Issue #259, Summer 2016 Reprinted with permission

Welcome to
the Agrihood
Farming is central to a new breed of planned community
By Asa Christiana
A
t the corner of New Urbanism and the local-food movement, a new type of­
neighborhood is rising: a tight-knit community built around an organic farm.
With dozens of these communities filling up fast and hundreds more in the
planning stages, “agrihoods” are one of the success stories of the postcrash
housing market.
An agrihood is a planned development combining clustered houses and broad ­natural
landscapes with farm-to-table living. It includes markets, community-supported
­agriculture (CSA) pickup points, community kitchens, and classroom areas, as well as
miles of walking trails—all places for people to meet naturally and share experiences.
Developers are catching on as farm-based communities generate headlines, which drive
brisk sales and a 10% to 25% premium in home prices. Developers also like how the clustered housing and amenities can mean millions of dollars less for streets and sewer lines.
Younger homebuyers, more interested in healthy food and hands-on living than golf
courses and suburban sprawl, are drawn to the walkability and sense of community in
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Photo: J. Ashley, courtesy of Serenbe
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Prairie Crossing
Grayslake, Ill.
Part of the Liberty Prairie Reserve—3200 acres of publicly
and privately held land that includes nature preserves,
forest preserves, farms, and trails—Prairie Crossing was
one of the first farm-based developments and has served
as the prototype for many others.
Started in 1994 on 677 acres near the junction of rail
lines to downtown Chicago and O’Hare airport, Prairie
Crossing gathers 359 homes, 36 condos, a charter school,
a fitness center, a horse stable, and a historic barn that
serves as a community center on less than 40% of its land.
The remaining land is preserved for an organic farm, a lake
used for both recreation and storm-water management,
and 10 miles of walking trails through native landscape.
The houses are spread out along the open spaces. In
addition to making the lots seem larger, this “makes it
easy to walk out the door and connect to the regional
trail system,” explains Sunny Sonnenschein, who has lived
at Prairie Crossing with her family from the community’s
beginning. “We also love knowing that the Prairie Crossing
Farm is changing the way people think about land use and
what is possible in a suburban county in the 21st century.”
Prairie
Farm
A sense of connection. Prairie
Crossing puts the community in
community-supported agriculture.
Prairie
Hiking
Commons
Farm
Farm stand
A lot more than lots
The typical master plan of an agrihood clusters homes into villages
for close community. By not obstructing the views of open spaces,
such a plan makes small lots seem larger. Amenities and community
meeting areas are also clustered, and biking and walking are favored
over driving. Here, the farm is set apart to keep noises and smells
from being a nuisance, but the farm stand is easy to get to.
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FINE HOMEBUILDING
these developments. Baby boomers, feeling nostalgic for simple pleasures that were common not so long ago, are flooding in also.
“I can’t imagine living anywhere else,” says Katie Critchley, who
lives with three generations of her extended family in three homes
at Agritopia, a 160-acre development in the Phoenix metro area.
“Most people who live here want to know each other and support one
­another. The accessibility of the farm and services makes it a convenient way to live, so we have more time to focus on our relationships.”
Developments that preserve natural areas have been around
since the 1960s. “Open space is cheaper than golf courses,” says Ed
McMahon of the Urban Living Institute, a Washington, D.C.–based
thought leader on housing and land use. “The initial idea was to use
the marketplace as a tool for conservation.”
While early agrihoods were built around existing farms, the first
of the current crop was Prairie Crossing, a community that broke
ground in 1994 on 668 rural acres near Chicago.
“The developers’ belief was that an ecologically sustainable way of
producing food should be a part of any community,” says Michael
Sands, who helped to set up Liberty Prairie Foundation, the nonPhotos: top, courtesy of Liberty Prairie Foundation; inset, Maryanne
Natarajan. Drawing: Martha Garstang Hill.
profit that owns the farmland at Prairie Crossing, runs a host of
educational programs, and works to protect the farm’s future. “They
wanted residents to have the opportunity to buy fresh food and see
what growing looks like.”
Nathan Aaberg moved into Prairie Crossing in 2004. His sons
­attended its elementary school, which has an environmental curriculum and serves farm-to-table lunches, and the older son worked on
one of the farms. “We knew that we could get more square footage
for the money in other places, but Prairie Crossing had everything
else we wanted our two boys to experience as they grew up,” he says.
All signs point to a trend. Agritopia, Prairie Crossing, and other
agrihoods give frequent tours to developers and serve as models for
communities such as Willowsford, Va., a 2100-home development
that sold its first unit in 2011. McMahon says that the Urban Living
Institute gets a call about a new agrihood “every other day.”
These new farm-based communities bring the same thoughtfulness
to the houses themselves. At Agritopia, for example, the developer
chose variety over similarity, mixing several classic bungalow and
cottage styles. The porches face streets and neighbors, not garages
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and walls, and the homes have sprinklers so that the fire department
would approve the narrow streets, which reduce driving speeds and
encourage walking and visiting over driving and isolation.
Today, Prairie Crossing boasts a profitable 50-acre farm that sells
produce to residents and members of the surrounding community
and that serves as an incubator for new farmers. But success required
patience and determination.
While infrastructure savings and free marketing are things that
devel­opers understand, farming isn’t. And the farm has to be in place
early to generate the buzz that attracts homebuyers. Even at Agritopia, where the developers were a farming family, it took more than 10
years for the farming operation to turn a profit. That’s why most farms
in agrihoods are subsidized by developers and homeowners. This can
be risky; developers may walk away when the last home is sold, and
the priorities of homeowners associations tend to change over time.
The challenges of incorporating agriculture into a housing development begin in the planning stages. A farm requires more capital
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Agritopia
Gilbert, Ariz.
Agritopia is the result of a
farm family’s endeavor to
forge a new model of urban
agriculture as the greater
Phoenix metroplex closed in
around them. It includes a
16-acre organic farm and 600
homes on its 160 acres.
In 2000, Joe Johnston
spearheaded a development
plan that met his parents’
and brothers’ goals: to be
walkable, to break down
barriers between people, and
to create a simpler, richer life.
Narrow tree-lined streets and
pathways connect homes,
farms, gardens, school, parks,
and commercial areas in a
network designed to resemble
a traditional village.
“We had friends that lived in Agritopia,” says resident
Belinda Belanger, “and we spent a lot of time in the
neighborhood. There was always something going on, and we
hated driving home late at night when everyone else was just
walking across the street or jumping on their bikes.
“We look forward to ‘pick your own’ days in the orchard,
and we like the honor system at the farm stand,” Belanger
continues. “I can’t tell you how many times we stop just to
see what we can take home. There is a sense of peace and
serenity that comes from the agricultural surroundings.”
than many developers realize—land, buildings, equipment, irrigation—and maintaining proper soil conditions adds another layer of
complexity to its success. “It’s easier to build buildings than farms,”
says Joe Johnston, a member of the family behind Agritopia.
Next, for a development-based farm to support retail sales via
CSAs and farm stands as well as offer wholesale products to restaurants—two of the main routes to profitability—the farmers can’t
merely grow one or two cash crops and then sell to a broker. The
farm at Agritopia grows 300 different fruits, vegetables, and herbs.
That means the devel­oper needs to find a special farmer, one who is
not only flexible but also entrepreneurial, deeply committed to the
mission, and able to act as the face of the farm to present and future
residents. Agritopia went through four farm managers before finding
the right couple.
The managements at Prairie Crossing and Agritopia recommend
creating a nonprofit that owns and leases the farmland and that
­ensures the future of the farm and its programs. They also believe
that it’s critical for the farmers to own and operate their own businesses, which creates a strong incentive to watch the bottom line. Others in the field, such as Quint Redmond of Agriburbia, a farm design
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FINE HOMEBUILDING
Willowsford
Loudoun County, Va.
Room to
grow. In
addition to its
larger farming
program,
Agritopia offers
individual
growing plots
to homeowners.
and consulting firm, back an outside-management approach, similar
to the model for golf courses and swimming pools. “Your kids still
get to be lifeguards,” he says, “and CSA is like buying a membership
at the pool.”
Redmond is working with 30 developers on plans for new agrihoods
worldwide, including a 1000-acre wellness community in Shanghai
and a “steward” model in Colorado, where prospective farmers will
buy a house lot that includes a farm tract where they will grow crops
for value-added products, such as mint for organic toothpaste or barley and hops for craft beer. In fact, “value-added” is the talk at many
agrihoods, in the form of artisanal foods and ready-made meals,
which have bigger markets and margins than raw veggies.
Today, even the biggest farms in agrihoods supply only a small fraction of the food their residents eat. “This is just the state of the evolution toward local food,” Redmond acknowledges. “We are creating a
multifunctional landscape,” says Mike Snow, the lead farmer at Willowsford in Virginia, “and we are only at the beginning.”
□
Asa Christiana, a former editor of Fine Woodworking, is now a
freelance writer in Portland, Ore.
Photos this page: Sarah Roberson, Peachy Photography, courtesy of Agritopia. Photos facing page:
left, courtesy of Willowsford; inset, Maxine Schnitzer Photography, courtesy of Willowsford.
Scaling up. Spanning
4000 acres for 2100
single-family homes,
Willowsford has a
40-mile network
of trails and a
300-acre farm.
About 30 miles outside Washington, D.C.,
at the intersection of traditional farmland
and the suburbs, lies an agrihood that
opened in 2011. Willowsford is now one of
the biggest agrihoods in the country. Half
of its land consists of open space; the rest
contains four villages, with neighborhood
parks, amphitheaters, sledding hills, dog
parks, campsites, resort-style pools, and a
network of trails.
Willowsford Farm grows more than 150
varieties of vegetables, herbs, fruits, and
flowers; raises several breeds of livestock;
hosts classes and dinners; and markets its
products through a CSA program, a farm
market, and by wholesaling to restaurants.
The farm is what attracted Jill Nolton and
her family to Willowsford. “We love how
we are able to engage with the farmers
and see where and how they grow food,”
she says. “I love that our children are able
to understand where whole foods come
from. They truly understand what eating
seasonally, locally, and sustainably means.
We volunteer on the farm, and we pick
up our fresh produce through our CSA
share at the farm stand, which is a dynamic
neighborhood gathering point. We take
cooking classes that incorporate fresh farm
ingredients, and our kids take them, too.”
Willowsford set up a nonprofit that owns
the farm and open space and that hired the
director of farm operations, Mike Snow,
who has been there from the outset. “While
I have no equity in the farm, I also have
no debt,” he says. Snow has been given
significant autonomy in his quest to make
the farm self-sustaining by the time the last
home sells.
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