In Mark Ferguson‘s mind, the ecological degradation of his Bedford County farm is part and parcel with the human enslavement that once happened there as well.
There’s the hillside once home to mighty chestnuts and oaks that was long ago clear-cut for pasture.
There’s the stream and its eroded banks trodden by cattle on their way to defecate in its waters.
And there’s the remains of the slave shack where his great-great-great-grandfather housed the humans he owned.
Now determined to atone for the sins of his ancestors, Ferguson is making it his life’s mission to cleanse the land of both scourges.
“For us, this farm is about heritage and stewardship — those would be my two watchwords,” said Ferguson, surveying the rolling landscape. “We want to be amazing stewards of it, and we want to uncover and represent both the good things and the bad things about the heritage of this farm. And there are both.”
Ferguson and his husband, Alexander Dykes, purchased the 226-acre farm in 2022, and at first glance, Ferguson appears straight out of casting for the urbanite relocating to the rural wilds.
Mustard-yellow corduroys tucked into properly scuffed boots, forest green sweater and quilted navy vest, manicured sandy hair and a hint of a beard framing blue eyes, he resembles a model in an outdoors ad. As he takes a visitor on a tour of the 8,500 native trees being planted in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, he greets the largely Hispanic crew with “hola” and departs with a “gracias,” though they never speak to him.
But if Ferguson, 51, is still a newcomer to this particular piece of land, Appalachia is not a newcomer to him. He grew up in Roanoke, where today he owns the year-round makers market Crafteria: Handmade Food & Goods and the online magazine and store Woodshed: An Appalachian Joint.
He shares that he’s working on his own memoir about how his “low-income, Appalachian momma persevered and, in spite of having no material wealth, guided her queer son out of an abusive environment and into Harvard University.”
Whereas “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vice President JD Vance’s memoir, “looks at our region and blames people for their circumstances, I look at mountain people and see a huge amount of grit and hope and resilience,” Ferguson said. 
Restoring the land, one tree at a time
Ferguson will need all that grit, hope and resilience to restore the farm.
On the environmental side, the first major project was the tree planting in late December as part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency’s Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, or CREP.
“So the most interesting part to me about the tree-planting is restoring the forest that was here 175 years ago,” Ferguson said. “My ancestors cleared this land, which made a lot of sense at the time. They were farmers. It was for their own sustenance and survival. But my life’s a little different. I work from a sofa with a laptop in front of me with a puggle by my side. Most days I don’t need acre after acre of cleared land, so I’m in a really good position to do this, to rebuild and restore this habitat.”
Today, acre after acre of his land is now home to chest-high saplings protected from deer by green plastic sheaths that look like toothpicks discarded by a passing giant.
According to the USDA’s website, CREP “encourages farmers and landowners to enroll in long-term conservation contracts, removing environmentally sensitive land from agricultural production and implementing conservation practices. Participants receive annual rental payments, cost-share assistance for establishing conservation practices, and other financial incentives.”
Planted by a crew from Shenandoah Habitats, the trees include 150 hybridized American chestnuts. Once comprising a third of the Great Eastern Forest, the American chestnut became extinct in the early 1900s due to a foreign blight.
“You can’t just go out and buy thousands of pounds of chestnuts,” said David Coleman, owner of Fishersville-based Shenandoah Habitats. “We’re still a long way away from restocking the mid-Atlantic with chestnuts because a lot of nuts go to research at Virginia Tech and Penn State.”
Shenandoah Habitats’ chestnuts are hybridized with a Chinese variety, which keeps them resistant to blight but a fraction the size of the original American. Researchers hope to one day achieve 97% of the native chestnut’s height, said Coleman, “but I don’t think we’ll see a significant shift in our lifetime because we don’t have enough seed. We’re closer than we were, but from a commercial standpoint we’re still a long way away.”
Then there’s the conservation easement that Ferguson plans to secure for the farm this year. His will join the 14 farms totaling 2,557 acres that Blue Ridge Land Conservancy placed under easement in 2024, said Emily Bender, assistant director.
“For a lot of folks we work with, it’s the peace of mind that the property will be available for agriculture and recreation down the road,” said Bender. “Conservation easements are a really great tool to protect land that is so special to people and families in the Roanoke Valley. We have such a treasure of natural resources here.”
Between some selective logging, CREP, and tax credits received for the conservation easement, Ferguson and Dykes hope to recoup the $612,630 paid for the farm.
The farm’s historical value has a different calculation. 
‘A very American story, for better or worse’
In 1850, Silas Dearing — Ferguson’s great-great-great-grandfather — was 45 years old when he purchased the farm for $4.
Dearing must have done well for himself, because by the time of his death in 1861, he and his wife, Polly, had added a two-story addition to the farm’s original one-room cabin. According to “An Appraisement of the Goods and Chattels of Silas Dearing, deceased,” filed in Bedford County Circuit Court, Dearing also owned a “Negro woman & Child” who lived in the shack.
The woman was later identified as Adeline Dearing, who may have been the maternal aunt of Booker T. Washington, who grew up nearby. Her child was a 2-year-old daughter, Amanda. 
According to genealogical research conducted by one of Adeline’s descendants, David Dearing: “At the time of his death, Silas was in debt, probably due to buying too much land. In order to satisfy his creditors, all of his possessions and about half of his land were sold at a public estate sale held at his farm on December 5, 1862. Bids were accepted on all items, including the slaves that he owned. The estate sale record shows that [Polly] Dearing, Silas’ widow, purchased Adeline for $700.00 and Amanda … for $300.00.”
As tragic as the transaction was, it kept Adeline and Amanda together.
“It’s a dark part of our history, but I say all the time that if we want to celebrate the good things our ancestors did, we have to reckon with the bad things they did as well,” Ferguson said. “And in this case, it was pretty awful. They held people against their will and forced them to work on their farm.”
While Ferguson laments the human-enslaving chapter of his family’s history, he’s refused to bury it in the Bedford County hills. 
“So this is Silas’ and Polly’s grave,” Ferguson gestures out his SUV window. “Here you can see the fence around it are indentations in the earth that are shaped remarkably like caskets. We’re 90% sure that those are the graves of Black people. There are no markers, and one of our goals is to find somebody to come out with ground penetrating radar to help us identify where those graves lie specifically and get them proper markers, the ones that they deserve.”
As for the living Dearing descendants, Ferguson keeps them regularly apprised of the farm restoration via email and the WhatsApp messaging service. The family gets to see in person the work as well as they continue to reunite every two years on the farm, said Willard Bolden, whose mother descended from Adeline.
“His [Ferguson’s] family was the masters of it and my family, well, there was slavery then,” said Bolden, 72, a retired U.S. Navy chaplain who now lives in Atlanta. “It brings a tear to your eye” to see how Ferguson has honored his family. “It’s very commendable. He’s done a lot for the land — his preservation for culture, for nature, for history, for our namesake.”
Matt Dearing, son of the family genealogist David Dearing, also praises Ferguson’s efforts. A 31-year-old political consultant living in New York, Matt Dearing said when he first visited the farm last summer, standing among the ruins of the shack where Adeline lived, contemplating her life of 160 years ago compared to his own, he was overwhelmed by appreciation.
“It’s a very American story, for better or worse, and I think it’s a testament to what change is possible,” Dearing said. “We can always create a better world.”
Ferguson and Dykes now split their time between the Roanoke Valley and Alexandria, where Dykes, 36, is a mortgage broker. They have no children, but see these 226 acres in Bedford County as their life work and legacy.
“We’re giving back to the world,” said Ferguson. “It just isn’t through reproduction. There are eight billion people on this planet. I don’t need to add another one.”
Parking near the gate that opens up from his farm back onto Stewartsville Road and out into the rest of the world, Ferguson reflected, “I feel incredibly lucky to be in the position to buy the farm and do this research and uncover these opportunities and have these resources directed at us that we would have never had access to had these programs not existed. I find that really heartening, and I’m really grateful for it.”
As for the Dearing family, Bolden hopes Ferguson will one day create a marker by this road for passersby to learn the history “so that others know what we know.”
Matt Dearing added: “I would also love for there to be some acknowledgment that our families have come together, because we consider Mark to be part of the family, too.”
