The story below is a preview from our September/October 2024 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
An Eagle Rock home blends Native American heritage with reclaimed materials, creating a serene retreat that harmonizes with nature and honors tradition.
Taylor Reschka
Rustic decorative elements and stunning mountain views abound in this home.
A Native American proverb warns us of this: Man’s heart grows hard when it’s away from nature. The owners of a special home in Eagle Rock have ensured their hearts will never harden. Barb and Dick Woodard have furnished a recreational home that brings the outside in and honors Barb’s Native American ancestry.
As a Monacan Native American, Barb’s ancestors are indigenous to the United States. Her great-grandfather was Cherokee. He was welcomed by the Monacan Tribe in Virginia, which gave sanctuary to the Cherokee, in the 1800s. Barb’s great-grandfather then married her great-grandmother, whose ancestry traces back hundreds of years in Virginia.
Taylor Reschka
This family history is ever present with Barb because she grew up on the land that their home overlooks. The Woodards live on the south end of a 350-acre farm known as the “Old McNamara” farm. The recreational home they have recently completed sits on the north end of the same property. The land in between the north and south end contains the Eagle Rock Limestone Quarry and the reservoir that once provided water for the town.
As a child, Barb canned tomatoes for sale with her grandfather, who owned a 75-acre Y-shaped farm visible from their kitchen window. While the elementary school she actually attended has been torn down and since rebuilt, they can see where her original elementary school was. The CSX railroad train she heard clank along its tracks still snakes around the mountains.
Taylor Reschka
Barb’s French bulldog, Ivy, is both charming and photogenic. She runs through the dog trot and the rest of the home while waiting for a head scratch.
Barb also looks out on the land where her father taught her to hunt and to interact with the earth mindfully. Thanks to his influence, she “would rather sit in a tree stand than anywhere else” because what she observes there has a meditative quality. Barb says, “Hunting is seeing things that other people don’t see, and hearing things that nobody else will ever hear.”
The quiet mystery of gazing out of a tree stand has found its parallel in this home. It’s a sort of enlarged tree stand where Barb and Dick see things others don’t see, and hear things nobody else will ever hear.
On cool, overcast days, fog rises up parallel to the house and floats downstream in the same direction as the James River. When raindrops hit the tin roof, the rhythm relaxes visitors like a soft Native American drumbeat. And if the sun peeks out after the rain, Barb and Dick actually enjoy a view from on top of the rainbow while sitting on their porch. At 1,500 feet, they enjoy a downward-facing view of the rainbow and the town below.
Even people accustomed to extraordinary views agree. This home was featured on Season 12, Episode 4 of the show Barnwood Builders and will appear again in the summer or fall of 2024. The host of the show, Mark Bowe, describes their view as “one of the prettiest he’s seen.”
So how did Barb and Dick end up on Barnwood Builders?
While watching the show one evening, they realized they could accommodate the Native American philosophy of utilizing what the earth provides and build the recreational home they desired by using a reclaimed home frame. Barb mused, “I just wonder if we could have a home like one of the homes on that show.”
Dick was hesitant because he thought their recreational home would be “small potatoes” and not worth the host, Mark Bowe’s time.
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Taylor Reschka
The kitchen island is a mechanic’s workbench from an auto repair shop in Lynchburg.
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Taylor Reschka
The light fixtures above the sink were already in the cabin. The Woodards purchased wrought iron plumbing supplies from an old junk shop for the contractor to install around the fixtures.
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Taylor Reschka
Barb bought this kitchen light fixture, known as a “vintage chicken feeder chandelier,” from a Canadian on Etsy.
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Taylor Reschka
Summer months of this view include meteor showers and plenty of stars.
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Taylor Reschka
The barn door is from the Woodards’ barn on their main property. They bought hardware from Restoration Hardware to turn it into a sliding barn door.
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Taylor Reschka
While almost everything in the home is repurposed, the Woodards opted to purchase a new shower and new carpets from Wayfair.
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Taylor Reschka
The charcuterie chopping board hanging between the two kitchen windows was handmade and hand painted by a neighbor.
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Taylor Reschka
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Taylor Reschka
Fortunately, Barb followed her instincts and bought a historical dogtrot cabin from Barnwood Builders. A dogtrot cabin is two cabins, one used for cooking and the other used as a living space such as a bedroom. These are joined by a breezeway or “dogtrot”- a space that was designed to permit airflow to cool the home off in the hot American south during pioneer times. The cabin was built in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1857 and is primarily cedar.
Want to read more about what makes this gorgeous Eagle Rock home so special? Check out the latest issue, now on newsstands, or see it for free in our digital guide linked below!
The story above is a preview from our September/October 2024 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!