Page County Grown Farm Tour: Public House Produce

Arriving at Public House Produce.

The tour assembles.

Today’s post is about a visit to Public House Produce, and is the final post reprising the inaugural Page County Grown Farm Tour, which took place on Saturday, August 27, 2011. There were more than 40 of us on the tour, always looking cautiously at darkening skies, threatening rain, as hurricane Irene was bearing down on the East Coast. We visited several of our local farms: Khimaira Farm, Skyline Premium Meats, Willow Grove Farm Market, Wisteria Farm and Vineyard, Paw Paw’s Honey, and Public House Produce, and luckily the hurricane held off until after the Farm-to-Table Dinner at the Mimslyn on Saturday evening. All of the posts on this topic include the label “2011 Farm Tour” at the end, so a simple click will pull them all up, including some posts I put up in advance of the tour, and the one I made about the Farm-to-Table Dinner.


Here is the short description of Public House Produce from the Farm Tour overview:

This is a family owned and operated farm located about one mile north of Luray. The farm’s produce is available at the Luray-Page Farmers Market and via their CSA. Over 80 varieties of fresh produce are offered, along with pasture based, heritage chicken and fresh farm eggs. Public House’s goal is high quality produce and poultry from a local source you can trust.

Some of the fields, with the new brooder hens in the distance.

I made this my fourth stop before heading over to Wisteria as I’ve mentioned in the previous posts; while we visited this farm we also had the chance to meet up with Paul from Paw Paw’s Honey. Soon after I arrived at Public House Produce, quite a few of the other tour members joined us – whereupon, David took us on a tour of the operation.



More Public House Produce Fields. And a nice tractor.

 Reaching the fields, David pointed out where the farm actually started – the first plots, and then the progress through his property as more and more of the fields were put into production, so that they now total six acres. He also showed the irrigation systems and some of the in-ground connectors, discussing the well and its capacity.

Back under the barn, the crowd had the chance to look at some of the produce. I’ve included a photo of that day as the opening photo, supplemented by some more recent ones.

"Japanese Pumpkins" curing in the barn, a few weeks after the tour.

Pie pumpkins.

At the time of the tour, Public House Produce was doing direct sales from the farm for the day, as opposed to their normal selling from the Luray-Page Farmers Market. In the first photo, some of the produce of the day is shown, including sweet corn, tomatoes, festival squash (a variety of winter/acorn squash), and some peppers. The more recent ones show the green “Japanese Pumpkins” – a variety of winter squash, and pie pumpkins. Most of these are contracted and will soon be on their way to markets elsewhere.

The next stop for the tour was to go inside the cooler – that was a big hit with a couple of folks, even though the day was overcast and rainy. I understand their interest was more in the technical details of how the system worked, as opposed to getting into the cool temps!

There was a lot of discussion about the farm and its produce. I overheard a lively discussion of the heirloom tomatoes (I’m guessing this was about the pineapple variety – one of the tour members said that he knew from tomatoes, being from New Jersey, and that “this was the best tomato I ever tasted!"). David also talked about the pasture based chicken operation, using the “Red Bird” or poulet rouge, another heritage breed that is hardy in the pasture and yields a very tasty chicken.

That very chicken was served in the second course at the Farm-to-Table Dinner at the Mimslyn that evening.

And David tells me that he’s already seen a couple of folks from the tour back at the farm to talk about next year’s Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program.

The Page County Grown vision statement is, “Page County Grown is thriving family farms driving local food economies and promoting healthy communities where quality farming is a valued heritage and a staple for growth.” That said, I’d have to say that the tour helped meet the expectation of the mission statement…not only that, but it appeared to be successful beyond expectations, with more than 40 participants – where the organizers thought there might be 20. At the Mimslyn, there were more than 70 diners, again, only 50 were expected.

That goes a long way to describe how interested people are in knowing their farmers, and in knowing where their food comes from!