By Marcia Barnes
Staff Writer
The origins of the historic Gibby Farm in Clay County date back to the early 1900s and its significant evolution persisted into the 21st Century and into the working farm it is today. The farmland owned by Keith and Kathy Gibby rests along Fires Creek Road, but the farm was not always in this location.
John Martin Gibby, Keith’s grandfather, originally had a 220 acre farm in what became Lake Chatuge. In 1941, the Tennessee Valley Authority announced that a dam was to be built and by August, John bought a 130 acre farm in the Fires Creek area and later expanded it to approximately 230 acres. The land ran from Tusquittee Creek along the Hiawassee River.
Moving the original Gibby Farm a distance of seven or eight miles to a new farm in a narrow window of time meant transporting everything from the farm except the house. Everything was tractors and farm equipment and a truck, livestock, everything except the house.
John was killed in a logging accident in Dec. 1958, and the land was divided between the siblings, Bill, who was Keith’s father, his uncle Floyd, and his aunt Alice. Over time some of the land was sold to pay taxes, yet a part of the farm endured the times.
Bill Gibby was disabled at the age of 33 and stayed here in Clay County all of his life. His home remains in full use on the Gibby Farm today. The plot of earth he and his wife seeded every year in a vegetable garden has recently been planted in potatoes by his son, Keith.
In 2015, Keith and Kathy started Still Waters Landing on part of the original farm as a church ministry through Hickory Stand Methodist Church with the help of then Pastor Bryan Wilson. Later, the couple purchased the remaining original farmland from a cousin and have 50 acres in farm use today.
By 2018, the farm expanded into the addition of livestock when Kathy made a fortuitous drive to Tennessee to buy pigs from a farm about to be sold. Housed temporarily in Kathy’s new root cellar, the Berkshire pigs accompanied with some high-bred cousins eventually moved to a natural habitat on the farm. That was the year a small garden was planted. Today, Still Waters Landing sells pork and produce to local customers and donates fresh produce to the local food pantries through the “Big Table Fund.”
The evolution of the original farm is star-studded with Appalachian certified organic vegetables and locally raised pork available year-round on Saturdays. The new family produce market will open in late summer or early fall.
A remarkable family has held the farm intact, utilizing practical farm practices, reaching into the scientific to produce better crops and sharing the best of what they grow and raise with the community that surrounds them.
Part of John's original farm remains visible as Gibby Island. It can be seen from the Chatuge Dam. Within a distance of about seven miles, his descendants live and work on the new farm, Keith, Kathy, Amy, Maple, Ash and baby Amethyst.