Faulkner Farms has million-dollar
views, precious memories
Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.
Head down County Road 33 in Beaver Valley, and it’s like a Sunday afternoon ride in “the country.” Rolling hills and wide-open pastures with towering pines and hardwoods forming the picture-perfect backdrop greet you with the familiarity of an old friend.
It feels like home — or at least the one dreams are made of.
A sign along the road says, Faulkner Farms, Est. 1972. A wooden, split-rail fence encircles a lush green pasture — its only residents an old barn and a covered arena where rare cattle from these parts once went to the highest bidders from around the country.
Realtor Lyman Lovejoy remembers the pasture packed with vehicles and people, “guests” of Dr. Jim Faulkner, who had traveled from as far away as Canada, Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas. He would hold an annual auction, the “Southern Gentlemen Sale” in spring at the Ashville farm.
“Part of the pleasure was having the sale here once a year,” said Faulkner, who noted that he formed lifelong friendships with many who visited. His bond, too, was with the Simmental cattle he raised. “The worst part was selling them.”
The love of farming and the outdoors goes back to childhood, he said. He was born in Georgia in 1927 and raised in Montgomery. “It was during the Depression. Nobody had anything, but we didn’t know we didn’t have anything,” he mused.
He had kin in nearby Pineapple, and his uncle would pick him up on the weekends to work the farm. “I plowed a mule and picked cotton. It was a great raising up,” he said. He attended Auburn University, joined the Navy in World War II and later graduated from Vanderbilt University. Medical school took him to the University of Tennessee at Memphis, and after an internship in Greenville, S.C., he returned to Alabama, doing his residency in orthopedic medicine in Birmingham at the Hillman Clinic, now part of UAB Hospital.
After years of a successful practice in Woodlawn on Birmingham’s eastside at Slappey, Faulkner & Morris, he decided to buy a farm. He asked old friend, Joe Meacham, if he knew of a good place, and he pointed him in the right direction. He bought the land — more than 500 acres — in 1972 and hung its first Faulkner Farms sign, handmade in Maine.
His son, James Jr., lived there for a few years, building the fences, planting the grass and clearing the woods until he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a doctor.
In 1976, Faulkner built the house with Western Cedar logs from northern Michigan near the Canadian border. All the logs were numbered and smooth on the inside. It became his family’s retreat built on Beaver Creek, which meanders nearby. Today, it is a two-story home overlooking a vast expanse of pastureland and woods with a few head of cattle or a horse or two passing by in the distance.
A rustic, covered porch frames the entire breathtaking view.
At first, Faulkner raised cattle as a hobby. “It ended up a business,” he said. Once a year, “cowboy buddies” would venture to Beaver Valley for a two-day event that culminated in the selling of cattle whose origin was another valley far from St. Clair County — the Simme Valley in Switzerland.
In a 1984 Gadsden Times story about Faulkner and his Simmentals, it said this farm of “valley and ridge may be as close to the Alps as Alabama will ever come.”
Faulkner bought his own cattle in Germany and England with a bull bringing the highest value at auction, $6,000 to $8,000. At one time, he had close to 200 head.
“It was really a great thing. We would invite people a few months ahead.”
On Friday nights would be a barbecue at the farm or dinner at a nearby restaurant. The next morning, 100 to 120 people would gather in that front pasture, and a tent would be set up with a catered brunch. At noon, “we were ready to start,” Faulkner said.
A brochure told them what was available, and they chose what they wanted. Auction bleachers were set up underneath the covered arena so buyers could get a good look. “They were a great bunch of people,” Faulkner said. They were good family-type people. You could deal with them.”
Faulkner retired from practice in 1990. His wife, Rose, passed away, and he has traveled the world doing mission work. He remarried an old friend, Diana, whose husband had passed away, and they are a loving couple who see the value in each other and the world around them. “She saved my life,” he said. “He’s a sweet, good man. He’s a prince,” she concluded.
As he looks around what is now 472 acres of Faulkner Farms, he appreciates the time spent building a farm, a business and a life there. Gazing out from the porch, where rocking chairs are the best seat in the house for enjoying the aesthetics, Faulkner chooses his words with an undisguised awe: “It’s God’s creation in its fullest.”
