Rock Farm

  Hi, my name is Ed Harris and together with my wife Sue and my daughters Elizabeth and Becky we run Rock Farm. For 18 years we ran a U-pick farm near Marietta Ga. After my Mother-In-Law died in 2005 we moved to my folks place in North Central Florida about 20 miles East of Gainesville Fl. just outside the little town of Hawthorne.

  I grew up in Treasure Island Fla. with absolutely no experience in raising anything. I went to Berry College where I intended to get a degree in chemistry but after meeting my future wife Sue, who was an Ag. major, I decided agriculture looked pretty good to me. After graduating with a animal science degree, I took a job as a county extension agent in South Ga. for 6 years where I found I enjoyed crop production as much as raising animals.

   Sue is more of an animal lover than I am and she does the lions share of the work on the livestock and horse boarding part of the farm. Sue was going to be a Vet but after we married she left school to be a full time Mom. She has quite a gift at caring for sick animals and has brought many back to health I had long given up for dead.

   Elizabeth is my oldest daughter and follows in Sue's footsteps as an excellent livestock raiser. Besides helping on the farm she has started her own kennel raising Staffordshire Bull Terriers and now shows them across the southeast U.S..

   My son Jeremiah, who is just a couple of years younger than Elizabeth, decided at 16 that working on cars was a lot more exciting to him than digging in the dirt and he now is an automotive tech in Roswell Ga.

   Becky is my youngest at 9yrs and we call her our second crop since her older sister is 18yrs older than her. Together we do all the labor on the farm. 

  We operate Rock Farm on about 90 acres of my folks land. They have a total of about 300 acres but most of it is planted in pines. About 50 aces of our 90 are in improved pastures and we have started to buy some cattle and plan to have a total of about 10 cows in the near future.

 We also moved our 2 mules "Monday" and "Tuesday" and as we have time we are working with them getting them redy to give wagon rides to groups at a nearby church camp. Sue's 2 horses, Toby and Tiger, also made the trip to Florida and round out our large livestock. Sue has bought 1 purebred Nubian goat and she plans to get some more shortly.

    There are several ponds on the property. One is stocked with Bass, Bream and Catfish. It is about 1 1/2 to 2 surface acres and has yielded some large bass in the past ( See the picture belowof the Bass Becky caught out of the pond). There is another pond of about 3/4 acre that we plan to stock with Catfish.

The land varies from a bayhead swamp to sandhill. For Florida the land is very gently rolling. we are located on a Geological feature called the Hawthorne ridge and our trailer is located near the top of a rise with an elevation of around 100ft above sea level. Oue trailer is about 60 feet long and there is a 2 foot drop in elevation frm one end to the other. It's no Georgia hill but it makes for a nice view from the trailer to the Pond.