Red Gate Farms is a picturesque piece of land filled with memories of farm life for Smith family

Through the years, the late Dick Smith had plenty of offers to sell a picturesque parcel of west Chatham farmland that had been in his wife’s family for decades.

Smith’s son, Ricky, remembers a time in the late 1970s when an offer was made to purchase Red Gate Farms off Chatham Parkway but “my dad stopped that,” he said.

Ricky has plenty of warm memories of father and grandfather toiling away at the farm. And his mother, Patti, was “right there working with my Dad,” he added. Through hurricanes, a fire that destroyed the old homeplace and the construction of roads that sliced through the land and more, Red Gate Farms has stood the test of time for decades. Back in the day, Ricky said, Red Gate was just one of a handful of working farms owned by families like the Kellers, Von Waldners and Zipperers.

And farming certainly wasn’t an easy way to make a living.

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Ricky’s maternal grandfather – Ed Martin of Hinesville -- purchased the property in 1931 and transformed it into a working farm that included milk cows. Dick Smith helped with the milking early in the morning and late in the afternoon and when it was time for the cows to come home, he would whistle for the cows to lumber on back, Ricky said.

“One day he saw that one cow was missing,” Ricky recalled, who was a little boy at the time. “He whistled, and way off in the distance you could hear the cow.” Father and son jumped on an old draft horse named Patsy and went searching for the cow and found her “hung up,” trying to deliver a calf, he said. “Back then, you couldn’t call just a vet so a dairyman had to know how to help.” Dick delivered the calf and put it up on the horse while the cow followed behind for the trip back to the barn.

Such experiences and more are etched in Ricky’s mind and taught him at a young age how difficult farming life could be. But the hardships and hard work paid off, he said.

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Today’s booming real estate market would tempt most people to sell a large parcel of land such as Red Gate Farms, but not the Smiths. The 250-acre spread is paradise to the family, especially Ricky, who retired a few years ago and turned over the daily operations of the farm to his children, and Dick and Patti’s other grandchildren.

The property now includes an RV park, event venues and bustling offices with staffers on computers and telephones.

Much of the staff is comprised of Dick Smith’s grandchildren, Ricky said, adding with a laugh that “We all love each other but we don’t all necessarily like each other.”

Venues have been christened with named like The Clubhouse, The Grainery, Mr. Dickie’s Barn and Patti’s Shack, which are named in honor of Ricky’s parents. (The Mackey House is a separate venture, owned by Ricky’s sister, Laura Mackey, he added.)

Weddings are a tremendous resource for Red Gate, explained Ricky. During one month in the winter, 26 weddings were performed at various locations throughout the neatly manicured property, he said. A few years ago, Ricky was surprised to bump into Clemson head football coach Dabo Sweeney, who was attending the wedding of a former player of his.

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The coach was down-to-earth and wasn’t offended when Ricky said, “Go Dawgs.” He also was impressed with the venue and enthusiastically told Ricky that the property could “go international” one day.

Ricky laughed when he remembered that moment and continued to share his memories.

Dick Smith died in 1990 and Patti Smith lived in the couple’s dream home on the property until she passed away in 2020. His mother was a strong women, he said, who experienced a lot through the years, including the automobile accident that took the life of daughter-in-law, Lollie Mock Smith, and the death of her son, Johnny, who drowned in a lake on the property, Ricky said.

Ricky seems to have inherited his parents’ strength and reckons that to succeed in life you have to “put (tragedies and hardships) behind you and move forward.”

Polly Powers Stramm is a contributing lifestyles columnist. Contact Polly at 912-657-3877 or pollparrot@aol.com. See more columns by her at SavannahNow.com/lifestyle/

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah ,Georgia wedding venues: Red Gate Farms has share of memories