- Yeah, we're here at the front porch of Cedar Grove, the beautiful, old, brick family farmhouse built here in Huntersville back in 1831, and right next door to North Carolina's oldest still standing store, the Hugh Torance store, which opened its doors, 1805.

(upbeat music) ♪ I was standing by my window - [Jeff] Inside, gospel tunes fill the halls and old maps cover the walls, but these days you need a magnifying glass to find where the farms like this one used to be.

And that's why these neighbors are gathered together, hoping to save from harm these last few farms that are still here, before they disappear.

♪ Will the circle be unbroken - Even when I came to Mecklenburg County, it didn't take long to get outta Charlotte.

In Mecklenburg County, you were in the country.

- [Jeff] Like sunshine through the blinds, historian Dan Morrill sees those forgotten farms through the shutters of Charlotte's past.

- [Dan] And remember, these are artifacts.

They're big artifacts, but they're artifacts.

They're physical things that tell us about who we were.

So you lose that sense of connection.

- [Jeff] Problem is the old farms today often wind up surrounded by and then eventually surrendered to more Charlotte area growth.

- People will admit, "Oh, oh, oh, isn't this awful "that this wonderful pasture "where this horse used to go clomping across "is being turned in all these lots?"

- [Jeff] But Morrill adds it doesn't have to be that way.

- A preservation project is not going to work unless it's economically viable, and we're very fortunate to have an owner who is willing to work with us on that.

- [Jeff] He's talking about the 26-acre Edgewood farm in Huntersville, where through the trees, you can see and hear traffic from 485 close by.

Developers are building 23 acres of new homes on this old farm from the 1840s, but they're also making a deal with Morrill's group, Preserve Mecklenburg, to leave alone these last three acres where there's an historic farmhouse and the farm's original log cabin.

- What we're trying to do is to work to try to keep as much of the rural field, and that ain't going to be easy, as possible.

- [Jeff] Back here at Cedar Grove, a panel of Save the Farm experts offers more advice.

- There needs to be some farm land left that cannot be developed.

- [Jeff] Frank Bragg explains how he and his fellow farm-owning neighbors joined together to protect a thousand acres of their farmland by signing what's called a Conservation Easement.

- So we have 10 families that have, and my expression, I used it that day, was "have drunk the Kool-Aid" and agreed to not ever develop their land.

Everybody has benefited from it.

- [Jeff] And Bragg says what worked for his north Meck neighbors can work for other family farmers too.

- Any of that county land... - [Jeff] Sharing his experience with small groups of land owners who also don't wanna lose their farms or that farming legacy that's slipping away acre by acre every time a family farm is sold.

- [Frank] Hey, Red, woop, Red!

- [Jeff] Bragg says on his farm, even the gravel road and wooden bridge alongside this horse pasture have been designated a Mecklenburg historic landmark and a North Carolina scenic byway, where for more than a mile and a half, you can see for yourself what most of Mecklenburg County looked like more than 100 years ago.

- [Frank] Now they've got to have this feeling like I don't ever want to see this change.

- [Jeff] Now that land over there, is that part of the conservancy?

- [Grier] Yeah, Frank just bought that this past year, it's 20 acres in there.

- [Jeff] Grier Bradford gives us the bumpy four-wheel drive tour of his family farmland here in North Mecklenburg, rolling past the pines and the pastures.

This was life.

This is the way life was.

- [Jeff] Where cows have grazed and crops have been raised for six generations.

- I've got about 50 acres in here.

- [Jeff] And this is a working farm?

- This is a working farm.

This is pasture right here.

The greenfield over there is a hay field.

That's where I mow hay for my cows and my horses.

This is the old Bradford Store.

- [Jeff] Hadn't changed much, I guess.

Wow.

When'd they built this store?

- [Grier] 1911.

My granddaddy ran it till '59.

Those were old shelves.

And what they did was they handmade all the block in this building.

They made it outta creek sand and lime.

They had a block press.

They made their own block.

- [Jeff] Across the road from Bradford's Farm Store on busy Highway 73, you can see the three-story townhomes where other families used to farm in the past.

But Bradford says his Conservation Easement means the historic Bradford family farm also has a working farm future.

- You can't stop progress, you can't stop development, but it's nice if you can pick and choose a certain area that is very scenic and the way it's been for 500 years and try to keep it that way, and we wanted it protected.

We want to keep it as it is.

It's the last of the rural Mecklenburg County land.

- All totaled here in Mecklenburg County, there's about 13,000 acres of farmland, which sounds like a lot, but it's still less than 4% of the overall land in Mecklenburg County.

And, it's also 3,000 acres less than the farmland that was here 10 years ago, which means not only is farmland shrinking, but it's shrinking fast.