I have had the privilege of living on two different farms in Ijamsville. My husband, Ralph Gordon, and I chose this life and our children in 1976. Our values were the values of agriculture. We believed in preserving the land.
After Ralph’s death in 1999, I bought a second, smaller farm and moved there, where I remained until I was 70. I am committed to stopping the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project because it will upend farm life in three Maryland counties: Frederick, Carroll and Baltimore.
This project, which calls for the construction of a 70-mile power line through central Maryland, affects farmers and landowners I have known for more than 48 years in Frederick County. Maryland farmers are already under great pressure, and this power line will be a death sentence for family farms that are more than a hundred years old. Some of the farms affected currently support three generations: parents, adult children, and several grandchildren. The children knew the value of the farm and were dedicated to that life. They returned to their parents’ farm. after college. Farming is their calling, not just a way to make a living.
Not only will this power line destroy these farms, it also aims to destroy the vision and values of agriculture.
Many of these farms offer direct services to families who have cut down Christmas trees, harvested apples or pumpkins, or brought home apple cider donuts, fresh eggs, beef or pork.. These farms connect our community.
This land must be preserved, not stolen to serve corporate interests. Farms with their crop rotation return nutrients to the soil, their forest plots store carbon, their land itself prevents water from running off. These farms don’t just feed us. They save us.
Conservation requirements are not respected by PSEG, the project’s contractor. Farmers who want to keep their land green are denied this right.
PSEG also said in a webinar that they would get the land they wanted through expropriation, but “only as a last resort.” Should the “last resort” be used against a farmer who refuses to give in to the demand to expropriate his land?
This is not a Republican or a Democrat issue. It is an issue that should bring people from across the political spectrum together because it is about the interests of ordinary people and the big, moneyed interests.
Susan Gordon, Frederick
