Less than a mile from the East Coast's busiest interstate highway, smack in the midst of Washington suburbia, sits an unlikely piece of rural Virginia -- a 40-acre working farm called Old Mine Ranch.
Located on a leafy road near Dumfries, 35 miles south of Washington, it's not well advertised and not particularly easy to find. But each year it draws about 20,000 visitors, owner Patty Calpin said.
Patty Calpin said that she gets offers to buy Old Mine Ranch but that "no amount of money" could replace the farm.
(Photos Katherine Frey -- The Washington Post)
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Old Mine Ranch is the only working family farm open to the public year-round in fast-growing Prince William and one of only a few farms of its kind in the Washington region, said Mike Maguire, spokesman for the Prince William County/Manassas Convention & Visitors Bureau.
Named after an abandoned pyrite mine nearby, it's not far enough from Interstate 95 to escape the din of speeding cars. Still, on a recent Sunday, dozens of visitors soaked up the bucolic experience, roaming the large lawn, stables and sheds near the family home. Children watched dogs race, rode ponies and played in a mound of sand.
Most visitors are school groups and area families, Calpin said. Many of them have never been to a farm before.
"A lot of kids come out, and they don't even know what a chicken or a duck is," said Keith Elliott, 25, Calpin's son. "They know what chicken nuggets are, but they never put together where it comes from -- just like hamburgers" and cattle.
But Calpin and her family have made a life, and a business, out of animals.
Calpin, 50, a retired publications coordinator, said she has owned horses since high school. In the early 1980s, she began renting ponies for birthday parties. Eventually she quit her day job to focus on her children and her expanding business of providing animals for events. Ten years ago, she bought Old Mine Ranch and opened it to the public.
Some of Prince William's 263 full-time working farms host school field trips by appointment, said Jan Sickel, vice president of the Prince William-Fairfax Farm Bureau, part of the national organization for farmers and rural families. But at Old Mine Ranch, visitors pay $5 to hang out with ponies and horses, goats, puppies, Asian chickens, rabbits, a baby calf and a potbellied pig. The farm is open seven days a week from March to November and by appointment the rest of the year.
Local farms are on the decline, said Sickel, a cattle farmer. The county used to be one of the largest dairy producers in the state, he said.
"At the peak, we had 150, 200 [dairy] farms," he said.
That was 20 years ago. Today, five dairy farms remain in Prince William. Two shut down this year because of rising costs for fuel, fertilizer and seed, Sickel said.
He said several farms that catered to visitors have been forced out of business or have had to curtail their activities, such as hayrides, because of the rising costs of insurance.
Calpin agreed that insurance rates have gone up and said she is thankful that she does not depend on the income from the farm.
"This is more about helping others than helping ourselves," she said.
Running a breeding operation and keeping the farm stocked with animals is a full-time job, she said, but she added that having baby animals is important because they're less intimidating to children.
When they're not being petted and ogled, the animals are shuttled around the region to appear in live nativity scenes and Santa sleigh rides as well as modeling shoots and fashion shows.
These days, Calpin said, she is facing a pressure that has become very familiar in the region's fast-growing outer counties: offers to buy the farm.
"I get calls, letters in the mail and offers every day," she said. But she said it makes little sense to sell.
"My whole family, we all live here, and there's no amount of money . . . that could buy right there what I already have," Calpin said.
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