OUR HISTORY
My father, Col James P. Rathbun, Sr. was responsible for our family eventually acquiring this farm. Dad was stationed at Parris Island in the early 1960’s. He and my mother, Elaine, fell in love with the Low Country. After dad’s retirement, they took a tour along the eastern seaboard and found this 30 acre track of land on Brickyard Point in Beaufort, SC for sale and was able to purchase it.
As a career Marine, my father had little experience with farming. But his abundant common sense and ambitious drive were all that was necessary to mold the property into a productive family farm. With a shoe string budget, dad was able to shape the land into a producing pecan farm. He planted and grafted trees in such a manner as to maximize cross pollination and nut production. He loved the work and poured his soul into the crafting of this magnificent piece of land.
My father enjoyed working the farm for 25 years. Regrettably, we lost him to the ills of cancer at the young age of 77, on January 23, 1993. My mother remained on the property and with the help of dear friends, was able to keep the farm functioning during those lean years. But in 2006, she broke her hip. At this point, it became obvious to me, that it was time to step up and take charge of those duties of the farm. Retiring from my federal service position at Quantico Virginia in November 2006, my wife Nancy and I came down and began the farming journey that has led us to where we are today.
From one broken tractor and no equipment any longer suitable for farming, we have slowly evolved into a farm the produces shelled pecans, pears, persimmons, pomegranates and a large variety of citrus to the Low Country.
provided by Jim Rathbun jr
A little bit of additional historical background about our farm. When my parents bought Brickyard Point Farms in the spring of 1968, there were about 25 pecan trees on the main property. These trees ranged in age from around 90 years to almost 200 years old. Today we still have 16 of the original monarchs. Hurricanes and lightning strikes have caused the demise of several of our old giants. But in the early days of my dad’s tenure, he planted and grafted the vast majority of what we currently harvest on the main farm.
Additionally, in 1972 I purchased a parcel of land about a mile down Johnson Landing Rd from the main farm. In 1977 we planted an additional 95 pecan trees on slightly less than a 3 acre parcel of this property. Today there are 84 trees in this orchard.
To date, we have about 340 pecans trees, including some young, non bearing trees. From these trees we annually harvest about 9 to 10 thousand pounds of pecan (in shell weight) on the “On Years” and about 5 to 6 thousand pounds on “Off Years”. Our highest harvest yield was in 2009 when we produced 14.3 thousand pounds. There have been some fairly lean years of late. 2016 brought us Hurricane Matthew which took all of our crop and we lost 15 pecan trees as well. in 2019, Hurricane Dorian stripped off about 20% of an already bleak pecan crop. We managed to harvest 4.3 thousand pounds. It was suppose to be an “On Year”.
