“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” – Greek Proverb
“The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese Proverb
Category Archives: Family
Greta
Her name is Berretta of the Autumnfire, but we call her Greta. Continue reading
Longleaf Pines: Conservation Reserve Program (CRP)
As we have added to the acreage on our timber farm, two of the parcels included some established cropland. When purchased, the cropland was tended by local farmers and plantings rotated based on market conditions. Two of the typical crops were cotton and tobacco. The former requires quite a bit of chemical augmentation and with the latter we had ethical/moral concerns. Neither really fit with our overall goals to improve habitat for all wildlife. This left us with some decisions about the best management for these areas. We actively sought out other options and eventually learned about the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP).
Beaver Blanket
On an earlier post, I discussed the need to manage beavers on our timber farm. While the beaver furs have little market value these days, they are still really nice furs. I think they are worth the effort to process. It is hard for me to totally waste such a beautiful animal. They need managing but they deserve respect. In this post I will describe how these animals were recycled into a beautiful blanket that has provided some toasty evenings on the couch watching TV. Continue reading
Buildings & Equipment
Interestingly, before we even purchased our parcel of land, we had already purchased our first piece of equipment. I blame this at least in part on our dear friends who were visiting us from Scotland, Ruaraidh & Marion. While they were here, Ruaraidh (pronounced like “roary”,with a Scottish lilt), was interested in seeing some of the outdoor sport stores.
This led us by some all terrain vehicles (ATVs). Ruaraidh astutely pointed out that I could not possibly do without one of them! We were in Orlando. I happened to have a drawbar and hitchball in my vehicle. We got a great deal. I became the proud owner of a blue Polaris 550 4×4 ATV. Fortunately my wife tolerates this sort of shenanigans. Continue reading
Family
I am going to switch gears a bit with this post. While it is no doubt obvious that a lot of personal benefits are received by Jeanette and me with our farm ownership, the main goal of land ownership was to offer a recreational oasis for our family and friends. 
Quite frankly, this has gotten off to a bit of a slow start. Our family is quite dispersed with the closest of our kids living about 2.5 hrs away and the most distant living a two days drive away; yes, our Fayetteville son Chris, his wife Clara, and their 3 sons moved recently to St. Louis :(. We have had some meaningful experiences however, and we continue to have the belief that “if we build it, they will come”. Continue reading
Hunting
If you remember back to the beginning of this blog, you remember that the lead introduction to land acquisition was my adventure into leasing hunting land. This post will highlight some of the early hunting related experiences associated with our new timber farm acreage. Since it is a discussion about hunting, there will be discussions and pictures of dead animals so proceed with caution! Continue reading
How it Began
How the heck did we become land owners in the first place?
Our son, Brad, and I had leased some hunting property in South Carolina south of his home in Charlotte. We both shot our first whitetail deer there and really enjoyed having the space to get away. There were however two main problems with this. First, it was not ours to manage; we had to use it pretty much as it was. Second, while it was relatively convenient for Brad (about 45-60 min drive), it was pretty inconvenient for me (3.5 hr drive). While the drive was fine for a fun, destination trip, it was too far for me to “pop in” for a quick recognizance visit. This planted the seed so to speak, for us to purchase some land of our own to manage as we wished for our enjoyment. My wife, Jeanette, and I started a search. We first looked at available properties between Fayetteville and Charlotte. We focused on areas within about a 1.5-2 hr drive from us. We found some promising acreages.