University of Virginia Library

Arrowhead Stock Farm.

Arrowhead Farm, the home of Samuel
B. Woods, in the North Garden
neighborhood, is one of the noted
places on the Southern Railway. It
is situated amid scenery strikingly
beautiful and picturesque. The highest
mountains in Albemarle, rugged and
bold, covered with forests, tower above
valleys green with grass fields and
rich in growing crops. On the mountain
sides are fields of blue grass
with ample shade and numerous
springs of the purest sparkling water,
which keeps a temperature of 50 degrees
even in midsummer, and up here a
handsome herd of Red Polled cattle
find an ideal home from April to December.
From one of these springs,
over 600 feet above the residence,
shaded by a mighty poplar and walnut,
water is piped to the farm below,
and in quality is like most of these
mountain springs of Piedmont, Virginia,
"the best in the world." The orchards,
at "Arrowhead," form one of the
notable features of the place. On the
mountain are the Albemarle pippins

and comet peaches, and on the lower
fields red apples, pears and many varieties
of peaches. These trees have
been most carefully planted, and no
matter where you go in the orchard
they line up as spokes radiate from
the center of a wheel. They have been
skillfully pruned, sprayed and cultivated,
and are thrifty, symmetrical and
beautiful. The fruit from these young
orchards have repeatedly taken prizes,
medals and diplomas at various shows
and expositions. Mr. Woods, who for
eleven years has been President of the
Virginia State Horticultural society,
is greatly interested in fruit growing,
and has large interests in this industry.
His methods of growing large
orchards in an economical way are radically
different from old methods, but
they are successful, and beautiful fruit
is being borne on trees grown at a
minimum cost. The stock raised at
Arrowhead is pure bred and registered.
The Shetland ponies, often seen
from the car windows, are a delight to
the children passing by as well as to
children at Arrowhead. Horses are
no longer raised on the farm, other
stock being found more profitable.
Red Polled cattle, the great milk, butter
and beef breed, has been adopted
and the herd now numbers up in the
seventies. The calves run with their
mothers and get all the milk where
they can take it all, and often weigh
500 and 600 lbs at five and six months
of age. These calves readily bring
from $55 to $100 apiece, according to
sex, and very few ever stay to be a year
old on the farm. The latest addition
to the herd is "Ruths International"
No—, prize animal, whose sire and dam
have both been great prize-winners,
the dam taking a first prize at the International
Show both for quantity
and quality of milk. There is a fine
crop of calves at Arrowhead this
spring by this splendidly bred bull,
averaging as well as any we have ever
seen. The Red Polls are a beautiful
sight, grazing together on the mountain
side, smooth, blocky, handsome,
gentle, a solid rich red in color and
uniform in appearance. The Poland
China hogs are raised at this farm and
among the herd are the sons and
daughters, all registered, of the greatest
prizewinners in the country, hogs that
have sold from $2,500 to $7,000 each.
The Poland China is the triumph of
American skill in breeding, it has now
the fine grained flesh and heavy hams
of the best pork breeds, while for the
same amount of feed it will produce
more meat than any of them. A fine
flock of registered Dorsets are kept at
Arrowhead because they are the best for
early lambs, and this is where the
money lies for the southern sheep
raiser. They also yield splendid mutton
and good heavy fleeces of wool,
but in this respect are no better than
some of the down breeds. Pure bred
poultry is raised, the celebrated
"Ringlets" of the Barred Plymouth
Rocks, and a few white Brahmas and
White Holland Turkeys are on the
mountain, and Mammoth Bronze down
below. For years the Bronze Flock
at Arrowhead has been noted as one
of the best in the United States, gobblers
weighing from 45 to 51 lbs have
been raised, and both gobblers and hens
have taken prizes at Madison Square
Garden and other poultry shows. The
birds sell from $5.00 to $10.00, and eggs
for 50 cents each. An account of this
farm would be very incomplete without
a notice of the seed corn department.
For years Mr. Woods has been
growing Albemarle Prolific seed corn,
a variety gotten from a mixture of
Cocke's Prolific, flint and Virginia
Dent. This corn has yielded as much
as 1631-4 bushels (shelled gram) to the
acre at Arrowhead. It is a great grower
of fodder, and the best for ensilage aswell
as for grain. Some of the largest crops
ever grown in the Valley, and in Ohio,
Illinois and other great corn growing
States have been made with Albemarle
Prolific. It has been equally successful
in the South, last year taking first
place in the tests of the Georgia experiment
station. The crop is cut with
a harvester, shucked and shredded with
a machine. Corn is then picked over
and shelled for seed, and the shredded
fodder fed with molasses and cotton
seed meal to the stock. Arrowhead
farm has demonstrated that farming
pays in old Virginia. Everything is
conducted, not for show, or for appearance,
but for the practical good
there is in it from a business standpoint.
Year by year the fertility of
the soil is being increased by deep
plowing and the use of the manure
spreader, and occasionally some permanent
improvement, like the big Ohio
barn goes up, which adds to the economy
of the administration.

The Albemarle Orchard Company
owns the largest orchard in the State.
The company has now about 1500
acres of land, and has planted nearly
seventy thousand trees, principally
comet peaches and Albemarle pippins.
About 600 acres of the orchard have
been cleared from the forest and
planted. Some of these trees have
begun to bear, and last summer experimental
shipments of these mountain
grown peaches were shipped to Londan,
England, carrying in perfect condition
and bringing satisfactory prices.
On some of the young apple trees fine
fruit has already been gathered, which
has been awarded first premiums and
diplomas at different exhibition. The
improvements which the company has
put up are modern, up-to-date and attractive.
The officers are Samuel B.
Woods, president; Wm. B. Morgan,
secretary, and E. L. Douglass, superintendent.