In Mount Airy, Panoramas at the Right Price

Something about scraping the manure off their shoes at a rainy county fair a few years back convinced Rick and Mary Anne Smith that "hobby farming" would suit them.

They sold their Silver Spring house and found a real estate agent, Mary Anne Smith said. "She kept a database of people like us -- Washingtonians who were looking for the perfect country property, those two-to-four-acre parcels."

The Smiths now have the life they wanted 35 miles north of Washington, in greater Mount Airy. They paid $160,000 for an eight-acre lot in the Maryland countryside and hired Keystone Modular Homes to put up a $250,000, four-bedroom Cape Cod.

Just off Interstate 70, the town of Mount Airy, with 3.8 square miles inside its corporate limits, is home to 8,908 people, said Town Clerk B.J. Dixon. Two-level frame or brick storefronts line the historic district's hilly Main Street, including a gun shop, restaurant, pharmacy and antique store. Queen Anne-style houses are set back from the streets on shaded lawns. Frederick and Carroll counties meet inside the town.

In the surrounding area, some 26,000 residents have a Mount Airy mailing address, which includes most of Zip code 21771 and parts of two more counties: Howard and Montgomery. The foothill-fringed region features farms and subdivisions of large single-family houses, most built in the past seven or eight years.

Mount Airy sprouted astride 830-foot Parr's Ridge in the 1830s, as the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad reached the location.

A Wild West-style settlement blossomed, with shooting parties and drunken brawls, said Mike Eacho, president of the Mount Airy Historical Society. "The railroad workers had money in their pockets and drinking on their minds -- among other things."

Eacho said Mount Airy's present-day residents are much calmer: "I always refer to them as the townies and the commuters."

Rick Smith is among the daily commuters. Audiobooks and satellite radio ease the drive to his job as director of the National Health Service Corps in Rockville. Mary Anne Smith retired last year from her teaching job at Colonel Zadok Magruder High School in Rockville, because, she said, "This farm has become a full-time operation."

Her charges now are 23 goats, three horses and other farm animals. She makes frozen yogurt and cheese from her seven quarts of goat milk a week.

The Caballero family moved from Gaithersburg to Mount Airy "to get away from it all," said Edward Caballero, 57. His wife, Ruth, still commutes to the Washington area. Daughter Michelle, 22, recently opened the Vintage Coffee House on South Main Street.

It's where the young people come to "chill" and enjoy live local bands, said Rita King, who was lounging one day on the sofa and drinking root beer with her friend Ryan Burkett. Both are 18 and recently started college -- King at York College in Pennsylvania, Burkett at Catholic University in the District.