Jennifer Robison
For a Louisiana Family, Agritourism and Old-Fashioned Methods Are Regenerating the Farm
REclaiming Their Heritage
“We’re taking the family farm to the next level,” Evan says.
Evan, a real estate agent at the time, knew the farm needed to diversify to be sustainable. Its new direction came from the family’s pursuit of a healthy diet and lifestyle, thanks in part to Evan’s wife, Nicky, a physician who specializes in rural medicine. They wanted to buy fresh and organic food from local farmers, but in those days, that was hard to find.
Old Methods for New Reasons “We’ve always enjoyed agriculture,” Evan says. The farm, located minutes from where the Red River runs through Shreveport and Bossier City, has come full circle since the 1920s, when it was started by Evan’s great-uncle, H.H. “Happy” Mahaffey. Once home to orchards, gardens, cattle and a large hay operation, it later reverted to pine and hardwood forest when it was too much for his widow to manage. To keep the farm intact and in the family, a great-aunt put the land in trust and enlisted Evan to run it in 1995, before he’d turned 20. SUMMER 2018
“We saw an opportunity, and we had the land base.”
Christine Forrest
By combining traditional agricultural practices with modern marketing, including farm-to-table dinners, a farm store and a bed-andbreakfast, Mahaffey Farms owner Evan McCommon and his family are introducing a new generation to fresh seasonal foods in northwest Louisiana.
Forestry and conservation were the most practical uses for the land until the economy stumbled around 2008, taking timber with it.
Mahaffey Farms
That kind of thinking is bringing new life to a 90-year-old farm in northwest Louisiana.
Mahaffey Farms in Bossier Parish, La., is at the heart of a growing local foods movement. From left to right are the McCommon family — Nicky, Evan and Taylor — and Evan’s mother, Sandra Evans, who produce vegetables, pastured meats and eggs.
By 2012 the gardens were back at Mahaffey Farms, which soon earned a following at farmers markets for purple hull peas, heirloom tomatoes, squash, greens, onions and other Southern staples. Next the family introduced pasture-raised livestock — an even better fit for the sandy soil and rolling terrain. Today the property looks a lot like North Louisiana farms did a century ago, when heritage breeds of pigs, cattle and poultry did their share of the work controlling brush and fertilizing the soil.
Christine Forrest
W
hen life gives you lemons, make organic, locally sourced lemonade.
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