When most folks take up knitting, they might pick up a pair of needles, a ball of yarn and a pattern book.
Dalis Davidson bought a sheep. Then some more … and then a bunch more.
At one point, she had a flock of 20 wandering the field behind her 1926 farmhouse in Barnesville, a town with 64 homes in the northwest corner of Montgomery County. Along the way, Davidson learned to knit and spin her own yarn and make custom colors that reflect the crayonbox of hues found along the ridges and valleys beneath Sugarloaf Mountain.
That’s not an uncommon story in Barnesville, where many recent transplants have become part of a back to the land movement on farm land often worked by single families dating to when the town was first surveyed in 1749.
“There are families who have lived here for generations since the town was founded and there are new families with children,” Davidson said.
In 1980, Davidson, then a graphic artist, moved to a rented home in Barnesville when her husband completed his doctorate and took a job at the federal Bureau of Standards (now called the National Institute of Standards and Technology) in Gaithersburg. They soon bought their home on a ridge just south of the crossroads of Beallsville Road (Route 109) and Barnesville Road (Route 117).
“It’s very windy along the ridge and the leaves are always moving, so I called it Dancing Leaf Farm,” Davidson said.
The couple raised three sons on two acres surrounded by trees and reclaimed the agricultural use of the property, which once was part of a larger working farm. The family is part of a community that combines farming and art.
“I got the sheep for pets and they looked good in the fields and they eat the grass,” Davidson said with a laugh. “But there are a lot of women shepherds in this area and they taught me how to shear the sheep and spin and weave and dye the yarn.”
Another property that has returned to its farming roots is a 19.7-acre spread on W. Harris Road, which is up for sale for $1.65 million.
The home includes a sprawling contemporary farmhouse with a wall of glass to capture the Sugarloaf view, two stables, a horse ring and a freestanding two-car garage.
“When the current owners bought the place it was just a house and garage and 19 acres,” said the listing agent, Tim McGrath, with Mackintosh Inc. “The current owners made it a horse farm and a boarding operation conveys with the sale.”
One thing any buyer can count on is that the million-dollar view will remain unobstructed. That’s because Barnesville — the closest town to Sugarloaf — is part of Montgomery County’s agriculture preservation area, which strictly limits development.
Another curb on replacing farms with tract housing is the fact that Barnesville straddles a mountain ridge, so the water table cannot sustain intense building.
The town thrived in the past as a farming crossroads, with shops and hotels. During the Civil War, Union forces marched through in search of Robert E. Lee’s army. During a battle to control Sugarloaf Mountain Barnesville changed hands five times in one day before it was finally secured by federal troops.
Today, Barnesville is prized for its serene beauty. There are no shopping malls or gas stations or movie theaters. All of that is in nearby Poolesville.
The only thing that changes dramatically at this time of year is the color of the trees. The area around Sugarloaf shrugs off its verdant green summer clothes and dons a robe painted with every shade of yellow, brown, red and orange. The soybeans already have turned from green to gold.
“People say, ‘Don’t you just get used to the view?’,” Davidson said. “But I can look out my studio window and see Sugarloaf and we can see the Blue Ridge and the Cacoctin [mountain]. Every day I feel like the luckiest woman in the world to live here.”
