Historic Stonewall Farm

Stanardsville’s Bob Runkle kicks back in the kitchen of his 181-acre farm on South River Road and starts sharing stories. The farm has been recognized and honored by the Virginia Century Farm Program for being in operation for at least 100 consecutive years.
In fact, Runkle’s Stonewall Farm has been in operation -and in his family - for more than 200 years.
Some of the first of Runkles’ ancestors to own the farm were McMullens and Melones.
“The first ‘Runkle’ came to Greene in the latter part of the 1700’s. He ran a gristmill,“ says Runkle, a retired history teacher. 
One of that man’s descendents - Runkle’s great-grandfather - signed the petition that called for the separation of Greene from Orange County - a separation that happened in 1838.  “My great-grandfather also had a gristmill, and a tannery that was in existence before the Custer raid (in 1864).“
And he had a son who, through marriage, linked the Runkle name with Stonewall Farm.
“Back then, the average size of a Greene County Farm was about 150 acres. People would have a cow for milk, hogs and chickens for meat,“ he recalls. “They raised a large percentage of their food … everybody had a garden.“
Runkle’s family grew tobacco. When the soil was depleted, they switched to wheat. They raised hogs, and, as with their neighbors, turned them out to forage for acorns in the mountains.
“The community had a system of ear-notching (so people could tell which were whose) when they had to go through the woods and drive them in. I’m told a full crop in the right ear and an under key in the left ear was my family’s mark.“
That practice came to an end about 1910, when the law changed and people had to close their animals in.
Runkle says that farming is an up and down way of life.
For example: After the start of World War I grain prices rose because much of Europe’s best cropland was covered by armies instead of seeds and fertilizer. For the 1915-1916 crop years, wheat averaged 98 cents a bushel, a good price in those days. When the United States entered the war in 1917, the government guaranteed farmers at least $2 a bushel for their wheat to encourage increased production. Liberal export credits to Allied nations drove wheat prices far above the government-guaranteed level.
And then it all came tumbling down. A few months after the Armistice in November 1918, prices for hogs, corn and other farm products began to edge downward with the expectation of a fall in demand.  In the spring of 1920 the U.S. Grain Corporation stopped buying wheat and prices plummeted more than 50 percent, to remain depressed through the decade.
With the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, prices fell even further, dropping 40 to 60 percent. In 1933 New Deal initiatives helped by raising farm prices via the limitation of production, establishing price supports to help farmers through the rough times, and a commitment to purchase surplus.
World War II pulled farmers back up. Food was needed for the military and for the civilian Allied population. But at that war’s end, farmers once again faced the challenge of overproduction. And, technological advances, such as the introduction of gasoline- and electric-powered machinery and the widespread use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, meant production costs were higher.
But the farm on South River Road survived and was in production when Runkle was born in 1945, at, he says, “the end of subsistence farming.“
“In my lifetime farming in Greene County has gone from crops to poultry to livestock,“ he says.
One of the crops his father was growing when Runkle was young was wheat.
“People used to take burlap sacks filled with wheat to the mill and come bring it back in a paper sack. There was enough flour for several months, eating biscuits three times a day.
“My father had a car, not a truck. Bags of wheat were all over the back seat and in the trunk, and tied to the car. He took them to the mill at Rapidan River. The miller would take a percentage or cash. People could wait for it to be ground or come back.“
At the time, the Runkle farm was also producing hogs and corn, but soon it would be producing cattle, poultry and hay.
In 1949 his father started raising poultry, but “that market collapsed about 1960. Now we raise beef cows. My father had 35 or 50. We raise more than twice that,“ Runkle says.
But perhaps because he’s seen agriculture go through so many changes, Runkle is still thinking ahead.
“What we should be raising is goats,“ he says. “It’s the number one meat animal in the world.“
Runkle reasons that because goats eat graze brush and weeds, they would clean up the grazing land for cattle. The cattle and goats could even be run together, protected from predators by dogs, llamas, or donkeys.
Runkle steps outside and looks around his farm.
He points to one of the vacant, but well-kept historical structures near the farmhouse.
“Do you see that barn?“ he asks. “We used to keep hay there, but no more … I put a new roof on it, though.“
Runkle, who has been one of Greene’s representatives to the Culpeper Soil and Water Conservation District since 2001, is now its vice-chairman. He is a member of the Greene County Farm Bureau Board of Directors and the County’s Board of Zoning Appeals. He chaired the Greene County Planning Commission from 1989 to 1991 and was on the committee that prepared the County’s original Comprehensive Plan in 1977. He won a conservation award from the Culpeper Soil and Water Conservation District in the 1970’s and has employed numerous conservation practices on his grazing land over the years. Runkle and his wife Janet have two grown daughters.