Maintenance work is done on a modest home on Georgia’s Sapelo Island. A referendum allowed residents to vote on a zoning amendment increasing the amount of residential square footage permitted. Photograph: Joshua Parks/The Guardian View image in fullscreen Maintenance work is done on a modest home on Georgia’s Sapelo Island. A referendum allowed residents to vote on a zoning amendment increasing the amount of residential square footage permitted. Photograph: Joshua Parks/The Guardian Cotton Capital: ongoing series Gullah Geechee ‘I ain’t goin nowhere’: Gullah Geechee people fight off developers with a historic referendum A citizen referendum, only the second of its kind in Georgia history, seeks to block a zoning amendment I re Gene Grovner stood behind his house on a recent morning, between chicken pens on one side and rows of winter collard greens on the other, holding a knife and skinning a raccoon splayed across a wood post. “The meat is good roasted,” Grovner said. He pointed to the collards, a burst of green in the winter cold, and the chickens, with their eggs. “If you ain’t lazy, you can live good here,” he said, referring to Sapelo Island off the coast of southern Georgia
