EARLEVILLE — EARLEVILLE -- One distant autumn day, a seven-point buck stepped out of some woods and made straight for two wild turkeys feeding in a field. Joseph Smith Whitlock, watching from 60 yards or so, felt sure the deer would chase them off. But no.
"One of them old turkey gobblers jumped up and smacked him on both sides of the head with his wings," he recalled. "That old buck shook his head and walked back into the woods."
Whitlock chuckled at the memory. That turkey smackdown has stayed vivid in his 82-year-old mind, though it happened long ago, "probably in the '70s, sumpin' like 'at."
Cackling next to him was Don Wright, a 65-year-old pipe-smoker behind the wheel of a Toyota truck so dirty its dashboard looked two-tone: blue and brown. The two men were driving a visitor around Grove Farm, lately covered in the tan stubble of last year's soybean crop.
The Wrights may own this Cecil County farm, but nobody knows its rolling 744 acres like Whitlock, a retired farmhand who's lived on the land 62 years. Now his deep roots and steady presence in their lives have inspired an unusual act of loyalty.
Not long ago, the state of Maryland agreed to buy Grove Farm for $14.3 million. The Wrights are delighted that the undulating fields, sloping woods and marshes, all bookended by a Chesapeake Bay tidal creek and the Sassafras River, will be preserved as a wildlife management area open to the public.
Best of all, they say, Joe Whitlock will get to stay in his one-story house with its big black Kodiak wood stove hunched by the kitchen table.
If the sale is finalized at the end of February as planned, the Wrights will leave their two houses, one dating to 1820, and empty the timeworn barns. But remaining behind, free to fish Pond Creek, wander among the poplars and chestnut oaks or maybe take his gun to the lay-down blind in the woods will be the short, white-haired man with a bamboo walking stick who's been as much a feature of these parts as any of those landmarks.
Allowing Whitlock to stay was "stipulation No. 1," explained David Wright, Don's 52-year-old cousin. In 2001, the Wrights began exploring a sale after some in the family concluded that the farm was too expensive to maintain. They made the same point to all would-be buyers, from house-hungry developers to the preservation-minded state: "This is Joe Whitlock. He's been here longer than any of us, and he's staying."
