He travels the pastures in a pickup truck with a short-barreled rifle lying on the console. He wears a ridiculously sweat-stained Stetson Open Road, the same model his daddy (and LBJ) always wore, except Will trains his into a narrow-in-the-front, wide-in-the-back profile. But let’s not be too hard on the Times, because it’s difficult for any journalist who visits White Oak Pastures (including this one) to resist the lure of writing about Will Harris the character instead of about Will Harris’ farm.
One of Harris’ daughters had to tell him who Justin Bieber was, and when he was told, he didn’t much care. A recent story in The New York Times said, “If the Southern organic crowd were made up of teenage fan girls, he would be their Justin Bieber.” In the process of making the transition back to the old ways, Will Harris accidentally became something of a celebrity among foodies.
It is the only pasture-raised livestock farm in the nation with its own separate slaughterhouses for hooved animals and for poultry. White Oak Pastures has turned itself into one of the largest - if not the largest - pasture-raised livestock operation in the entire nation. The grasses and legumes that spring up from it feed great herds of cattle, hogs, goats, sheep, rabbits, chickens, ducks, guineas, geese and turkeys. It smells so good you almost want to eat it. Today, you can pick up a handful of earth from anywhere on Harris’ 1,250 acres and not see red. He stepped back two generations to the methods of his great-grandfather, to a way of farming that depends on the keen eyes of the cowboy traveling endlessly through the pastures, vigilant for small changes, determining when it’s time to move a herd from one pasture to another, to give the land a rest. He slowly began to exchange the methods of large agribusiness corporations for something different. Then, about 20 years ago, Will Harris turned back the clock. Under the direction of James’ grandson, Will Bell Harris, the current Will’s father, it became a modern cattle farm after World War II, when traditional methods of farming began giving way to industrial methods. Will Harris’ 1,250-acre White Oak Pastures has been in his family since 1866, when his great-grandfather, James Everett Harris, came to Bluffton. After decades of being treated with chemical fertilizers, these red-clay fields with which we so strongly identify can now produce food only with the aid of chemical fertilizers.īut here we are, Will and I, right in the middle of a strip of land once so naturally rich that an entire civilization called Kolomoki rose up on it.Ĭan such land be redeemed? Yes, absolutely. This is the result of our country’s move to industrialized agricultural. What that color tells you is there is little to no organic matter left to serve as topsoil. In this heavily agricultural part of southwestern Georgia, much of the cropland is now freshly plowed for spring planting, shining bright red in the sun. But the grasses and trees around the mounds are brilliantly green, because underneath it is that good land, fertile topsoil black and rich in organic matter on a bed of the red clay that defines the American South. It hasn’t been a hopping town in more than a millennium. Kolomoki is quieter than a church on Saturday night. Nothing remains of the old civilization except the ceremonial mounds, which archaeologists tell us were used in the religious practices of the Swift Creek and Weeden Island people. In the early spring, it is mostly devoid of people, save a few curious tourists and the one state park ranger staffing the visitor’s center. You can still visit Kolomoki, but it’s now known as Kolomoki Indian Mounds State Park. Kolomoki back then was the most populous area north of Mexico, like New York City is today. He teaches me that we are standing on a strip of the same good land that drew huge numbers of native North Americans to a place called Kolomoki, about seven miles southwest of Bluffton, 1,600 years ago. The pointing man is a farmer named Will Harris.
This is uneroded because there's nowhere for it to run.” That's important because this soil is an uneroded mountain soil. “On this side of the road, it goes to the Chattahoochee River. “Everything on that side of the road drains to the Flint River.” “Highway 27 right here, the old one, was built on the Indian trail that ran along that crest.” It is really good land because it's where the Appalachian Mountains went subterranean.
It is anywhere from a few yards wide to maybe a mile wide, probably not quite a mile. “OK, there is a strip of land that starts about 10 miles that way,” he begins and then turns and points southwest, “and goes about 15 miles that way. He is pointing.įirst, he points north, straight up Pine Street. What little traffic there is in Bluffton moves slowly. I am standing in the middle of Pine Street in downtown Bluffton, Ga., with no worry of being run over.
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