Kinloch Farm Beefing Up Its Local Hoofprint
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By Leonard Shapiro
here’s no fancy building, no gaudy roadside billboards or signage to alert potential customers to the Kinloch Farm store’s truly understated location less than a mile from the village of The Plains. And so far, word-of-mouth has been the main promotional tool. A simple sign is posted just outside the store’s front door, with a drawing of a cow, the words “Historic & Regenerative Farming” in small type arcing over its beefy body and the name—KINLOCH FARM— underneath, along with the days and hours of operation: “Open Thursday-Sunday 10 am-6 pm.” “We’re easing into this,” said Mike Peterson, Kinloch’s farm and conservation director since October. “We want to do it the right way and take all the right steps to produce an outlet to sell the very best grass-fed beef and partner with other likeminded producers.” The store is located on Old Tavern Road at what has been serving in recent years as the popular Archwood Green Barns Farmer’s Market on property owned by The Plains Redevelopment Corp. (TPRC), a Currier family agricultural holding, that includes the farmer’s market of 24 years. According to Linked In, “Kinloch Farm operates at the intersection of agriculture and conservation. We take the approach that agriculture and conservation are intrinsically intertwined…We strategically integrate our historic line of Aberdeen Angus cattle to complete nutrient cycles throughout our grasslands and native
Photo © by Leonard Shapiro
meadows to promote diversity, wildlife habitat, ecological health, and animal nutrition.” Peterson said his role is “to establish an outlet to sell it. It’s a great location, right off I-66 near Middleburg. And we gladly and proudly carry other people’s products—pork and lamb from Hidden Creek Farm in Delaplane, for example, chicken from Rucker Farm in Flint Hill, locally produced honey.” Peterson is aided and abetted by Bobby Doane, the gregarious store manager and sales director who describes his role as “working alongside Mike to grow the beef business from the ground up.” Kinloch’s Aberdeen Angus beef is Certified Naturally Grown. The brood cow herd is now up to about 220 head with a total of 400 animals grazing on 800 acres of the farm. And both Peterson and Doane have years of experience in the farm-to-table process. Peterson grew up on an Illinois dairy farm, has cooked in restaurants that included a stint at the Inn
Kinloch Farm’s Bobby Doane and Mike Peterson. at Little Washington and also owned a farm store in Sperryville before moving to Kinloch. Doane is a Seattle area native, spent many years with Whole Foods and joined the now closed Gentle Harvest store in Marshall as its manager and marketing director in 2016. He also helped found the Marshall Farmer’s Market. “My vision for Kinloch is that we don’t want it to be just a tourist location,” Doane said. “We want it community oriented where our producers can also mingle with our local customers. We’re getting a lot of local traffic, and we’re getting more and more repeat guests every week. Said Peterson, “it’s a place for the community to come in and know they can trust that what we have to offer is produced with total integrity. What I like is the farmer and the customer can come in here, they can talk with each other and they can learn from each other. We see it all the time.”
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