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 fill volumes.

The family’s farm legacy — and the Center Point community itself — 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. Portions of that property eventually held the structures that made up the Center Point community, but it was the farming on the property that sustained the community.

From 1880-1903, Wesley Dominick ran a sharecropping operation — this was at the height of cotton farming and prior to the bole weevil. The practice involved dividing the property into 50-acre plots, building a small, simple house and barn and furnishing it with bare essentials, two mules and basic tools. A sharecropper family would then be placed on the property to work the 50 acres on a 50/50 percentage. Dominick had literally dozens of these sharecropper families farming his land, according to his family.

“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 Levans family. “Their only way out was sharecropping.”

At the time of his death in 1914, Dominick had already sold 622 of the 1,900 acres and since he never married he had 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. Records show that between 1914 and 1922, Dominick’s two nieces sold 751 acres of the what they had inherited.

In 1927, Ophelia McCullough deeded the north half of Dominick’s 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 fertilizer and other 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 Center Point 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 and turned out to be more trouble than their production was worth. On the other hand, pimento peppers became quite productive to the point that a processing plant was established in Carrollton and there was even a pimento festival complete with a pimento queen. 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 forth of the labor force on the farm. He never returned to the work on the farm, but built a house there a few years ago after retiring after 38 years working for Sears Roebuck.

“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.”

About the time the Donald entered the Air Force, he said that a county agent was promoting Hereford cattle through the use of artificial insemination. Cecil used $190 from money Donald had sent to his family 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. During his period the cattle herd continued to grow and became successful enough that the farm longs from the bowl 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 of the very large chicken house facilities 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. Over time he took over more of the work exactly as Cecil had from Zack and as Jerry had from Cecil.

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

Johnny said he doesn’t think much about carrying on a legacy. With a retirement from teaching, he 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,” Johnny 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.

“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’s 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. I think I read somewhere the other day that to make a pretty good living you’ve got to have something like 400 head of cow. I don’t know that there are any farms in Carroll County with 400 head.”

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

Anyone interested in discovering your farm/family history should consider joining the Carroll County Genealogical Society. Contact Donald Levans at 770-562-1612 for details.