SperryFest 2023

SATURDAY, APRIL 29

→ 9 a.m. - 10 a.m. Festival set-up, parking opens

→ 10 a.m. SperryFest Begins

→ 10:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. RAAC Music: Grass Fed at Music Stage

→ 12:30 p.m. - 1 p.m. Juggling Magic by the Plaksin Men

→ 1 p.m. - 1:45 p.m. RAAC Music: Gold Top County Ramblers at Music Stage

→ 1:45 p.m. Kid’s Duck Dash Parade down Main Street led by Lady Panthers

→ 2 p.m. Kid’s Duck Dash

→ 2:15 p.m. Kid’s Duck Dash Winner Circle

→ 2:15 p.m - 3:45 p.m. RAAC Music: Gold Top County Ramblers

→ 4 p.m. The Great Rubber Duck Race

Down the Mighty Thornton River

→ 4:30 p.m. Winner’s Circle

→ 5 p.m. SperryFest Ends

→ 6 p.m. Main Street Reopens

→ 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Volunteer Appreciation: Ducks After Dark at Quièvremont ($1 glass of wine for volunteers)

TRAFFIC

Main Street will be closed to vehicles for a pedestrian friendly walkway featuring food, artisans, demonstrations, and live music.

KID’S CORNER

• The main activity in the Kid’s Corner is for kids to purchase a white rubber duck ($5) and then decorate it prior to the 2 p.m. Duck Dash race. Paint is from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

• Kid’s Duck Dash Parade, led by Lady Panthers, scheduled at 1:45 p.m. down Main Street to the Main Street bridge.

• Scramble Hunt, where kids find ducks hidden throughout the festival to unscramble the name of a child's book.

• Plus: Corn hole; Kiddie pool with ducks floating; a bounce house; RCHS Cheer Squad doing a face painting/bake sale; Sebastian coloring pages

PARKING

Please respect your neighborhood. Park only in these lots and pick up your trash.

→ Park in Lot A and walk our trails to Main Street (0.9 miles)

→ Park in Lot D and walk our trails to Main Street (1.3 miles)

→ Limited handicap parking available at Methodist and Baptist Churches on Main Street

→ No event parking at Cafe and golf course

The Black Twig Diner & Bar

How trails and rubber ducks link Sperryville to its scenic riverfront

BY BEN PETERS

The nonprofit Sperryville Community Alliance has spent much of the past year working to promote a sense of community connectedness – both literally and figuratively – through maintenance and expansion of its growing network of walking trails.

BY LUKE CHRISTOPHER

The roughly 1.5 mile trail follows the Thornton River, a tributary of the Rappahannock River that’s part of the Chesapeake Bay watershed, from Main Street eastward onto Water Street and ends near the village’s river district. But to the community alliance, the end is only the start. Organizers hope to expand it while also creating a showcase model for how to rescue local flora and

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An ephemeral artwork by Donna Marquisee along the trail last fall.

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fauna from strangulation by invasive species that threaten to deteriorate the ecology.

Overshadowing the effort is a broader vision to transform Sperryville into a more walkable, pedestrian-friendly village where both residents and tourists can travel by foot from restaurants to shops while absorbing river scenery, and maybe even hike over to Shenandoah National Park without ever turning the ignition on their cars.

Sperryville resident and owner of Before & After Cafe Kerry Sutten, who serves as president of the community alliance, is at the forefront of that movement. He noted that his business on Main Street has been crashed into twice by motorists in recent years, resulting in nearly $30,000 in damages. “Don’t tell me this is a safe village to walk in,” he said. “I mean, we’re just lucky nobody has been hit on those two instances.”

Revitalizing the river

Decades ago, the Thornton River was horribly polluted because of sewage runoff from homes and scores of cattle occupying its waters unchecked, according to Sperryville resident Cliff Miller Sr. He is the sixth of seven generations that have cultivated the 845-acre Mount Vernon Farm property since 1827, which is now home to almost the entirety of the Sperryville trail.

To cut back on pollution, a sewage plant was built and the Millers removed cows from the river. Rappahannock organizations have worked to improve its water quality and maintain the high standard achieved since.

Over the past several years there’s been a growing

BY LUKE CHRISTOPHER

initiative in Sperryville to inject more vitality into the river district, which can be traced back to the inaugural SperryFest celebration in 2019 and the first-ever “Great Rubber Duck Race Down the Mighty Thornton River.”

“Those trails exist because of the ducks,” Sutten said. “We built this first trail because we had raised money from the very first duck race.” He sourced the rubber duck race idea from his time living in Iowa, but the time Sutten spent as a Washington, D.C. resident helped fuel his imagination for what Sperryville’s river district could become with a bit of tender love and care.

D.C. in recent years has made sweeping changes to the Southeast neighborhood that backs the Anacostia riverfront, creating what’s known today as The Wharf. It’s dotted with luxury apartments and trendy restaurants and is host to numerous community events each year.

“The Anacostia, nobody knew existed until the city made a conscious effort to begin to clean it up and build along it,” Sutten said. “And even the Potomac [River], there weren't many accesses.”

But, he cautioned, the mechanics of urban river district restoration are very different from the needs of rural Sperryville. With Sutten’s purchase of the building that houses his cafe, he endeavored to spotlight the Thornton.

“Prior to me buying this place, making a parking lot and giving access to the river, you couldn’t get to the

river anywhere in Sperryville,” he said. “Now you can walk along it, you can see it, you can notice it’s there, you worry about it being clean.”

Community clean-ups are now held twice a year that involve much more than just sweeping up trash. Volunteers cut down vines and spread mulch, to name just a few jobs. The community alliance has a dedicated and growing group who attend, according to Trail Advisory Committee Chair Clare Lindsay.

“We’re just beginning to feel like it really is a community effort, and we’re really grateful for that volunteer spirit,” Lindsay said. Just last weekend the community alliance held a clean-up in advance of Sperryfest to clear the way of debris for the coming onslaught of yellow rubber duckies racing down the river.

Fighting Invasives

Key to opening a window to the river, Sutten said, was creating awareness of the environment and its ecology, which is currently threatened by more than 40 types of invasive species.

Invasives, such as vines that grow like a jungle, overtake the flora and disrupt balance of the river's ecology, according to committee member Torney Van Acker. Van Acker, who oversees the invasive species removal efforts, can be found out on the trail with a chainsaw in hand to sever vines from tree roots.

“If you don’t maintain the trail, it will regrow whatever it grows. And pretty soon you won’t be able to pass through,” he said. Vines left unrestrained will otherwise suck the life from trees.

Trees perform a number of critical functions to protect the riverbank. If their root structure were to be disrupted along the riverbank it would cause excessive erosion. They also provide a canopy over the river to shade water, keeping it cool and protecting the trout

Kerry Sutten, seen at last year’s SperryFest, spearheads the trail movement and made efforts to spotlight the Thornton with his riverfront cafe.

and other ecology that call it home. Fish could be harmed if subjected to warming waters in direct sunlight.

“What we’re trying to do is preserve what we have so we can enjoy it,” Van Acker said.

The community alliance, with the help of the Piedmont Environmental Council’s Rappahannock County representative Laura O’Brien, secured a $50,000 grant from the Virginia Department of Forestry to immediately help pay for removal of invasives. Recapturing the trail from invasives began recently and is expected to continue for at least five years, according to Sutten. They’ve since planted more than 60 native plants and trees along the trail.

O’Brien, described by Van Acker as an “ex-officio” member of the trail committee, attends each of their meetings and also helped the community alliance last year obtain a nearly $20,000 grant from the PEC’s Krebser Fund for Rappahannock County Conservation to conduct two studies that outline plans for managing invasives and aspirations for how to maintain and expand trails. Those studies have become guiding documents for the alliance as they press forward.

“It’s really great that all the work they’ve been doing has been really intentional and backed by these studies and other technical experts,” O’Brien said. PEC places a strong value on public access to nature, informing the organization’s decision to become so heavily involved in the community alliance’s projects. “I see myself as like a resource to help guide their vision for it and the vision the community has,” she said.

“I’m really excited about this project particularly because, obviously you might think Shenandoah National Park is right there, but I think the Sperryville trail really serves a different niche for the community,” O’Brien said. “Because not only is it hyperlocal access to nature but it’s also improving the walkability of the community and connecting these previously disparate parts of the community that are difficult to access on foot.”

Expanding beyond the village?

While the community alliance is presently concentrated on fighting invasives, potential expansions to the trail loom over the imaginations of those involved. Connecting the trail to Shenandoah National Park, Eldon Farms, Old Hollow and Pen Druid are all ideas that have been floated. Most recently, the trail has grown from just over a mile to about 1.5 miles after a quarter mile was added from Water Street down to the river district,

according to Van Acker.

Currently the trail is entirely located on the private land of seven different residents, but it’s mostly concentrated on the Miller’s Mount Vernon Farm. “This seriously would not happen if it were not for Cliff Miller senior and junior,” Sutten said. “The Millers were instrumental in helping us get this going.”

Miller Sr. and his son, Cliff Miller Jr., have played a significant role in the project allowing it to exist on their land.

“We just think it’s a wonderful thing that they’ve done,” Miller Sr. said of the community alliance’s efforts. Miller Jr. is leaving Rappahannock for California soon, and his father will remain steward of the land that’s been held in their family for generations.

“My family has been here for 200 years, so we’re committed,” Miller Sr. said. “And we’ve seen a lot of things happen, and I would say that in the last 25 years … the whole area around Sperryville has gotten much more enjoyable for people to come as they tour the mountains.”

“The trail system is a great asset,” he said.

But with the trail located on private property, concerns of liability arose. While all the current property owners agreed to host part of the trail, the community alliance is working with an attorney to develop landowner agreements to ensure property owners aren’t held liable for mistakes made on the trails by its patrons.

“This really all starts with [private landowners'] generosity and willingness to allow the public to use these trails across the land and work with partners to restore and enhance those trails and the river alongside it,” O’Brien said.

The drawing up of an agreement also stands between the alliance expanding the trail further. Community alliance leaders haven’t engaged in discussions with landowners who don’t already have part of the trail on their land. Once they create an agreement with landowners who currently allow the trail on their property, they’re hoping it will have applicability for when they approach others for future expansions.

“I think having a good landowner agreement in place is going to be really key to being in a position to go and approach others who we think might be a good opportunity for expanding the trail,” Lindsay said.

“The landowners have to protect themselves,” she said. “They’re offering this up for the public good.”

The most immediate expansion would be to develop a bridge, which would be very expensive and technically complicated, that could get pedestrians across the river and connect it to Pen Druid Brewing on the east side of the village, according to Linsday.

A stretch goal would be to connect the trail to the national park. There is a segment of Shenandoah near Oventop Mountain that juts out toward Sperryville on Oventop Mountain Lane north of Central Coffee Roasters that Sutten believes could be connected to the trail should leaders reach agreements with several landowners and successfully lobby the park to re-open the long-closed trail that leads up to the mountain – two substantial obstacles.

“If you could bring it into the park, it is just a great kind of boon for the community because you can come to enjoy the businesses and services we have, hike into the park, and Oventop is stunning,” Sutten said.

Sutten had a number of informal conversations with park Superintendent Pat Kenney, a Castleton resident, about the potential of expanding the trail into the park. In an interview, Kenney was uncertain about the Oventop idea since he’s been unable to discern how long the trail has been closed or why it was shuttered by the park in the first place. He said they no longer have personnel on staff who were working at the time the trail was shut down to provide an account of the rationale.

BY LUKE CHRISTOPHER

“Obviously we’re interested in working with gateway communities like Sperryville and always open to conversations about ideas, but we’ve not seen any real, official proposals from them,” Kenney said of the community alliance.

More immediately, the alliance is working to add directional and educational signage to the trail.

“We’ll have some nice mapping signs and a couple of really cool interpretive signs that talk about the health of the river and some of the challenges, and why we’re doing what we’re doing,” Lindsay said. Adding benches, space for students, and more recreational amenities along the river for kids to play on are also on the agenda.

Cliff Miller Sr. is the sixth of seven generations that have cultivated the 845-acre Mount Vernon Farm property since 1827, which is now home to almost the entirety of the Sperryville trail.

A vision to transform Sperryville into a more walkable village where both residents and tourists can travel by foot from restaurants to shops while absorbing river scenery.

The Rappahannock Food Pantry

is happy to celebrate the village of Sperryville and SperryFest.

Good Luck – and May the Best Duck Win!

Stop in a Shop… you might find

A Million Dollar Baby

(with a nod to The Mills Brothers)

It was a lucky April shower

It was the most convenient door

I found a million dollar baby

In the Sperryville Corner Store

The rain continued for an hour

I hung around for three or four

Around the million dollar baby

In the Sperryville Corner Store.

She was selling pizza

And when she made those eyes

I kept buying pizza

Until the crowd got wise.

Incidentally, if you should run into a shower

Just step inside my cottage door

And meet the million dollar baby

From the Sperryville Corner Store.

You might find a home with the Kohlers

76 Farm Homes

(with a nod to The Music Man)

76 farm homes catch the morning light with 110 hill sides right behind, there are more than a billion trees springing up like weeds, flowing streams of every strength and size. There are sunny days and big storms in the mountains blue, thundering, thundering, all along the chain. Mountain cabins and enormous Great Rooms, too. One can always count on the stars so true. Organic farms are spread across the countryside, birds still fly, butterflies and bees are in the hive. Breezes dance across hay fields that sway with hues, big broad views, lovely valleys, too.

There are farms here of every size that you can find, big estates, a country place, a getaway for two. Farmers who can improvise, non-profits that will blow your mind, great friends who will help you start anew.

Oak Mountain. Open floor plan, windows with a view, and bath, full basement with Rec room and Play room, plus a handy machine shed/shop.