Header image: Farm Road at Granger Farm painting by Cara Burton
By Arthur Upshur, Stewardship Manager
Dee Miller loved to walk the Granger Farm with VES Land Trust staff on annual visits. Not all landowners choose to do so. Some prefer to check in over the phone instead. But Dee enjoyed the walk and the time to tell stories.
The first property I ever visited for the Land Trust was the Granger Farm. When Dee learned it was my first property visit, he was so excited because “You will always remember the first one better than all the others!” I remember wandering the property for more than three hours that day, an unusually long visit, with Dee offering commentary on the trees, sights, and history of the land.
Dee Miller at Granger Farm on Nassawadox Creek
My final visit with Dee was almost the same. This time Dee could not walk but he gamely loaded himself with his tubes and bags of medical gear in my truck so we could drive around the edge of the field together. He was still full of comments, stories, and memories of our past walks: from the old cars abandoned in the middle of the woods, the deer with hemorrhagic fever, the pine with the unique bark pattern along one field edge, the massive walnut trees marking the corners of the field at the southern woods edge, and the large pines growing along the ditch near the property line with David's Nursery. It was clear he loved this farm and land right to the end.
Dee was born in 1944 and loved nature and the outdoors all his life. His first word was “bee,” which he said as he pointed at trees in his back yard. His early years he spent exploring Long Island Sound on his family's sailboat. Not surprisingly, he graduated from Syracuse with a degree in forestry. He spent several years in Alaska in the Navy and then settled into his first forestry job in northern Maine. He always told me how much he missed the sound of the wind in the white pines in Maine – a different pitch apparently than breezes in our Virginia loblolly pines.
Eventually Dee found a way to combine his love for salt water from Long Island and the Maine forest by moving to the Eastern Shore. He used to swim in the Chesapeake every day, pushing the season until the water became too cold. His career on the Shore was working as a surveyor for Shore Engineering, continuing his lifelong pattern of loving to work outdoors.
Dee married Catherine Mapp in 1984 and they often explored her family farm together. They dreamed of building a great house there and began by moving an antique home to the property. While planning for their future, they also planned for the conservation of the farm by donating a conservation easement on the property to Virginia Eastern Shore Land Trust in 2007. Sadly, Catherine died early of cancer and the house was never finished. This portion of the original Mapp family farm is known to VES Land Trust as Granger Farm.
Dee bequeathed this lovely piece of property to the VES Land Trust asking that in acceptance of the gift the land trust remember Catharine’s grandfather, Captain Luke, who purchased the farm in 1907. The Granger Farm is the largest gift ever received by the Land Trust and will significantly impact the Land Trust’s mission and programs.