Putting down new roots in Cumberland County

By John Markon, Virginia NRCS Public Affairs

CUMBERLAND, VA – It’s probably not coincidental that the words “farming” and “family” start with the same letter.

Agriculture may be America’s most traditional and family-focused occupation. It’s not at all unusual in Virginia for a producer to refer to himself or herself as “a sixth-generation cattleman” or to hear that a given parcel of land has been owned by members of the same family for 200 years.

Or longer.

“My family’s ownership of our original property near Harrisonburg went back to the 1700s,” said Anthony Beery. “Dairying was also the traditional land use. It was a lot of family history. We didn’t make changes without a lot of dinner-table discussions and a lot of planning.”

Soil health champion Anthony Beery (right) and his son Logan get ready for a day of work in the fields. Photos by John Markon, Virginia NRCS.

Changes, however, were made. In 2018, Beery and his wife Rachel did two things most farm families would probably never try, at least simultaneously. They changed their products and they changed their address, getting out of the dairy business and relocating 120 miles away in Cumberland County, where they’ve left their cows behind to grow hay, corn and soybeans.

“It’s not quite as drastic as it sounds,” Beery said. “I did grow some hay and smaller amounts of corn and beans on the dairy farm, so I wasn’t totally inexperienced. The dairy farm is also still in our family. I sold it to my cousin Brandon Beery, who’s operating it as a dairy today and doing well. The land is fairly close to Harrisonburg and sales pressure from developers had begun before 2018. I just thought it was time to let someone else in the family have the dairy while we tried something else.”

The Beerys’ search for a replacement property was nationwide, with sites in Wyoming and Nebraska considered. The ultimate winner was an 850-acre parcel in Cumberland that had previously been used to raise the crops Beery most wanted to grow. The transition was quick enough that Beery was able to go into business as Cumberland Hay & Straw and market his first produce in his family’s first year on its new property.

As usual, soil health has been a key to Beery’s approach to farming.

“My father was doing cover crops and no-till even back when some of the experts were arguing against both of them,” Beery said. “We’ve always been guided by what’s good for the land and what’s good for our business. We’re still doing conservation measures because they work and because they pay off.”

Beery was honored in 2024 with Virginia Cooperative Extension’s Carl Luebben Soil and Water Quality Champion award. He’s currently participating in the Farm Service Agency’s (FSA’s) Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP), a long-term arrangement that subsidizes farmers’ decisions to employ conservation measures to reduce nutrients and sediments loads to waterways.

Now that he's a full-time small grains producer, Beery gets to work with larger machinery, some of which he purchased along with his Cumberland farm.

USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) provides technical support as part of this program, working in collaboration with FSA staff. Producers can also use CREP to accept FSA payments for taking environmentally sensitive land out of ag production.

“State and federal programs can help with money but sometimes have a lot of ‘must dos’ and can interfere with how you want to do things on the farm,” Beery said. “I don’t apply for a lot of them, but CREP is a good fit for me.”

Beery has also made considerable headway in his most important project – starting with a blank sheet of paper and developing an entirely new roster of customers. While Harrisonburg is a rapidly expanding college town and one of Virginia’s busiest agricultural hub cities, the pace of activity in small-town Cumberland – about 55 miles up the southern side of the James River valley from Richmond – is a little slower.

“I still drive to Harrisonburg sometimes to buy supplies,” Beery said, “but some things are different. Most of the hay I grow here is for customers who own horses rather than cattle. Crop yields have been better here than I projected they would be. That was a good surprise.”

Beery says he’s generally happy at his new, cow-free address. He and Rachel have five children, with at least two of them expressing interest in operating the Cumberland farm one day. A new family tradition could well be in the process of being established.

“If I were giving advice to anyone else trying to relocate,” he said, “I would start with 'Expect the unexpected' – both in terms of problems and growth opportunities. There’s also no way to take the emotion out of the choice. Parts of it will be difficult for everyone.”