The state of Georgia is honoring 13 farm owners Friday at the Georgia National Fair in Perry for maintaining a farm in their family for a century or more.
The Georgia Centennial Family Farm awards will be presented for the 22nd year.
Among the farms honored are two in the Athens area, the Boyd McLocklin Farm in Barrow County and the Hickory Hill Farm, owned by Garry and Susan Shaw, in Oglethorpe County.
And for those recognized with the award there is a sense of pride in keeping the family farm for generations, said one honoree.
“Talk to farmers with a family history of being on their farm, and when you listen to them talk about the land you will pick up that there is a sacred feeling about it,” said Boyd McLocklin, whose farm in Statham has been in the family since his great-grandfather began sharecropping it around 1893-94.
“You look after the land. You conserve the soil and the water. That is the mind frame I grew up in … and that feeling is still there,” McLocklin said.
His great-grandfather purchased the land around 1910, then it went to his son, then McLockin’s father purchased it around 1939 and operated it until the 1990s. McLocklin, who was a CEO at a mental health and retardation community service in Gainesville, moved to the farm and began raising horses there in 2009.
The history of the farm is important, he said, and the human history of the land goes way beyond because there is a place near a creek where numerous Indian artifacts have been found as the land was cultivated over the decades.
“We assumed an Indian tribe lived there,” he said.
McLocklin is an overseer of the land.
“This is a sacred gift and we should pass it on to the next generation in as good or better shape than we have it,” he said.
McLocklin said he was honored by the award. Since it was instituted in 1993, the state has recognized 482 farms.
The Georgia Centennial Farm Program is a partnership between the Historic Preservation Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources; Georgia Farm Bureau Federation; Georgia Department of Agriculture; Georgia Forestry Commission; and Georgia National Fair and Agricenter; with support from Georgia EMC.