James Coman
Executive Director

I grew up on my parents’ farm near Hillsborough in peidmont North Carolina maintaining a flock of sheep, a small nursery liner business, and a Christmas tree plantation.  Through the 1960’s and early 1970’s I watched suburban sprawl overwhelm farms belonging to our neighbors one by one until the immediate vicinity of our farm was no longer suitable for the continued survival of a mixed livestock and horticultural crops operation, and my father had to make the heart-wrenching decision to subdivide the farm.  I know as a teenager that the destruction of the stable farm community for the short-term benefit of people who were essentially wealthy, rootless, transients was wrong, but I was unaware of any means by which a rural community could defend itself in the face of “progress”.

            In 1977 I was able to purchase an abandoned farm in an adjacent county in an area unaffected by sprawl.  This farm I brought back to a high state of cultivation by 1982, rebuilt the sheep flock to 130 ewes, and restored the 1770’s big house, known as Melrose, and outbuildings, resulting in its listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.  As a result of a life-threatening heat stroke in 1982, I began considering selling Melrose in order to move to a cooler climate and more congenial community.

            After several adventures and a great deal of research , Melrose was sold and I bought yet another abandoned farm, Stoney Knob Farm in Piney Creek in Alleghany County in 1985.  I have now poured fifteen years of back-breaking work into bringing Stoney Knob Farm into its current excellent state, and I see the same pressures of development, rapid escalation of land values, taxation, and unplanned, unchecked sprawl beginning in Alleghany County that forced the destruction of my parents’ farm in the ‘70’s.  Knowing the effort needed to produce and maintain good, productive agricultural land and economically viable farm units, I have truly visceral reaction to seeing a farm destroyed for short-term gain.

 

            I have come to truly believe that the land trust movement, and the mechanism of conservation easements, offers the best currently available means of allowing a landowner to protect his property, and to insure that his or her heirs will be able to hold onto the farm with the possibility of continuing agricultural production.   Thus, I intend to spend much of the rest of my life in an effort to conserve as much farmland as possible by this means.