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A LITTLE BACKGROUND
 Historic, beautiful, and prestigious Albemarle County, Virginia. A magnificent 2,300 acre purebred livestock farm in a secluded mountain valley with miles of equine trails and carriage roads.
When the owner gets tired of struggling "just to be left alone"; when serious economic alternatives present themselves...and when the farm is sold to a developer, many people come out of the woodwork to say "NO WAY." To those who fear the future: We differ. So do our nearby neighbors who support the Qroe Farm / Audubon International project here run by Edge Valley Preservation LLC . But ......we do see a greater need, and the sale of Bundoran Farm has made it possible to address that need. We established a significant pool of funds, held at the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation, to help teach others what we have spent a lifetime learning: that sustainable and successful environmental outcomes depend almost entirely on economic success.
We see people often talking past each other: educated persons referring to "dairy product" eggs (because eggs are sold in the dairy section), sustainable farming, value-added farm products. We see a disconnect between environmental advocacy and land stewardship, local land-use ordinances, regulations, government interference, etc. The common theme is ECONOMICS of land use. The Ballyshannon Fund will make an effort to address these economic realities in rural Central Virginia.
We don't mean the narrow definition of economics as dollars and cents, rather we refer to the incentives for decision-making as it relates to land use. Economics is all about choices and incentives, not only dollars, but also values, rewards, planning, stability, sustainability... the list goes on.
Ballyshannon Fund hopes to educate others about the economic realities of rural enterprise; about those issues that my neighbors and I...after lifetimes working in the country...intuitively understand:
It's really simple:
.............. Soils, water, forests, and economic success are all tied together.
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