Page County Grown Farm Tour: Willow Grove Farm Market

Willow Grove Farm Market store entry.

This is the third of six posts I’m running this week to reprise the inaugural Page County Grown Farm Tour, which took place on Saturday, August 27, 2011. Despite the hurricane bearing down on the East Coast, a brave group of 40+ farm tourists set out to visit a few 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. 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.


Since the parking area at Willow Grove Farm Market couldn’t accommodate all of our vehicles, the group split into thirds and headed in various directions once we had all left Skyline Premium meats. John and Nina, friends that Mary and I have run into more than a few times over at Wisteria, had joined the tour at this time and we decided to travel together – I have a photo of them here in the Willow Grove store, as a matter of fact.

Now, the overview write-up of Willow Grove was as follows:

“The market was founded in 2010 on one of Virginia’s Century Farms – meaning the same family has been farming here for over 100 years. The market’s goal is to be a source of local and Virginia produced beef, chicken, dairy and produce, all foods that are less processed than those that are available elsewhere – foods that are good for you and support the local community and economy.”

John and Nina pick up a few local Virginia goods.

As we browsed the store, we got a good idea of all those Virginia-grown offerings, many of which are grown right there on the farm: beef, eggs, broilers, watercress, asparagus, onions, Swiss chard, collards, beets, cabbage, sweet corn, tomatoes, sweet peas, snap peas, strawberries, cantaloupe, watermelon, squash, zucchini, bell pepper, jalapenos, banana peppers, pumpkin, okra, cucumbers, green beans, and lettuce. Since the original descriptions were put together, local dairy products, goat (from Khimaira, I understand), several salsas, and other condiments have been added to the offerings.

Mary and I bought a block of smoked cheddar cheese from there recently. I want to make a note of it, it was so good. But they were out of it during the farm tour, and it still hadn’t been restocked when I was there last weekend. I put in a special request. I can’t wait to have that again – it inspired me to dream of having my own small herd dairy to make cheese with…maybe Belted Galloways, which would be very popular in the Valley with the other farmers. I could haul them around with a duallie…even better.

Because we knew it wouldn’t be long before many of our touring colleagues showed up behind us, we kept our visit short but informative, and headed on to our next venue – Public House Produce. However, for continuity purposes, my post tomorrow will skip ahead to Wisteria Farm and Vineyards before coming back to Paw Paw’s Honey, and then closing out with the Public House Produce post.