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Jessie Ball DuPont bought the property in 1932 as a summer house.
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Cathy Calhoun and her husband, retired Vice Admiral Paul Grosklags with their cows.
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Period antiques accent original woodwork, ceiling medallions, Georgian staircase and heart pine floors.
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Jessie Ball DuPont put in four bathrooms, running the cast-iron pipes through the chimneys so they wouldn’t tear up the slate roof.
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The farm is producing three distinctly different types of cider: Rivah, a beer-style cider, Blush, done in a wine style, and G-8, a traditionalEnglish heavy style cider.
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The couple raises free-range heirloom breed pigs, along withIndian Runner ducks, Toulouse geese and heritage turkeys, all of which are fed with apple waste.
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Ditchley Cider Works is a family business. Pictured from left are Paul Grosklags’ sister Pamela Brown, Paul and wife Cathy Calhoun. Over three miles of pristine deep water frontage is forever protected from development for the enjoyment of future generations.
Ask Cathy Calhoun how she wound up living in a house built by Kendall Lee in 1752 and she’ll say she just happened by at the right time.
Calhoun and her husband, retired Vice Admiral Paul Grosklags, both career Naval officers, had been coming to the Northern Neck since buying an old farmhouse in 1987 as a getaway. During horseback riding outings over the years, she’d pass Ditchley, Lee’s Georgian style brick mansion, never imagining it would be sold. Until the time she spotted objects being removed.
Without hesitation, she went to the Northern Neck Land Conservancy to find out what was going on with the 162-acre property. Seems a group of Florida lawyers intended to buy it as soon as it went on the market, develop it into 77 waterfront lots and turn the mansion into a clubhouse.
It was fortuitous timing. Calhoun and Grosklags had been ruminating on their next phase of life, trying to decide whether to become ski bums or find something to keep them occupied. They made their case to the Alfred I. DuPont Foundation who held the property.
“Nope, we’d make it a working agricultural farm and put the whole property into conservation easement,” Calhoun told them. “And they said, ‘Sold!’” The house never went on the market.
That was December 2014 and the house hadn’t been occupied since 1970 when philanthropist Jessie Ball DuPont had died. DuPont, who bought the property in 1932 as a summer house, always arrived by boat, never by car. A painting of that boat sits in the dining room.
“Jessie Ball did the hardest thing in this house,” Calhoun explains. “She put in four bathrooms, running the cast-iron pipes through the chimneys so they wouldn’t tear up the slate roof.” In addition to her practical side, DuPont had a superstitious side. When the master bedroom was renovated, she had the fireplace bricked up to prevent spirits from entering. The eight other fireplaces remain open and workable.
“The house had been sitting empty for 44 years, so it was like a time capsule with all her possessions here,” Calhoun recalls. “It looked like she just walked out the door.”
Both engineers, the couple’s task was to turn the time capsule and its surrounding property into a sustainable agricultural endeavor. They needed a base business and enough reports had come out of Virginia Tech predicting that cider was a growth industry to consider making Ditchley a cidery.
“Virginia’s the seventh largest producer of apples in the country and cider was making a comeback,” she says, explaining that the infrastructure was in place and local extension agents could help with apple knowledge. The next step was planting 2,000 trees, which resulted in some unexpected finds.
“The most surprising part was the amount of things we dug up every time we put a shovel in the ground,” Calhoun says, showing off a bowl of Native American pottery shards, pieces of glazed fireplace brick and remnants of English bricks.
Currently, the farm is producing three distinctly different types of cider: Rivah, a beer-style cider, Blush, done in a wine style, and G-8, a traditional English heavy style cider, which uses Wickson Crabapples that naturally ferment to a hearty 22-24 percent alcohol level.
Calhoun is the cider maker, with all kegging and bottling done at Ditchley in small batches of 55 gallons. With the renovation of the former caretaker house into a cider house, the couple will be able to do much larger batch runs, although they’ll still be an artisan cidery with local/regional sales distribution.
Once they started thinking about what else they could do, livestock made sense. The couple raises free-range heirloom breed pigs who managed to unearth the foundation of the original 1686 Lee property house as they rooted in the dirt, eating bricks along the way. Also roaming about are grass-fed cows, along with Indian Runner ducks, Toulouse geese and heritage turkeys, all of which are fed with apple waste.
After crushing the fruit and pressing the juice, what remains is pommace and it flavors the meat of whatever animal eats it, making it a natural for creating flavorful sausages. Last year, the farm processed 20,000 pounds of estate-grown apples, making for a lot of pommace. The cider is sold at Dug-In Farm and farmers markets in Williamsburg and Fredericksburg, while the sausage and meat are sold through meat clubs.
Ditchley is very much a joint project with Grosklags, whom Calhoun refers to as chief pig and cattle wrangle rand all around fix-it guy. “He’s a pretty good painter as well,” Calhoun says. “Not so good with public relations when it comes to guests driving on his grass and leaving ruts he has to mow over.”
With water sports a major attraction on the Neck, they began planning what they could offer to complement farm production and emphasize local history. “We’re respecting the history of the place,” Calhoun says. “So we looked at the under-utilized potential and the current state of what people want and tried to match them up.”
Their solution was to become a rental facility offering guided experiences via kayak and paddleboard along their3 ½ miles of waterfront. Explains Calhoun, “You can paddle for two weeks here and never repeat the same route.”
They’ll offer the same guided experiences for cyclists, laying out routes of historical interest within a 40-mile radius of Ditchley. “They’ll take cyclists to over 24 historic sites and homes that typically people wouldn’t know about.”
To allow for weddings, the couple has renovated the caretaker’s house—where DuPont’s 18 servants lived—to add four additional bedrooms on site. Next year, they’ll renovate the 1958 Sears Roebuck kit cottage on the property to provide three more bedrooms for wedding parties, bringing to 25 the number of guests they can accommodate.
By working with the Northern Neck Land Conservancy, the couple was able to secure federal and state funds, allowing the land to be preserved, restored and put to use for farming and agriculture production.
“It’s a win/win for the county,” Calhoun says. “And it shows others that you can get help to maintain family farms and keep them as agricultural.”
Beyond setting a good example, Calhoun and her husband have one aspiration. “The biggest thing is balance, not to be slaves to the property,” she says.”It has to pay for itself because old houses aren’t cheap. We want to maintain the property and still have a life.”
Visit ditchleyciderworks.com for up to date event, cider/meat club, wedding venues and tasting info.