LINCOLN -- Arkansas Agriculture Department recently announced 54 Arkansas farms would be designated as Arkansas Century Farms. One of those farms recognized as being in the same family for 100 years is Sugar Hill Ranch Inc., located outside Lincoln.
Roger and Mary Alice Pitts are owners of Sugar Hill Ranch. They are retired now but Roger gave a history of the family's ownership of the property.
"My grandfather, Sterling Chambers Pitt, moved from Alabama to Muskogee, Okla., around 1900," Pitts said. "He was a civil engineer graduate of Auburn University and worked all over the world where railroad tunnels were being built. He was appointed to the Daws Commission and moved to Oklahoma."
"The Daws Commission was a commission concerning Indians," said Mary Alice Pitts.
"My dad, Sterling Hardy Pitts, was born in 1903 in Muskogee," Roger Pitts said. "His mother died and my grandfather remarried and had three more children. He remarried again after the death of that wife and married a woman with three children, so he had three sets of children, three of them stepchildren.
Pitts said his grandfather then moved near Lincoln and bought a farm in 1914.
"My dad was 10 years old then and he never left the farm," Pitts said.
In 1936, Sterling Pitts passed away.
"My father, an older brother Robert and his half brother Samuel Pitts took possession of the farm," said Pitts. "They called it the Pitts Brothers farm and operated it until 1964.
Pitts said there were 341 acres and an old orchard set on the property. In the early 1930s the family started planting more apple trees and peach trees and fenced part of the property for cows and hogs.
"Until the early 1950s, we had the largest fruit farm in Arkansas," Pitts said.
Samuel Pitts developed a heart condition and retired in 1964.
"My dad bought his third of the farm."
In the meantime Roger had graduated from the University of Arkansas in 1961 with a general agriculture degree and a vocational tech agriculture degree. He worked as a teacher at Lakeside High School in 1962 then accepted a position with Farm Bureau to sell insurance in Hempstead County. He and Mary Alice had moved to Hope when he went to work for Farm Bureau.
"My dream was to come back to the farm," Pitts said. "I went to work for Farm Bureau thinking I could make more money than I could teaching."
He received a visit from his dad asking him if he still wanted to work on the farm.
"I told him, 'yes, but I have no money,'" Pitts said.
With help from his father, Pitts and Mary Alice moved back to Lincoln to a cattle farm.
They had three children with the first, Russell Pitts, born in 1964, a daughter Sarah Elizabeth born in 1967 and Alicia Kay born in 1969, The couple lost Russell to a heart attack in 2007.
Russell had three sons and one of them Seth Sterling Pitts, with a business and agriculture degree, has moved to the the farm and runs it now, since Roger and Mary Alice have retired.
"His brother, Connor, is a senior at the University of Arkansas," Pitts said. "He's also a business and agriculture major."
The younger brother Alec Morrow Pitts is a senior at Lincoln High School.
Sarah's two sons are Lincoln High School graduates -- Dustin and Dalton Simmons. Pitts said Dalton is studying business and agriculture at college too.
The Pitts have two grandsons, Alicia's sons, Trevor Ezell, who is attending Southeast Missouri state on a baseball scholarship, and Tanner Ezell who is a high school junior.
The couple has two stepgrandchildren, Kim Brown, a U.A. graduate, and Shane Simmons, who is employed by Walmart.
The farm has grown through the years to having 800 acres today with 600 acres in open pasture.
"Its a cow, calf operation now," Pitts said, adding the family has cross-bred English cattle and Angus bulls.
"We have about 300 head of cattle," he said.
Calves are sold when they are seven to eight months old at a sale barn in Stilwell, Okla., at its livestock auctions.
The Pitts also have nine poultry houses.
Pitts said the farm was incorporated in 1988 and renamed Sugar Hill Ranch Inc.
"Seth is the fifth generation since 1914," Pitts said. "I hope the grandsons stay on the farm and make a living at it."
Mary Alice and Roger married in 1958. Once the couple moved to the farm, she became the farm's bookkeeper.
"She managed our money," Roger Pitts said.
"Mostly I raised our kids, helped with the grandkids and followed them in sports," Mary Alice Pitts said. "It hasn't been a very exciting but it has been a rewarding life."
"I was able to do what most people don't get to do," Roger Pitts said. "I got to do what I wanted to do and preferred to do. I had a choice to do this. I had an opportunity to fulfill my dreams and be on this farm since 1964."
The family has received an Arkansas Century Farm sign and certificate honoring Sugar Hill Ranch as a 2014 Century farm.
General News on 12/17/2014