OPINION: The Corn Maze, the Cows, and the Conservation Question
Disclosure: I am also the CEO of the Freedom to Read Coalition of Columbia County (FTRCCC), a registered 501(c)(4) organization that engages in issue-based advocacy and has endorsed Jim Steed’s opponent in the District 2 Commission race. This post is written and published independently as part of the Columbia County Observer, which I maintain separately to document and share information from local public meetings, with occasional opinion pieces thrown in the mix. The views expressed here are personal and do not represent any organization.
About a week or so ago I received a tip asking me to look into Steed’s Dairy because the property on the county tax map is listed in a conservation status. The individual felt that perhaps the commercial activity on the property should disqualify it from having conservation status. (FYI - Property in a conservation status is assessed at 40% of current value so has a much lower property tax than commercial or home property.) Conservation properties are limited to timber and agricultural use. Admittedly, I didn’t know much about Conservation Use Valuation Assessment (CUVA) properties before this and I am still by no means an expert.
After that, the same question started circulating on social media. Some people wondered whether the commercial activity at Steed’s Dairy might conflict with its conservation status. It’s an understandable question because the CUVA rules can be complicated, and not everyone realizes that agritourism is specifically allowed under Georgia law.
I went ahead and did an Open Records Request for the CUVA applications for two parcels owned by Young Property Holdings, LLLP; Parcels 074 136G and 074 138B. Both applications were dated 2022. Don’t get all conspiratorial on me now about the property being held by an LLLP as that’s not unusual for family agricultural holdings. Just in case you look into it, the property was originally held by Mill Branch Investments LLLP and must have changed names/ownership during the application process.
The accompanying letter from the law firm Hull Barrett contains a clerical error in that it switched the parcels, but it’s clearly just clerical. Also of note, Parcel 074 138B had a lease to Big Dog Stump & Tree, Inc. consisting of 15 acres. Big Dog Stump & Tree is a tree-removal service, and from photos included in the packet, it appears that the area is used for storing trucks and equipment. The lease was disclosed in the CUVA paperwork as well as the photos. I haven’t looked into whether that use affects the conservation classification, since my primary focus was Steed’s Dairy, but it’s something that could be reviewed by the county assessors if they perform future inspections.
The parcel that has Steed’s Dairy is on Parcel 074 136G at 4553 Wrightsboro Road, Grovetown GA. The parcel is listed as 86.974 acres. Of that, according to documents 24.829 acres are listed as Timber and 62.145 acres are listed as Agricultural. In the accompanying questionnaire dated 4/18/2022, it shows that there’s about 50± acres of pasture and 10± acres of corn. For livestock, it listed 10–12 cows and 4 chickens. The county’s inspection report conducted on September 15, 2022, corroborated the land use with some minor differences in livestock: the report noted a few additional goats, ponies, horses, and four more chickens.
The same letter from Hull Barrett also identifies a lease to Jim Steed to operate Steed’s Dairy Farm. The lease includes a 5-acre field known as the corn maze, a 3-acre cow pasture immediately adjacent to it, and an 11-acre tract containing the “Maze Complex” and playground. So clearly, this lease, and its uses, were disclosed to the Columbia County Board of Assessors in the 2022 application.
The law covering Conservation is OCGA 48-5-7.4. Justia shows some changes to the law between what it has archived as the 2022 version vs 2024. However, when I looked into it further, I think it might be an error at the Justia website because the only amendments to this law during that time frame appeared to be grammatical. However, the Georgia legislature proposed expanding the applicability of CUVA property from 2000 acres to 4000 acres in 2025. It passed the House but not the Senate.
Importantly, the law clearly allows for certain commercial and educational activities:
(6) Allowing all or part of the property subject to the covenant on which a corn crop is grown to be used for the purpose of constructing and operating a maze so long as the remainder of such corn crop is harvested;
(7)
(A) Allowing all or part of the property subject to the covenant to be used for agritourism purposes.
(B) As used in this paragraph, the term “agritourism” means charging admission for persons to visit, view, or participate in the operation of a farm or dairy or production of farm or dairy products for entertainment or educational purposes or selling farm or dairy products to persons who visit such farm or dairy;
In short, property enrolled in CUVA can be used for agritourism, including corn mazes, field trips, and other educational or seasonal activities. Based on the documents, the law, and the county’s own inspection reports, it appears to me that Steed’s Dairy is operating within those bounds.
There’s always room for discussion about whether laws like CUVA strike the right balance between supporting family farms and ensuring fairness in taxation, but in this case, there’s no indication to me that the rules were broken. I lived in Tillamook, Oregon from about age 2 until I was 10. Yep, the place of cheese fame and the tagline “more cows than people.” Back then the cheese was only regionally known, icecream sold locally, and all the milk for the cheese factory was from Tillamook. Anyway, I spent many of my formative years “helping” my step-dad on family dairy farms, so I have some sense of what an operating dairy farm looks like. With only about a dozen cows, Steed’s Dairy seems to function more as an agritourism and educational venture than as a traditional production dairy, and that’s fine under Georgia law. Don’t take that to mean I’m anti-agritourism either. I’m not saying that at all. My husband and I enjoyed taking our kids to Steed’s Dairy when they were younger, and I think it’s important for kids to learn where their food comes from.
For me, this is about transparency and accuracy. When questions are raised about public figures or public programs, it’s worth checking the facts before jumping to conclusions. That’s how trust in our local institutions, and in each other, is built.
