David Boehmig and I have lunch occasionally at Houston’s on West Paces Ferry. David runs Atlanta Fine Homes Sotheby’s International Realty — he oversaw about $4.5 billion in sales last year, 525 agents, 90 employees — and I’ve spent the last 22 years selling Buckhead real estate. You might think our lunches revolve around the market: where prices are headed, what’s moving, who just listed what. You would be wrong. You’re more likely to find us deep into the strategic merits of guinea fowl, the method for best perimeter fencing, or the difference between Scottish Highlands and grass-finished Black Angus.
David has a farm. I’m building one. And as I started looking around Buckhead, I realized we weren’t alone. Many residents have quietly been drawn back to the land — some an hour outside the city, some 3,800 acres in the middle of nowhere, and one, remarkably, on four acres right here in Buckhead on West Paces Ferry Road.
David is the President, CEO, and founder of Atlanta Fine Homes Sotheby’s International Realty, which he opened in 2007 with his business partner and mother-in-law, Jenny Pruitt — the legendary Buckhead broker whose name has been synonymous with this neighborhood for half a century.
While David’s professional life is high-octane, his weekends are spent in Hart County, on a 35-acre farm along Lake Hartwell that he and his wife Stephanie acquired in 2023 after a meticulous two-year search. What began as Stephanie’s vision for a different kind of family experience has evolved into a thriving operation.
“I just embrace the vision my wife had for having more room to run around with our grandchildren, and just it being a different type of experience,” David says, though he admits the pull has become much deeper than he initially realized.
The farm is now home to an incredible menagerie: four or five Scottish Highlands, two Longhorns, two sheep, a dozen goats, a mule, three donkeys, and three horses — plus the chickens. David is particularly focused on the strategic management of the land, currently replanting his pastures with native Bermuda grass to support his goal of raising grass-fed and grass-finished Angus cattle. David and Stephanie don’t keep this all to themselves. They sell eggs to a handful of customers in town, and they’ve also sold some of the meat from their first Scottish Highland cow.
After brooding 20 chicks at their home in Sandy Springs, the couple is transitioning them to a newly finished coop on the farm. They’re also preparing for the arrival of 20 guinea fowl — a strategic addition intended for insect control. David has even researched how to attract crows to the property, noting that they are a “natural deterrent for hawks,” which are his primary concern for the safety of his birds.
Despite the physical demands of fencing, reclaiming overgrown land, and managing livestock, David and Stephanie find the work profoundly restorative. He doesn’t try to keep his two worlds separate, often sharing farm updates on social media alongside business milestones.
“It’s a strange kind of work because it’s not a burden,” David reflects. “At the end of the day, we’ll be lying there on the sofa… both dirty and exhausted with a glass of wine, and we just look at each other with a big grin on our face, and it’s therapeutic.” For David, the farm is a vital break from the technology and pace of the city. “It lowers your blood pressure,” he says. “It makes you feel like you’re in a different time, almost.”
The unexpected arrival of Angelos Pervanas, a finance professional from Greece, and Chiara Visconti di Modrone, a nutritionist from an aristocratic Italian family, as the stewards of a 3,800-acre ranch in Gay, Georgia, is a story of slow but profound transformation. Their path to the land was not direct; it led through the heart of Buckhead, where they lived on Blackland Road until 2023. While they appreciated the community’s lush greenery and “livable” pace, it was the 2020 pandemic that finally pulled them from the city and into the soil.
The history of the farm is as gripping as its modern reinvention. Founded in 1977, the land served as a sanctuary for Chiara’s parents, Duke Uberto and Duchess Visconti di Modrone. They fled Italy during the Anni di Piombo — the Years of Lead — a period of political terrorism when the Red Brigades targeted wealthy families for kidnapping and ransom. Chiara recalls the tension of her childhood: “I remember the kidnappings. I had to go to the beach with a bodyguard… My father was on a kidnapping list. There was a lot going on.”
Seeking a new beginning in the American Southeast, Chiara’s parents were introduced to their property by Georgia’s governor at the time, George Busbee. “They met Governor Busbee,” Chiara explains, “and he actually brought them to this piece of land, which was not like what we have now. There was nothing on it.” They fell in love with the raw wilderness and decided to settle there, carving out a purebred Limousin cattle ranch and a hunting reserve — a legacy Chiara and Angelos are now reinventing.
For more than a decade, Angelos and Chiara found a sophisticated middle ground in Buckhead, drawn by its lush canopy and family-focused culture. Having moved back to Atlanta from London in 2012, they settled on Blackland Road specifically to be near the Atlanta International School (AIS), Chiara’s alma mater. To them, Buckhead was the perfect compromise. As Chiara notes, “Atlanta was a really nice balance to have all the amenities you needed but so much greenery, so much space… it was a lot more livable.”
While Chiara, a self-identified country person, always intended to eventually develop the family land, the move allowed the couple to enjoy a more family-focused culture than they had experienced abroad. Buckhead offered an unusual opportunity to connect with other parents, often gathering for early dinners with multiple families on weekdays — a stark contrast to the professional work dinners typical of London life. “I really enjoyed that,” Angelos admits.
Chiara was already intimately familiar with this pace. Having been born in the Margaret Mitchell neighborhood, she attended AIS when it was located in Sandy Springs. During those years, she bridged the two worlds of her childhood by splitting her time between the farm and the city.
The 2020 pandemic lockdowns served as the final catalyst for their permanent transition. Retreating to the farm for what they thought would be a few months, Angelos experienced a radical transformation. “Those three months turned into him deciding that we may not have access to food… He realized that there was no way he was going to go back to a city after that,” Chiara reflects. Angelos, now an “entrepreneurial conservationist,” traded his finance background for beekeeping and regenerative farming, realizing that nature’s “healing power” was essential.
Quercus was opened to guests in the fall of 2024 as a way to share the land with others and preserve it in its current state for future generations. Today, the 3,800-acre property supports a vertically integrated, zero-mile hospitality experience. The operation is supported by a dedicated staff of roughly 36, with six people focused on the land and the remainder managing the hospitality experience. Currently, the resort offers an intimate setting with four luxury cabins, but construction is underway to add four junior suites by fall 2026 to accommodate guests visiting the on-site restaurant. The long-term vision is to cap the property at 10 to 14 keys to maintain an exclusive, high-quality experience and avoid the pitfalls of over-expansion.
At the heart of this transformation is the resort’s culinary program. Anchored by the 30-seat restaurant Uberto — named in honor of Chiara’s father — the kitchen is helmed by Chef Ryan Smith, the culinary director also known for Atlanta’s Michelin-starred Staplehouse. The lodging mirrors this commitment to the land, featuring luxury cabins designed with a deep undercurrent of wellness, including organic mattresses, non-toxic paint, and Wi-Fi kill switches to minimize digital stimulation.
This focus on quality has garnered significant acclaim. In March 2026, Quercus became the first and only destination in Georgia to be accepted into the prestigious Relais & Châteaux association. The designation had an immediate impact, effectively doubling the property’s occupancy.
For Chiara and Angelos, the ultimate success is the connection to the land they are preserving for their three daughters. “We are wired to be in the sun, to touch the earth, and work to get our food,” Chiara explains. It is a legacy of stewardship designed to endure for generations to come.
Dian Deimler’s Three Creeks Farm is a testament to the fact that four acres in the heart of Buckhead can be just as restorative as a vast rural estate. Tucked in amongst large estates and manicured lawns, Dian’s farm is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream that took root when her daughter, Jesse, left for college. “I’ve always wanted to live on a farm,” Dian explains. Her husband, Michael — a senior partner at Boston Consulting Group in Midtown— initially insisted that any farm stay “inside the perimeter,” leading them to the perfect four-acre parcel on West Paces Ferry Road.
The property was intentionally designed to feel established and grounded. Working with architect Charles Heydt of Pak Heydt & Associates, the Deimlers created what Charles calls a “house of permanence” — featuring a garage with stables tucked underneath. This medieval-inspired technique was originally used so the heat from livestock would rise to warm the living quarters above.
Today, the farm is home to a diverse group of animals whose names and birth dates Dian seems to know by heart. They include a flock of four Buff Heritage geese, 12 ducks, and nearly 20 chickens — including seven Bantams. The larger residents include two miniature donkeys, three Angora goats, and a Rocky Mountain horse named Annie. “She’s an actual horse,” Dian notes, “but she looks like a pony.” Four free-ranging turkeys round out the operation, and they have a habit of following Dian around the property like puppy dogs. During my visit to her property, we discovered the lone female turkey, who had been missing for days, tucked into the roots of a poplar tree beside the stream, dutifully sitting on dozens of her large eggs.
While Michael serves as the farm’s “financier,” he is famously hands-off and prefers not to “get dirty.” Dian recalls a humorous moment during a corporate event at the farm where Michael was proudly showing off the property: “These are our two goats,” he told a guest, only for the guest to reply, “Two? I see four.” Dian had quietly come home with four instead of the two he had agreed to.
The farm’s output is a passion project rather than a revenue stream. Dian’s sister runs Barking Dog Bakery and Feed, where she uses the farm’s duck and turkey eggs to create baked goods for dogs who have allergies to common chicken eggs. Dian also sells chicken eggs to a couple in the neighborhood.
Dian is a lifelong learner who operates on what she calls “a ten-year rule,” mastering a new skill every decade. At 40, she became a Master Gardener; at 50, she built the farm; and at 60, she took up pottery, building a studio on the property. The farm is also where she thrives as a grandmother, creating a world for her grandchildren complete with a mud kitchen and tadpole tanks. Watching her interact with them, it’s clear that she can check off mastering the role of grandmother, too.
Despite the inevitable heartbreaks — weasel attacks, raccoon raids — Dian finds her strength in the land. She is a hands-on operator, even performing the “top-level” task of removing eggs from the mouths of snakes in her coop. “I get my strength, my power, my energy from being outside around nature,” she says. “I think it’s innate in all of us… It’s where we’re from.”
I have personally felt the pull toward the land since I was young. Some of my earliest memories are of walking across pastures, looking out at long stretches of grass with cows pulling at it contentedly, and feeling — even as a kid — that this was a free place to be.
For years, I dreamed of building my own farm right here in Buckhead. I tried to buy nearly every parcel over seven or eight acres that came on the market, but a deal never came together.
My wife, Lauren suggested I start looking at North Georgia and western North Carolina instead. We were thinking twenty acres, on a lake. What we found wasn’t twenty acres. It was a parcel a little over two hours from Atlanta, in the western “toe” of North Carolina — bordered by national forest, with more than a mile and a half of frontage along Lake Apalachia. The only catch was that it was closer to four hundred acres. We bought it anyway and have grown it to over 550 acres since.
We named it Highgrove, after one of my favorite gardens in England. It is completely remote. Two hours from Buckhead, yet fifty minutes from the nearest grocery store. The few years since we purchased the property have been an almost unimaginable amount of work. With a dedicated team, we are carving a productive farm out of raw nature: building roads, installing underground infrastructure, fencing miles of perimeter. Right now, it looks more like a construction site than a farm, but the murky vision is starting to come together. Last year, our entire family participated in the harvesting of 75 turkeys we had raised all summer on pasture, a grueling and eye-opening 12-hour day. Our herd of black Angus is growing, with a dozen calves due this summer. Current projects include an eight-acre orchard, a walled market garden, and a Slovenian bee house built entirely from white oak trees harvested on the property.
It is the hardest thing I have ever taken on. But then we’ll get out on the lake, a bald eagle will fly overhead, and it just feels like the place we’re supposed to be. I hope to eventually bridge my two worlds and connect Highgrove back to the Buckhead community through a small-scale farm and lake-focused hospitality venture. I expect that will keep me busy the rest of my life. It will never be finished. It will never be done, and for some strange reason, that’s part of the attraction.
In a world hurtling faster every day toward automation and technology, I believe our need to connect with the land will only grow. We are wired to be in the sun, to touch the earth, to work for our food. We are all just searching for our own version of the garden — a place where the rhythm of life slows down enough to remember where we came from.