We Ain't Sellin'

Craig Valley Farm has been in the Smith family for 130 years.

By Marty Smith

CORNELIUS, NORTH CAROLINA -- Ease north down Catawba Boulevard in Cornelius, NC, past the sparkling new neighborhoods adorned with “from-the-mid-600s” signs and by the palatial lake marinas and the playgrounds made to look like toppled oaks, just between NC Route 73 and Interstate 77, and you’ll happen upon an obscure two-lane pass named Westmoreland Road.

This sly cut-through track is barely one mile long. But is well traveled. It provides a keen avenue for carpool parents all over the Lake Norman region to circumvent morning rush hour traffic.

It is certainly more authentic than the I-77 parking lot. Especially when you initially hang a right and head east. The corner of Catawba and Westmoreland is lost in time, two decades at least.

Just before a brief crest and a blast of morning sunlight, immediately to the left, stands proudly an old white farmhouse with three brick chimneys, a screened-in front porch and a barn out back. There are a couple of single-wide trailers and a new fence line that embraces a rolling field speckled with Angus cattle, 50 head at least, and three or four dogs.

The time-stoppage is brief. On one side of the farm is the road that leads out to the Interstate and out of here. On the other side are high-end condominiums so new they’re not yet open for purchase.

This farm fascinates me. It is an anomaly, tractors and hay bales and rusty old plows in a niche of pontoon boats and posh Beamers. I think about this often. I pass this farm five times a day as I drive my children to and from school and practice and dinner at the Davidson Soda Shop. Why is it still here?

This whole area – all farmland 10 years ago – is now ball fields and condos and grocery stores and full-blown sprawling suburban neighborhoods with pools and hot tubs and cul-de-sac’s packed with children.

So why hasn’t this guy sold out? Every time I pass it, I think of a Montgomery Gentry song, written by Robin Branda and Steve Fox called Daddy Won't Sell The Farm:

He worked and slaved in '68, he bought these fields and trees…

He raised his corn and a big red barn and a healthy family…

He learned to love the woodlands, he can't stand to do them harm...

There's concrete all around him, but Daddy won't sell the farm…

That’s it. Right there. It must be. It must be the fundamental pride within that farmer, evidenced by calloused hands and dirty fingernails, that this land is my land and I worked it and tilled it and nurtured it and fertilized it and it will stay mine, trends to the periphery be damned. I’m not concerned with what you want or covet. It’s like Steve Earle sang in The Rain Came Down:

            So don’t you come around here with your auctioneer man…

            ‘Cause you can have them machines…

            BUT YOU AIN’T TAKIN’ MY LAND…

I appreciate a man with staunch convictions, who knows what and who he is and isn’t apt to waver no matter what outside influences try to mold his clay. He sacrificed for it. Or his daddy did. Or his daddy’s daddy did.

You can’t monetize that passion. It is invaluable. It is rooted deeper than the deepest pockets.

I can relate. That’s my position right now. I own a farm that’s been in my family for four generations. It’s a massive responsibility and requires daily attention that’s hard to come by for a guy that lives at the racetrack four days a week and wrangles three kids on the other three days.

As a farmer you pour your money out and pray the water cycle brings it back around.

It may. It may not. And that dynamic makes me think of another song about the farmer’s plight: Amarillo Sky, written by Big Kenny and John Rich of Big 'n Rich fame, Rodney Clawson and Bart Pursley, and performed by Jason Aldean. It is one of the greatest songs of my lifetime.

He gets up before the dawn;

Packs a lunch and a thermos full of coffee.

It's another day in the dusty haze;

Those burnin' rays are wearin' down his body.

The diesels worth the price of gold;

It's the cheapest grain he's ever sold,

But he's still holdin' on.

He just takes the tractor another round,

And pulls the plow across the ground,

And sends up another prayer.

He says: "Lord, I never complain, I never ask: 'Why?'

"Please don't let my dreams run dry,

"Underneath, underneath this Amarillo Sky."

That hail storm back in '83,

Sure did take a toll on his family.

But he stayed strong and carried on,

Just like his Dad and Granddad did before him.

On his knees every night,

He prays: "Please let my crops and children grow,"

'Cause that's all he's ever known.

He just takes the tractor another round,

And pulls the plow across the ground,

And sends up another prayer.

He says: "Lord, I never complain, I never ask: 'Why?'

"Please don't let my dreams run dry,

"Underneath, underneath this Amarillo Sky."

The horrifying devastation in Oklahoma City following the tornado got me to thinking about farming. I think about farming every day, but my thoughts are centered on the grind, not the result.

The work, the passion, the dogged determination it takes to succeed as a farmer is back-breaking.

And to lose it all heartbreaking.