Stonyman Gourmet Farmer is a family farm business specializing in premium farmstead cheese. Its 18th century farm is located on the Valley side of Stonyman Mountain in Virginia’s legendary Blue Ridge, site of Shenandoah National Park and the easternmost rampart of the Appalachian Range.
Stonyman’s farm store operates in an early mercantile and garden in “Little” Washington on the Piedmont side of the Blue Ridge. The mercantile provides an ideal setting for elegant country entertaining. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation notes it is “without hyperbole, one of the most intact early stores in the broader Chesapeake region of Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina. It contains more original elements, inside and out, than any other known early Virginia store.”
Proprietor Susan James's family has farmed in Virginia since 1725 and she spent much of her childhood at family farms throughout the Old Dominion. Having also lived on a farm in rural Montgomery County, Maryland for a few years, Susan maintains the tie to this day: Stonyman Gourmet Farmer is active in Elm Street and Kensington farm markets and occupies permanent retail space in the Montgomery Farm Women’s Cooperative Market on Wisconsin Avenue in the heart of downtown Bethesda.
Susan operates the business with co-proprietor and husband, Alan James. Between them, they lived in France for more than twenty-five years and bring the appreciation of fine cuisine and farmstead cheeses they acquired there to Stonyman Gourmet Farmer's selection of fine food.
