SLUSHER VALLEY -- The house was built during the Johnson Administration. The Andrew Johnson administration.

Slushers have owned it for more than a century, less than half the time Slushers have been farming in Floyd County.

"It goes back 260, 270 years in Floyd," Terry Slusher said.

While the farms around it seem to be slowly growing houses and house trailers as each generation cuts its slice off the family land, Slusher Valley Farm is likely to stay a farm. The family has put a conservation easement on its 500 acres, limiting the number of houses that can be built there and limiting what can be done on the land.

In exchange, the Slushers get a break on their state and federal income taxes, a permanent reduction of their real estate taxes and the satisfaction of knowing they won't be the last Slushers to know the old farm.

"The Slusher easement is the perfect example of what conservation easements were set up to accomplish," said Elizabeth Obenshain, executive director of the New River Valley Land Trust.

Conservation easements provide tax relief for landowners and permanent protection for the land they own. The tax breaks help owners hold onto their land and resist the temptation to sell to developers. The easement's restrictions assure that future owners of the land can't succumb to that temptation.

"We're hoping to stay on the farm for years and years ourselves," Alice Slusher said, "and hoping someone in the family will keep it going."

Slushers have been working on Slusher Valley Farm since 1892. They've been playing there that long, too. Alice remembers summertime visits from Slusher cousins from Richmond.

"When they were in, it was time to jump out of the hayloft and get crawdads out of the creek," she said.

Those visits gave the on-the-farm Slushers a chance to see their valley through different eyes. It helped them see what a special place it is, Alice said.

"It's our little spot," she said. "I had a friend say one time, 'I can see why you never could leave.' "

The Slushers haven't altogether prohibited development on their 500 acres.

"You could build six houses," Terry said. "It'll never turn into these little developments that's dotting up all over the New River Valley."

But the Slushers' goal isn't simply to prevent their farm from becoming a housing development. They want their farm to stay a farm.

"If there is a farm here," Alice said, "somebody will be able to farm it."

Alice lives on the edge of the farm, in the old Thompson's School, the school her father and his five sisters attended.

Alice's aunt Ruth Ann lives in the old homeplace, with Alice's brother Terry and his family. That's where the post office used to be. The old Slusher store is out front. R.O. Jr. and Evelyn, Alice and Terry's parents, live one cow pasture away.

Terry, 44, stood in that pasture, pointing out the piles of rocks his father and grandfather piled as they cleared the field across the road; pointing toward the spot where his father used to hoe corn and turn up arrowheads.

"Dad has picked up shoebox after shoebox full of Indian artifacts in that field there when it was planted in corn," Terry said.

The farm used to produce corn, wheat, chickens, milk, beef and chestnuts. It's pretty much a beef-only operation now. Terry works the land his father, grandfather and great-grandfather worked before him. It's what he's always wanted to do.

Terry did well at Floyd County High School, until it was nearly time to graduate. He stood first in his class, but didn't want to give a speech at graduation. So he let his grades fall enough that he'd be third in his class -- and free of the burden of public speaking.

Both of Terry's older brothers, Roger and George, graduated from Virginia Tech. Terry was in the eighth grade when he noticed that Roger seemed to come home every weekend with two papers to write. Terry didn't like writing papers.

"I decided then I wouldn't go to college if I didn't have to," he said. He didn't follow his brothers to Tech. "I got a pretty good education from them through the extension service, but I didn't have to write any English papers."