About the Farm
Blue Mountain Farm is near Hedgesville, in central Berkeley County at the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley. It covers 11 acres, eight of them with deep, rich loam along a meandering creek flowing to the Potomac River a few miles away. The rest of the land consists of steep, rocky slopes.
The farm was founded in 1814 when Peter Speck moved from southeastern Pennsylvania and purchased about 200 acres of meadows and woods that included a large, pristine spring. Near the top of a ridge he built a log cabin, taking time to square up its rough timber walls and beams with a hand-held adze. He cleared enough ground to grow subsistence crops and fruit trees, and dug a shallow well so he didn’t have to walk to the big spring several hundred feet away down a steep hill. Once settled, he cut and chiseled stone from his fields to build a two-story house with five ornate fireplaces and a central staircase, features that would eventually put the home on the National Register of Historic Places.
He and his descendants called the farm home for the next 186 years, producing field crops, livestock and apples and pears for themselves and their neighbors. They constructed a three-seat outhouse in the backyard, apparently to provide users with the opportunity for companionship on cold, dark nights.
The Specks welcomed the coming of the B&O Railroad in the early 1840s, selling a strip across their land for a track right-of-way. They insisted, however, that the railroad move rather than demolish a large wood-framed house they had just constructed nearby for a family member. The railroad agreed, and using horses and mules moved the structure to a site a quarter-mile away. The house still stands.
Like others living in the area, the Specks endured “visits” – sometimes raids -- by Union and Confederate troops during the Civil War. They saw their address change in 1863 from Hedgesville, Virginia to Hedgesville, West Virginia.
The farm went through several changes in the following decades as a dairy and an orchard. But after almost two centuries of stewardship, the last generation of Speck descendants began selling off parts of the farm when the final family patriarch, Benjamin, died in the mid-1990s.
Dave Elliott and Sue DeVall bought the original homestead and surrounding acreage in the summer of 2000 and began working to restore and maintain its farming tradition. They’ve been updating the house with modern utilities, but still rely on a wood stove to keep it warm in winter.
