Leaving a Legacy a Century Later

My husband, Byron, is the guest author for today's blog post.  He's been looking forward to writing this one for awhile.

Recently I came across a marriage license from 1878 that I had made a copy of at the courthouse.  The groom was 27, his bride just 18.  On December 30, 1911, the man, a farmer, bought a 54-acre piece of land a couple of miles from his farm for $250.  Less than two years later, the man sold the land to one of his sons – his sixth of nine children – for the same price.  The son was married the following year and the young couple cleared the land without the benefit of a tractor, establishing a farm on which they raised a diverse variety of crops and animals.  They reared two daughters and a foster son on the farm and would see three grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren born in their 70 years of marriage.  They loved their family and their farm; their family very much adored the hard-working couple and the home and land that epitomized the idyllic American homestead.

I’m proud to be the tenth of Grandma and Granddaddy Green’s great-grandchildren and equally honored to have had the opportunity to buy back a piece of my family’s heritage.  In the 20 months since Laura, Akea, Charlie, and I were fortunate enough to buy back into the family the heart of Grandma and Granddaddy Green’s farm, I have fallen more in love with this wonderful place every day.  It’s an incredible feeling to have the opportunity to live here and farm on land that was so special to Grandma and Granddaddy Green.  When you add our acreage to what my Dad and Aunt Dottie have kept in the family all of these years and are kind enough to allow us to use, nearly 32 acres of the original farm are presently family-owned.  While the house and acreage we purchased spent over 18 years out of the family, 26 acres of the original 54 have been in our family for exactly 100 years today!  To me, this is incredible!  I wonder how many families nowadays have had land in their family for a century?  We are so blessed to live here and to have the chance to be stewards of this wonderful place we call Green Legacy Farm.*

Byron with Grandma and Granddaddy Green during his very first visit to the farm. Could Grandma and Granddaddy Green have thought at the time that their great-grandson would one day live at the farm? This very special photo has a place of honor on our mantle.

*A while ago, we decided that Green Legacy Farm would be a more apropos name than Green Acres, though for the interim, Green Acres will remain the name of the blog.  We like the dual meaning in the new name, in that Byron's great-grandparents were the Greens, and that we are making every attempt to live as "green" as possible in our endeavors here.