Greenville farmers, once vehemently anti

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The view of the Blue Ridge Mountains from Famoda Farm in Tigerville. The farm's owners are leading a charge to add agricultural zoning to the county's zoning classifications. Nathaniel Cary/staff

About 60 years ago, a local meatpacker named William Paul Brown and his family bought 350 acres in northern Greenville County to raise Angus and show cattle. It was a family operation and became known as Famoda Farm, named for those involved — father, mother and daughters.

Famoda Farm is still a working farm today. Modernized and morphing with the addition of an event venue and a small store that sells locally farmed products, it’s still in the family. Those daughters, Shirley Brown and Doris Brown Blackmon, have become great-aunt and grandmother, respectively.

Heather Collins — daughter of Doris — her husband, Travis, and their two children work the farm and raise cattle to this day. They want that to continue for the next generations but fear the onslaught of development creeping north from Greenville will forever change the rural lifestyle they enjoy.

The Collins family wasn’t interested in zoning their land. The closest suitable zoning was for residential, which they felt could impede on their farming and event venue activities. But after they became involved in a conflict to keep sewer service and the denser development it allows from expanding in the area, they began to search for a zoning option that might work to preserve their farm and others around them at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Months later, after numerous community meetings, discussions with state Sen. Tom Corbin, Rep. Mike Burns and County Council members Joe Dill, Mike Barnes and Steve Shaw, the Collins and others settled on a request: Could the county create a new zoning district for agricultural uses?

Other counties in the state already have agricultural zoning district as an option. Greenville County has never had the zoning, in part because residents in areas where agriculture zoning would be appropriate have largely opposed to any zoning whatsoever.

That script has flipped. Now, hundreds of residents in northern Greenville County have signed a petition asking County Council to establish an agricultural use district.

The push came shortly after County Council voted on new land development rules that some residents in unzoned areas felt would lead to dense development and sprawl in rural parts of the county.

County planning staff drafted a new zoning classification that would be known as Agricultural Preservation District (AG). County Council is set to discuss the new district at its meeting Nov. 2 on the second of three required readings. County staff and the council’s planning and development committee have each recommended approval of the new district following a public hearing where a number of farmers spoke in favor.

The district is designed to preserve the county’s agricultural resources “for agricultural and forestry uses and limit non-agricultural development in productive and prime agricultural areas to densities and development patterns that are consistent with the continuation of economically viable agriculture,” according to the ordinance.

Heather Collins stands at the entrance to Famoda Farm to Table, the family's new store that sells farm-raised products in the Tigerville community, on Nov. 1, 2021. Collins is among those who pushed for Greenville County to add an agricultural zoning option. Nathaniel Cary/staff

On its own, the new agricultural preservation district zoning won’t zone any specific parcels within the county but would make the AG zoning an option for property owners.

It would allow for one house and an accessory dwelling unit like one used for farm laborers to be built for every five acres of land. It would allow both indoor and outdoor farming, processing, storage and support services as well as animal production, barns, stables, farm stands, fishing lakes and ponds, forestry and logging, riding academies and veterinarians.

Agricultural zoning could also be used with some conditions for agritourism, bed and breakfasts, group homes, manufactured homes and special event facilities. Other uses — all non-residential — could be permitted by special exception, including for athletic facilities, cemeteries, communication towers, government facilities, religious institutions and runways.

In 2016, an effort by some Tigerville residents to consider rural residential zoning to protect their properties from future development failed to gain traction. In fact, it led to threats, canceled meetings and destruction of signs by some opposed to any zoning in the northern third of the county.

The Dark Corner’s history of fierce independence carried on.

But five years later, the tone has changed. And as the county expects to add nearly 200,000 residents in the coming two decades, the pressure to sell farmland for development has heightened.

Heather Collins said she has found a much more receptive audience to agricultural zoning because it seems to best fit the character of the properties near Famoda Farm.

“They’re all farms that developers would love to get their fingers on because most of it is pasture, most of it is cleared, most of it is flat,” Collins said.

More than 700 people hand-signed a petition to ask County Council to create the zoning category. Collins set up a table with a red checkerboard tablecloth Nov. 1 at the entrance to her event space and posted on Facebook for anyone who wished to support zoning to come sign the petition. More than two dozen stopped by and added their names by late afternoon.

Many who signed don’t live on land they could zone agricultural but support the idea and don’t want the county’s farms to turn into subdivisions, Collins said.

Others, at least 10 farmers with more than 2,300 acres combined, plan to seek agricultural zoning if it is established, she said.

From leff, Doris Brown Blackmon, Dora Marcus, Minnie Brown and Shirley Brown stand at Famoda Farm in 1962 with the farmhouse foundation in the background in a photo that hangs at the farm. Nathaniel Cary/staff

“It’s not an easy process (to zone property),” she said. “We’re just trying to get the option to start the process.”

Councilman Joe Dill, who represents much of the Blue Ridge community, said the proposal for agricultural zoning has led previous anti-zoning advocates to change their stance.

“There are several who now see the need to be zoned,” he said.

He said he hoped the council would allow farmers to protect the agricultural history of the county by creating the zoning classification. Other counties across the state already allow agricultural zoning, he said.

The Greenville County Association of Homebuilders has taken a "neutral" stance on agricultural zoning, the association’s Vice President Michael Dey said. The HBA has stated in the past that the county's issues with its land development regulations, particularly the now-replaced Article 3.1, should've been solved with zoning.

Dill said he thought the zoning would have the support of the council since it did not specifically zone any land and it had the support of residents in his district and county staff.

“Other than folks that just want to flex their muscle, I don’t know of any reason that folks would want to be against it because it gives people another tool,” he said.

To zone property in Greenville County that is currently unzoned, a single landowner can petition to have it zoned if their property is contiguous to other zoned land. Landowners can also petition for zoning if they have at least one square mile of land where 60 percent of the property owners who own at least 60 percent of the land request zoning.

Landowners, with support by at least 15 percent of a voting precinct, can also ask for a referendum to be able to vote on zoning an area of land.

The agricultural zoning in Greenville would not be limited just to unzoned land. It could also encapsulate land that’s currently used for farming in zoned areas.

The original Famoda Farm sign from 1962 hangs inside an event venue at the farm. Nathaniel Cary/staff

Ben Carper, a Tanglewood resident who has run for public office in the past, said he owns an eight-acre farm that’s currently zoned “R-S” residential but that he would consider zoning agricultural if it were approved.

Carper said he lives at the farm and also raises some farm animals and has no plans to develop the land. The agricultural zoning would give peace of mind to neighbors that the farm would remain and wouldn’t be sold for development, he said.

“My neighbors love the farm, they don’t want a subdivision. It gives them more ground to push back and say, 'We don’t want a subdivision in here. We want a farm,'” he said.

Collins said she is concerned council members would seek to amend the ordinance at the last minute just like they did this summer with a replacement to Article 3.1 when amendments at the final reading significantly changed an ordinance that had gained widespread support from residents who live in unzoned areas of the county.

She said she has gathered signatures from residents in every council district in favor of agricultural zoning.

In the meantime, Collins and her family are continuing to raise cattle and hogs and hoping the view of the mountains visible from the farm will remain undisturbed in the years ahead.

“The farm is an experience. It’s a way of life, it truly is,” she said. “And if you haven’t experienced it, you don’t know what you’re missing.”

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