Moving 1,000 Miles to Home: My Retake Everything Story

Two years ago, before I had ever heard of Identity Dixie or their motto “Retake Everything,” I put into motion a dream I have had since I was a little boy.  I moved my family across Dixie to help my family manage some property that has been ours for about 100 years. Ever since, I have worked tirelessly to make this land more than just a large timber tract and transform it back to the farm my Dad had described to me from his youth; and thwart my uncles and their plans to develop our ancestral land. Here is the story of how I got to where I am today.

My Dad’s family first moved to this small city on the western edge of Dixie around 1910.  Within a decade, my great-grandfather was on the city council and the family had amassed over 1,000 acres a few miles outside of town.  My Dad’s generation grew up when Jim Crow still reigned and flourished here, they all went off to college and scattered to the winds. My Dad would eventually take a job for the Federal Government and move to the East Coast, where he would meet my Mom (a country girl who had moved to the big city from her small rural county in the Carolinas) and raised me in a bland eastern suburb. 

Ever since I was little, I have dreamed of farming.  I had always assumed this would be out of my reach, primarily due to high land prices on the East Coast, but that did not stop me from devouring anything on the subject I could get my hands on.  I always enjoyed coming here to visit my Dad’s mother and tramp around the family property, or when we’d visit my Mom’s predominantly rural family. However, I figured this would be nothing more than an idyllic day dream, so, I also went off to college and moved to the city.  I spent my 20s enjoying everything that city life had to offer, it was fun and exciting, but always felt empty and meaningless, especially since I had bought into the nihilism of my peers and wanting nothing more than to party and feel good, dreading the “F Word” (family) like the plague. 

One year, in my mid 20s, I was asked to move to a house about 20 minutes out of town, which some friends of mine were renting on 3 acres. They knew I had a passion for self sufficient living and thought I would be a good fit for the group. I learned to love the feeling of getting up early, working in the sunshine and the satisfaction of doing a hard day’s honest work.  Even though that living situation lasted only a year, due to interpersonal differences, I was hooked and could not wait to try my hand at it again.  

The other good thing to come from that year was that I started dating my wife.  While at first our relationship had its ups and downs, we both came to the conclusion that a life of hedonistic pleasure was not for us, even though when we started dating we were both adamant about never getting married, having kids, or settling down from our party-all-the-time lifestyle.  We had always talked about our plans for the future, but after we were engaged I told her how dissatisfied I had become with city-living and how I wanted to move back out to the country, like I had for that first year we were seeing each other. She seemed receptive, if nervous about my dreams, even after I took her on a road trip across the South to see this place and the potential it had. It remained a dream until one fateful day; the day we found out that we were expecting our first child. We both knew we didn’t want to raise kids in the city, we had known too many city kids growing up and, as adults, were almost entirely terrible people. We knew we wanted a safer and more wholesome life that this small city in a rural county could provide, that we could never afford back East.

We talked to my Dad and he talked to his brothers about us moving down and, luckily, they were all receptive to the idea.  They knew the place had not been well cared for in the last decade, and how much it would benefit the family to have a watchman living on the place and checking up on it.  They had talked since before I was born about selling off most or all of the land to a developer, an idea I have always hated, and I knew that this was my opportunity to try to thwart that.  Since we moved down here, we have been rehabbing the small hay field, mending and replacing fences, putting livestock and poultry on the land for the first time in 15 years and have a decent sized kitchen garden.  We have started attending a church for the first time since our youth, trying to make new friends and reconnect with the old families that have been close with my own, and attend as many of the local events as we have time for.  I have been working full-time, and while I have not accomplished as much as I would like, it’s worlds apart from what it looked like two years ago.  

Now that we have two years under our belt, we are about to approach the next phase of the plan and the scariest, for it potentially holds not only my family’s future but also that of the farm as a whole; if successful, I can hopefully deter my uncles’ developmental ambitions.  I’m working on quitting my job and dedicating myself full-time to our burgeoning enterprise and expanding it to a level that can support us both financially, as well as, nutritionally.

Wish us luck and pray for us, if we can “Retake the Family Farm” from developers, then surely we will be a small step closer to Retaking Dixie for ourselves and our posterity.  I hope this inspires you, dear reader, to find your own way, however small, to be the change you want to see, shape the future for yourself and your community and Retake Everything.

-By Ed