Life on a farm can be tough, but the Levans family in the Center Point community have managed to make it work for more than 100 years through hard work, a little ingenuity and adapting to the industry.

The Levans farm recently received a Centennial Family Farm Award from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, an award that is given to those families who have kept the farming tradition alive for more than 100 years on the same property. Though the award in itself is an accomplishment — only 359 farms in Georgia have received the honor — how the farm operation continued during that time could fill volumes.

The family’s farming legacy began when an uncle, Wesley Dominick, migrated to Georgia from Alabama in the late 1800s and purchased about 1,900 acres just outside of Temple between where Center Point Road joins Highway 113 and the Haralson County line.

Farming on this property and others in the area sustained the community.

From 1880-1903, Dominick ran a sharecropping operation — this was at the height of cotton farming and prior to the boll weevil. The practice involved dividing the property into 50-acre plots, building a small, simple house and barn and furnishing it with bare essentials. A sharecropper family would then be placed on the property to work the 50 acres on a 50/50 percentage.

“An overlying theme there is what in the world do you do with thousands of uneducated and unemployed people,” said Donald Levans, a fifth generation member of the family. “Their only way out was sharecropping.”

At the time of his death in 1914, Dominick, a lifelong bachelor, turned the farm management over to his nieces, Ophelia McCullough and Lee Almon. From 1903 to 1922, Ophelia and her husband Giles, and Lee and her husband Billy, continued the sharecropping operations. Then the boll weevil hit West Georgia and destroyed the sharecropping industry.

In 1927, Ophelia McCullough deeded the north half of Dominick’s original lot No. 80 to her son-in-law, Zack Levans, because her daughter, Ruey, had died two years earlier. Zack Levans also purchased 50 acres in the adjoining land lot, giving him 150 acres upon which he had three tenant houses where he scratched out a living for three sharecroppers plus his own family with cotton and other row crops.

From 1930 to 1948 Zack Levans and his son Cecil would act as partners, doing the bulk of the farm work themselves with the help of hired hands. By the early 1940s Cecil and his wife Iva turned to their two sons, Donald and Jerry, who had become able farm hands, reducing the need for hiring much help. By 1950, Zack Levans was no longer able to do farm work and he died in 1952.

Times were tough during this period and the Levans family, as well as other farmers in the area, did what they could to survive. To continue to be able to purchase the necessities to keep the farm operation operating during the a period of constantly declining cotton production, Iva Levans, got a job at a shirt shop in Bremen.

“All of these little small farms could not make it because it was hard to afford fertilizer, so a lot of the women got jobs in Bremen in the clothing business and that held the farm together,” Donald Levans said.

The family also ran the local store for awhile and there was a period when Cecil Levans drove a school bus. On the farm, they also cut and sold hay to the public and produced milk for all of Temple.

“It was all about what to do to make it work,” Donald Levans said.

Donald Levans recalled that during the late 1940s and into the mid-1950s the farmers of Carroll County tried several new crops. Peanuts proved not to be suited for the local soil. On the other hand, pimento peppers became quite productive to the point that a processing plant was established in Carrollton.

Eventually, the farmers, including the Levans family, would turn to cattle to make a living.

“All of these little farms, we were still trying to row crop and live,” Donald said. “It never crossed anybody’s mind that a cow was worth anything more than milk, frankly.”

Donald enlisted in the Air Force in September of 1950, taking away a fourth of the labor force on the farm.

“I was 19 and had worked the farm from about age 10 to 19,” Donald said. “I never intended to pick cotton the rest of my life.”

It was about this time that a county agent was promoting Hereford cattle through the use of artificial insemination. Cecil used $190 from money Donald had sent home to purchase a Hereford cow and calf. This, along with two milk cows and artificial insemination, proved sufficient to begin building a beef cattle herd.

“The whole thing moved like that because nobody could afford to just buy a herd,” Donald said.

Over time Cecil and Jerry would work as partners much as Zack and Cecil had done all those years before. The cattle herd continued to grow and became successful enough that the farm loans from the boll weevil years were finally paid off.

In the mid-1950s, a totally new “crop” was brought into the county — chickens. Though he worked a full-time job at Southern Bell, Jerry Levans invested in three very large chicken houses and stability was once again brought to the Levans farm.

Cecil and Jerry operated the cattle business as a partnership from the mid-1950s to Cecil’s death in 1980, and Jerry continued to farm chickens until 1994.

The Levans farm today is operated by Jerry and Julia Levans’ son, Johnny, who worked alongside Jerry and Cecil all his life while attending school and then during his 30-year career at Temple High School.

“What Johnny is doing, it’s the last drop out of that heritage,” Donald said.

With his retirement from teaching, Johnny farms the property more because he enjoys it than as a way to make a living.

“It’s a challenge and I like being outside,” he said. “I like doing something that I know my Daddy and Granddaddy did too, and it’s something I’ve done since I was little and know something about.”

Johnny added that unless someone has an extremely large head of cattle the input costs into a farm make it nearly impossible to make a living anymore.

“You couldn’t live off this as a sole income. We make enough to do improvements on the farm and buy new equipment,” he said. “It just costs so much for what they pay you now for a cow you’re not going to make a living unless you have a whole bunch of cows.”

Even so, Johnny said he plans to keep the family tradition alive until he can’t physically do it anymore.

Anyone interested in discovering their farm/family history should consider joining the Carroll County Genealogical Society by contacting Society President Donald Levans at 770-562-1612.