I need only to look out any of my house windows or simply take a step outside my door to survey some of the most bucolic scenery on God’s green earth. A drive down any of our local roads brings the same. Yet a hawk glides overhead and casts an eerie shadow on all the tranquility.
I have a hunch there are any number of farmers in our area mulling over temptations of stunning proportions today. The word SOLD was barely out of the auctioneer’s mouth when the news hit every corner of the community. A farm, not ten miles from here, sold for nearly $63,000/acre. My mind is not quite grasping how the blowing grasses of that country crossroad has now been converted from 108 acres of arable farm land to twenty-three much coveted building parcels for a staggering $6,700,000.
I cannot fault the sellers. They are friends and neighbors. They lost both elderly parents inside a month’s time last year. They were settling the estate between six siblings. Calling the auctioneer was the best way to maximize everyone’s share. Plus, if they didn’t parcel it out the next guy would.
A simple phone call could change our own portfolio unfathomably as well. We have 129 acres with over a mile of road frontage. And it isn’t that we haven’t been advised to sell a few times already. But at what cost?
Sure, we could cash in. Financially it would make sense to do so. $63,000/acre is a bit unprecedented, but half that is nothing unusual. Real estate prices in our area of “Amish Country” are largely driven by a strong community of people who would rather pay what it takes to stay than to broaden the borders to live further away. Understandable. We like living here as well. Our family is here---Paul’s parents are literally right next door. His mother lived on this very farm for most of her eighty-one years. Paul grew up here. Our children have grown up here. For us, “here” means this farm. To sell it would dismantle our own environment even if our bank account would be substantially richer.
To sell our farm to development would forever alter the local landscape. It would be another 129 acres dotted with houses instead of cows. Does anyone care? Statistically the number of farmers in our community is fast shrinking. Easier money is to be had doing jobs with better hours than farming and many of the local community are discovering that. They’ll buy five acres, plant a beautiful new home, and have the sort of job that affords the amenities they never had growing up on their dad’s farm. It happens all the time.
This isn’t actually unique to just Wayne and Holmes Counties. We have a small farm up in Medina County that is really just a remnant of its former self after almost all the road frontage was sold off in couple acre plots. We have connections in that area where we had thirty acres of hay ground available to us for rent. We lost that this year. Plans are to use all that beautiful bottom land for 22,000 solar panels.
So many lament the changing landscape. So many reminisce a bygone era. Yet, the pastoral scene cannot simply exist simply for its own sake. It is a sober thought that families like ours quite literally hold it in our hands to be caretakers or to be of the ones to exchange the diminishing commodity that is farmland for a tempting sum.
Quite frankly, you as a consumer hold considerable influence in our desire to hang on to what we have and do what we do. Serving a group of people that appreciates the efforts that go into a small family farm---however imperfect we may be---makes it worthwhile. Sustainable and conventional farmers alike are bailing on life long dreams, licked by both unpredictable weather and volatile prices over which they have little control.
You can be proud of your contribution to keeping rural farm communities alive!
