[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

A Wheatland Legacy

Since its settlement in the 18th century, Loudoun County has been acclaimed for its fertile soil.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Germans and Quakers from Pennsylvania moved into the area around Catoctin and Goose creeks, west of Leesburg. They began growing wheat and building stone houses and mills to grind their grain into flour.

Indeed, by the 1850s and 1860s, Virginia was the fourth-largest wheat producing state, and Loudoun was one of the state’s top-producing counties, with 30 water-powered mills processing a half-million bushels of wheat. Within a 10-mile radius of what is now Lydia’s Fields, one would have seen several mills, including Janney’s Mill in Waterford, Goose Creek, and the “mill at Wheatland” just down the hill from the farm, not far from the intersection of today’s Route 9 and 287. That mill stood until 1919.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”371″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center” style=”vc_box_circle”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”375″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” style=”vc_box_circle”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]How our corner of Loudon’s rich wheat fields got its “Wheatland” name remains something of a mystery, at least insofar as our research to date has revealed. One of the earliest official references to the name came in 1802, when a U.S. Post Office was built in Wheatland.

As wheat cultivation gradually moved out to the Midwest, Wheatland became synonymous with delicious, organically grown vegetables and fruits at many farms including our predecessor, Wheatland Vegetable Farm, and neighboring farms Moutoux Orchards and Potomac Vegetable Farms.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]