Lynn Witt loves waking up in the morning to the "whooing" of great horned owls in the towering pines and hardwoods. Grabbing her walking stick, she treks through a forest teeming with wildlife and the music of birds. Other than an occasional car horn or jet contrail, there's little sign of the 21st century.
"We love hearing the owls," she says. "They sit at the top of the tulip poplars. We have three bucks in the neighborhood. And I've seen a fox and fox dens are nearby. And coyotes ... they've come up to the back door and taken our cats."
Witt is no country cousin: She lives just three miles from the Atlanta city limits and immediately adjacent to the Cobb County-owned Hyde Farm, some 100 acres of woodlands, fields and farm buildings off Lower Roswell Road adjoining the Chattahoochee National Recreation Area.
And she's about to get some company on her morning walks, as the farm opens to the public for the first time.
On a recent late spring morning, weeds ran riot near the musty-smelling 1830s-era farmhouse. Holes gaped and doors stood askew in barns and outbuildings storing farm equipment and artifacts. But the disrepair that's developed since the last Hyde brother died is about to change.
In an initial move, Cobb County Commissioners earlier this month approved spending $289,000 for a parking lot at the end of Hyde Road. Work is under way to stabilize and repair some of the most rickety structures and to begin cataloguing the artifacts and period pieces therein.
If all goes well, Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs officials plan an August "soft opening" allowing residents to walk the trails and see the spread where members of the Hyde family grew produce until J.C. Hyde died in 2004.
Hyde and brother Buck, who died in 1987, lived pioneer-like. They grew sweet potatoes, corn, beans and okra and sold what they didn't consume in nearby Roswell and Marietta. They kept chickens and slaughtered hogs. Water was dipped from a well and, yes, the outhouse was an integral part of the complex.
The farm's caretakers aim to showcase that simpler time.
"When we can get the funding, we're going to restore these buildings back to the working farm look," says Rusty Simpson, recreation program manager for Cobb Parks' natural resource division, leading a visitor on a tour of the property. "We haven't decided exactly what era we will portray. That will come as we get further in."
Parks officials have a long timeline from which to choose, dating back to just after the land was opened to non-Indian settlement. Sometime between 1830 and 1840, James Cooper Power and his wife built a log house on what had been Cherokee territory.
The more recent 95-acre tract, acquired by the Trust for Public Land for $14.2 million, was purchased by the county with proceeds from a 2006 park bond issue. Together with a 40-acre spread the trust acquired in 1993 that wound up in federal hands (J.C. sold it to pay taxes on Buck's estate but continued to farm it), the Hyde complex will be operated jointly by county parks and National Park Service officials, Simpson said.
The restored farm will be joined by a welcome center, educational facilities for school groups and an improved trail system. Interpretive programs will focus on such things as spring-plowing the fields with a mule.
Witt and another neighbor, Morning Washburn, remember when the farm was a beehive of activity: the cheerful, bib-overall-wearing Hyde brothers, their sisters who would take turns staying a month at a time to cook and clean. Buck's biscuits were popular with neighborhood kids, and there was dawn-to-dusk work in the fields and nearby barn.
For many years, Washburn lived in a rustic cabin next door to the Hydes and helped them work the fields. "They were treasures," Witt said. "You would have liked them."
Now residents of the surrounding area are anticipating the farm awakening from its slumber.
"A lot of people are coming up and asking when the property will be open," Simpson said. "We are getting some very positive feedback."
Cobb County Parks Director Eddie Cannon said no timeline has been established for improvements beyond the parking lot and initial facelift, but he estimates that by next spring, the property will take on a more renovated appearance.
Additional facilities will take several years as funding becomes available. Witt said she is not worried that the woodland treasure that she has mainly enjoyed solo will be overrun by recreation-seekers.
"No, it's the beauty of nature. You get out here and walk in the open air and you think right. Nobody owns land. We're just here to take care of it."
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