ATLANTA—The Trust for Public Land just saved one of the last farms near Atlanta from development. On June 6, TPL celebrated buying ninety five acres of farmland to be preserved for the public. Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss called the farm "a true Georgia treasure." J.C. Hyde worked the northwest Cobb County land where he grew up, using his mule, Nell, to plow the soil. His family bought the land in 1920 from the Power family, who had settled there in the early nineteenth century.
Hyde did not want the land to be scraped clear of trees and turned into subdivisions and shopping malls, like so many of the farms, meadows and woods around fast-growing Atlanta. When he was an old man, he began to talk with the Trust for Public Land, a private non profit which buys land in order to protect it. TPL buys threatened parcels and arranges for them to be made into parks.
TPL bought forty of his acres in 1992. The land lay along the Chattahoochee River. Hyde and TPL agreed that he could farm the river land as long as he lived. After his death, TPL would have the right to buy the rest.
His heirs did not agree at first. After he died in 2004, they sued. After four years and mediation, they sold the property to TPL for over $14,000,000.
"We are delighted that with our partners, the Hyde family, we'll be able to provide a place to learn, a place to visit, a tranquil place to recreate," said Debra Edelson of the Atlanta office of The Trust for Public Land. Cobb County plans to create an educational, working farm, a place school children can visit to see how people lived in Georgia's agrarian past.
But it won't open to the public until 2009. First, the buildings must be restored. They fell into disrepair in the past four years. Then it will be necessary to make things comfortable and safe for groups, while still keeping everything intact and historically accurate, she said. They will probably have mules, in honor of Nell, who has retired to a secluded location in West Cobb.
The land itself is in good shape, as fertile and lush as ever. Edelson has seen a giant Osage Orange tree with it's hard, wrinkly fruit, pecan trees, muscadine grape vines, apple trees and "all the crops." Hyde invited a "tenant" farmer to grow crops there, and the man is still doing it. He goes there every day and grows okra, watermelon, peas, corn, "all kinds of stuff," said Edelson. "He just does it for the love of the land." He eats what he grows, and maybe sells the rest. He and J.C. Hyde had kept hogs and chickens, and the animals may come back when Cobb County develops the working farm historic park.
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