This post is Way to LONG... but I couldn't help it.
I like this place and it's mostly pictures anyway.
The best thing for you to do is stop reading and go to the real place...
...All right, you want something to do that's different.
You've done the zoo, the DC sights, and all the malls within 15 miles.
Want a Farmer's Market on steroids?
Go visit Cox Farms at the intersection of Braddock and Pleasant Valley roads in Centreville VA.
Learn how to use old farm equipment as decorative landscaping items.
They got stuff to do, see, and eat.
Buy great produce,
landscaping plants
or just take your kids to see the mini goats, peacocks and chickens. Wandering around is free :-) Take your camera.
The Cox Fall festival is coming in late September....you have to make it then.
We took our kids for hayrides, hay forts, (I like the swinging rope into the hay pile myself) cider, animals and all the food you can imagine.
The Beginning of Cox Farms ( From the Cox Farm web site posted at the end)
Eric Cox and his brother Steven Cox started Cox Farms in 1972 on forty acres formerly owned by their family on Fox Mill Road near Herndon, Va.
That same summer the brothers opened a small roadside stand on Chain Bridge Rd in Vienna, Va. to sell the produce they grew .
A year later, Eric Cox and Gina Richard (high school sweethearts from their days at Herndon High School) got married, and Gina joined the Cox Farms partnership.
They established a produce market in the old barn at the Fox Mill Rd farm and their Vienna market moved across the street to the location it has occupied ever since.
The Fox Mill farm and other local farmland was by now being developed into subdivisions.
Nevertheless, Eric and Gina decided on a risky future for Cox Farms: they decided to stick with farming in northern Virginia by buying a new farm close by.
They borrowed every penny they could find – and paid what was at the time a huge price for agricultural land –
....to purchase the parcel of land on Braddock Rd in Centreville, Va which has been home to Cox Farms since 1978.
Local people, bankers, farmers and businesspeople all said that Eric and Gina were absolutely crazy. There was simply no way this land would ever be worth anything.
No customers would ever find their way all the way out to the quiet country crossroads of Pleasant Valley Rd and Braddock Rd.
For “hired help” on the farm and in the markets, Cox Farms relied in the early years on their large family: Gina had five siblings and Eric had eight!
As the business expanded the extended Cox Farms family grew to include friends, partners, cousins … and then friends of friends.
The core Cox Farms business throughout the 1970s continued to be summer fruits and vegetables. Believe it or not, in those days there was no such thing as Cox Farms Fall Festival!
The Next Generation ...
Gina and Eric’s three children (Lily, Aaron and Lucas) were born & raised on the farm.
As soon as they could walk and hoe and pick crops and work a cash register, they began working in the family business after school and during school vacations. After college, all three returned to work at Cox Farms and have become senior managers in the family business.
But thr
oughout the years the Cox Farms business benefited not just from Cox and Richard family relatives. Equally important was the “extended Cox Farms family” of employees, many of whom worked on the farm, in the greenhouses or in the markets for over a decade, often introducing their own family and friends to jobs at Cox Farms.
Then, one autumn day in 1983, someone asked Eric Cox if he would arrange a Fall hayride on the farm. A few pumpkins, some apple cider … nothing too complicated ….
Cox Farms Today ...
… who knew? Today the Cox Farms Fall Festival is the largest and most popular Fall Festival in the Washington DC area. For many thousands of people in the local community, fall would not be complete without the annual Fall Festival at Cox Farms.
There are three other seasons at Cox Farms, of course: Over 20 greenhouses on the farm supply spring bedding plants for northern Virginia gardeners.
Local summer produce is a highlight during July and August. And December brings the finest Fraser firs, seasonal decorations (and visits from Santa) to Cox Farms.
...
And Eric Cox and Gina Richard continue to own and operateCox Farms as a local, seasonal, family business. It’s been a local tradition … for generations.
Photos by Steve Bachman
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