conservation
“Dr. Joe”: An Appreciation
"Dr. Joe" Rogers, MFH / Douglas Lees photoDr. Joseph M. Rogers, who died March 8 at his beloved Hillbrook farm near Hamilton, Virginia, was of a rapidly disappearing breed of Virginians whose financial resources made possible the pursuit of a mission to preserve the countryside before it passed from reality to a lithographic memory.
These Virginians did not keep score with coin. The acquisition of land was not an egotist’s pursuit, and its preservation was not a beauty contest. Land was acquired and cared for because it represented an irreplaceable resource. That it provided the setting for pursuit of agricultural business and field sport was a cherished benefit, not a root rationale. To do otherwise, he believed, was to leave God’s earth to the vagaries of the marketplace.
“Dr. Joe,” as he was known by all, was at heart a man of that earth. He admired a craftsman who could build a proper four-panel fence or shoe a horse as much as he respected a man who made his fortune in business. In many cases, more so. He took pride in being able to train one species of canine to be capable of pursuing another much craftier, quicker, and agile species—a sport called foxhunting, in which the hunted had nearly insurmountable advantage over the hunter. It is a picturesque sport, photographed, illustrated, written about, and otherwise memorialized. But it was also a lot of hard work when you were in charge of bringing the show to the field.
George L. Ohrstrom III Wins MFHA Award
George L. Ohrstrom III / Matthew Klein photoEver since 1888, the Blue Ridge Hunt has pursued foxes through the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia—a verdant, rolling grassland dotted with small woodlands, perhaps fifteen miles across, nestled between the Blue Ridge Mountains to the east and the Allegheny Mountains to the west.
The Shenandoah River flows northeasterly along the eastern edge of the valley, passes under the western slopes of the Blue Ridge, and empties into the Potomac River at Harper’s Ferry, W.Va.—a confluence described three centuries ago by Thomas Jefferson as “one of the most stupendous scenes in nature.”
Home to a mostly rural population, the Shenandoah Valley has long been a destination of unsurpassed beauty to vacationers and sightseers. The northern part of the Valley that is home to the Blue Ridge Hunt also finds itself to be an object of lust to developers from Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia to the east and the nearby city of Winchester to the west. While many landowners find it hard to resist the potential financial windfall from development, others believe that to relinquish such natural beauty to untrammeled development would be a crime against nature.
Along with its sister landscape just to the east of the Blue Ridge—Virginia’s Piedmont—a passionate calling for preservation has rallied many of its citizens to battle. Few, however, have responded like George Ohrstrom III. The scope and creativity of Ohrstrom’s efforts locally, nationally, and internationally earned him the MFHA’s Conservation Award for 2014.
Farmington Hunt and J.B. Birdsall Honored for Conservation Success
J.B. Birdsall (holding trophy) is flanked by the Farmington Masters (l-r) Carol Easter, Pat Butterfield, and Joy Crompton. Cheryl Microutsicos photo
The Farmington Hunt and J.B. Birdsall received the 2011 Hunting Habitat Conservation Award at the MFHA Annual Meeting in New York City on Friday January 28.
Each year with each recipient of this award we witness yet another testament to the role of foxhunting in the preservation of open space. Arguably no other sporting culture has done as much to preserve land and natural habitat.
But, it often takes a leader, an individual driving force, to establish a culture of conservation within an organization. J.B. Birdsall—longtime foxhunter, landowner, and hunt member—provided that passion, commitment, and leadership for the Farmington Hunt to become a force for open space conservation in their hunting country.
Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds: An Oasis in Suburbia
If you want to see stunning hunting country, I commend you to FHL’s latest Photo Gallery slide show. We feature Elisabeth Harpham’s lovely photos of Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds in Unionville, Pennsylvania.
The Cheshire hunting country is an oasis between the developed suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Wilmington, Delaware. This is hunting country for any foxhunter to drool over. But you have to know that country like that just doesn’t happen by a stroke of luck. It’s the product of years of commitment by strong-willed individuals determined to protect what they have.
