This is a photo of my grandfather. Farmland was particularly important to my grandfather because he watched his own father lose all

of his 940 acres of farmland during the Depression, after his father had borrowed against the land to raise cattle. After witnessing his father's loss,

my grandfather swore that he would never borrow any money for the purchase of farmland, and my grandfather never did either. However, he would

always recite how much his father had paid for each piece of farmland that he had lost in the Depression. Thus, to my grandfather, farmland had a

special value, beyond the value of his other assets. He had planned his estate so as to protect the farmland from costly estate taxes.