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Seeing a Farm Through the Seasons: Aerial Records for Working Land

Writer: Jonathan G. Browning
Jonathan G. Browning
Oct 7
4 min read

Updated: Oct 8

Working land changes all year. A hayfield in June and the same field in January tell two different stories. Fence lines disappear under summer growth and show up again in winter. Wet spots that are invisible in August are obvious in March.

If you own, manage, or are thinking about buying farm or timber land, a single photo is a snapshot. A seasonal record is a picture of how the land works.


Why seasons matter

Most people see a property once, on one day. They judge it by what it looked like that afternoon. That is a narrow window for land that has to produce something.

A seasonal record can show:

  • Spring: standing water, drainage paths, and which fields dry out first.

  • Summer: growth, canopy, and how much of a pasture is actually grazed.

  • Fall: harvest patterns, hay storage, and the condition of roads after a season of use.

  • Winter: fence lines, terraces, old roadbeds, and structure condition without leaves in the way.

None of this needs to be fancy. Four flights a year, from the same points, at roughly the same time of day, builds a useful history.


Start with what already exists

Before flying anything, look at the free imagery the federal government already collects.

The USDA runs the National Agriculture Imagery Program, or NAIP. According to the USDA's NAIP GeoHub, the program acquires aerial imagery during the agricultural growing seasons, with a primary goal of making digital ortho photography available to government agencies and the public within a year of acquisition. This "leaf-on" imagery is used as a base layer in the Farm Service Agency's County Service Centers and to maintain Common Land Unit boundaries. The GeoHub is also where you can search for and view the imagery.

NAIP is a great baseline. It covers wide areas and goes back years. What it does not give you is the off-season view, or the detail to see a single gate, culvert, or roof.


Round hay bales scattered across a harvested field under a cloudy sky

Add the ground underneath

Photos show the surface. Soil data explains it. The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service's Web Soil Survey provides soil data and information produced by the National Cooperative Soil Survey. NRCS describes it as giving producers, agencies, and others access to soil information needed to make land-use and management decisions, with the ability to download data for use in GIS.

Put a soil map next to a spring aerial and patterns jump out. The wet corner of the field often lines up with a poorly drained soil. The best hay ground often lines up with the best soil. That is the kind of layered view we mean when we talk about Layers at 48 Pegasus: one place, several kinds of information, stacked so they explain each other.


Records matter for Greenbelt land

In Tennessee, working land can be enrolled under the Agricultural, Forest and Open Space Land Act of 1976, known as Greenbelt. The Tennessee Comptroller's Greenbelt page explains that agricultural land must be at least 15 acres, including woodlands and wastelands, and meet other conditions. Forest land must be at least 15 acres and managed under a sound program of sustained yield. Applications are filed with the assessor of property in the county where the land is located.

The page also notes that the assessor takes into account the portion of land in actual use for farming, and that land can still qualify without producing income as long as it is being actively farmed.

If land comes out of Greenbelt, rollback taxes apply. The Comptroller describes these as a recapture of taxes saved, not a penalty: the preceding three years for agricultural and forest land, and five years for open space.

A dated, seasonal photo record does not decide any of that. But it is a clear, simple way to show how the land has been used over time, which is useful for owners, buyers, and anyone who has to answer questions about the property later.


A simple seasonal plan

  1. Pick three to five fixed photo points that cover the property.

  2. Fly or shoot them once per season, at a similar time of day.

  3. Name files with the date and point number.

  4. Keep a one-line note for each visit: weather, recent rain, what changed.

  5. Once a year, put the four seasons side by side with the soil map and NAIP image.


Practical takeaways

  1. One visit shows one day. Four visits show how land works.

  2. Use free NAIP imagery and Web Soil Survey data as your baseline.

  3. Winter flights reveal fences, roads, and structures hidden in summer.

  4. Keep photo points, times, and file names consistent.

  5. Keep dated records for Greenbelt land so its use over time is easy to show.

If you own or are evaluating farm or timber land, contact 48 Pegasus, serving properties within 75 miles of Macon County, Tennessee, across Middle Tennessee and South Central Kentucky, to talk about a seasonal record.


Sources

Photos: cover by Bernd Dittrich / Unsplash; inline by Brett Jordan / Unsplash. Free to use under the Unsplash License.

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