With the racing on hold my dad got a chance to buy a 10-acre tract of land in Taylor, FL, the goal was to go sell sufficient, for me it was another learning experience, as the race car set outside the body shop after the 1973 season, our total focus turned toward the Taylor property. As crazy as our adventures were the learning never stopped. The pig operation was no different than any of our adventures find a hole and jump in. Raising animals was never a passion, an interest yes, but the main interest was sustainability. Living off the land is part of the Davis lineage, from the outlaw swamp wildlife to dirt farming we embrace the pick and save experience. Our adventure had a couple new members that directed our agribusiness concept, Butch and Hazel Taft fresh out of TN Tech College of agriculture and AG teachers at the local. Butch from Taft, Tennessee had a degree in Animal Husbandry, Hazel Taft from Marion, Ohio had degree was in Ornamental Horticulture both were cowboys. We’ll talk about cowboys later. Dad was out trading one day and ran in Johnnie Raulerson an ole truck vegetable farmer in town, he wanted his truck painted but even though the truck was a perfect 65 Ford long wheelbase the cost was more than he wanted to pay. Dad was talked into a trade that included a Duroc boar, a Duroc sow, 2- White Chester guilts and we were in the pig game. So, we decided to raise pure and cross bred pigs to supplement the income and get my mind off racing. Like every adventure with my dad, he went neck deep, the goal was to research the most productive swine operation in Baker County. My dad was working at Baker County High School, I was starting a new private school in Lake City, shortly after we purchased the property we started a road to the river, our property 10 acres, an acre of planted pines, 5 acres of pastureland, and 4 acres of thick cypress swamp, the deed read to and into the St. Mary’s River that was the border between FL and GA. We brought in a contractor friend and using a method perfected by my grandfather back in the WPA days, we crossed the swamp by laying over cypress trees across the road, covering them with swamp muck, a thick clay and plant material. About 3 days into the adventure Buck’s right-hand man slipped off the cypress matt and sunk a bulldozer in the muck, as it sank, we tied everything we owned with a winch, Buck called Farm Bureau as the bulldozer sank into the abyss. My grandfather suggested using a track hoe, to create the road by staying on road center laying down trees from left to right, cutting ditches in the muck, burying the trees with the think clay. Once through the thick swamp we dressed the road with the rich black dirt of the oak hammocks on both ends of the road. The next adventure was to build the hog facility. Remember my dad was an engineer, draftsman, and master carpenter. After drawing the furrowing barn dad design an innovative pen system that utilized a direction of flow from pens to farrowing barn, back to the breeder animal pens. The system included a 20 ft x 20 ft furrowing barn, 10 breed sow and boar pens 10 ft x 10ft, and 2 feeder pig pens 10ft x 40ft. Each area included demand feeders and waterers. Total area was 20ft x 120 ft built out of 4000 board ft of cypress 2”x 4”, 2”x 6”, 2” x 8”, 1”x 6” boards. To achieve this, we had to harvest enough cypress from our swamp to cut the boards, secure a sawmill and sawyer to cut the logs. As we planned to retrieve cypress from the Crews Road property swamp, dad reached out to find a sawmill.