A piece of paradise

By Carrie J. Sidener
Lynchburg News & Advance
Sunday, October 22, 2006


Mornings, Sandi Wells sips a cup of coffee and watches the mist burn off the rolling hills of her Amherst County farm.

Five years ago, her mornings were long commutes through heavy traffic to an office cubicle in Washington, D.C.

She longed to move somewhere else, to have some land and some solitude.

“It’s important for me to go back to a simpler life, a quieter life,” Wells said. “I always wanted to have a horse farm. It’s been my lifelong goal. … I went from the cubicle to the hayloft three years ago.”

Wells, 60, fits into a trend happening in Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford and Campbell counties.

Roger Holnback, executive director of the Western Virginia Land Trust, said he’s seeing a change in the demographic of Central Virginia’s new landowners. They are people looking for that piece of paradise they couldn’t find in big cities.

“They are coming down with a strong environmental ethic,” he said. “These people have seen sprawl. They’d like to get (the open space) back, but they can’t fix the places they live now. But they can take the money they have from selling a small piece of land and buy acres.

“They are more attuned to what can be lost.”

Scott Baker, cooperative extension agent for Bedford County, also has seen an influx of people from large cities who have bought land and are looking for advice on how to keep it.

“I don’t get the impression that these will turn over into development,” Baker said. “These people do have a desire to keep it open. I think the people that are coming here want to do something with the land to make it productive.”

Baker said most of the new residents are retirees who are looking to own property in a community that still retains its natural beauty.

“I try to take a little more optimistic view,” Baker said. “People who recently moved to the country are working to try to address some of these concerns.”

Mark Dalton, a real estate agent who specializes in buying and selling farms, is seeing demand for tracts ranging from 50 to 200 acres.

“A lot of people tell you they always wanted a little land,” Dalton said. “A lot of people I’ve sold land tracts to said they never really thought they’d buy a farm. It’s an investment and sort of a lark purchase.”

Dalton said most of his clients are from metro areas looking for a quiet place to live that’s still within a day’s drive of major cities.

“Most of the farms and land had appreciated in the last 10 to 15 years,” Dalton said. “A lot of people think land is a sexy investment. A lot of folks in metro areas absolutely adore it here.”

While property values seem high to local residents, people from big cities still find them reasonable, said Paul Kilgore, an associate broker for Montague Miller & Company. That’s why people are willing to pay prices ranging from $2,000 to more than $10,000 per acre for undeveloped property.

“We’ve got pretty views and a slower way of life yet we are still accessible to a lot of areas,” Kilgore said. “The values are still very affordable to a great deal of the country. … A lot of the things that make up the cost of living are lower.”

Dalton said the trend is happening because Baby Boomers are retiring with their own nest eggs, along with another one from their parents. Many want to make an investment that likely never will decrease in value.

“After Sept. 11 - that really helped this area,” he said. “A lot of people in the D.C. area wanted a weekend getaway. People wanted a good, safe area.”

That’s what inspired Wells to move to southern Amherst County. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, turned her urge for a quieter life into a longing she couldn’t ignore. She decided to retire from the Environmental Protection Agency after 30 years and began searching for her dream.

Each weekend she looked at farms in places like Orange, Fauquier and Rappahannock counties. She hadn’t thought to venture further south, but she couldn’t find what she was looking for. Then she saw the 75-acre property just north of Madison Heights on the Internet and had to take a look.

“I wanted open land with a pond and pastures,” Wells said. “I found this piece of property that was on the Internet. It looked like something out of (the film) ‘Deliverance.’”

But Wells’ real estate agent told her she should take a look at the Amherst farm.

“I saw this property and I said ‘this is it,’” Wells said. “It was incredible, breathtaking, visual beauty. The flora, the fauna. Last week I saw eight turkey hens and one gobbler.”

Using money from real estate investments and the sale of her Alexandria home, she bought the 75 acres with its small lake and began fixing up the old farm for her horses. She had been riding since she was a child and always dreamed of having her own farm for the horses.

“I like the openness and the quietness of it all. And the solitude,” she said. “There’s lots of time to think. To think, before I retired, I was in a windowless office cubicle and commuting.”

Wells said she had a lot to learn about land management, going from a quarter-acre lot in Alexandria to a 75-acre farm in Amherst County.

She began reading and talking to her neighbors to determine how to rehabilitate the farm and fertilize the fields.

“There were the remains of chicken coops and storage sheds,” Wells said. “I’ve been trying to restore the lake to its original state. There was an enormous amount of barbed wire and glass. … Parts of it looked like a primal forest.”

Wells said she wants to leave the farm as natural as possible. Forested areas will stay intact; the cleared areas will remain open and harvested for hay.

When Wells moved in, most of the area around her road was mud. She had to learn topography to figure out how to divert water from collecting in pools. She had a crash course in drainage to prevent water from eroding the bare ground.

“The biggest challenge has been trying to get the grass established,” Wells said. “It’s a delicate balance trying to manage the farm. You can end up with horses and a lot of mud and weeds.”

She researched what she wanted to build. She helped design her own home and the barn that holds her three horses.

She has a farmer cut the hay from her fields twice a year, leaving some for Wells’ use and selling the rest.

“He takes all the round bales and pays for the hay,” Wells said. “I’m paid $3 per bale.”

Farm life has become routine. She gets up around 7 a.m. and brings the in the horses - Remi, Mirage, Shannon - to feed them. She goes out in the afternoon and cleans the stalls and puts in hay for the next day.

Every few days, she spreads the manure out in the fields.

“It’s all very manageable,” Wells said.

And in between, she works on the farm’s landscaping in hopes of getting rid of the non-native plants that have sprung up.

Wells often visits her neighbors, and the other farmers in the area bring her fruits and other farm products.

“My neighbors have been very calm and embracing,” Wells said. “I didn’t feel like a fish out of water. Amherst has enough culture and enough beauty to make it pleasurable. The spiritual aspects and the people are very interesting.”

Henry Martin lives near Wells’ farm. He also loves horses. His wife, Virginia, sells eggs.

Martin has helped Wells get established, as well as advised her on how to care for horses.

“Sandi comes by and gets some eggs,” he said. “She calls my wife just about every evening.”

In one of her visits, Wells mentioned that she should get another tack box. When Wells stopped by on another visit, Martin was putting the finishing touches on the box.

He said Wells offered to pay for the box, but he refused, since the neighbors had been helping each other all along.

“As people need things out here,” he said, “we do whatever we can for them.”