May 15, 2024

The color of Greenfield? Green, of course. You drive into Greenfield thru a green-walled lane that opens onto green lawns dotted with colorful flower gardens. The environment—and the well-placed benches—induce calmness and invite meditation.

That’s why it was shocking to behold the recent construction chaos that turned the entranceway into a muddy, ditch-like miasma. Expect that to change, and soon. Just last week, work crews finished tamping down the newly contoured areas on each side of the driveway and planted grass.

With the newly planted grass covered with a protective layer of straw, the scene is still mostly brown. And way off to the left as you enter, there’s one area that looks like it’s been covered with cheap wall-to-wall carpet. The grass seed on that steep slope had to be embedded in fabric to prevent it from washing away in the rain.

In the coming days, the areas on either side of the entranceway will turn back into beautiful green lawn. And what looks like cheap carpet will thankfully disappear.

Paving Comes Next

The new guard-rails and curbs are now in place. However, work on the entranceway is not quite done. The first 30 to 40 feet of the entry lane still need to be paved. That’s to be done in two steps. Step One is scheduled for just a couple of weeks from now, weather permitting.

Final paving, however, will not be done until AFTER construction on the Greenfield Chapel is complete. There’s a really good reason to put off taking that final step: Building the chapel will entail a good deal of traffic up and down that lane. We anticipate regular delivery of building materials, work crews coming and going, not to mention all the heavy machinery needed to get the job done.

If you would like to contribute to the Greenfield Building Fund, go to the Donations page.

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May 7, 2024

It’s simple. You flip the switch, the lights come on.

But when you’re putting a brand new building on a brand new site, it takes a team doing a whole lot of work to make that happen. This past Friday, May 3, the soon-to-be-built Greenfield Chapel got the attention it needed to turn on the lights and the refrigerator and the air conditioning and… You get the picture. We’ve been electrified.

Workers put in underground conduits and cables. They installed a second transformer to the property just to handle the extra electric load that the new chapel will require. And as an added bonus, they took down one power pole close to the big house and moved unsightly overhead wires underground.

We’ve just moved one step closer to work starting on the chapel itself. The only thing holding that up is Warren County approval of an engineering report on how water drainage will be handled around the chapel site. That could happen within the next couple of weeks.

If you would like to contribute to the Greenfield Building Fund, go to the Donations page.

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May 1, 2024

If you’ve driven into Greenfield anytime in the past few weeks, you’ve encountered a beehive of activity. In place of the serene, green entryway, you carefully maneuver through an obstacle course—bulldozers, huge black pipes, piles of gravel, dump trucks full of dirt, not to mention a swarm of workers engaged in what seems to be a major project.

 

They’ve turned the once green lawn on either side of the entranceway into what for now looks like a big, unsightly ditch. And that is a beautiful thing to behold!

Beautiful? Yes! All this activity means that construction is finally underway on what will soon be the new Greenfield Chapel. Work has not yet begun on the building itself. Before that happens, work on the entranceway comes first.

 

At this point, you likely have a few basic questions:

What exactly is being done to change the entrance way?

Ultimately, visible changes to the entryway will be modest. Once complete, it will be a little easier to enter from the highway. Instead of that sharp, almost 90-degree turn, you’ll encounter a slightly wider driveway entry with a curb and guard rails.
The first 30 to 40 feel will be paved. Then you’ll find yourself back on the serene, green lined gravel lane, past the ponds and into the beautiful Greenfield grounds.

If the change is so modest, why is everything getting so torn up?

In a word: drainage. Work on the entrance looks complicated. And it is. The Virginia Dept. of Transportation regulations require that drainage and safety issues be addressed before anything else can happen. The depressed areas on either side of the driveway needed to be graded just so, requiring the delivery of multiple truck loads of shale. And all that needed to be graded into place according to engineers’ specifications. In addition, the culvert under the driveway needed to be enlarged to handle more water.

Greenfield’s entrance has served us well for for decades. Why now?

These changes were required in order to get the building permit from Warren County.

When will the work on the entranceway be completed?

The easy answer is: sometime in the next few weeks. It depends on things like the weather and availability of work crews and equipment. Both are involved in other building projects in the county.  The project has already taken a little longer than expected. Once the grading got underway workers discovered an underground spring. No surprise there, as Greenfield has many springs. However, this newly discovered spring required the installation of a French drain (a system to divert the spring water). And that added to both the cost and the time.

If you would like to contribute to the Greenfield Building Fund, go to the Donations page.

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