Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 1 · column 2 of 6 · from the scan, no model involved
Herbert Foster is the patriarch to one of Rappahannock’s first families of farming. For years, he grew and sold apples at the Fosters Packing House on Route 522 between Flint Hill and Huntly, farmed, and raised beef cattle with his brother and two sons. His father before him was a Rappahannock County farmer and his grandfather was a farm worker.
“We’ve always been here,” he says with pride.
In the mid-1960s — good years for Rappahannock growers — the Fosters harvested more than 50,000 bushels of apples a season, putting them among the leaders in local agricultural enterprise. And on the main farm that was the family’s “home place,” they kept cattle and cultivated small grains — corn, rye, oats, wheat and orchard grass.
Earning his entire living from the land, Herbert Foster has been as committed to farming as anyone in the county, and as the Wakefield District representative for 20 years and a member of the Board of Supervisors which adopted Rappahannock’s first zoning and subdivision ordinances, he worked to ensure that farming could survive here.
So his recent decision to sell the family’s 302-acre main farm raises new concerns on the future of farming in Rappahannock County.
“Four or five years back, we got 9,000 bushels of orchard grass cut and thrashed from those fields. But you could get labor then. Now it makes no difference what you pay — $7 an hour, $10 an hour — help is not to be found ... I wouldn’t have sold if I could get good help,” Mr. Foster said in an interview Monday.
He plans to keep his residence and the m acres around the house, assuming the Board of Supervisors this week approves his special exception application for, the subdivision. “I’m too old to rebuild; I’m too old to move,” he joked.
To those who worry that they’ll have to find another supplier of Grimes, Blushing Goldens and Delicious apples, Herbert Foster promises that Foster’s orchards and packing house will still be in business
93.8%