After years of neglect of farmland that has been in my family for generations, we are restoring 250 acres along the Ichawaynochaway Creek in Baker County, Georgia to promote biodiversity for a sustainable ecosystem. This project documents this land and its restoration back to the native longleaf pine. When this land was still occupied by those who gave the creek its name, pines ruled, though not the fast-growing, scrawny species preferred for pulp. Shaped by frequent, low intensity naturally occurring fires, longleaf developed fire-resistant characteristics that would allow them to thrive, forming one of the most extensive ecosystems in North America. Stalwart and slow-growing, longleaf dominated the southeast providing an open understory for endemic wildlife. The southern landscape of today would be unrecognizable to anyone who knew it before the logging and fire suppression that led the longleaf ecosystem to become one of the most endangered and fragmented in the US.