Head to Dunlop Pavilion at Wintergreen Resort for bluegrass mountain music all day long on Saturday, August 13!
Featuring:
2:00 & 5:00 pm Seldom Scene
1:00 & 4:00 pm Whitetop Mountain Band
Noon & 3:00 pm James River CutUps
6:00 pm Pete and Ellen Vigour & Kim and Jimbo Cary
Photos by Martha Hayman : Blue Mountain Brewery was a busy place during this week with their annual hop picking and harvest. The fun continues later this month at BMB’s Barrel House in Arrington.
Our friends over at Blue Mountain Brewery held their annual even just a few days ago.
Above, more photos from Blue Mountain’s annual hop harvest.
If you didn’t get a chance to make it to the Afton location, not to worry. They will be having another hop harvest at Blue Mountain Barrel House August 19th from 11AM-7PM. 2 hours of volunteering earns you a t-shirt and lunch, along with live music during picking.
Photos By Tracy Watts : This past weekend the folks over at Misty Mill Hops in Lowesville at Rockmill Farm held their first hop picking.
Lowesville
Amherst County, Virginia
This time of the year you begin seeing hop picking everywhere. The latest to join the movement are the folks over at Misty Mill Hops in Lowesville. This past weekend their held their first Hops Picking.
According to Misty Mill, “organically grown Cascade hops are going to be at their prime two weeks early this year!”
The Misty Mill website says:
Misty Mill Hops is located at historic Rockmill Farm in Lowesville, VA. Rockmill Farm is a circa 1824 Greek Revival Plantation home where legend claims Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry hid from the pursuit of Tarleton’s raid at the Old Rock Mill located on the property. The mill was allegedly named from the patriot’s cry of “meet me at the old rock mill.” Only the stone foundation remains. Bordering Indian Creek and Piney River, the farm and the mill were once located on the old stage coach line to Lexington which once was a major thoroughfare from Charlottesville to Lexington.
The website goes on to say, “They are currently growing one and a half acres of Cascade hops comprising of 720 crowns and 300 lavender plants.”
Afton
Nelson County, Virginia As we first told you weeks ago, considerable resistance was met when RVCC accepted a $20,000 grant from The Dominion Foundation. The same company promoting the Atlantic Coast Pipeline through Nelson and surrounding counties. After a unanimous decision by the RVCC board to return the grant to the Dominion Foundation, the outpouring from the community was tremendous. More than $ 20,000 was received to meet the criteria from The Perry Foundation for their matching grant.
In an official release on Tuesday afternoon RVCC’s Executive Director Stu Mills spread the good news.
“We wanted to give everyone a quick update on the Green Initiative, since our August 1 donation date has now come and gone!
And it’s really good news.
Your amazing pledges have been turning into donations for the past couple of weeks, and we’re happy to report that we now have more than enough cash to cover the check that we sent back to the Dominion Foundation on July 21st. Even better, we surpassed the $21,317 threshold we needed to match the Perry Foundation’s challenge grant, so we forwarded all the paperwork to them just two weeks ago. And long before we expected it, their check arrived in our mailbox last Thursday!
We still have a small number of pledges that are outstanding, but we’re confident that most of them will be honored, since several people are on vacation right now. We’re very hopeful that when all the donations are complete we will have enough funds to complete this phase of the Green Initiative, including the lead-paint abatement project that involves the repair and re-painting of all of the fascias and soffits on the original building. That is a long-held dream of mine, and I know it’s shared by the Building & Grounds Committee, the Board and the rest of the staff!
To honor your pledge –or to make one – please drop a check by the office or in the mail made out to RVCC, and please be sure to put “Green Initiative” in the memo line. Or, you may pay by credit card or PayPal here in the office or on our website at this link: http://rockfishvalleycommunitycenter.memberlodge.com/donations Just ‘mouse-over’ Membership/Donations, click Donations and scroll down to the donations form on the page. Again, please be sure to enter “Green Initiative” in the donation designation box.
We hope to get started on the windows replacement phase of the project very soon, so keep your eyes open when you visit over the next couple of months. With any luck, we’ll have this beautiful old building sealed tight as a drum (and a lot prettier!) by the start of cold weather!
Finally, all of us here at the Rock want to thank you – our community – for helping to guide us and sustain us through these very challenging past couple of months. You’ve totally made believers out of a few of us skeptics who underestimated your resolve to meet a huge challenge by opening your wallets and your hearts. Your generosity and commitment to community is unprecedented in our history.”
That is very good news!
Thanks to everyone and looking forward to seeing the project get underway!
Photo By Michelle Lee Boggs : In spite of some heavy downpours this past weekend the Blues Festival at Blue Mountain Barrel House carried on with lots of fun!
Arrington
Nelson County, Virginia As Tommy has been mentioning all week, pesky thunderstorms with heavy rains have been hitting just about every afternoon. But, that didn’t stop the fun during Saturday’s Blues Festival at Blue Mountain Barrel House.
Thanks to Michelle Lee Boggs for sharing some of her photos with us!
Before the dinner folks were treated to signature cocktails mixed with VDC’s whisky.Veritas Vineyard & Winery co-founder Andrew Hodson (center) talks to attendees at the Friday night Whisky Farmhouse Dinner with the Virginia Distillery.Andrew Hodson co-founder and owner of Veritas Vineyard and Winery (left) chats it up with Dima Holmes of Wintergreen Real Estate Company in Nellysford, this past Friday night – July 29, 2016 during the Whisky Farmhouse Dinner with the Virginia Distillery.
Here’s what folks were treated to:
First Course: Free Union Grass Farm Whisky Barrel Stave Smoked Liver Pate, Cornbread Crouton, Peach Butter, Verjus Fresnos, Ancho Broth and Tangerine Sprouts
Second Course: Hanover Melon Salad, Local Spinach, Whisky Mustard, Hickory Syrup, Ham Emulsion, Basil Ice
Third Course: Sherwood Filet Mignon over Grilled Nectarine-Corn Farro Salad, Baby Kale, Whisky-Bacon Jus, Annatto Oil
Fourth Course: Peach Upside Down Cake, Whisky Syrup, Sweet Corn Ice Cream, Vanilla Crunch, Mint Oil
Additionally of the dishes were perfectly paired with wines from Veritas along with Virginia Distillery Company whisky.
Check out all of the photos from Friday night’s event here in our Facebook album below.
Photos Courtesy of Steve Southworth – Wintergreen Police : Back in Novemeber of 2015 this RV was fully engulfed in flames near the entrance to Wintergreen Resort in Nelson County, Virginia. They owners of the RV finally made it back to their home country of Germany 8 months later after the fire. The sent a big thank you to WFD
“There were a few tense moments Tuesday afternoon when an RV caught fire on Route 664 near the entrance to Wintergreen Resort. Wintergreen Fire & Rescue responded to the blaze and got it under control pretty quickly, but the whole mess snarled traffic going up and down the mountain until the scene was cleared. Wintergreen Fore & Rescue Chief Curtis Sheets said no one was hurt in the incident.”
Today Chief Sheets forwarded a letter the owners of the RV sent to him thanking WFD for their quick response and help.
Click on the image above to enlarge the letter to read.
Nelson County, Virginia
Strong thunderstorms that moved across the area late in the day Wednesday caused some power outages. At 6:27 PM around 1137 reported outages were being reported via the CVEC outage app. Up from 811 earlier in the afternoon.
Central Virginia Electric Cooperative (CVEC) announced a rural broadband initiative designed to incentivize qualified entities to deliver world class service throughout its 14-county electric distribution territory. As outlined in the just released Request for Information (RFI), the Cooperative is seeking to “partner with a proven, committed entity or consortium of entities to make affordable Gigabit-class broadband available to all CVEC members…”
Specifically, the Cooperative has offered to waive annual pole attachment fees, that totaled $1.2 million in 2016 with expected increases over time, in exchange for the deployment of a fiber based broadband network that provides a minimum of 25 Megabits per second (Mbps) download speed with no cap on data usage to any of the 36,000 CVEC member service locations.
CVEC President and CEO Gary Wood explained the Cooperative’s motivation, “Without affordable, reliable broadband communication services, rural residents are being shut off from advancements in technology that would provide jobs, better education, and a higher quality of life. When CVEC was first formed in 1937, the members came together to share the cost to extend distribution lines and make central station electric service available to every home. Now, the members are willing to join together to offer this incentive.”
Wood compared the lack of rural broadband to a time when nine out of ten farms in Virginia lacked electricity, “Fifty years after Richmond residents first began to enjoy electric service, their country cousins were still using fire to heat and light their homes, cook food, and wash and iron clothes. The formation of member-owned electric cooperatives effectively resolved the basic disparities in economic opportunity and in quality of life. Today, the Cooperative will do all that it can to recruit a working partner in order to close the digital divide, for the benefit of our members-owners and our rural communities.”
In addition to targeting universal service for its members, CVEC envisions contracting for broadband connectivity to its offices, electric substations, and down line equipment to enhance control and reliability of the 4,500 mile electric distribution system. Interested broadband providers may view the Request for Information at www.mycvec.com and should submit a letter of intent to respond to the RFI by September 2, 2016.
Headquartered in Lovingston, Central Virginia Electric Cooperative is a member-owned electric-distribution utility serving 36,000 meters in 14 counties across central Virginia with an expressed mission of: “Improving the quality of your life in a quietly impressive way.”
