By Tonia Moxley
The Roanoke (Va.) Times
March 01, 2009
Summary: Alec and Sarah Bradford join a growing list of small family farms across the New River Valley that use environmentally conscious practices to raise their livestock.
ALLEGHANY SPRING — Alec Bradford stood in muddy boots on a recent Thursday morning, huddling against a cutting winter wind as he [...]

By Tonia Moxley
The Roanoke (Va.) Times
Jan. 16, 2009
Summary: The issue over the First & Main shopping center is linked to a larger question about changes in local land-use rules.
RICHMOND — Three years of contentious public debate and legal wrangling about Blacksburg’s First & Main shopping center and a proposed big-box store widely thought to be [...]

By Tonia Moxley
The Roanoke (Va.) Times
Jan. 10, 2009
Summary: Shooting Creek Farm Brewery will not open a tasting room to appease concerns about traffic.
There will be beer.
A compromise struck between the owners of Shooting Creek Farm Brewery and neighbors opposed to its licensing has finally opened the taps for Floyd County’s first commercial microbrewing operation.
If all [...]

By Tonia Moxley
The Roanoke (Va.) Times
Jan. 1, 2009
Summary: Bull & Bones Brewhaus and Grill officially opens today amid fanfare for the $1.8 million business
BLACKSBURG — Today the keen anticipation of microbrew fanatics will end when Bull & Bones Brewhaus and Grill opens for its first lunch service at 11 a.m., several hours before the Virginia [...]

By Tonia Moxley
The Roanoke Times
Oct. 10, 2008
Note: View a .pdf version of this story.
WAKE FOREST — Esther Jones’s family history was all but hewn from the rugged coal faces deep inside Brush Mountain.
Born into a mining family in Wake Forest in 1920 and married for 43 years to a coal mine operator, Jones is sought [...]