Jolly Folly Farm

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Earlysville, VA
Jolly Folly Farm

Fresh organic roamin' eggs sold roadside on Fridays or everyday via text. Forever flock (no kill). In 2015 we felt led to purchase a property near us. He did.

On the surface, it didn't make sense. It was lunacy to mortgage ourselves beyond the grave with 2 loans at our age with our commitments. We spent the next year-- every night and every weekend, every free moment, fixing up the house. For whom, we weren't sure, but we knew God had a plan for someone who needed it. The year after that, we spent every free moment yanking out barbed wire and fencing. We knew the land had a purpose to help people and animals in some way, and it did. The land's purpose still continues to reveal itself and we are excited to see what is to come. It was sometime in 2016 that we began referring to it as "The farm" and it soon became "Jolly Folly Farm." Financial and relationship experts would have told us that jumping when God says jump wasn't a good decision. However, what seems folly in the eyes of man, is something more in the plans of God. We are well aware that this all may go bottoms-up at any moment, but we know God has helped us through many more failures in our lives than successes and our job is just to "do the next thing." He sends us people or animals or tasks, He gives us opportunities and takes them away. Our only responsibility is to not screw it up. This happy lunacy, this slice of Earth wedged between the Blue Ridge Mountains and our heart, has received the greatest portion of our physical and financial abilities as we pass middle age. However, in our efforts to restore it, we ourselves were restored. Our work is still constant, our reward cannot be measured in any way that is seen by the eye, but within us we reap the peace of knowing that we are idiots, but our God is great and when we trust Him, He can see what we cannot. We hope you, too, can find the plan God has for your Jolly Folly.

10/30/2026

10/22/2026

I was raised that voting is a BFD...a Big FAMILY Deal! Before I was old enough for school, I have a memory of my mom telling me to stand right outside the booth where she could see my feet and hearing the clunk!kerchunk! of pulled levers. I wondered what kind of special thing voting was that it was so serious and private! I still don't think we truly appreciate it as we should.

I also have a fond memory of sitting in the backseat, listening my parents coax from the other how they voted. And the resulting: "KEN!!! you voted for Reagan??!! How could you? Jimmy Carter's a good man!" My dad said: "that may be true but Reagan knows what he's doing." Today, every time I vote, I still hear her response to him in my head and it makes me grin: "well we just shouldn't have even bothered voting because you cancelled mine out!"

Today 3 generations went to early voting (only 2 generations voted though). It was great to vote with both my daughters and think about all the women (and a few men) who worked for years to amend the Constitution so a mom and 2 daughters could vote. I wore my suffragette button I got when in DC for the America's States Fair this summer, and am guessing we 3 didn't cancel each other out, but we left it all in the booth.

It's been 250 years of the best country in the world, hoping for 250 more!! Be sure to vote!

10/02/2026

Not enough eggs to warrant corner sales, but still plenty of reasons to smile. John Denver blarin in the background while the presidential groundhog brigade fattens up for winter. Country life is the best life.

09/30/2026

Just a beagleboxerhoundy dog watching the sunset. And just like that, all is right with the world.

09/18/2026

Happy 79th birthday to the USAF! This was one of the formal functions at DMAFB where they would take formal prom-like photos we all bought!

When I see these photos, I remember Col. Underwood: a spry, charming retiree who still wore his mess dress to every event. I was friends with his wife Jayne (we served on a board together). They both golfed religiously, laughed sweetly, and had a warmth that was magnetic. Tom was chatting with him at a formal and asked when Bill had joined the Air Force. Bill told him "oh I joined the Army! I was in the Air Force flying before there was an Air Force!" Tom still talks about that!

Both Bill and Jayne have gone on to the wild blue yonder to their reward. However the foundations laid by people like them and the service and sacrifice is what allows today's Air Force to continue stretching to the stars and beyond! The view from the future F-47 will be great, but only because it rests on the shoulders of giants!

William S. Underwood - Pima Air & Space https://share.google/1Ewb7rdtROBs71YZi

09/10/2026

If anyone out there has a CERTIFIED comfort/support dog who would like to volunteer to come share love and smiles with UVA students, please text me. I help organize the Hoo Needs A Hug on Engineering Way and we're looking for a dog or two to join us on Oct. 13. Because of the location and foot traffic, official dogs with handler only. Woof bock!

09/07/2026

Tis the season. The time of year when I walk into a store and squeal with delight at a perfect goose neck squash. The tablescape has begun! Once upon a time, every year my table was decorated with gourds surrounded by treasures brought insidoors by tiny grubby hands:

Acorns gathered beneath the centuries old oak in our Ohio yard

Teezles from the overgrown path behind our Northamptonshire stone house

Smooth rocks from the spring behind our Buck Mountain home, found while digging for crawdads

Each fall I still make the tablescape, in hopes the people I love most will return to me with a precious gift that is found, not bought. I yearn for the proudly outstretched hand, the wide smile, the gaze directly into my eyes and the heartwarming words: LOOK WHAT I FOUND! HERE! YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS! PUT IT ON THE TABLE!

Now I collect nature's trinkets rarely and mostly on my own. Occasionally, while choring, something catches my eye: a special seed or bloom, a sycamore leaf so large it doesn't look real, a feather from a bird I've never seen. They're little gifts made only by God and delivered across my path by wind.

I don't know if any fall finds will join the gourds and pumpkins on the table this year. Collecting them by myself somehow feels lonelier than a nearly bare table. But I'll still squeal at a good gooseneck, and I'll hold out hope that one day the little hands of my favorite baby will be big enough to bring in treasures....and the table will be covered again!

09/05/2026

The photo doesn't do it justice because of the weeds, but the tractor is basically hanging off the edge of the earthen bridge, kept in place by the bucket and the bush hog. It literally looks like those saved his life. It's a 5 ft drop over 3 giant culverts. The roll bar was up when I went down to see it today, but I've seen Tom on Lil Red (the tractor) when he's working and I have a sneaking feeling he put the roll bar up AFTER he nearly went head over rump with a 5,000 pound piece of equipmment into the gulley.

I got a little emotional thinking about how close he came to going off the edge of the literal bridge and the metaphorical bridge.

Today I am grateful we bought the farm, but that Tom didn't "buy the farm" yesterday. I'm grateful to live across the street from local and national treasure Bruce Eades who has the best advice on everything in this neck of the woods. I'm grateful for Anthony and his Kel-Cam towing team that made short, quick work of a really remote and weighty removal. They did an amazing job but were also just terrific, friendly people. A bad situation left us smiling! Only in Virginia!

And, for the record, after seeing Lil Red like that, the next time he goes into the forest I'm considering requiring Tom to bring back writing those "if you're reading this..." deployment letters we have in a box around here somewhere!

Address

1142 Durrett Ridge Road
Earlysville, VA
22936

Telephone

(434) 409-8557

Website

http://www.jollyfollyfarm.com/

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