Page 14 - Georgia Forestry - Winter2017

Lynda Beam
An Investment in Heritage
Forestry has always been a family affair for Lynda Beam. “My daughter Lindy was dating [her now husband] Joey in ’85,” she recalls. “It was December 23. There
was misting rain and blowing wind. And the whole family was out planting containerized Longleaf pine in terraces that my husband, Kirby, had prepared. We planted all those trees instead of Christmas shopping.
“We were testing Joey out,” she adds, a laugh bubbling behind her words. “He was blindly in love, you see. We gave him a hoe and told him to walk behind every planting. If it was too deep—dig it out a little bit. If it was too shallow, cover it up a little bit. Well, Joey did that all day long and we knew he was a keeper.”
Delightfully, Beam really does talk like this, like she’s narrating the novel of her life.
Her approach to TooHolly Farm, the 1,100 acres her grandfather and father bought in Screven County in 1951, seems equally romantic.
“We don’t try to change what God intended,” she says of her forest management philosophy. “My husband said that Mother Nature was an old lady. She’d been knocked down and beat up, and we’re just picking her up, dusting her off and helping her out. We try to grow the species that should be grown on that site; plant the right tree in the right place. And most of it is hard- wood, which is a long-term project.”
Because, of course, Beam isn’t much interested in quick- growing, high yield trees, or as she puts it, “plant-’em-thick and cut-’em-quick.”
TooHolly Farm—with its red-roofed “big house” and “little house,” its free-ranging Ossabaw Island burros and its very own juke joint, complete with a dusty record player and a stack of salvaged 45s—has always been “an emotional and family heritage investment,” Beam says. More than a financial one.
But beneath all that romance? There’s a lot of hard science focused on sustainability and stewardship.
“I’ve probably had more hours of continuing education from the University of Georgia than any other human alive,” Beam says. She’s also walked miles of forestland with her mentor, the Georgia Forestry Commission’s Gene Rogers. All that scholar- ship shaped a forest management plan that won the Beams the American Tree Farm System’s title of National Outstanding Tree Farmers of the Year in 1994.
Beam’s daughter, Lindy Wheat, lives next door to Beam in Savannah. A new member of the Georgia Forestry Association’s board, Wheat inherited her parents’ knack for balancing rever-
ence and pragmatism when it comes to managing the family land. “The clear-cuts hurt my heart,” she recently wrote in a letter to her mother, “but they are a necessary part of farming and they
will produce not only revenue but also new trees!”
Beam is 76 now and widowed, and she says the family is talking about later days. Having already placed the land into a trust, they’re considering, Beam says, “Do we do a conservation easement? Do we divide the land so each child and grandchild
has their own piece or manage it all together?”
“It’s wonderful,” she adds, “to keep the land as the landowner
wants it, but is it the best way to provide for future generations? Maybe not.”
Perhaps nothing illustrates the intersection of love and practicality more than the additional 686 acres of forestland
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