John Shearer: Finally Saying Goodbye To The Farm

On Thursday, I finally said goodbye to the last remaining piece of the scenic former Mountain Creek farm that my parents, Dr. and Mrs. Wayne Shearer, had first purchased in the early 1960s.
 
The end came when I sold my roughly half-acre lot at 770 Shearer Cove Road in what is now the mostly developed Horse Creek Farms, Phase 2.
 
It was not necessarily what I envisioned happening about 20 years ago when I dreamed of the farm being preserved in some way like the Greenway Farm in Hixson or Reflection Riding below Lookout Mountain. But the closing at the Cumberland Title Co. still seemed to have a happy, not sad, feel for me.
 
Back in 2004, I had written in chattanoogan.com about my parents selling the farm to developer Neal “Bud” Bennett after four decades of ownership, and I wrote the article with a lot of sentimentality. But the first-person column did provide me with some closure after I had tried to get the city or someone to buy it and had also become involved with a group wanting a Mountain Creek greenway.
 
But I did not say a complete goodbye to the farm at that time, as my father had stipulated that three choice lots would be given to family members as part of the sale. My sister, Cathy Morris, decided to sell her lot not long after we acquired them, and my parents sold theirs a year or two later after briefly considering building over there.
 
Due to my strong attachment to the farm – which featured beautiful rolling pastures, breathtaking views of Signal Mountain, and a pretty spring down near the creek -- I decided to hold on to my lot, although I was not sure what I planned to do with it.
 
I was living in Knoxville, so I had no plans to build on it in the immediate future. 
 
For the first three or four years I owned it, it was fun to stop by periodically and walk over it or clean off some of the high grass or brush every fall. Although most of a giant hill where daffodils and a long-gone old farmhouse had stood had been leveled to make the lot suitable for building, the back third of the small acreage that backed up to the woods at the foot of Godsey Ridge had not been changed at all.
 
As a result, I briefly felt like I was still at the unspoiled farm in a small way when I would visit. And such wildflowers as trillium plants and May apples would appear every spring, as would daffodils at various place on the lot, due no doubt to the bulldozers that had moved the bulbs around. The latter scene was almost like a natural act of defiance.
 
But then houses began to surround the lot, even after a slowdown of a year or two after the Great Recession that began in 2008, and I no longer felt that private when I would walk around the back part of the lot and into the front part of the hilly woods.
 
And during the last three or four years, after the subdivision had been mostly built up, I would occasionally get a form letter from the city of Chattanooga saying that the lot was overgrown with grass and I needed to mow it to avoid being cited to court.
 
Still in Knoxville, I had to scramble to figure out a way to get it mowed. And I was beginning to think I needed to do something with the lot, even though I still loved walking to the back of it and poking my head into the woods and looking at the giant oak tree on the property at its elevated spot.
 
Always the idealist, I had also imagined having it as an entrance and picnic area and trailhead for a small trail traversing the side of Godsey Ridge. That way my dream of a greenway for the farm could have still come true.
 
Whether the neighbors would have bought into that plan, I don’t know.
 
As I documented in another recent story in chattanoogan.com, my wife, Laura, and I recently decided to relocate to Chattanooga. We began looking at houses here while also briefly considering building on the lot. We even met with a representative of a building company one day.
 
While seriously considering that, but also knowing it might stretch our budget to build there, we found a home in the Hixson area we liked a short time later and signed a contract to buy it.
 
As a result, I decided to sell my lot on the old farmland, and, at wife Laura’s encouragement, I decided to sell it myself. After a sign was put up there around April 1 and I posted the listing on a website, I began to get a few calls.
 
Some were from real estate agents wanting to sell the land for me, but I received some other interesting calls. One or two were from street-wise builders who wanted to offer me a little less than I was offering. One man even told me that my price sounded like trendy North Chattanooga prices when I told him the listing price.
 
But some of the callers had a genuineness and almost naïve manner about them when they inquired about the lot, and I no doubt probably sounded a little naïve, too, as a first-time seller of property. But after the first three or four calls, I began feeling comfortable talking with the callers and even enjoyed some of the conversations.
 
I also began to figure out by the tones of the voices and attitudes to whom I wanted to sell the lot, even though I would have taken the first offer that was close to my asking price. 
 
About that time – three or four weeks after I had put the lot on the market – I received a call from a nice-sounding young woman who complimented the lot. She also said she was interested in acquiring it, even after I believe I told her the price, and that another family member might call back.
 
The family member did and, after a little negotiating over several days, we decided on a price just slightly below my original asking price. 
 
I then ventured into further unknown territory by trying to figure out how to put together a sales contract with the help of the Internet. I finally did and we closed on the property on Thursday morning.
 
I was happy to see how excited the family seemed to be about purchasing it. 
 
Although I had not been able to visit the lot much this spring due to my busy schedule while still in Knoxville and getting ready to move, I did want to say goodbye to it one last time. 
 
So on Wednesday afternoon, Laura and I went over there with my father, walked a few feet into the lot full of high grass before a Thursday morning mowing, and took a few pictures for posterity.
 
I had actually envisioned having one last picnic over there on the unchanged back part of the lot shortly after the grass had been mowed, but that did not materialize. 
 
But maybe that was appropriate that the land did not get mowed, as my wife said it looked like a nice meadow and actually did not need mowing – even if the city of Chattanooga might have had another idea if they had driven by it that day.
 
And maybe the high grass with a few blooming early summer wildflowers did help me visualize the old farm better. I could once again in my mind clearly see the row of daffodils on top of the hill, the cows grazing idly nearby, the beautiful leaning old gray barn to the left, the old crabapple tree that provided some jelly, and the beautiful spring with only fields, trees and limestone rocks around it.
 
I am sure the new owners of my lot and those who have built in the subdivision would say there is plenty of beauty still there – from Signal Mountain enjoyed from amphitheatre-like views, to the creek at the bottom of the development, to Godsey Ridge at the top. 
 
For what is still there and for what was once there, I am grateful.
 
Jcshearer2@comcast.net