Originally published in the Sept. 4, 2013, issue
By Dallas Duncan
In 2008, Suzy Brown of Lawrenceville,
Ga., became a farm owner after going through the farmland for sale ads in the Market Bulletin.
Brown bought her farm with plans to move
their when she retired. Her father, a builder, once told her “they’re not
making any more land.”
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Suzy Brown purchased her Elberton, Ga., farm from a 2008
Market Bulletin farmland edition. Photo courtesy Suzy Brown |
“After living in a subdivision on a
little quarter-acre lot where you can hear your neighbor having a conversation
next door, I said I need a little more land,” Brown said. “When I first started
looking at property, I thought, well, maybe four or five acres is good. I found
some in the Bulletin and went and
looked at it. … The more I looked I realized what I needed.”
The farm she purchased in Elberton, Ga.,
is about 15 acres with a natural spring and creek. Five acres are hardwoods and
the rest is open pasture. It came already fenced and cross-fenced and even had
livestock handling equipment on the premises. That was a great boon for Brown,
who has Black Angus and two donkeys on the property.
“We have three heifers. We’ve gone
through a couple of cows and have sold them off to market and started fresh
with three heifers,” she said. “They’ve had a bull visiting them for about a
month so hopefully they’re pregnant.”
In addition to the small cattle
operation, Brown and her family visit the farm twice a week and stay in their
camper. They’re cultivating the bottom pasture into a garden, which the
previous owners had as well.
Though her parents were raised on a
farm, it took Brown until her adult life to realize that’s what she wanted to
live on.
“They grew up on the farm, left and went
to the city and never looked back,” she said. “I think as a child I always had
a little garden, and it was nice to be able to go out and pick some lettuce and
cucumbers and make a salad. That always stuck with me that I liked doing that.”
Whereas Brown bought her farmland as a
place to retire too, Donald Shelnutt of Stockbridge, Ga., inherited his
father’s retirement farm – purchased out of the Market Bulletin in the 1980s.
When the Shelnutts bought the farm in
Gay, Ga., it had soybeans on it, so it really couldn’t be used for the first
six months, he said. Then they raised cattle on it and today, it’s been
converted into a pine tree farm: a place the generations of Shelnutts can take
their children to enjoy.
“[My daddy] had always wanted to plant
pine trees on it,” Shelnutt said. “The pine trees are 12 years old. … The kids
today don’t have any places to hunt or fish unless it’s provided by the state,
so we keep ours and the kids go down. We’ve got a little cabin on it and the
kids and grandkids, we do a big grill-out once a year and we hunt on it.”
Shelnutt said the ultimate plan for his
family farmland is to keep it in the family.
“They’re getting pretty close to making
the first cutting. Then after that, we’re going to look at raking the pine
straw and you figure it’ll be 12 more years, but they’re going to replant it in
pine trees,” he said.
Of the 40 acres, 30 are in pine trees.
The remainder includes hardwoods and a stream. The barn on the property has
since been turned into a hunting cabin, and Shelnutt said his family and
neighbors go down to the farm on the weekends or just for day trips to ride
four-wheelers, hunt and grill lunch. The Shelnutts’ land is involved in a land
management program, and the family received donations from the National Wild
Turkey Federation to establish spring and fall plantings for food plots as well
as oak trees.
Brown sees her farm’s future as a
self-sustaining one, with a garden that includes her blueberry and strawberry
plants, the beef cattle and chickens. She keeps track of her farm’s value by
comparing it to prices and acreage for sale in nearby areas in the Market Bulletin, just in case she wants
to add on a few more acres.
“I found the whole process [of buying
through a Market Bulletin listing] very
easy and comfortable, and even to this day when the land edition comes out I
look through it,” Brown said. “I think that a lot of people are reluctant to
use realtors, and just dealing with individuals and a handshake is a much
simpler process than going through and paying commission.”
