A mottled red apple fills a child’s sticky hands. Baby August spits out the peel as he runs in circles around the shed.
“He’s the real boss around here,” Richard Jones says, laughing and pointing to his 15-month-old grandson – the sixth generation of the Jones family to stir up dirt on Happy Jack’s Pumpkin Farm.
Richard has lived on the same 200 acres since before he was August’s age. In that time, he has diversified crops, watched both sons go to college, and welcomed his sons back to work alongside him.
When Adam, 23, and David, 27, work the field, Richard is rarely far behind. When they move a log, he tells them where it should go. When the goats get out, they report the news to him.
Not even sickness redirects Richard’s watchful eyes. When leukemia kept him in a hospital bed in 2001, Richard spent visits from his wife, Lee Ann, reviewing lists of farm chores. Richard wrote Lee Ann a detailed letter describing each season’s work schedule to ensure the farm would continue running smoothly. After another health scare in 2007, David and Adam stepped up, and they’ve stayed on the soil ever since.
“They could probably make more money doing something else, but they don’t want to be doing something else,” Richard says.
When August reaches toward the tractor, that legacy continues for a moment.
Richard’s mother owns the farm. When she dies, the land will be shared among her six children. Divided parcels are often sold part-by-part. It’s a common demise for family farms.
However, before that more certain scenarios exist: a cold snap, disease in the pumpkin patch or a quiet afternoon spent with family.
“It’s a possibility that this might not be around in my lifetime, so the time to come back and do it is now,” David says.
