County rent increase threatens Dickerson farm

Nine years after winning a bid for a $100 lease and upgrading the property, farm family faces a market value hike to $2,300

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo David S. Spence⁄The Gazette The Horst family in front of the farmhouse they have made livable. Picture (from left, front row) Kara, 11, Luke, 7, Melody, 5, Daniel, 9 and Nathan, 12 and (from left, back row) Joel, 17, Cathy and Myron.

The Horst family — Cathy and Myron and their six children — lease the 25-acre property in the Agricultural Reserve from the county. They were notified in March 2005 that the county would raise their rent from $100 a month to $2,300 beginning in August.

Myron Horst is hoping there will be a change, but if not, Jehovah Jireh Farm will close and the family will move from the house that was inhabitable when the began renting the property nine years ago.

Esther Bowring, a county spokeswoman, on Tuesday said county officials are negotiating with the Horst family.

‘‘The county is actively trying to work through these issues to achieve a resolution that is satisfying to the community, the county, and the tenant,” she said.

During their time on the property, the Horsts have invested their own money to repair a house that was boarded and been vandalized.

The dramatic rent increase makes Myron Horst wonder whether the county is still committed to promoting farming in the reserve.

Embarking on a journey

The Horst family began their tenure on the Martinsburg Road property more than nine years ago, after winning a fierce bid process that included nearly 20 proposals. On Nov. 22, 1996, the family signed a 5-year lease for the property, which is owned by the Division of Solid Waste Services.

It took members of the Horst family six weeks to fix up the house on the property and get it to the point where it was livable. The house was boarded up, and appliances were saddled with buckshot and windows were shattered. No new wiring has been required, but the maintenance work was extensive.

As part of the original lease, the Horst family lived on the property rent-free for the first two years in exchange for continuing to restore the house. Family members did not receive any money from the county to make repairs to the house and after the two years the rent was set at $100 a month. In 2000, the family began farming.

Jehovah Jireh Farm began its tradition of raising turkeys, chickens and cows while keeping them antibiotic-, hormone- and chemical-free. The animals are fed on unfertilized fields. Many of the animals are also fed with certified organic feed, which creates a healthier product, Cathy Horst said.

Joel Horst, 17, is his father’s ‘‘right-hand man” and has been working on the farm since it started.

‘‘Farming has really been a good experience for me and of course for my brothers and sisters,” he said. ‘‘I get a very broad education in the principals of life and death. It is a family business and we children are involved in how things work.”

When the five-year lease expired, the Horst family continued to rent the property from the county on a month-to-month basis at the $100 rent. In April 2005, the property was inspected for the third time. County officials verbally told the Horst family that their new 5-year lease would require a small increase in rent and more work on the barn located on the property.

By then Jehovah Jireh Farm was a successful business offering a variety of services to the public. Each year more than 110 turkeys and 1,200 chickens raised for slaughter. Eggs that are high in omega 3 were provided to five area health food stores and one restaurant year round.

A sudden spike

But on March 17, 2005, county officials delivered news that was earth shattering for the Horsts. The market value of the house had risen at the result of the family’s repairs. The county said that in order for the family to stay on the land they would now have to pay a monthly rent of $2,300. The offer included a dollar-for-dollar rent reduction in exchange for more maintenance work on the house and barn, Cathy Horst said.

‘‘They were thinking about making up a schedule where we would be doing $2,300 worth of work a month,” she said. ‘‘We would be responsible to do that $2,300 worth of work and if we didn’t then we would be penalized. ... For us to do $2,300 worth of work with the barn plus doing farming is just too much.”

The barn is listed on the county’s Locational Atlas for Historic Sites. Myron Horst speculates the county was preparing to tear down the two buildings before they realized his family was willing to restore the house.

After negotiating with the county for a year, the Horsts still have not received an offer from officials they feel they can afford. At this point, the Horst family plans to move.

‘‘Our specialized food — eggs and meat that have been raise on pasture — they are hard to come by in this area,” Cathy Horst said. ‘‘Many of our [customers] are simply health conscious or they are conscious of how animals are raised. They aren’t too happy about it.”

The news has hit Nathan Horst, 12, pretty hard. He started his own farming enterprise and owns 20 of the sheep on the farm. If the family has to move, Nathan will have to sell his sheep.

‘‘I don’t want to get rid of the farm because I like living here,” Nathan said during an interview in his family’s living room while trying to hold back tears. ‘‘It’s basically been my home all my life — ever since I can remember.”

Signs of support

Customers of Jehovah Jireh and farming advocates have already started to band together to send letters to county officials asking them to cancel the new rent increase. The farm is located in the county’s protected Ag Reserve, which spans 93,000 acres across the upcounty.

Ilene Freedman, owner of a diverse market farm in Adamstown, Md., said she will be among the letter writers.

‘‘The Ag Reserve has to be about the preservation of farming,” she said. ‘‘This is a farm the county has helped to create. This is an opportunity to celebrate that. A family fixed up the house and created a farm to feed the community. They should continue and the county can support the Ag Reserve.”

Freedman thinks the rent increase should be more in line the Voluntary Rent Guideline system the county has in place for other landlords. Under the guidelines, a landlord can not increase the rent of a tenant more than 4.4 percent per year.

Myron Horst said their proposed rent increase raises many other issues about farming within the county.

‘‘The impression we got in talking with the ones in the Office of Real Estate, who handles our lease, was farming was really not important to them,” he said. ‘‘The fact that we are in the Ag Reserve really did not make a difference. One of the problems I see happening with the Ag Reserve is it is becoming a residential community of big estates that are not really farms.”