Yearly Archives: 2023

It’s Time to Treat Stiltgrass

Stiltgrass A pernicious, non-native, invasive plant that is spreading like wildfire across our landscape. It’s time to treat stiltgrass, a pernicious, non-native, invasive plant that is spreading like wildfire across our landscape.  Vigorous patches of this invasive plant have been spotted growing along our roadsides, particularly along Farmview Road, creeping into our yards and lawns where it displaces desirable lawn grasses, and spreading into surrounding forests where it overwhelms and destroys biodiversity and natural habitat for animals, birds, and insects.Non-native plants become invasive when they put out huge amounts of seeds or send out large root networks and are hard to contain, usually because there are no natural controls like insects or disease.  Non-native plant species, like stiltgrass, are a leading cause of declines in native plant and animal…

Continue ReadingIt’s Time to Treat Stiltgrass

Farewell to Pickles!

Farewell, Pickles Live Long and Prosper! https://youtu.be/cpQgYpbNf3Y Farmcolony bids farewell to Pickles, a most delightful duck that members of the chicken committee came to know and love as they cared for her in the chicken coop.  Why is there a duck living in the chicken coop, you might wonder?  Two ducks came to live in the chicken coop several years ago with a group of chickens given to the farm through a private donation.  These two ducks had always lived with chickens and the chicken committee continued to care for the ducks as well as they could by building them a swimming pool and providing sleeping accommodations for them inside the coop.  The ducks in turn rewarded the chicken committee members with their utter cuteness as they waddled through…

Continue ReadingFarewell to Pickles!

Five or Seven? The Choice Is Yours. Or Is It?

In 2020 immediately following a new board election, a member of the Farmcolony Board of Directors abruptly resigned from the board.  His reason for resigning, as he stated at the time, is to comply with our Declaration of Trust which set the initial number of board directors at five. The resignation from the board raised many questions, such as what is a Declaration of Trust and what role does it play in the governance of our association? It’s complicated.In 1983, eight years from the founding of Farmcolony in 1975, the membership met and voted to amend its bylaw Article IV, Directors, Section 1, Number and Qualification to change the number of directors on its board from five directors to seven.  The rationale given at the time for amending the bylaw…

Continue ReadingFive or Seven? The Choice Is Yours. Or Is It?

Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place

The board sets a new plan for maintenance and upkeep of the community, and how we’re going to pay for it. What do you do when the bill comes due, but you don’t have enough money in the bank to pay it?  If you’re like most families, you turn to savings.  That’s what the Farmcolony Board of Directors has done in past years when our quarterly dues did not fully cover our costs of operation. They turned to the reserve funds to cover the shortfalls, until there were no reserve funds left. Our historical record compiled by Farmcolony Historian Deborah Lee tells the story. Throughout its first quarter century, Farmcolony slowly evolved as a self-sufficient farm relying mostly on cattle and hay sales for revenue. A long list of…

Continue ReadingCaught Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Committees: Essential to the Community or One Big Joke?

“A camel is a horse designed by a committee,” or so the joke goes.  “A committee is a group that keeps minutes and loses hours” is another knee slapper.  People love to poke fun at committees -- they are the brunt of many punchlines.  If committees are such a joke, why do we have them? All joking aside, the Farmcolony Board of Directors is currently reviewing the community’s committee structure and the necessity of our existing committees, which today numbers fifteen committees.  The board wants to know, are all of these committees necessary or do they create cumbersome paperwork for the association by requiring minutes and records?  The board is beginning its review of existing committees with a survey of the membership.  The survey is asking members which committees…

Continue ReadingCommittees: Essential to the Community or One Big Joke?

Farmcolony Bids Farewell to Bill and Ann Bohn

Farmcolony Bids Farewell to Bill and Ann Bohn With gratitude for their twenty-five years of hard work and service to our family farm! On any given day you could spot Bill Bohn’s Kabota somewhere on the farm.  It was easy to spot.  Bill’s Kabota is the orange one with every tool imaginable hanging from its side panels.  Whenever you saw it, you knew something was getting done on the farm. Bill and Ann Bohn moved to Farmcolony in 1998 after selling their small farm in nearby Dyke.  They quickly became key players in the management of the farm.  Bill, a retired Army engineer who had also worked in facility maintenance at the University of Virginia, spent many hours a week maintaining fields, fences, and buildings, while Ann, retired from…

Continue ReadingFarmcolony Bids Farewell to Bill and Ann Bohn