Potomac Vegetable Farms is an organic vegetable farm, located on 20 acres, just four miles west of Tysons Corner, on Leesburg Pike. The Newcomb family owns the farm, which they established forty years ago.

With every real estate boom, there is a surge of interest from developers hoping the farmers are ready to sell the land, but the Newcombs have a long term interest in growing vegetables and teaching people about sustainable agriculture. So the answer is always no.

In the early 1990's, when the first cohousing book was published, the Newcombs became interested in the idea of creating a cohousing community, using some of the farm property. Anna Newcomb Bradford and Hana Newcomb convinced their mother, Mariette Hiu Newcomb, that it would be a very cool idea to build one of these intentional communities right on the farm. As an added incentive, the family realized that this plan would ensure that the farm would remain undeveloped, except for the cluster of houses at Blueberry Hill.

The farm would use up its development rights and still continue to grow vegetables, right in the midst of suburbia. If it could be done, it would be a first for Fairfax County.

The Newcombs got to work and started to find other interested people to help with the project. It was a long and convoluted process, changing the zoning from an Agricultural and Forestal District to a zoning which would allow for clustered development.

The Newcombs and the Blueberry Hill group worked together to convince the neighbors and the County professionals that this would be a viable alternative to the usual development patterns in Fairfax County. It was a winning combination: farmers with a long history in the community and a group of enthusiastic future residents -- the County approved the rezoning application.

The farmers and Blueberry Hill residents have a very unusual and friendly relationship. When they decided to build the community, the Newcombs chose to give up about seven acres of wooded land on the back of the farm, on the steepest slopes, where crops weren't growing. Fields of flowers and vegetables border the community, and grow right up to the edge of the new paved road which leads to Blueberry Hill. The residents now drive past the roadside stand, flower gardens, blackberry bushes, and mulch piles on their way home everyday. The farmers drive their tractors up the paved road on the way to fields on the other side of the neighborhood.

The construction phase was a strain on the farm, but now that the noisy parade of bulldozers and trucks are gone, the new development looks as if it was always meant to be.

In the summer of 2001, Potomac Vegetable Farms regained its zoning status as an Agricultural and Forestal District. It is a precedent-setting move, but it would take an extremely specific set of circumstances for another developer to replicate what PVF and Blueberry Hill accomplished on this thirty acre piece of property.

At the moment, there are no other working farms in the County likely to try to maintain their open space and build a clustered community at the same time.