Farmed out

In the five or so minutes it took me to figure out how to start this column, the country lost about 10 acres of farmland to some development.

By the time you finish this column, the country will have lost another 10 acres of farmland. That’s based on figures from the American Farmland Trust that about 2 acres of farmland succumb to development every minute.

Somewhere, there’s a farmer sitting at his kitchen table watching the minutes pass by and trying to figure out how his family will survive when the state comes through, eating up his land to expand a nearby highway.

He’ll get paid for the land, but it won’t be enough to keep him from moving somewhere else, finding a new job and starting a new career that he never thought he’d need.

Somewhere else, the minutes can’t go by fast enough for a farmer waiting to sign on the dotted line and turn his land over to the state for an expanded road. It’s the retirement money he never thought he’d see, a chance to shake off the dawn-to-dusk, back-breaking labor he never thought he’d escape.

Everywhere in between, there are farmers negotiating and compromising with mixed feelings. They understand the necessity of progress, and they hear the legitimate reasons given by the road planners. But it can’t feel right letting go of that land, some of which could have been in the family for decades or even a century.

I’ve never farmed, but I don’t think it would feel right to me either. I do, however, drive up to Door County about five times a year, and I’ve watched the progress of the Highway 57 expansion.

For the record, I hated the stretch of Highway 57 from north of Green Bay to Sturgeon Bay. It was slow, dangerous and incredibly frustrating.

And as I watched the project develop every few months, I began to see where the new road would be. I couldn’t believe how much land it was eating up. I don’t know how much of it was farmland, but I know it was a lot more overwhelming to see in person than if someone simply told me they were widening the highway from two to four lanes.

The last couple of times I drove to Door County, I was on the new four-lane highway. I love it. It’s fast, traffic is manageable, and it seems safer.

But I’d be lying if I said I don’t have some of those mixed feelings I believe farmers have. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t begun to picture the Door County peninsula with a giant strip of concrete down the middle and the land — farms and otherwise — shoved off to the side in tight margins.

And that’s where I see family farms headed — the margins.