Farmland & Dev

As the area surrounding Jefferson County draws more residents, farmers face growing temptation to sell to developers, and the rural character that attracts so many is being threatened.

Piece by piece, Betty Moser Largen and Shirley Moser Marshall are selling the Oldham County farm that has been in their family nearly 60 years.

Seeking financial security, the sisters are turning 104 acres into quarter- and half-acre lots, with houses selling for $270,000 to $400,000 rising rapidly where hay and soybeans once grew.

They join a growing number of farmers in counties rimming Jefferson County who, unable to make the profits they once made on their lands, are yielding to developers' pressure to sell their farms.

And it's fueled a building boom in Oldham, Shelby, Spencer and Bullitt counties and in Southern Indiana that has left many local governments struggling to keep pace.

More than 15,000 homes have been built in those areas in the past decade, making them among Kentucky's fastest-growing spots. In all, nearly 70,000 acres of farmland disappeared in the counties in the 10 years before 1997, the latest figure available -- about 19 acres a day.

The building boom comes as Jefferson County is filling up -- its population grew by only 1.2 percent in the past decade -- leaving farmers in surrounding counties with a major role in determining the speed and location of the area's growth.

The number of farms sold is expected to continue to increase as development pressures raise the value of farmland, and as aging farmers near retirement with few of their children wanting to take over the dawn-to-dusk operations.

The financial incentives are powerful. Farmers can get from $2,000 to $30,000 per acre, according to property experts. A 200-acre tract selling for $9,000 an acre, for example, could bring a farmer $1.8 million, before paying off real-estate fees, taxes and any outstanding debts.

"For a long time people said they would never sell; but that has changed in the last two to three years," said Kevin Jeffries, a long-time Oldham County farmer on the local planning and zoning commission.

"A lot of the farms in Oldham County have a lot of history," Jeffries said. "It kind of tears at people. They don't want to sell the home place."

The availability of farmland is not the only factor affecting the pace and location of growth. Planning-and-zoning controls play a role, as do interest rates and the overall economy.

But the impact on communities where farmland is yielding to neighborhoods has been apparent.

Many local governments have been faced with building schools and sewer lines and maintaining new subdivision roads.

With the rising population, it's not unusual for a school to reach capacity soon after it's built, such as Oldham County's 2-year-old Buckner Elementary.

But the most visible change may be to the landscape itself. While newcomers are eager to snap up the new homes, some residents, both old and new, clamor for the remaining farmland to be saved from more growth that might diminish the "rural character."

"More and more people are coming, and with Jefferson County getting saturated with development, people are looking for rural landscapes," said Joanne Bemiss, Shelby County's planning administrator.

"But they don't seem to realize that if they all come out here, that will disappear."

"The farm economy is not good," said Brittany Edelson, Shelby County's agricultural extension agent. "We're in a farm crisis with the low commodity prices, last year's drought and the tobacco quota cuts."

Growers' tobacco profits have been eaten away by 65 percent cuts on quotas, the amount that can be grown under the federal tobacco-support program. And farm expenses jumped 65 percent from 1994 to 1998, according to an annual survey of 267 farm businesses in the Kentucky Farm Business Management Program, run by the Cooperative Extension Service of the University of Kentucky.

As a result, fewer children are willing to take over the family farm. "It's not that they don't want to farm; it's that the income is so low that you can't make a good living," said Bland Baird, who runs Spencer County's Future Farmers of America program. "A lot like the rural way of life, but to make enough money, it's just not possible."

Income from his family's 400-acre dairy farm, he said, is just $15,000 to $20,000 a year.

Of the 220 FFA members, Baird said he expects none will farm full time, but about half will do so part time while holding outside jobs.

"I'm not looking to farming as a future," said Craig McKinney, 17, an FFA member who lives in Mount Eden in Spencer County, where his family grows tobacco and raises beef cattle on 130 acres.

"I've watched my parents try to struggle," Craig said. "They've had to get jobs off the farm."

The average income generated by a Kentucky farm in 1999 was $61,417, according to a study by the Kentucky Farm Business Management Program at the University of Kentucky.

Farm incomes vary depending on the kind of farm and its size, dipping as low as $18,872 for grain farms that are less than 1,000 acres, according to that study. Incomes also can swing widely from year to year due to commodity prices and production affected by weather.

"If you invest the $4,000 you would get from (the sale of) an acre, the return would be $300" at 7.5 percent interest, Shelby County farmer Paul Hornback said. "You can't farm $300 out of that land. It's tough farming now. That's why you see all these tracts sold off."

Betty Moser Largen and Shirley Moser Marshall are doing just that to the farmland that their parents, John and Ann, bought in Oldham County in the early 1930s.

John Moser was a national dairy leader, and the family also grew corn, soybeans, barley, wheat and potatoes.

Ann Moser died in 1979, and when John Moser died in 1984, Largen, with some help from her husband, Ray, began working the farm, milking cows three times a day and raising hay and corn. Sister Shirley Marshall, 76, also helped.

But they had trouble getting reliable workers, milk prices were low, operating costs were rising and they were pulling from savings to keep the dairy going. In 1995, they decided to stop.

Now the sisters are developing the farm in partnership with Duane Realty Inc. of Louisville. Each of the 160 lots in Moser Farms are going for about $50,000; houses start at $269,000.

While pleased with the subdivision's success, the sisters say it's still painful to let go of the farm. "I'm so attached to it. This is where I grew up," Largen said.

John Brent Smith and his father, James, also are letting go of 424 of the 560 acres they've farmed on Ky. 22 in eastern Oldham and Henry counties, most of which has been in the family for nearly 50 years.

They raised hogs for 20 of those years and most recently raised cattle, grain and hay.

"We were able to make a go of it, but every year things would get tighter and tighter," said John Smith, 52. "You gradually see income going down, and the problems and headaches increasing."

"We'll still have one farm left to live on, but you come to a point where you say, 'Cash this thing in, take my check and look what interest it will draw,' " he said. "I see more and more farmers feeling the same way."

Mostly younger, in their 40s and early 50s, they often lease land to help increase revenues.

Shelby County farmer Paul Hornback, 43, started farming as a high school freshman, when he earned spending money by raising tobacco and cattle on leased land.

Since 1978, he's owned 150 acres on Ky. 53, one mile south of Interstate 64, and he leases 600 acres of cropland. He's got 70 acres of tobacco, raises beef cattle, plus flowers, grasses and purple gourds as part of his wife's landscaping business.

His father still farms the nearby 150-acre homestead that's been in the family for 120 years.

It would make beautiful home sites, he said, "but we're not intending to sell. But the problem is Mom and Dad are in their mid-70s and don't have a lot of income. I would like to see it easier for them."

Just across the street from Hornback's farm, new houses are sprouting in what used to be a farm field. "The whole county is under pressure," he said. "Choice plots in Jefferson County are rare, and we're less than 30 minutes to Hurstbourne Lane."

Developers used to approach him, but most know by now he's not very interested in selling. "But I would consider -- if the money is right," he said.

"I've put back into the farm everything I've made. This is my savings. This is my 401(k)," he said.

Developers also have pursued the Deibels -- father Ray, 82, and brothers David, Tom and Richard, all in their 50s. They own one of Oldham County's half-dozen or so remaining dairies on the 200-acre "home farm" on Ky. 22 near Crestwood.

They grow crops on nearly 1,700 acres leased from other landowners "who do not want to sell but are too old to handle it," David Deibel said.

Several years ago, developers came with offers once a month. But the family was so adamant about not selling they finally stopped.

"The only thing that would change that is if we all had a heart attack at one time," David Deibel said. The only reason they'd stop farming, he said, is if they "felt so forced out that someday we won't be able to farm, to farm on a scale that we can make a living."

With other farmers selling out, it's harder to find land to lease, he said. And it gets increasingly difficult to move slow-moving farm machinery on increasingly busy roads.

Spencer County is hardest hit by the sheer pace of growth. The fastest-growing area in Kentucky, its population jumped 53 percent in the past 10 years, bringing the total to 10,441.

"Nobody could be prepared to handle that," Judge-Executive David Jenkins said. "Every area of the county is seeing the strain."

The sheriff's department, for example, has doubled in size in five years -- from two to four officers. The school system, with 2,100 students, grew to three schools from two this fall when a new elementary opened.

Much of the development is along Ky. 155, which links Spencer County with employment centers in Louisville and Jefferson County. Dozens of new homes, most on one- to five-acre lots, dot the hillsides of the Elk Creek community just 10 minutes from the Snyder Freeway.

"We're getting a lot of people moving from the South End of Louisville and from the Preston Highway area," said Steve Tichenor, a Spencer County farmer who also develops subdivisions.

One of the turning points for Spencer County was development of Hurstbourne Parkway as a job corridor, said Bobby Smith, a partner in Elk Creek Realty with his wife, Jeanie. "We're closer to that than much of the population in Jefferson County."

Many newcomers are seeking a small community with a hometown feel, planning administrator Lorraine Hardin said. But that "everybody-knows-everybody" atmosphere is slowly disappearing.

"It used to be that way," Hardin said. "It's been like Mayberry all my life. Now I don't hardly know anyone."