In May of 2022, after a long weekend at a stream-side homestead in West Virginia, Ashley and I started taking seriously the idea of decamping from DC to start life on a farm somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains— “Oh, people actually live like this…”. We hung this map of the Appalachian Trail on our kitchen wall, and began to wonder whether our future homestead lay somewhere along it.

Over several months, we built a google map of our major requirements and constraints: plant-friendly climate, access to trout streams, amenities, and transit. Almost every long weekend and holiday took us somewhere in the gray zones of this map, exploring options, crossing off regions. At home each evening, we haunted Zillow and the like, creeping on rural listings from one end of Appalachia to the other. My nightstand piled high with books on local trout fishing for each relevant state.

As I thumbed through “Trout Streams of Virginia”, a paragraph caught my eye, lingering in memory—p. 192 became the means by which Damascus, Virginia first entered our lives.

In August 2023, we visited Damascus and fell in love— this was the place. But despite months of effort, the pace of the arms-length real estate market was glacial. The local agents we engaged seemed unable to thaw it without sacrificing our major requirements. Gradually we formed a theory: properties must be changing hands, but without being listed. In a town of 500, where everyone knows everyone, and much land is still locked up in the families of the original settlers, we’d have to be there in person to meet folks—so the theory went— to have a shot at finding our farm.

So in February 2024, after 6 months of fruitless search, we decided to test our hypothesis, selling our Alexandria home and moving to Washington County “at risk”…. It worked! While lodging in an AirBnb in nearby Abingdon for 4 months, we intensified our search. With help from the (excellent) Washington County GIS department, we printed a 6 foot map with every one of the 82 properties that met our criteria for farm characteristics and fishing access. Knowing our farm would be somewhere on this physically massive (yet geographically tiny) map, Operation: Greenstride commenced.

The details of the Operation are many, and are best recounted over drinks. Suffice to say they included: creating a web referral program based on DARPA’s ‘Red Balloon’ Challenge, calling on old friends, and making new ones (including those fascinatingly connected to the 1987 James Bond film The Living Daylights…

In the end, just as we had suspected, we found our farm through word of mouth from the friend of a friend, who was offered it for private sale from a family trust.

We bought the farm on July 9th, moving in on September 7th after extensive repairs and renovations…just 20 days before Hurricane Helene appeared on the scene. But that is a story for another time. For now we’ll skip to the (ongoing) ending, which reads, “happily ever after.”