Our Story
Preserve Grayson Inc. was founded to preserve the water, air, native habitat, health, and traditional peaceful way of life of residents in Grayson County, Virginia
Grayson County is a mostly rural county in Southwest Virginia. The area is rich in tradition, love of the land, the heart of traditional music and craft, and treasured farm life. Preserve Grayson appreciates all that Grayson County is and seeks to understand and protect the balance between agriculture and the natural world. We deeply value our natural resources, our clean streams flowing into the ancient New River, and the people who live here.
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Much of Grayson County is zoned rural farm district, the exact wording being, "to preserve and protect the existing rural character, natural amenities, and the agricultural base of the County. This district is composed of agriculture and forest land, low-density residential uses and services with a mix of light industrial, low impact commercial services and outdoor recreational uses.” Yet! In recent years, industrial scale agriculture has put more pressure on how land is used. The massive and rapid expansion of large scale agriculture in the county has placed an unsustainable burden on the people who live here, those who would move here, the tourism industry, small farmers, and of course, the land itself.
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See some of the impacts below. Entire mountainsides slashed and burned, fields of wildflowers irradiated, trees along border lines ripped, farm roads carved out beside neighboring properties, streams inundated with sediment, and internal roads eroding because of large flatbed trucks and dump trucks traversing the countryside. These are just a few of the massive impacts industrial scale agriculture is having on Grayson County and beyond.
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Preserve Grayson seeks to bring attention to these changes.
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Wildflowers grow on a mountain hillside.
This same field, cleared and sprayed with herbicide in preparation for planting Christmas Tree seedlings.
Wildflowers grow on a mountain hillside.
Deep in the recesses of this beautiful countryside, thousands of acres of land are being forever changed by industrial scale agriculture. One crop, in particular, has exploded in recent years on mountaintops and hillsides and that crop is Christmas trees. Christmas trees are cultivated intensively for 8-10 years before harvest.
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Most of these trees, and the profit gained from them, leave Grayson county, destined for cities throughout the United States.
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Many internet searches will lead you to believe that Christmas trees are environmentally safe, but consider this. The trees, flora, fauna, and streams that inhabited these mountainsides before were storing carbon, supporting diversity, and protecting the ecosystems that exists in the soil, water, and air. Further, spraying pesticides and fertilizers from a helicopter in prevalent winds, at high elevations, around homes and family farms, can hardly be called environmentally safe.
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Today, in Grayson County, like many places on Earth, a beautiful ecosystem is being destroyed, for a commodity not necessary to life. Preserve Grayson seeks to present another view, a deep dive if you will, of what is happening beyond the pavement, in the hills and hollers of these mountains.
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