Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Georgians Return to Roots with Farmland Edition

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.”
 
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.”

No comments:

Post a Comment