Two families protect Craigs Creek land
CRAIG COUNTY – Two sets of Craig County landowners have taken steps to protect family land along Craigs Creek by placing it in conservation easements.
They are Marlon Old and his father, Charles M. Old, of Craig County, and Dr. Karen and George Barnhart. The Arrowhead Club LLC has also put land club members use for hunting into an easement to protect it for the future.
Olds farm
Craig County residents Marlon Old, a former forester, and his father, veteran farmer Charles M. Old, have protected their family farm on Craigs Creek with a conservation easement.
“We’re happy that it won’t be subdivided,” said Marlon Old, who works in best management practices for the Mountain Castles Soil and Water Conservation District in Craig and Botetourt counties.
Craig County landowners Marlon Old, left, and his father Charles M. Old, center, talk with George Kegley about their decision to protect their family farm with a conservation easement along Craigs Creek. Submitted photo
Charles Old protected 136 acres and his son added 55 acres, although they consider it as one farm. The senior Old, a retired beef cattle and hog farmer and former hauler of pulpwood to the Westvaco plant in Covington, purchased the farm in 1959. When he started, he said he was a “pilot—pile it here and pile it (manure) there.”
A native of the Catawba Valley, Charles Old helped build roads with the Civilian Conservation Corps, worked as a mechanic for the old Norfolk & Western Railway, and served in the Marines in the Pacific in World War II and later in Korea. Now slowed by health problems at 86, he supervises from chairs in both ends of a family garden.
He said he signed the easement “to keep it from being broken up. I want to leave it in one piece…Developers are using good farm land.”
The Old farm, which is two miles east of New Castle, once was part of a larger parcel of 10 tracts. Forty years ago, Old fed as many as 150 hogs—“They rooted the mortgage off the farm”—and he once helped butcher 42 in one day. He built a herd of beef cattle to about 200 cows and calves.
Their farm, now leased for hay production and beef cattle pasture on meadowland and forest, is bisected by a mile of Craigs Creek. Encroachment is everywhere, said Marlon Old. Craig County has seen “remarkable growth” since he returned from a career with the Forest Service in the West.
A forestry graduate of Virginia Tech, Marlon Old was a forester in Craig County and then westward for a total of 13 years. He also attended law school and practiced law in Arkansas, later working on water rights for the Forest Service legal department.
When they completed the easements, the state tax credit was more than Charles Old paid for the farm 50 years ago.
Charles Old’s other children are Sam, who has a commercial garden across the road and works for the Craig-Botetourt Electric Co-operative; Patrick, who works for WDBJ Channel 7 TV in Roanoke; Dana, who lives in South Carolina, and daughter Luana Price, a retired teacher who lives in Blue Ridge.
– By George Kegley. Reprinted with permission from “Saving Land in Western Virginia,” Western Virginia Land Trust newsletter
I think it is great that My Grandpa and Uncle have taken such an interest in helping the invironmeny like this. Congrats go out to the both of them. They set a good exsample for the generations to come.