Bushy Park Farm LLC

03/02/2023

Winter Getaway! Our farmhouse w/ access to a mile of private beach is 90 mins from Richmond, 3 hrs from DC. Two wood stoves, three bedrooms, surrounded by crop fields. More photos and to book: https://abnb.me/10aM8e107wb

17/07/2022

Happy Sunday! Somebody had themselves a good old time last night ramming their red vehicle (see paint chip) through our gate. We are still reviewing the video footage, but if you see a vehicle with new damage consistent with this, please call the Middlesex Sheriff’s Department at 804-758-2779. Thank you! This happened about 3:15 AM on July 17.

17/07/2021

I had completely forgotten that Andy Waller and family of Dayum This is My Jam handcrafted jams, pickles, and salsas had stayed in our farmhouse vacation rental and left us a care package. What a delight to discover it—I just enjoyed “La Three En Rose” on toast! Check them out at dayumjam.com. They deliver in Richmond and ship elsewhere! Yum. Thanks, Andy! ❤️

25/05/2020

One day’s worth of photos documenting life-threatening and property-destroying bank climbing. This was all done yesterday. We suspect most of this was the work of two teens who were with their parents. Please don’t let your children do this anywhere, on any unstable bank with overhang. Special bonus: beer cans left right by the private property sign! We appreciate our respectful tresspassers for not trashing the property but as you can see some folks ruin it for everyone. Hard to see in the photos but these are just a few of the many new places just from yesterday (they weren’t there the day before) with hand-hold and footprint marks, and even climbing notches carved out as well as drawings made near the top. You can see in a few places how the bank, aka our land, crumbles and is diminished by this activity. We have lost many feet of land to natural erosion and the groins (aka rock jetties) we put up costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. We no longer have that kind of money, though clearly we need more groins, so while we’ve always been afraid of trespassers hurting themselves by climbing that bank, the property damage aspect of this behavior is abundantly clear to us these days. Please help us make it stop by raising awareness of the danger, the illegality, and the fact that it is destroying someone’s property.

16/04/2020

April beach. ❤️

11/01/2020

Everyone's loving this balmy screened-porch morning here on the farm. (Although the quadripeds would rather be chasing the birds than listening to them; but life is full of sorrow, dogs.)

08/11/2019

Just a couple of good dogs in the front yard, watching & smelling the winter wheat (this was the first day the field beyond the driveway turned green, and none of us could get enough of it; we stayed outside till dark) & enjoying the shadows of the evergreen limbs on the ground.

So much sky. So much space. It's a little piece of heavenly peace out here.

06/08/2019

04/08/2019

Today’s wildflowers.

13/07/2019

Wild passionflower beside the field and native morning glories on the beach. Re passionflower: “Two species of this tropical-looking flower are native to Virginia, growing in most counties in the coastal and piedmont regions. The large lavender flowers are arranged in intricate layers, fringed in the center. Leaves are toothed along the edges and 3-lobed. Emerging late in the spring, Passionflower Vine grows and blooms rampantly all summer, then often disappears in October and November under the voracious grazing of the caterpillars of the fritillary butterflies.[...]

The passionflowers were discovered by a Roman Catholic friar in Mexico in the early 1600’s. Symbolism to the Christian passion abounds. The combined sepals and petals could represent 10 apostles (omitting Peter who denied, and Judas who betrayed), the five anthers = the five wounds, the column of the o***y = the cross, the stamens = the hammers, the three stigmas = the three nails.

However, American Indians already used the plant in folk medicine and as an aphrodisiac, attaching a different meaning to the plant’s name. Chemists have found drugs in Passionflower used to combat insomnia and anxiety. A writer in southern Appalachia advises: “After you have lived with someone for many years the little things they do start to bother you. So you take some passionflower leaves and make you a tea. Pretty soon you start to relax and the little things don’t bother you so much and you get along fine.”

The fruit is greenish-yellow, edible and makes a very good jelly. In 1612 Captain Smith reported that in Virginia the Indians planted a wild fruit like a lemon, which begins to ripen in September. Passionflower is also known as “maypop”, referring to the sound the fruit makes when stepped upon. It is the official state wildflower of Tennessee.

The flowers are visited by butterflies such as the variegated fritillary and zebra longwing, who lay eggs on the stems and leaves permitting the entire lifecycle of these beautiful butterflies. Hummingbirds and bees also visit the flowers, but beware, deer and rabbits may eat the fruit.” —-from an article on dailypress.com

13/07/2019

Thunderstorm moving across the fields. View from the front porch of our vacation rental.

05/07/2019

Here's our Airbnb listing for "Tulip Grove," our three-bedroom farmhouse. Please help us get the word out to responsible renters who would enjoy our recently renovated vacation home and take good care of it! Two weeks/weekends still available in August, and totally open starting next May.

05/07/2019

PRIVATE BEACH. NO TRESPASSING. STAY OFF BANKS. THANK YOU.

Local boat owners have a tradition of enjoying our mile of private beach, most of them cleaning up after themselves and leaving the beach pristine. These visits have always been, legally speaking, trespassing (please see link to VA law, below), and we were not aware that the beach had become a popular local destination, but the family had not been using the beach much since the ‘80s and we appreciate that most beachgoers have been respectful. Thank you. We hope you have appreciated the free time on a private beach. The farm is now under new family management (please see our “About” page for more info), and we are again utilizing our private beach, for ourselves and for paying tenants. The family would prefer to continue not to actively prosecute such trespassing by boat, for the purposes of enjoying the beach, but our paying tenants should not come to the private beach on a holiday weekend and be confronted with 15-30 boats tied up along the beach and multiple groups of people using the beach they paid for, for free. We are actively looking into allowing legal, paid boat access for a normal “beach parking” type daily fee; please check back here for updates. We do understand that, while unauthorized use of our beach has always been illegal trespassing on private land, it’s become a beloved tradition for many, so we hope to find a solution that works for all. The land costs money and requires upkeep, and as you can see from the extreme amount of bank erosion, the beach needs more groins (those jetty rock piles that help prevent the beach and land from washing away). Groins cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and we are currently in the red due to cleaning up after destructive, drug-addicted tenants who trashed a couple houses on our property, allowed dumping and more—so if you love the beach we’d love for you to chip in so maybe, eventually, we can afford more groins or other erosion control measures to keep the beach as nice as it is. We will post updates here. FYI our paying tenants are less likely to utilize the far end of the beach, west of the wooden breakwaters, by Bay Sands and closest to the bridge. We are collecting photos of the boat registration numbers of boaters who choose to tie up and set up their party on the other part of the beach by the “Private Beach, No Boats, No Trespassing” signs, where our tenants and guests expect privacy. Meanwhile, we must put an immediate end to any digging in and climbing on the unstable sandy bank. We will, of course, strictly enforce no trespassing signs on our non-beach land, including anyone cutting through the farm to get to the beach.

Please understand that digging or climbing the sandy bank, as the trespassers in this photo are doing, is a major safety hazard. It is trespassing and it is also vandalism, because it encourages more rapid erosion and thus destruction of our land. The bank, a naturally occurring feature of our property, is sandy and unstable, prone to collapse, aka mini landslides. It has considerable overhang. Visitors will see where huge trees have fallen down the bank. It a natural hazard that shifts and erodes with every storm. It should never be climbed on.

If we continue to see or hear of people climbing and digging in the bank, we will have to ask the sheriff’s office to arrest the culprits and we will prosecute.

We ask our responsible neighbors and boaters to help us monitor the situation and to stop the bank climbing, so that we don’t have to hire monitors and start filing charges. The county told us they’re looking at sites for a Middlesex County public beach, so we encourage area residents wanting legal access to a beach to inquire at the county office about progress on that. Thank you! Here’s the link to VA law, and of course feel free to contact your state legislator to lobby to change this law if you don’t agree with it. http://www.virginiacoastalaccess.net/law_statutes.html