm sells wine, jam, and meat),
and the more local Madison farmers' markets (where there are only
8-10 vendors, and the customers mostly ask for vegetables.) The
Vidals also sell to restaurants through a Virginia-based company
called The Fresh Link, whose tagline is "Family Farms to City
Plates." Twice a week, the Vidals post information about what
produce they're offering to The Fresh Link, where the information
is made available to restaurant chefs, who order the exact kind and
number of heirloom tomatoes and free-range eggs they
need.
If you go:
The Brightwood cottage sleeps up to
four on one queen bed and two twin loft beds. Rates are $110/night
weekdays and $155/night on weekends, double occupancy. Additional
guests are $20/person, per night. The farm is two hours from
Washington DC and 45 minutes from Shenandoah National Park. Farm
activities (for guests who are interested) include feeding goats,
sheep, and donkeys and collecting eggs. Guests are also welcome to
swim in the Robinson River and walk on trails that wind through the
farm's "back 40."
Dean and Susan Vidal
(540) 948-6845
svidal@hughes.net
www.brightwoodvineyardandfarm.com
1202 Lillard's Ford Rd.
Brightwood, VA 22715
This post was written by Michelle Nowak, and
originally published at her blog, The Farm Stay Project
(www.farmstays.blogspot.com), on July 28.