Portia Fulford’s love for the land began helping her grandparents shell peas throughout her childhood. Although it was difficult, she recalls how her grandparents’ sharecropper profession taught her the importance of hard work. After finishing her doctoral degree and working long hours in an office, Portia realized something was missing. She had achieved her career goals, lived abroad in West Africa, and spent time in Selma and Atlanta, but still felt empty.   

“Without the land, I could not feel my pulse. I was going through life, and had what was considered to be successful, but I had no pulse.” Portia explained what led her to focus on her Alabama ranch, "I feel the most alive in this state.”  

Today, Fields & Forests, a project developed by the American Forest Foundation (AFF), is honored to support Portia as she invests in her land and builds her family’s legacy. Fields & Forests works with small acreage landowners like Portia across the Southeast to plant loblolly pine trees on their open fields, providing new income opportunities and creating thriving, working forests.  

It was back in 2012 when Portia decided to make a change and purchased 250 acres in Prattville, Alabama. Her original intent was to use the property for production. In her first year, she had an all-female crew helping her cultivate watermelon, an incredibly challenging crop. Portia even taught herself how to drive a tractor on YouTube to make it through the season. She was growing food for wholesale buyers like Walmart and quickly felt her farm’s purpose slipping away under bottom lines and production quotas.   

“I just found it to be less fulfilling than actually getting nutritional food into the hands of people,” Portia explained.   

With that goal in mind, in 2025, Portia enrolled 65 of her acres in Fields & Forests. This low-maintenance opportunity provides her with guaranteed annual payments, professional forestry support, and profits from any timber harvests that she chooses to conduct.  

She hopes that the trees she plants with Fields & Forests will give the land rest, restore soil health, and invite beneficial plant and wildlife species back to the property. The program will allow her to cultivate the acreage she needs and use the rest to give back to the environment in a sustainable way.  

“When I was reading the brochures and even the contract, I'm looking for the heart and the why. And so, you all [F&F] checked that box off. I still felt whole after signing my contract. I still felt like a good farmer, a good doctor, a good family woman that was making the best decisions for our ranch, that contributes to the values that we had. So, [Fields & Forests is] definitely organized, definitely heart-centered, definitely environmentally anchored, and definitely a resource for the American farmer.”  

Portia’s decision to pull back production caused significant financial stress, and she worked long hours to make ends meet and keep her property. Now her yearly payments of $30 per acre, per year, from Fields & Forests help cover her taxes and give her the freedom to reach her goals. 

Portia is currently building a home on her ranch, which should be completed in the coming months, and working on planting a 10-acre vineyard for wine cultivation, raising chickens and dairy cows for milk and egg production, and planting vegetables and other foods for homesteading. Her ultimate dream is to make this ranch a teaching farm, where families can learn how to cultivate their own properties. This will coincide with her other project, a national credit union association that will help families get resources and funding to return to the land and build their own homesteads.   

Fields & Forests partners with landowners like Portia across the Southeast, providing the resources they need to protect the health and legacy of their lands. Today, Fields & Forests is now open to landowners with 30 acres or more across Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida. To learn more about Fields & Forests and whether it’s a good fit for your land, visit here.