Waking the Land--Part One

My family used to farm.  Up in the hills of north Georgia, my step-grandfather (who I never met) owned thousands of acres, a chicken farm, cattle.  After he died, it was bought up and portioned out bit by bit, starting way before I was born and continuing through my childhood and early adulthood.

I grew up wandering the pastures, reading books, searching for flint nodules, and riding dragons which disguised themselves cleverly as hay bales.  We didn't have much money, but we were rich in land and dirt and woods.  Our wealth faded through the years.

As time passed, my daddy and his sisters tried to get the farm going again.  They dreamed up truck farms and nurseries and countless other variations that remained just dreams that got trapped underneath the skin of their children.  Those suckers itched.

The land, what was left of it, slept.  It grew blackberries and field mint, it covered itself with privet and sheltered coyotes, and I think it dreamed, too.  It dreamed of hands and plows running over it, asking it to wake up and start all over again.  

We have decided, my brothers and sister and I, that it's time for it to wake up.

We have forty acres left to the family as a whole.  It is land covered with brambles and poison ivy and privet and johnson grass and possibly a few dragons lurking in the old farm dump.  BUT...underneath all that is good earth, waiting...

We're taking it slow.  We're making sure that we have the time and money for what we want to do.  We're gathering information, looking at land maps, researching agritourism, and scheduling work days.  We're making up a business plan to present to Daddy and his sisters, since they are the ones who actually own the land.  We are squashing down our individual egos (which, I have to tell you, are GIGANTIC) and trying to work together as a team because we understand that if we don't do it, everything will fall apart and the land won't ever wake up.  Which would suck.

A few weekends ago, we had our first work morning.  It wasn't anything crazy:  Heath and Daddy just sawed up a big red oak that had fallen over the path to the river while Kelly and I walked the land, discussing what needed to be done and what could be done where and how about a concert?  And a farm store?  And a story-telling garden?  AND WOULDN'T IT BE AWESOME???!!!???@!!!

Ahem.  Taking it slow...right.

We also spent a good bit of time hacking at and wrenching out the privet that lines the drainage ditch that runs down to the river, which is what we'll be doing this Saturday morning as well.  Privet is not a native plant and if given any mercy, will spread like plague, smothering other plants (except for poison ivy, apparently) and light and pretty much making itself the bane of my existence.

We haven't yet come up with a name for the new farm that is coming from the old farm, but I am starting to think that No Privet Farm sounds great.  "Welcome to No Privet Farm, where we take our plant destruction seriously." 

Anyway, from time to time, I'll be posting on INH about the farm until we get things a little more ironed out, at which time, the farm will get its own interwebby home.  Mkay?  Mkay.

For now, how about pictures of my daddy and brother cutting up a tree?

And a crab spider thingy?

And privet.

The beautiful, awful privet.