Road Trip To Northern Virginia

Last Updated on May 30, 2018 by lydiaf1963

You don’t need a horse to drive cattle in 2018, all you need is a heavy duty pick up truck, a trailer large enough to hold a few calves and directions to the nearest auction house. I rode with friend of mine to Northern Virginia last week to drop off a few meat animals from her farming operation. You can kind of see two of them in the photo below.

I’ve known this lady since 5th grade. In fact, she introduced me to my first husband (I don’t hold it against her, hahaha.) She and her husband own one of the nearly 6000 family owned farms in Maryland. They are also very active in 4H. At some point we lost track of each other between raising families and day to day living but one day we reconnected via Facebook and ever since we’ve gotten together on a regular basis. Of course, we had no difficulty finding things to talk about the entire way.

We left around 10 am and headed over to Northern Virginia, about 4 hours away. It was an easy trip although once we hit the belt way around Washington, DC the traffic picked up a bit. As you may know, hauling a heavy trailer is very different from driving a sedan. My friend had no difficulty maneuvering her rig through traffic and around some tight spaces.

Once we reached the auction house the calves were unloaded and she picked up her receipt. Once there, the calves are sorted into lots by size and sold to feed lots which finish growing them to size. She gets paid by the pound at the time of the sale and the auction house gets a commission. At one time there were many beef and dairy operations on the Eastern Shore of Maryland but they’ve died out as the small commercial dairies and packing houses were bought up by larger operations which changed from a local to a more regional business model. Nowadays poultry is the top meat animal raised by Eastern Shore farmers although there are many, like my friend, who have boutique farm operations to supply the relatively small number of consumers who want grass finished beef, lamb, goats and rabbits.

Since we were on the belt way for most of the trip, there wasn’t a whole lot to look at until we crossed the Potomac River into Virginia. Then we could admire the rolling green hills and after we left the highway, the quaint small towns. The Fauquier School House #18 shown above has been preserved by the community and now serves as an educational center and museum.

Once the calves were delivered we had the luxury of a more leisurely trip back so we did some shopping and had dinner in Annapolis before crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and heading home.