Local family farms- Depressing-LONG

I honestly don't know what the solution is, without agriculture and traditional families continuing to form and keep things together, as well as property taxes, jobs to support farming operations that are not profit makers or alternate land uses besides developing, is our land just going to get swallowed up and become one mass suburbia some day ?

Same thing here, 10-15K for an acre, taxes on 98 acres here is over 8K annually and what really SUCKS is that this county really penalizes you if you get behind, no you can't catch up a few years or whateve is in arrears, you must pay it all, other counties are not like that, so backtaxes can lose your property quickly.

Developers are swarmed and lined up to ruin a huge part of our town, a once proud agricultural town, we used to sell Ford tractors to all the farmers who liked them, and the other guy sold JD and we even had a long time International dealer too, that was it. We are close to a city, but there was a line, that line is moving closer.

The whole thing is insane, some really nice property with views for 40-50 miles, rolling hills, some excellent crop and hay land, even if it is not flat, the hills make it interesting and give it character.

No longer desirable to farm due to expense and little profit, everyone that is left wants out to retire, not have the tax payment etc. One guy in town has bought his fair share to keep open, supporting a long established horse operation, but not everyone is going to buy and keep it open. It's a sad state of affairs, then you see how much is manufactured out of the country, and it's effects here.

It's hard to complain about what ain't yours and what happens to it, but what is the solution to keeping things to a minimum and not sacrificing a way of life, like many prefer in the open space.

Even within family, market prices of some land is far out of reach and ends up on the open market because that families members cannot afford it.

It's a huge problem without a lot of solutions, very hard to accept that some of our most cherished lands and farms will end up in the abyss of development.

Yep, I wholeheartedly agree with you. I grew up living right beside my grandad's farm (160 acres) in S. Ohio. I worked on it and other farms and loved it. I went to college to become a meteorologist and did well. During college my grandad died and grandma got bad enough to need nursing home care. I graduated and soon learned that to do that job would require me to move to who knows where and live in a cramped up apartment. I decided I didn't need that kind of "success". I'm now two years out of college, still living at home till I can make a deal on living in the old farmhouse and work for CaseIH about 30 miles from home. A lot of people look at me and you can read the word failure in their thoughts but they don't understand what is at stake. It's all the things you just talked about and I'll fight with all I have to keep what we have. God bless.

--old fashioned farmer

At any rate, I'm single, might stay that way (although I have a ways to go...my Dad was 47 when he finally got hitched :) )

If I was to find out I had terminal, fast moving cancer tomorrow...

I have one nephew who runs a part-time landscaping business while he's in college. He's welcome to any tools and equipment because I know he'd make good use of them.

Anyone in the family want to buy the house, I'll sell it cheap.

But other than that, it'll all gets sold and anything after covering medical expenses get donated to charity.

It's had been many years since I stopped by to talk to her. I was in Aurora, figger I'd go there. I almost got lost. There was no farms, road construction was horrible, and we won't even talked about the traffic in the area.

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