Another new neighborhood is popping up next door to Tess Fetterly’s Twisted Horns Farm in Jefferson, Ga. TWISTED HORNS DIARY
In many areas, developers are squeezing out America’s farms
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone They paved paradise, put up a parking lot ...
I was driving my kids to school this morning and the song Big
Yellow Taxi came on the radio. I’m sure most of you remember the rendition covered by Counting Crows in the early 2000s but the orig- inal was released in 1970 by Joni Mitchell.
I turned the volume up and sang along while my kids rolled their eyes at the “oldie” I was listening too. I didn’t really pay much attention to what the song was saying until later that day because, of course, the song got stuck in my head!
I was repeating the chorus over and over as I moved through our pastures making my rounds and as I made my way up to our top field, I could hear construction equipment and the banging of hammers next door. A subdivision has started to take form and homes are popping up all along our property line. I am watching as my own county is losing farms and homesteaders and in their place are big box stores and high-density housing. It got me thinking about the real effects of the “urban sprawl” and how we are witnessing not only the loss of land but the loss of generations of Americans whose dirt roads are being paved to make way for interstates that move not only goods, but people who want to escape the chains of city life.
10 Goat Rancher | May 2026 BY TESS FETTERLY
I find this ironic because as more people start moving farther out because of overcrowding, they inevitably bring with them all the things they were trying to escape in the first place. They leave the cities and highly populated towns because of
crime or traffic. They want better schools or more space, but they bring all that they hate with them because they do not want to lose the convenience that they are accustomed to. I understand that things are always changing but watching the destruction of rural life makes me sad.
When my husband and I made the decision to move our family across the country from San Diego, Calif., to Jefferson, Ga., we wanted a different life. A place to raise our children to be self-suffi- cient, free thinking and live life at a slower pace. We wanted to raise them far away from where prioritizing possessions becomes the foun- dation for a life of materialism, vanity and greed. We had no idea when we bought our home that we were moving to one of the fastest growing counties in Georgia. We moved to Georgia in 2021 and in five short years, the area we live in is becoming unrecognizable. Maybe change and growth are inevitable but the challenges it brings with it has made us recon- sider if this is really the place for our family. As if the financial challenges in today’s livestock market are not enough, we are continually facing rising operating costs and en- croachment challenges. I was surprised to learn that this “encroach-
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