Belle Grove bringing life back to barn.  Belle Grove Plantation's 100-year old bank barn will receive $1.1 million-plus renovation made possible through a $1.1 million gift from the Shoemaker Family Charitable Trust.  Winchester-based KEE construction Services will begin work on the barn soon with an anticipated completion date of Spring 2019.  The renovation will preserve the building's structure while creating space for a gift shop, exhibits and other visitor amenities on the first floor, including a ticket desk and media room.  The upper level will be used for seasonal events such as weddings.  Kristen Laise, Belle Grove executive director, said moving the visitor center and gift shop to the barn will open up space in the historic manor house for exhibits.  The renovated structure will be named the Beverley B. Shoemaker Barn Welcome Center.  (For more information see The Winchester Star article for Tuesday, May, 2018.)  

West Oaks Farm Market Grows With Large Addition.  A 20,000 square foot event center will open soon at the West Oaks Farm Market at 1107 Cedar Creek Grade.  This facility will have a banquet room for weddings, business meetings, birthday parties, showers, reunions and events hosted by the market.  It also will include a catering kitchen for hired catering services to use.  Later this year, a small, counter-service restaurant will open at the farm market.  It will have a full commercial kitchen and serve deli-style food.  (For more information see The Winchester Star article, May 11, 2018.)  

Release of Trout Raised in Classroom.   Redbud Run in Frederick County received a healthy infusion of fish from some young conservationists on Friday.  Students throughout the county school system participated this year in the Trout in the Classroom program offered by the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.  The students fed them every morning so that they became part of the students' lives.  This wonderful environmental program allows physical education departments to raise brook trout from eggs to "fingerlings," before releasing them into local waterways.  There are two huge springs which produce a lot of cold water.  Because of those springs, cold water flows to Opequon Creek from Redbud Run all year long.  A naturally reproducing population of rainbow trout has been there for 50 years.  Brook trout are native to Virginia and could once be found in virtually all the commonwealth's cold babbling waters, but environmental stress from agriculture and development have decimated their populations and relegated their existence in the wild to a few protected streams.  (This article taken from The Winchester Star dated May 12, 2018.)