Not For Sale

One of my grandfather’s final requests over 22 years ago was: “Never, ever sell the farm in Naylor.”

Shady Grove Farm outside of Naylor, Georgia in Lanier County has been in my family for more than 200 years. That’s an impressive amount of time considering we live in the days of money-driven land auctions which can shatter a farm in a single day. As family trees grow, more heirs to the farms are born, and so the lands are split and usually sold off over time. That’s inevitable in most cases. What is very discouraging is that so many heirs to the land care nothing about it. They don’t value our God-given rights one bit. That scares me.

It has been said that you cannot control your land from the grave, and that is true, but what you can do is pass on the values and beliefs of land ownership to your kids and grandkids. Instill in them the importance of keeping the farm, continuing to preserve the amazing rights that we have as American sportsmen and women. We have enemies out there ready to strike and rip those hard-fought rights from us, to strip us of who we are at the core.

When I say “hard-fought,” I don’t use those words lightly. As the grandson of two WWII combat veterans, I understand, to a degree, the sacrifices that were made, especially for people like us in the GON community who value the freedoms that we know are not free.

As I get older, I think about the power of my grandfather’s words to me when he told me that the farm was never for sale. There did not need to be any legally binding documentation. Respect for my grandfather and having the core values instilled in me are more than enough to keep this admiring boy honoring my grandfather’s dying wish. How could I let my hero down?

My family has been contacted more times than we can remember by potential buyers willing to throw money in our pockets in exchange for that hallowed ground. And for my family, it is hallowed. I come from a strong line of Christians who knew to give thanks to God Almighty and our Savior Jesus Christ. They saw the dirt of Shady Grove as a blessing from God. It got them through tougher times than most of us will ever know. My grandfather was born on that land, in a house built by my great-great grandfather in the 1800s. There was a small, single-room schoolhouse on that farm. There were tenant houses scattered throughout to form a tiny community. There were mule barns, pack barns, tobacco barns. There were peanuts, cotton and turpentine. There were cows and chickens. And… there was hunting and fishing.

All that remains manmade is a concrete cross that barely legibly reads: G. F. Carter Shady Grove Farm. I know what was there though, and I know what that land means to my family and what it still has to offer.

I can hear my grandfather now: “Son, you can always go back to the land.” What he meant was that I can survive off that land, no matter what happens to our economy. That is sound advice from someone who survived the Great Depression, and it’s some mighty good insurance if you ask me.

By the way, it doesn’t have to be a century-old family farm either. It might be a 3-acre plot with one deer stand on it. It could be any place that we are free to hunt and fish and do what we love as outdoorsmen and women. If you are blessed enough to own a parcel of God’s green earth, you may want to think twice about selling it.

But just owning the land isn’t enough. You have to know how to use it. We, the people of GON, know more than we think about survival. We know more than we think about how to live well. Do not let it die with us. There are new generations depending on our teachings. Kids now rely on artificial intelligence to help them function every day. What would happen if technology malfunctioned? What would happen if enemies of the United States shut down our power, our communications, our technology core? I pray that never happens, but it is better to be prepared.

I can only hope to have as much of an impact on my kids and grandkids as my grandfather when I say: “Never, ever sell the farm in Naylor.”