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Saving the Farm
by Sarah Kucharski, Staff Writer

Jim Moore’s eyes light up when he recounts the number of northbound visitors on their way up from Georgia to Franklin who stop by Spring Ridge Dairy Farm to ask directions, solicit destination ideas and buy homemade ice cream.

“This is almost like a welcome center coming into North Carolina,” Moore said.

The farm, located on U.S. 441 just a few miles shy of the state line, is one of the first establishments visitors come across — one of the main reasons Moore was interested in preserving it for the future. A family farm, he said, has more social value than yet another strip mall, housing complex or perhaps worse, a carved out plot of dirt like that across the road. A developer bought the land and, thinking it would sell better if it were already flat, gouged out a mass of earth. That was years ago.

“Now all it’s good for is a used car lot or the like,” Moore said.

“The alternative is getting involved in something like we’re doing here.”

Spring Ridge Dairy is the first farm in Western North Carolina to be permanently reserved as farmland through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm and Ranchlands Protection Program. So even when Moore passes the farm on to another buyer — his children were not interested in owning a farm, he said — the open fields that straddle the Little Tennessee River would remain as is.

As a small operation, Moore’s dairy farm doesn’t have a large income potential. About 20 soft brown Jersey cows each provide five gallons of milk per day, enough for the farm’s assortment of cheeses (such as feta, Colby and mozzarella), fresh milk (regular, buttermilk and eggnog), sweet butter and ice cream (more than 30 flavors).

Moore doesn’t ship and he doesn’t do commercial sales.

“If they like what they get here, they can come back here,” he said. “This is the only place it’s sold.”

Moore isn’t it in for the money though.

“You’ve got to love it. It’s not like a job, you don’t get the monetary rewards, that’s for sure,” he said.

A farmer of one kind or another for 40 years, Moore began his work career with two tours in the Air Force. Once back on native soil, he finished up his college degree at the University of Georgia and got a “regular” job, but in the early1980s he decided to move back home to the mountains.

Moore began his dairy on a leased parcel of land on Siler Road near Franklin, what is now the future site of Southwestern Community College’s Macon campus and the new county library. After a few years, he was looking to expand.

“Small dairy operations, they just don’t generate enough income to cover overhead,” Moore said.

He purchased the tract where the farm is now located, breaking ground in 1996. But the day he put the roof on the building, tragedy struck. Moore’s wife, Judy, was killed by a drunk driver not far from the dairy. A registered nurse, Moore was an inspiration to both nurses and patients for her work as a community health nurse and an OB-GYN practitioner.

“I guess this is done in her memory,” Moore said.

After Judy’s death, work on the dairy slowed, but Moore kept busy. Finally, on June 22, 1998, the dairy’s doors opened.

These days, farm operations are mostly seasonal. Work begins at about 6 a.m. and lasts for 12 hours a day, seven days a week. The cows are milked for 305 days and get two months off to calve. Moore hopes to adjust his breeding schedule so that the calving period coincides with the slower winter months, so that both the cows and he might have some time off. But looking for time off doesn’t mean he’s anywhere close to retirement.

“I’ve read the average life expectancy after retirement is seven years, so if I don’t quit ....” Moore trails off.

Moore plans to expand the farm’s offerings so that it is open for tours, giving children a taste of agrarian life — milking cows, drinking fresh milk, maybe ride a wagon through the fields. The important thing, he said, is to maintain a sense of how it once was.

“Just to have something that my great grandchildren can look back on or maybe somebody else’s,” Moore said.

As development increases in mountain communities across the region, Moore said the public already has shown an interest in preserving open spaces. Now they need to put their money where their mouth is.

“The public’s going to have to be very aware,” Moore said. “It will take public funding, you can’t leave it just to the farmer.”

Conservation officials have announced the conservation of three additional farm tracts along the Little Tennessee River, each of which was made possible by the USDA’s farmland preservation program.

“I think it’s something we can build on,” Moore said.