Blue Sky Farm: A Modern Farmhouse, a Restored Dairy Barn, and 15 Acres at the Foot of the Blue Ridge
- Colleen Gustavson Brownell
- 2 hours ago
- 13 min read
Some properties are best understood at the threshold. Blue Sky Farm is best understood from the air.
From a few hundred feet up, the geometry of the place becomes legible. The 2023 modern farmhouse anchors the southern edge of the clearing, its long rooflines and standing-seam metal accents drawing the eye eastward toward the restored 1950 dairy barn that gives the property its character and its name. Between them lies a pond, sited to mirror the late afternoon sky and the long blue line of the Blue Ridge beyond. To one side of the residence, beds of perennials run in long ordered rows — commercial-scale plantings organized for color and fragrance from the first crocus to the last asters of October. To the other side, the approx. 15.33 acres open into pasture and a vacant second parcel that adjoins the working core of the farm.
This is what was completed in 2023 by an established custom builder as his personal home. The decisions show. The building envelope, the materials, the orientation, the mechanical systems, the landscape itself — every element bears the mark of a maker working on his own behalf, with no client to compromise with and no quarterly horizon to meet. What emerges is a property that resists easy categorization. It is a residence. It is a working landscape. It is a venue waiting for its first night. And it sits five minutes from the center of one of Western Loudoun's most beloved small towns, on a quiet country lane that takes its name from a one-room schoolhouse that once stood nearby.
The Residence
The 4,701 finished sq. ft. main residence is composed for true one-level living — increasingly rare at this scale in the contemporary market. All four bedrooms are arranged on the main floor, thoughtfully separated for both quiet and connection. The lower level adds approx. 1,034 finished sq. ft. with a full bathroom, plus approx. 2,420 unfinished sq. ft. ready to be shaped into a media room, gym, guest suite, or additional bedrooms by a future owner. The total under-roof footprint, including the outbuildings, reaches approx. 14,875 sq. ft.
Inside, the materials catalog reads like a builder's personal wish list. Showplace custom cabinetry with Kohler polished nickel hardware. Cambria premium quartz countertops, the kitchen island poured as a single seamless slab. A full JennAir appliance suite. Visual Comfort and Hinkley decorative fixtures, joined by 82 LED recessed lighting positions for layered illumination throughout the day. Random-width rustic red oak flooring sanded and finished in place. A masonry fireplace anchored by a Loudoun County fieldstone hearth and a barn-beam mantle, the architectural detail that ties the modern construction back to the agricultural heritage of the land.
The den centers on a custom built-in wet bar that has become the property's signature interior moment — a hand-poured countertop of luminous epoxy flowing through live-edge timber, illuminated by warm LED strips set within the cabinetry. It is the kind of one-off element that cannot be replicated, because it depends on a specific piece of wood, a specific pour, and a specific maker willing to spend weeks on a single counter.
Behind the visible finishes is the engineering that gives the residence its long durability. The building envelope features 2x6 framing, a continuous thermal break system, and open-cell spray foam insulation — approx. 5 in. in the walls, approx. 10.5 in. in the roof. Andersen 400 Series clad wood windows and Andersen A-Series 8 ft. doors. GAF Timberline Ultra HD shingles. James Hardie prefinished fiber cement siding. A brick watercourse on all four sides. Three-zone Lennox Elite Series heat pumps with ERV air exchangers and electronic filtration. Dual Rinnai tankless water heaters. Whole-house water filtration and softening. 400-amp electrical service with Generac generator readiness. Deako smart lighting throughout. These are the specifications of a builder constructing for the long horizon, not the resale.
The Blue Sky Barn
The Blue Sky Barn stands a short walk from the residence, and it is the structure that transforms the property from a fine modern farmhouse into something rarer.
Originally constructed in 1950 as a working dairy barn, the building's bones — heavy timber framing, soaring interior volumes, the patina of seven decades of honest agricultural use — were honored and restored rather than replaced. What emerges is a structure that carries the soul of the land while meeting every expectation of the modern entertainer. Across approx. 2,400 sq. ft. on two levels, the barn now offers a full bathroom, dedicated laundry, and a fully equipped bar on the main floor. The upper entertainment level rises into the original timber volume, with a dedicated stage at one end. Full water, sewer, and approx. 100-amp electrical service are in place, supporting any future build-out a new owner might pursue.
The functional implications are significant. The combination of a stage, a bar, a full bathroom, and dedicated laundry — all under a single restored roof, all separate from the residence — is the infrastructure that turns a property from a place that could host events into a place that already can. Whether the gatherings in question are intimate harvest dinners for thirty, wedding receptions for one hundred and fifty, live music sets, or quarterly private parties, the barn arrives ready. Few properties of this scale anywhere in the region offer purpose-built entertainment infrastructure of this caliber on a separate structure from the main residence.
The Grounds
The grounds were composed with the same intention as the architecture. Commercial-scale perennial gardens unfold across the property in seasonal succession from spring through autumn, a horticultural arrangement shaped to deliver waves of color and fragrance through the entire growing season. The pond — a working focal point and a mirror for the western sky — is positioned to capture the last light of evening with the Blue Ridge holding the horizon beyond. Approach paths, plantings, and view corridors were designed in concert.
The approx. 15.33 acre offering is divided across two parcels. The second parcel is vacant — a separate development envelope that adjoins the residence and gardens, and that provides considerable optionality for a future owner. A guest cottage. A second residence for multigenerational living. A small vineyard. A modest commercial structure. A future pool and pool house. The decision sits with the next steward.
Purcellville: Settled in 1764, Still Itself
Five minutes from the property gates, the Town of Purcellville begins. To understand Blue Sky Farm fully, it helps to understand the place that surrounds it.
Purcellville was settled in 1764, originally as a frontier crossroads in the western reaches of what was then a vast and largely Quaker-influenced agricultural county. The town took its present name in the early 1850s, and was formally incorporated as a Town in 1908. What is striking, more than two and a half centuries later, is how much of the original character remains — not as a museum piece, but as a working main street.
Main Street, also designated as State Route 7 Business, runs east-west through the heart of town. Within its few blocks sit the kind of independently owned restaurants, boutiques, bookshops, and coffee bars that have largely vanished from the rest of Northern Virginia. Magnolias at the Mill occupies a restored historic mill building and has anchored the upper end of the town's dining scene for two decades. Bia Kitchen serves a locally-grown European-inspired menu. Catoctin Creek Distilling Company, founded in Purcellville in 2009, was the first legal distillery in Loudoun County since before Prohibition; its Roundstone Rye has become a small-batch standard-bearer for the region.
The Town's farmers market gathers weekly through the warmer months. The annual tree lighting on Main Street draws families from across Western Loudoun. Independence Day brings the parade, the fireworks at Fireman's Field, and the kind of small-town pageantry that long ago disappeared from the Beltway suburbs. The W&OD Trail — the 45-mile paved path that follows the bed of the old Washington and Old Dominion Railroad from the Potomac to the foot of the Blue Ridge — terminates at Main Street in Purcellville, making the town the western anchor of one of the busiest rail-trail systems in the country. On any given Saturday morning, road cyclists ending a long ride from Arlington meet farm families coming in from the surrounding country, and the result is the cosmopolitan-rural hybrid that has come to define Purcellville's particular charm.
The schools serving the area sit within Loudoun County Public Schools, one of the most highly regarded public school systems in Virginia. Mountain View Elementary and Woodgrove High School both lie within a short drive of Blue Sky Farm. Loudoun Valley High School, also nearby, has a long tradition of academic and athletic distinction.
Western Loudoun: Wine Country, Hunt Country, Open Country
The Town of Purcellville sits at the eastern edge of what has become one of the most celebrated agricultural and recreational corridors in the Commonwealth. To understand Blue Sky Farm in its full setting, the lens must widen further.
Western Loudoun is the rural half of one of the wealthiest counties in the United States. While Eastern Loudoun has become known as the data-center capital of the world, with a substantial portion of global internet traffic passing through fiber lines beneath its industrial parks, Western Loudoun has gone in the opposite direction — toward open space, working farms, and a deepening agritourism economy. The dividing line is roughly Route 15. East of it: technology, suburbs, the Dulles corridor. West of it: a piedmont landscape of rolling pasture, wooded creek valleys, equestrian estates, and a constellation of small historic villages — Lincoln, Hamilton, Hillsboro, Round Hill, Bluemont, Lovettsville, Waterford. The western horizon is held, always, by the Blue Ridge.
The wine industry has become the most visible economic engine of this corridor. Loudoun County markets itself, accurately, as DC's Wine Country. With more than fifty wineries, Loudoun has the largest concentration of wine production in Virginia. Many of these are clustered within easy reach of Blue Sky Farm. Sunset Hills Vineyard sits on Furnace Mountain Road outside Purcellville, with rocking-chair tasting porches that catch the western light. Bluemont Vineyard, perched on a southeast-facing slope at 951 feet of elevation, offers what is widely considered the most expansive panoramic view in Northern Virginia wine country. 868 Estate Vineyards in Hillsboro is among the most decorated estates in the region. The Middleburg American Viticultural Area (AVA), formally recognized in 2012, encompasses much of the surrounding country and has helped to anchor the Western Loudoun wine corridor as a serious destination for serious wine drinkers.
The breweries and distilleries followed the wineries. Bear Chase Brewing Company sits at the foot of the Blue Ridge in Bluemont, with mountain views from a long timber-framed deck. Crooked Run Brewing operates locations in Sterling and downtown Leesburg. Catoctin Creek Distilling — already mentioned — completes the trifecta in downtown Purcellville. The Loudoun Wine Trail, the Loudoun Brew Trail, and the LoCo Ale Trail give visitors organized routes through what has become one of the most concentrated craft beverage corridors on the East Coast.
The equestrian heritage runs even deeper. Middleburg, fifteen minutes south of Blue Sky Farm, has been the unofficial capital of American foxhunting since the early twentieth century. The Middleburg Hunt, the Piedmont Fox Hounds, and the Orange County Hunt all maintain active territories in the surrounding country. The Salamander Resort — opened in 2013 by entrepreneur Sheila Johnson on land at the eastern edge of Middleburg — has brought five-star hospitality to a town that had previously been content with smaller country inns. The Upperville Colt and Horse Show, held annually in early June, is among the oldest horse shows in the United States.
Beyond wine and horses, the agritourism infrastructure is substantial and continues to grow. Visit Loudoun, the county's tourism authority, tracks more than 1.6 million annual visits to the rural west of the county, and supports the Loudoun Made Loudoun Grown program that markets locally produced food, beverages, and handcrafts under a unified brand. The Loudoun Farm Color Tour each October draws thousands of visitors through a self-guided route of farms, orchards, and pumpkin patches across the western half of the county. The Waterford Fair — held every October in the National Historic Landmark village of Waterford, fifteen minutes north of Blue Sky Farm — is one of the longest-running juried fine craft fairs in the East. The Lovettsville Oktoberfest, the Bluemont Fair, the Hamilton Day parade, the Round Hill Hometown Festival — these are not invented marketing events. They are community traditions that have been organized continuously, in many cases for generations.
The conservation ethic that has shaped Western Loudoun runs in parallel with all of this. A substantial portion of the open space in the western county is permanently protected through conservation easements held by organizations including the Land Trust of Virginia, the Piedmont Environmental Council, and the Virginia Outdoors Foundation. The result, for any property of any size in this corridor, is a setting where the surrounding open space is not contingent on the goodwill of neighboring landowners but legally permanent.
A Platform for What Comes Next
This is the section that most properties cannot honestly write. The "possible future uses" of a typical residential offering tend to be either obvious (one could live here) or aspirational (one could imagine a vineyard). At Blue Sky Farm, the future uses are credible because the infrastructure is already in place to support them, and because the surrounding county has the demand and the regulatory framework to absorb them. Each of the following has been weighed against what the Blue Sky Barn, the perennial gardens, and the vacant second parcel actually make possible.
A premier event venue. Loudoun County is one of the strongest wedding and event markets in the Mid-Atlantic, with several established venues — Stone Tower Winery, Whitehall Manor, 48 Fields, the Salamander, Goodstone Inn — drawing couples from Washington, Baltimore, and beyond. The Blue Sky Barn arrives with the architectural authenticity that contemporary couples are seeking, on a property whose Blue Ridge backdrop is the kind of setting that ends up on the back cover of every regional bridal magazine. Stage, full bar, full bathroom, dedicated laundry, and approx. 100-amp service are already in place. Weddings, corporate retreats, milestone celebrations, live music nights, harvest dinners, fundraising galas — the barn is configured to support a full calendar.
A boutique winery or vineyard. The Middleburg AVA designation, the established Loudoun wine market, and the suitable soils and microclimate of Western Loudoun together make a small estate winery on the vacant parcel a serious possibility for a future owner with that ambition. Virginia's Farm Winery zoning provisions allow extensive on-farm activities at properties that meet the production thresholds, including tastings, retail sales, weddings, and small-scale concerts. The Blue Sky Barn could double as a tasting room while vines mature on the second parcel. Fifteen acres is small for a commercial winery on a national scale, but it is well within the range of the boutique estates that have come to define the Loudoun wine scene.
A pick-your-own flower farm or wholesale cut-flower operation. The commercial-scale perennial beds are already installed and producing. The cut-flower market in metropolitan Washington — supplying event florists, restaurants, weekly subscription boxes, and the steadily growing direct-to-consumer flower market — is substantial and underserved. Established Virginia cut-flower farms including Wollam Gardens in Jeffersonton and Three Brothers Cut Flower Farm in Round Hill have demonstrated the model. Blue Sky Farm offers the unusual combination of beds already in production, a barn for processing and cooler installation, and immediate proximity to the Loudoun and DC retail markets.
An antiques and barn-sales destination. Western Loudoun has a deep antiques tradition. The Lucketts Spring and Fall Markets, held a short drive north of Blue Sky Farm, draw tens of thousands of visitors across two weekends each year and have helped to anchor an entire subsector of the regional retail economy. Hill High Marketplace operates as an organized destination for antiques, collectibles, and specialty foods on Route 9 outside Round Hill. The Blue Sky Barn could host quarterly or monthly barn sales, antiques shows, vintage markets, or a continuous retail operation with the architectural backdrop that draws shoppers willing to drive an hour or more for the experience.
A farm stand and agritourism experience. Crooked Run Orchard in Purcellville, Great Country Farms in Bluemont, Stoneybrook Farm Market in Hillsboro — the local models for a thriving farm stand are well established and consistently busy. The combination of the perennial gardens, the barn for retail space, the parking capacity of the property, and the year-round visitor traffic that Western Loudoun draws creates a strong foundation for a retail farm operation. A future owner might combine a u-pick flower season with a fall pumpkin and ornamental gourd operation, a Christmas tree pop-up, a holiday wreath workshop series, a maple syrup boil, or any other seasonal program that draws on the same core infrastructure.
A bed and breakfast or glamping retreat. The vacant second parcel could host a small guest cottage, a series of architecturally interesting cabins, or a more contemporary glamping installation — all while the main residence remains a private home. Loudoun's overnight tourism market continues to expand, anchored by the Salamander, the Goodstone, the Inn at Willow Grove, and a growing constellation of smaller properties. The barn, with its stage and bar, could serve as the gathering space for guests during their stays and as a private event venue for incoming wedding parties seeking on-site accommodation for their guests.
A second residence on the vacant parcel. For families thinking about multigenerational living, adult children, or aging parents, the second parcel allows the construction of a second home subject to standard county permitting. The arrangement preserves the privacy of the main residence while bringing extended family within walking distance.
These possibilities are not mutually exclusive. A future owner might run a small flower operation in the spring, host weddings and corporate retreats in the summer and fall, hold antiques and holiday markets in the colder months, and live full-time in the main residence throughout. The infrastructure of Blue Sky Farm — the barn, the gardens, the second parcel, the proximity to one of Virginia's most active visitor corridors — was assembled, intentionally or not, to support exactly this kind of layered use.
The Setting
The address is 37370 Allder School Road. The road takes its name from the Allder School, a one-room schoolhouse that served the surrounding farm families in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The schoolhouse is gone, but the road preserves the memory, in the way that the country lanes of Western Loudoun tend to preserve the memory of the families and institutions that shaped them. Hamilton Station Road. Loyalty Road. Howsers Branch Drive. Mountville Road. The names are a kind of oral history of the place, persisting long after the original referents have changed.
Blue Sky Farm sits on this road five minutes from downtown Purcellville, fifteen minutes from Middleburg, twenty minutes from downtown Leesburg, and just over an hour from the heart of Washington, D.C. when traffic cooperates. Dulles International Airport is approximately forty-five minutes east. The W&OD Trail, the wineries, the equestrian estates, the village of Waterford, the restaurants and farmers markets and live music venues of Main Street Purcellville — all are within short range. And the Blue Ridge holds the western horizon from every principal room of the residence.
Properties of this provenance, scale, and possibility are not repeated. Blue Sky Farm is offered to the market for the first time, presented by Colleen Gustavson Brownell and Eryn Appell of The Local Group at Hunt Country Sotheby's International Realty — both Loudoun County natives, with combined roots in this country measured in generations rather than years. Colleen has spent nearly two decades selling Loudoun real estate, with a particular focus on large-acreage properties and conservation buyers. Eryn was raised in Purcellville. Tours of the residence, the Blue Sky Barn, and the grounds are arranged by appointment.
Blue Sky Farm is offered at $3,500,000. To arrange a tour, contact Colleen Gustavson Brownell at (703) 296-2347 or colleen@huntcountrysir.com, or visit blueskyfarmloudoun.com.
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