STEWARD OF THE LAND

To Supervisor Mike Dvorchak and Town Board Members:

With all due respect to the town board and the road and highway department. I will write as a citizen, as a businessman, as a steward of the land, as a farmer, and as a family man. All of my comments will encompass the above. To suddenly be informed of an impending plan to stone and oil the  roads of Texas Hill and Appletree Lane is an unexpected blow to my farm, my business and my family.

I have spent a quarter century and great effort, both financially and with sweat equity to maintain and express the beauty of the Knapp Hollow Valley that Apple Tree Lane bisects. I have spent years fighting illegal, poachers, cleaning up residual trash thrown from cars and maintaining the land and the valley and the stream with the utmost attention to organic standards, cleanliness and beauty. The idea of having that bisection of the valley, be paved and stoned and oiled with petroleum products is nothing but an aggressive affront to everything that my farm and staff has done for a quarter century in this hamlet of Hillsdale. I will not stand for it, and I will oppose it unceasingly. I will not let this be pushed through by some back room colloquy of people who have never lifted a shovel of dirt in that land to plant something and harvest it. In short order, I find the idea and the dispensation of the idea, violent and brutal, and not rooted in the health of the community.

I have the exact same set of reactions to the idea of paving Texas Hill Road, which drains directly from three sides onto the origin of Taconic  Creek, which empties into the Hudson and also drains from three sides onto some of my most productive and beautiful farmland. I have had professors from local colleges take water samples from the creek that passes our fields to study aquatic wildlife flora, and fauna as it might affect research into antibiotic resistant infections in hospitals. These fields, woods and streams are living laboratories, as well as vital providers of oxygen, food and eternal natural beauty. The misbegotten idea that humans have that they can irrevocably make nature better with petroleum products borders on suicidal. The problem with human beings is once they make an irrevocable mistake they don’t admit it and then they live with the consequences. We have a jewel in our hands to preserve the natural resources which we are fortunate to steward. This is a bad, ill conceived poorly communicated idea that would affect us permanently. Not just my business not just my farm but the entire town of Hillsdale will suffer for this. 

Respectfully,

James Cox Chambers

FH Farms

Honey Dog Farm