During the Thanksgiving season people think about what they are most thankful for and all kinds of promotions for the Giving Season abound. On the radio, announcers are asking for callers to call in and thank the folks they know in the armed forces and of course the shopping commercials about gift giving are everywhere.

One thing that I am most thankful for is the land. As the preamble to the NAR Code of Ethics starts out…. “Under All is the Land!” Everything we eat comes from this precious land. Thanksgiving started with the Plymouth settlers after they had a plentiful harvest over 300 years ago and that harvest came from the land just as the one today. As we sit down for meals that include turkey, potatoes and pumpkin pie I immediately think of the land that provided us the opportunity to feast.

The AgChat Foundation is promoting Food Thanks this Thanksgiving holiday so people everywhere can express their gratitude for the food they eat. They encourage you to use Social Media to thank the individual farmers, companies and industries and many people involved in agriculture. You can tweet, blog or post your #FoodThanks anytime but they are especially encouraging it on Wednesday, November 23 on twitter.

That is just one to say thank you but you don’t even have to do that. An important way to give thanks for the land that provides food to you is to care for it. Conservation of the land can be as simple as picking up a piece of trash alongside the road or restoring waterways. If one person picked up one piece of trash during Thanksgiving the farm fields would definitely feel the impact. One of the most disheartening things I see when I travel the state looking at land is trash in ditches or plastic bags caught on barb wire fences. One person can make a difference so take a moment and pick up some debris.

So what are you thankful for this season?

The LandThink Summit, a great one-day event held in Duluth, Ga. on September 29^th brought together Timber Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), Timber Investment Management Organizations (TIMOs), land brokers, auction companies and land consultants to discuss economics, taxes and major trends in the land industry. This conference excelled at intensity, information and opportunities to network with land industry experts and decision makers.

LandThink, led by Ryan Folk, immediately set the tone with a satirical view of the land industry. They presented a 10-minute video that questioned why there is so much interest in land with adequate doses of self-deprecating humor. The fact is land is the common denominator that attracted the interest of individuals and companies to travel from as far as Oregon, Oklahoma, Indiana and the Southeastern United States.

Black Swans of Global Economy

The summit’s keynote speaker, Dr. David Kohl, Professor Emeritus, Agriculture and Applied Economics from Virginia Tech covered mega-trends in the global economy, and U.S. farm real estate values that were delivered with a “Sunday go’in to meeting” enthusiasm. Megatrend influencers affecting the world economy include such “black swans” as oil, Japan’s recovery from natural disasters, sovereign debt issues and social unrest.

As oil exceeds $125 per barrel correlating to $4 per gallon, the analysis suggests U.S. consumers shutting down. Six of eight recessions in past the fifty years are due to oil prices. Seventy percent and sixty percent of oil and fertilizer produced respectively are in military/politically sensitive areas. Oil, water and agriculture production will be at the core of megatrends.

Timberland Professionals

In between sessions and lunch, the networking opportunities were remarkable. As a follower of the timberland industry, I was glad to meet representatives from two of the four REITs, Raynoir and Plum Creek and enjoyed our conversation about the ways the economy is affecting their business model.  I also talked with representatives from American Forest Management, a TIMO who manage timberland from acquisition, forest consulting and conservation to sale.

I found the presentations by Dr. Tamara Cushing, Assistant Professor & Extension Forestry Specialist at Clemson University and Dr. Brooks Mendell, Principal for Forisk Consulting in Athens, Ga., to be especially useful. Dr. Cushing spoke on the topic of “Discovering the hidden costs of land ownership” while Dr. Mendell discussed “Forests, fuel and finance: global trends influencing bioenergy markets and timberland investments”. Each highlighted the tax consequences of timberland ownership and global factors driving wood bioenergy markets and affect on forest use and timberland values. These topics were relevant given the economic recession and planning horizon of forest landowners.

Housing Market and Banking

In addition to the discussion on economic trends and forest economics, presenters spoke about the housing market and how local banks approve real estate loans under oppressive regulation. John Hunt, President of ViaSearch & SmartNumbers provided an in-depth perspective of the Atlanta housing market. He talked about “the ring of death,” a circle outside Atlanta where developer lots sit foreclosed representing a 66 year inventory. One in seven homes is new versus four in seven prior to 2007. Mr. Kim Childers, President and Chief Credit Officer for State Bank Financial Corporation explained the difficulty of dealing with non-performing real estate loans, FDIC regulations and health of the banking industry. Insolvent banks are being closed and assets sold for pre 2004 values. It is not a pretty picture but necessary in the long term.

The LandThink Staff, summit partner AgSouth Farm Credit and sponsors contributed valuable resources elevating a forum that like-minded land industry professionals found well worth their time.

If you have ever considered attending a seminar about the land industry, you need not think any further about which one to attend. LandThink Summit 2011 was held in Atlanta, Georgia last week and the lineup of speakers was an excellent cross section of various backgrounds that culiminated in an overall global view of the industry.

In addition to land brokers and agents at the conference, ag lenders were also in attendance and provided a balanced prespective on issues affecting land transactions. A market trends survey book was a big bonus handout which will likely come in handy during listing presentations when making points about buyers and marketing. For example, over 80% of all land buyers start their search online now so as a group land buyers have caught up and may surpass traditional residential real estate buyers in their tech savvy.

The “Get Land Smart” tag line is not just marketing jargon. If you are truly serious about keeping a pulse on the land industry as a whole, then this an event not to be missed. Even if land is not your primary focus, but you have some business in that arena, it is valuable overall market information especially for timberland, commercial, building lots and recreational hunting land agents.

Taxes, the Economy, Stats…all sounds pretty boring right? No way! All of this information was there but you wouldn’t have known it. The speakers kicked out all the important numbers and facts but they made it revelant to your business. The observations were right to the point with no fluff and they could back it up with black and white historical facts. The speakers were absolutely resounding and really kept things moving. I don’t think the podium was used more than a few minutes tops during the whole day. Speakers were walking and talking and totally invigorated about the subjects and excited to share their information.

As well as presentations there was plenty of time to network during lunch and breaks and meet brokers from all over the United States. Learning about other types of markets (timberland, commercial, etc.) and land value prices in their areas was enlighenting and interesting.

And of course a seminar would not be complete without a few drawings but these were no ordinary drawings for trinkets. There were some fabulous gifts like a brand new iPad and cold hard cash. Additionally, some items including a hunt and a laptop were auctioned off to raise money for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. The consensus was that the investment to come to the seminar was well worth the time and effort. A few comments I heard were…

Many thanks to all the folks at LandThink that worked hard all year to put together an awesome, professional and on-time event.

The 2011 LandThink Summit held at Gwinnett Center in Georgia on September 29th was a great success. I, along with several colleagues, and many land-industry friends attended the event this year. All felt the time and effort spent on attendance was worthwhile. Numerous speakers helped attendees gain knowledge about the current state of the land market, those factors that are currently driving the market, and the direction it’s likely to head in. If you are employed in any industry related to land, this was a highly relevant and timely day spent in Duluth, Georgia.

Attendees came from the US and Canada, and as far away as Oregon to learn and to network with other professionals. Multiple land-industry professions were represented there. Agents, auctioneers, foresters, investors, TIMOs, REITS, fund managers, I.T. professionals, extension workers, Farm Credit…the list goes on. Real estate professionals and foresters were able to earn continuing education credits through their attendance at the Summit, which improves the value of the event even more. There were even numerous cash prizes for those in attendance, as well as a couple charity auctions during the day.

Dr. David Kohl, Virginia Tech Professor Emeritus of Ag Economics was the keynote speaker. If you missed his two sessions, you missed three of the most valuable continuing education hours you could ever spend. Dr. Kohl has a unique style that delivers highly valuable information to the listener, and keeps the listener very engaged. He spoke extensively on the global and national factors effecting the economy and land valuation. He also gave insight on price trends throughout the country, and throughout different classes of land. One of the best economic speakers I have ever had the opportunity to learn from…and I majored in Ag Economics in college. I will seek out opportunities to hear him in the future.

There were several other speakers from Farm Credit, banking, the forest industry, extension, and even a little humor. Ryan Folk, LandThink Founder, delivered the results of the 2011 LandThink Land Market Survey to the attendees. The information contained in this booklet would alone be worth the time and cost of attendance. It gauges the temperature of the national market in a way that I have seen no other survey do.

LandThink.com is about sharing land knowledge with a public that is thirsty for practical, useful, and timely information regarding the in’s and out’s of land acquisition, ownership, management, marketing, and disposition. The contributors there are just as diversified and knowledgeable as the speakers at this year’s Summit. In the coming weeks, information from the Summit will be presented on LandThink. Soak it up. Make sure you are in attendance at the next Summit. I look forward to meeting you there.

If you are a land professional, investor or land owner you should make plans to attend the 2011 Landthink Summit at the Gwinnett Center in Atlanta, on September 29. By attending you will join several hundred others from across the country that share your passion for land.

You hear pitches for conferences and courses all the time, and everyone wants to know WIIFM (What’s in it for Me?). Here are a few reasons I am coming back to the LandThink Summit again this year.

1. Opportunities to Network. Last year I met Tate Reddick of 1031 Land Group at supper. He told me about how pecan farms were becoming really popular with buyers and how he had closed on a large farm in south Georgia. This past week I used information I gained in that conversation with a farmer looking to sell a small portion of his pecan orchard in south Alabama.

This isn’t the “spray and pray” method so many networking events offer where you sling business cards out right and left and hope someone will eventually call you. Here you get the opportunity to have conversations with people who are experts in your field and make real connections that can lead to future business. Robert King, of AlaLandCo, said his favorite part of the event was reconnecting with professionals he had not seen in a while and made some positive relationships with new people.

2. CE Credits Tailored to Land Professionals. All real estate agents and foresters have to earn continuing education credits, and many of our associations offer courses that are not relevant to what we do day in and day out. These speakers address topics that are targeted to this audience.

Last year’s timberland panel was a big hit with attendees. Our company currently has over 20,000 acres of institutionally managed timberland for sale across Alabama. The sale of those tracts has buoyed our company through the down market in the past two years. Insights gained in those discussions provide persuasive logic when helping investors choose timberland over other investments

3. Invest for your Business: Invest in Yourself.  Last year after the Summit I came away with an overwhelmingly positive view of being a real estate agent that specializes in selling land. I described it as “land euphoria”, and it stayed with me for a long time. The only information media outlets provide about the current real estate market is negative. This conference addresses the realities of our current economy. But one thing I gained was looking around the room and seeing the past president of Alabama’s RLI chapter, the current president, and next year’s president. These are people at the top of their profession in my state. I want to be around people that are successful. Dan Hatfield, 2010 RLI President was there, and I got to spend some time with him at the meet and greet session the night before the conference. He is one of the best in our business, and I just picked his brain and listened to him talk land.

There is a cost to coming to this event. If you register by September 1, you can come for $119.  Yesterday I spent $71 on gas to go preview two listings. I just spent $3000 on mailing postcards to landowners in my area. We spend money on many things in our business. This is an opportunity to invest in ourselves and become more proficient at what we do.

If you come to the LandThink Summit on September 29, I will guarantee you can put some  new arrows in your quiver, tools in your tool belt, or make connections that will help you get business in the long run. When you make investments in yourself, they always pay off. I am excited about the Summit, and I hope to see you there.

More Golden Rule, less smoke and mirrors.  If we could get that idea through our society, it would be great.  My goal is a bit less ambitious though.  I would just like to get that idea through to those that I deal with on a professional basis every day.  I’m not throwing stones at everyone involved in the real estate industry, indeed over the years I have picked out a group of professionals that I choose to work with because I can trust them.  I cull the ones that I can’t pretty quickly…and so do other professionals in the industry, I might add.  However, people come and go from our industry, as do buyers and sellers.  I guess my folly is the belief that everyone would like to stay in business long-term, and therefore will do what is right.  I have made a conscious decision to trust first in all of my life’s relationships, and business is no different.  If you don’t choose to trust first, then you end up being one of those people that no one trusts.  Jaded if you will.  I guess that’s the reason I feel blindsided by misdeeds and untruths that people are involved in.  Why shouldn’t we have an industry where people trust and are trustworthy?  I understand that all news is not good, but just because it isn’t does not give you the right to hide it, spin it, ignore it, or flat-out lie about it.  Rest assured that it will come out at some time.  Maybe you bargain that you will be long-gone before it does, and maybe you are right.  How does that help you when you lay your head down on your pillow at night?  Facing a problem head-on may not be the most comfortable thing, and it might even make the deal go sour. However if you do that, then you will not be the one who is responsible for the hurt feelings, lawsuits, and other injurious occurrences.  You may have to deal with some of those things, yes…but not because you are at fault.  That’s a whole different position to work on a problem from.  It’s a position of strength and certainty.  You needn’t hide anything that you have done, or try to remember your version of how it happened, or invent a scenario that puts you in a better light.

This is not the popular way to climb today’s ladder of “success”.  Most people want to short-cut the tried and true method of honest dealing.  In society as a whole people will claw at you, climb over you, and knock you off the ladder just to better their position.  Often this is done with total disregard for the downstream consequences for themselves and their victims.  Often these same people are the first ones to cry out as victims themselves.  I would argue that ill-gotten “success” is not success at all though.  It’s willful defeat with a tainted sugar-coating that will eventually melt away.  Step back and take a look at your business practices.  Would you like to be treated the way that you treat others? Would you trust yourself if you were involved in a transaction with someone just like you?  If you did not answer yes to both of those questions, please accept my gracious request that you find another line of work, or seriously change your business practices before we all catch up to your game.  More Golden Rule, less smoke and mirrors.

With the truck in the barn and the GPS off
Visions of no more work sounded just tops
I kicked off my boots and hung up my hat
Just as the dog wandered in for a pat

When out in the pasture I heard all kinds of chatter
I dropped my smartphone to see what was the matter
I Jumped up from my computer and then out onto my ATV
And found a Jolly ‘ol Cowboy looking at me

He was pointing out yonder toward the wheat fields
And he began boasting loudly about big yields
I could tell by his smile he loved this dear earth
Knowing that I had believed in him since birth

Through the Kansas wind and the blinding dust
He began to speak louder and said “Listen you must”

If things don’t always go just right
Keep working even into the night
And be sure to give it all your might
Don’t give up on your set trail
And the checks will always be in your mail

Then he stepped up into his red and white striped truck
And inside were his elves dressed in green for luck

As he drove away slowly I heard him say
“Don’t ever give in and just ride away
Because right here under where you stand
is your most precious gift, “This Great Land”

God, family, neighbors, country, land, and honorable work. That’s the order of it. Fiercely independent and humble servants. We as partakers in the rural lifestyle think our urban cousins have this order out-of-whack. We stereotype them, just like they do the overall wearing, barefoot hillbillys that many of them see us as. We see a bunch of prissy, uptight urbanites that could not shoot a rifle or swing a hammer to save their lives. (I doubt either of these stereotypes are fair assessments, but they illustrate my point) When Hank Jr. sings, “we can skin a buck and run a trotline” we know its because “Country folks can survive.” We are proud of our heritage and our chosen lifestyle. We can survive without Republicans and Democrats, without Uncle Freddie and Sister Sallie Mae. Bernanke is not a name that most of us will recognize without some explanation. It’s OK that Brother Bill talks slower than even most of us, cause he can work rings round 3 good men. An afternoon on the porch visiting with an elderly neighbor that can’t get out anymore is not a half-day wasted. It’s a golden time to give back, and learn from the wiser at the same time.

We don’t believe you are going to find the things you need to live your life on the evening news. We know those things are in the Bible. Everything takes a backseat to how God directs us to live our lives. Nothing is more important. Nothing. Not health care, not taxes, not global warming, not our paycheck. We know God is there when everything else fails to live up to it’s promises.

Our family are people that we want to see, and want them to come over during the holidays. They are those that we can count on when times are tough. The ones that help with sick children and sacrifice their own time to help you in times of need. Our neighbors are family too, so I probably should have grouped them together to start with. In the rural South, it’s still customary to give a little wave or gesture as you meet people…even while driving. You might know them, and Heaven forbid you not speak to somebody you know! Those are the same neighbors that will help you with that flat tire when it’s 37 degrees and raining. The same ones that will sit with you on the porch one day when you are old and feeble.

Country. Many would list this right after God, but those that hold to true Southern Living Values will not. There is still a strong independent mindset among rural Southerners. The same kind of mindset that led General Lee to fight on the behalf of his beloved Virginia, instead of the Union. He had the opportunity to have the great power of the Union Army under his direction. He chose his beliefs and neighbors over country. It was not without angst that he made this choice, as struggling to reconcile highly held, and seemingly conflicting values can be. However, few can argue the honor of this iconic and AMERICAN figure. I would argue that we love America just as much as any other person. There are simply those things that we value even more. We hold that America is worth fighting and dying for. At the end of the War of Northern Aggression, General Lee chose reconciliation to his neighbors and country over the human desire of grudge and retaliation.

Our land rises up high on the list. It’s what God has given us to take care of and preserve for future generations. Rural folks are conservationists at heart. We understand that there is a balance between using the land for our betterment and our enjoyment and completely changing the face of what was created. Land is our connection to peace and harmony. It sustains us. We use it to sustain our urban cousins too. They are part of our country. They can’t grow enough food and trees to satisfy their own needs. So they rely on us to use our land to do that for them. We want to be able to continue to do this, despite all of their insistence that they know better how to use our land than we do. We have been feeding and taking care of you for hundreds of years, and we are a tenacious lot. We’ll keep doing it in spite of the roadblocks you throw out there. Sure there are those that take advantage of land. Just like there are those that take advantage of your financial investments. Do we legislate them into oblivion or reach out a hand to a neighbor that wants to conserve, produce, and protect the land that sustains us all?

Idle hands are the devil’s workshop. Truer words may never have been spoken. That’s why we honor those who are willing to give an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. OK, so I have used three cliché statements in a row. Southerners are good at that. Jesus taught in parables. Sometimes that time on the porch can be one parable after the other. The person we are sitting on the porch reminiscing with has spent a lifetime in hard, and honorable work. We honor that work as a means of honoring our neighbor.

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. – Matthew 22:37-40

Rural Southern Living Values, in a nutshell.

Since I was a boy I have loved seeing different plots of rural land. One thing that has always fascinated me was how it seems everyone has a name for their land and what they call the various parts of their property.

Geography is the study of the earth and its inhabitants, and all of us learned world geography at some point in school. In the land business we also have some exposure to cartography, which is the study and making of maps. Toponymy is the scientific study of place names, and the meanings, origins, and uses of those names. I have been an amateur toponymist (without knowing what it is called) for many years.

As I mentioned, one of my favorite parts of visiting other people’s properties is to see their place and hear the names associated with it. A big dairy farm in Marengo County, Alabama has a huge field named “Bluegrass” and a deer hideout called the “Hackberry Thicket.” When I turkey hunted the place, they told me to go through Bluegrass, past the Hackberry thicket, cross the creek, and hold up inside the wood line. Those directions led my brother-in-law and me right to a strutting tom.

One of the seller’s I am representing in Fayette County, Alabama has a farm where every food plot is named for an SEC football team. Some of the best hunting can be found in “Bama” or “the Swamp”.

Last year I hunted at Foothills, a pay-to-hunt outfit, down in south Perry County, Alabama. They showed us a map of their 3,000+ acres of prime Black Belt agricultural land and started naming off potential sites for us to go the next morning. My brother-in-law, Chris, was assigned the “75 tripod” that hugged the south border of their sprawling operation. The roads through the property were marked with signs detailing the way to various stands. I loved riding by the hand-painted wooden signs as we passed each one. About 45 minutes after Chris and I settled into our spots, he took a nice 159” 11-point. I remember the name of his stand, but not mine.

We do the same thing on the family land where I live. If you come for a visit, we will see the “Triangle Field”, the “Right-of-Way”, the “Little Lake”, the “Yellow Jacket Field”, or “Perfection”.  Perfection is a one-acre food plot that was cut into the middle of the forest with a woodland mulcher. We have white oaks, red oaks, Japanese persimmon and pawpaw trees to provide food for the deer. We take extra measures when cultivating this plot to make sure all of the areas are planted and fertilized. I love this plot. It is always my first choice of a place to hunt. Even though we have a lock-on stand in a pretty good location, I will experiment with hanging my climber on various trees along the periphery. The very first time I hunted Perfection I saw six racked bucks feeding at once. That one event spawned a love affair with my favorite hunting spot.

Many of these places are named for past events which took place in that location. We have one place we call the “Yellow jacket Field”. This was named for a fateful encounter our tractor operator had with a subterranean hive of yellow jackets. He was stung twenty-two times before he could escape their fury. He went home after the last one got him inside the nose. We felt that event justified naming the field in its memory.

Fine homes and plantations have long been bestowed with regal names that left an indelible impression on everyone that heard about or visited them. What images appear in your mind’s eye when you hear Monticello, The Magnolia Plantation (Charleston), Mount Vernon, King Ranch, or even the Ponderosa? Naming property is not reserved for the wealthy or prestigious. Just down the road from my house is a beautiful home and acreage called “Repose”. I can connect with that feeling of rest and relaxation associated with a great home place.

This past week I read that the ancient Greeks called the island of Cyprus, “he Makarios” which meant “Isle of Happiness”. The word “makarios” carried such a strong connotation of happiness that it meant one never needed to leave the shores of the island because it contained everything he could ever want. That thought really resonated with me. In many respects when I am with my family and we are enjoying all that God has created in the outdoors, I often think “What more could you want?”.

No doubt as you read this you are thinking about the names of some of the places you have hunted or that are on your land. If you have a favorite hunting spot or if you have named your property, please share the name and a brief story in the comment section below. Personally I would love to hear about some of the places that are special to our readers.

If you love your land, give it a name. Names of places are often a lot like the places themselves. They outlive their originators and connect many generations with the history of the place. Wherever your place and whatever the name, enjoy your time on the land.

Please take a second and share some of your names and places with other readers in the comment section below. I think our readers will enjoy hearing from others who share their passion for the land.

I live in an old place.

Our farm sits on karst limestone, a sedimentary rock composed largely of the shells and skeletons of marine organisms that lived in a shallow sea several hundred million years ago. I find their fossils on ridges 4,000 feet higher than the Atlantic Ocean.

We live on the Allegheny Front in the Valley-and-Ridge section of the Appalachian Mountains. The Front — a 180-mile-long, Southeast-facing escarpment that runs from Pennsylvania through eastern West Virginia — generally functions as the Eastern Continental Divide. Colliding tectonic plates pushed up these mountains higher than the Himalayas in the Silurian Period, 418 to 445 million years ago.

We live on the remnants of these peaks, which are among the world’s oldest and, like old teeth, have been slowly reduced to their nubs.

Blue Grass lies along the South Branch of the Potomac River in what until the mid-1940s had been called, “Crab Bottom.”  I would rather hail from Crab Bottom than Blue Grass any day, but my wife, Melissa, our Commonwealth Attorney who’s coming up for reelection, believes this is one pot that does not need to be restirred by the likes of me. So I’ll keep this opinion to myself.

It would be easy — too easy — to say that I like old better than new. But just to get my prejudices out in the open—I prefer old cars, old clothes, old watches, old telephones, old houses, old furniture, old music, old fiction and men and women of a certain age.

I admit that I’m not consistent. I like color television and desktop computers. I like some new tools and some new foods. I go for cotton, wool and leather, but some synthetic materials keep me warmer and drier.

I like email, but phooey on cell phones. According to a long-ago girlfriend, Devra Davis, author of Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family (Penguin, 2010), these earrings are linked to brain cancer, damaged DNA, increased memory loss and reduced sperm count. Children are especially vulnerable, she writes. I’ve heard it said that people who yak away while using public restrooms deserve higher risk for these maladies, particularly lower sperm counts.

When you get to a certain age, you start coming down more and more on the old side of things. You’re more comfortable with what’s familiar, with the stuff that was new when you were young and now is old.

People tend to become more cautious and conservative as they get older if only because they’ve seen how hard it is to recover from choices that end badly. One advantage of being old is that you have a sense of how certain situations tend to play out because you’ve been through them before.

This produces wise advice to children who believe that they invented the first wheel and all of its recent reinventions, including the wheel of fortune. Age allows me to make truthful statements like: “You’ll see,” which drives the youth of our Nation deservedly batty.

I’m not defending universal fuddy-duddyism, because that’s a dead end. But I do favor pitching all new things into one of three bins: 1) safe, useful and worth the money; 2) not safe, or not useful or not worth the money; and 3) contrivances that were better left uninvented and should, therefore, be shunned.

My 24-year-old daughter and I disagree over where to toss Starbucks and the ever-anal Martha Stewart.

Living in Blue Grass encourages preferring old over new. Our county of 2,500 is older than average by a lot. Retirees move in, and high school graduates move out, which means we become different as we get older. Our farms — with the exception of the poultry houses — are small, inefficient and labor-intensive. They trace back 250 years. No one expects them to turn a profit, not even the IRS.

One hundred years ago is still pretty close and 200 years is not that far back. Some maples on Snowy Mountain were turning in October when George Washington and his buddies were around these parts working sweetheart land deals with the King’s government. I can walk in my back field and occasionally find a stone arrowhead, which is about all that’s left of the folks who hunted this ground for 10,000 years.

The old life was hard. Babies died. Women “got wore out.” Medicines and doctoring were primitive. “Creature comfort” was more applicable to the barn than the first log cabins. The 12 Foxfire books never showed much about this side of the old ways, since there isn’t much of a modern market for self-denial, sacrifice and hardship.

So we cherry pick the old—we value the nice old and park the bad old behind our memory barns. Our tourist-oriented celebrations of the past are about crafts, maple syrup, apple butter and music.

Moonshine — ethanol that has been processed into alcohol and untaxed — is still around so to speak. But it’s hardly worth the effort and risk. I’m waiting for the few surviving moonshiners to start selling corn-based ethanol to gasoline refineries…or most of it, anyway.

The nice thing about living in a small, old, rural place is that we don’t have many people. That’s also the reason we can’t generate much economic growth with our own resources. On some days, I think we need another 1,000 people if only to keep our school system — which graduates 20 kids a year — viable. On other days, 1,000 fewer would suit me.

And if I had a choice about recruiting 1,000 people, they’d be locals who had been out in the world for a while and outsiders who wanted to be here, all in their prime years, 30-50, ready to bring their education, resources, experience, energy and ideas to mix with what’s already here.

Time is always running out for young and old alike. The older we are, the bigger the clock and the louder its dinger. My big clock encourages me to “use time wisely,” which my elementary report cards always said I failed to do.

Rural areas have often been thought of as places where things change slowly, where old keeps out new. I’m not sure that’s true anymore. What’s new about this old place is how quick we now are to go new. We don’t resist change the way we once did.

Our restaurants now serve wraps (which, in my day, were inedible shawls that spent their days in a “cloak room”); our farmers drive tractors from Japan and India; our houses have satellite dishes; our people use computers and email (with a few holdouts); our county may get a small wind farm; and there’s even talk about a Subway Restaurant making a permanent stop in our county seat, a town of about 250.

Old places used to be where you got stuck in the mud. No more.

Now, we may start thinking about selling genuine Silurian mud online.

Suggestions are welcome as to which of my three bins deserves to be filled with this idea.