Manier Farm – Middle TN
“It occurred to me the other day that I am the only one on God’s green earth who knows where each buried rock that can hang a plow is located, where the wet spots are that should be left alone until dry weather…where the best fishing hole in the creek to catch perch is…where the big weeping willow was in the yard…where the old Jersey cow with the new-born calf “wallered” me in the ground when I was a six-year-old boy, and all those places and times my dear parents and grandparents taught me to love this land.” – Hal Manier
With its rolling hills, meandering creek, and fertile pastures, the Manier family farm is a beautiful and essential piece of the Holts Corner community in Marshall County. Its inspiring aesthetics and agricultural significance were not earned overnight.
For more than 100 years, the Maniers have farmed this land, showing a multi-generational commitment to caring for the place they love. The farm has required hard work and sacrifice, but Hal Manier says that the land also brought rewards, which include “happiness, contentment, satisfaction, and the security that comes from knowing that there is always a refuge – a place to call home.”
“Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, ‘If a man owns land, the land owns him.’ It is true. This land, for 73 years, it has been a part of me and I a part of it,” Hal explained in a letter to future owners of the land.
Hal’s commitment to the farm inspired him to conserve it. In December 2018, The Land Trust for Tennessee closed a conservation easement with the Manier family that will protect this farm and refuge for generations to come.
“My sister or I will be the last of my line to live on this place, and I am grateful to The Land Trust for Tennessee for helping keep it forever intact,” Hal said. “It is my fervent desire that those who own it after us will, as Emerson suggested, ‘let the land own them’; that they will let the land become a part of them and they a part of it.”