I've been reaching out to neighbors for years, but it's hard to reach our entire community at once, so we're adding this page to get accurate information out to our community and answer questions about our current projects in Browntown. My family has had a farm in Browntown for three generations, and I moved back here eleven years ago specifically to find ways to protect it from becoming a residen
tial subdivision. In that time I have expanded our farming operations from cattle and hay to include pigs, goats, sheep, and honey bees, and we will continue to farm and share our local products with the community, but like so many local farmers who have off-farm jobs to make ends meet, main line agriculture can only get us part of the way to our goal of saving our family farm. Since I was a little kid I've watched with an ache in my heart as other family farms in our area were slowly pulled apart for new houses, leading to many new wells, new traffic, and light pollution. But if you look around the county for alternatives to residential subdivision , you also see successful campgrounds, event spaces, wineries, breweries, and other outdoor recreation. Warren County has been both an agricultural community and a tourist destination for a long time - and bringing these two features together is a comparatively low impact way of creating success stories for family farms and our community by resisting housing development in the Ag district. On these two parcels, for example, creating new campgrounds and events spaces would add less than half as much traffic annually as new houses, and less than one fifth as many wells compared to residential subdivision on the same acreage. Allowing us to embrace these recreational uses instead of more houses fits with the County's comprehensive plan by protecting the view-shed provided by our open fields and preserving the rural feel of our community. These plans will create local jobs, add to the tax base without putting a burden on schools or emergency services, and help protect the things we love, and love to share, about Browntown.
