Local Links

Touchstone Farm is located in idyllic Rappahannock County, Virginia.  Small in both geographic area and population (just around 7,000 people call it home), Rappahannock made it through the 20th century without ever being tainted by a single traffic light, shopping center, or fast food joint. Instead it remains a quiet place of gently rolling hills dotted with farms, forests, and small villages at the edge of the Shenandoah National Park.  Old Rag Mountain dominates the scenery at Touchstone Farm and throughout the rest of the county too.

 

Yet Rappahannock is hardly a backwater.  Our county seat Washington, and two of our villages, Sperryville and Amissville have their own websites. Info on county-wide community events can be found at RappVoice.Com. Information about our county government, population, and other facts can be found at our County website. Other local farms and vineyards have websites too, including:

We keep in touch with local happenings through our own excellent on-line newspaper, RappVoice.com.    We're committed to keeping our corner of the world rural and bucolic, and several local organizations are dedicated to that goal, including the Piedmont Environmental Council and the Rappahannock League for Environmental Protection.  

For such a small place, there's an awful lot to do here in Rappahannock.  We have a thriving arts community of talented writers, actors, painters, sculptors, and musicians.  The Rappahannock Association for Arts & the Community is the cornerstone of this cornucopia of cultural offerings. We are also blessed with several performance venues, including the Theatre at Washington, which attracts performers of international renown.  We're also big on outdoor sports like hiking, fishing, and foxhunting (Old Dominion Hounds and the Rappahannock Hunt)

 

If you're visiting the area, there are plenty of Bed & Breakfast Inns and lots of wonderful restaurants, including the Flint Hill Public House, Four & Twenty Blackbirds, Griffin Tavern, Thornton River Grille, the Epicurious Cow and the world famous Inn at Little Washington.  You can check on the local weather here before you visit. And, if you like it so much here that you want to buy a little slice of paradise, you can!

 

 

Sheep & Lamb Links

Touchstone Farm raises purebred Clun Forest sheep.  The National Clun Forest Association has lots of information about the breed. There are several other breeders of Cluns on the web, including Gerard Scholtes in the Netherlands, Michele Stute in Wisconsin, and Mary Gloster in New York.  Our Wool gets processed into yarn at Green Mountain Spinnery in Vermont.  A great place to see all kinds of sheep and sheep-related things is at the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival the first weekend in May.

 

Lamb doesn't seem to be as popular a meat in the United States as it is elsewhere in the world.  One reason for this may be that many people here have never learned to cook lamb properly.  Lambinfo.com is a great site which has terrific recipes and cooking tips.  Our lamb is processed by Blue Ridge Meats in Ft. Royal, VA where they really understand lamb and how it should be presented.

Poultry Links

If you want to learn more about chickens and other poultry, please visit Barry Koffler's excellent poultry site.  Our white peafowl are rare, but not as rare as some of the colors that you can see on the United Peafowl Association site.  

 

 

Farming & Other Links

We originally thought our farm name was rather unique, but it turns out that several other farms in North American share our name.  If you are looking for some outstanding warmblood horses, you should visit www.touchstonefarm.com in Alberta, Canada.

 

Below are some additional farming, local, and food related links that you might find of interest.

Note: Our farm logo was created by Mary Lempa, an artist in Vermont who specializes in English Scraperboard. Mary can be reached via her website at www.flockillustration.com.