From the knoll near the barn of their Street farm, James and Jeanne Galbreath take in one of the county's loveliest vistas, as the countryside rolls away in neat crop rows and verdant tree lines toward Rocks State Park and beyond.
"When the leaves are right in the fall of the year, it's fantastic," said James Galbreath, 76, who has spent his life in the Emory Church Road farmhouse where he was born, and where his wife joined him 52 years ago.
That view, he said, looks almost as if it is in the mountains, and may alone have been enough reason for the couple to decide recently - after eight or 10 years of deliberating - to put the 145-acre farm into the county's agricultural preservation program.
The program, which began in 1992, offers landowners money for their property in exchange for putting a conservation easement on the acreage that prohibits development "in perpetuity."
The Galbreaths, who raise hay for pleasure horses, are among 18 families joining the program this year.
It's not an easy decision, several landowners said, to put your trust in government and keep the land in farming, especially when the prices developers are willing to pay for their land may be many times higher than what the easement program is able to pay.
But with Harford one of the fastest-growing jurisdictions in the state, development pressure was one of the deciding factors for some families.
"It's unbelievable how much is going on," said Cheryl Dixon, whose husband's family owns a 152-acre dairy farm on Bradenbaugh Road in northwest Harford that is going into the program.
She said she and her husband, Reg, felt it was important to keep "some part of Harford County in agriculture - even though most of Harford County doesn't believe this is an agricultural county."
Harford County spent roughly $5 million to take in the current properties, the last group of which comes before the County Council for approval Tuesday. They represent a mix of dairy, crop and beef cattle farming, said program officials.
James Conrad, executive director of the Maryland Agricultural Land Preservation Foundation, said the county's program has preserved more Harford farmland than the state's program.
According to June 2002 figures, the county program had preserved 15,250 acres, while state easements in the county comprised 11,958 acres.
It's a pretty impressive effort considering Harford has one full-time employee working on agricultural preservation. Baltimore, Carroll and Frederick counties each have three to four.
"They've done a very critical share of the job," Conrad said. "They've protected more land than we have. In a lot of ways, they do more than we do."
He added that the county also has provided matching funds for the state program - whose funding has been cut in half for 2003 and will be put on hold in 2004.
In lean budget times, Conrad said, the county program "makes a big difference because they provide a sense of continuity."
Robert Tibbs, a Havre de Grace farmer who sits on the county's Agricultural Preservation Advisory Board, said farms are chosen for the program using a point system that weighs such factors as soil productivity, the investment in farming operations and the number of development rights. The point scale also helps determine the price a farm may receive, up to $3,500 an acre.
Tibbs said the formula is "very equitable," though it can be tough to see a farm come up where the owners really want to join, but the points just don't make the cut.
"You want to do as much as you can," he said, "but your hands are tied."
He said he was particularly pleased to see the Pusey farm, this year's largest at 300 acres, go into the program. The grain farm, just outside Aberdeen Proving Ground on Swan Creek, sits in the county's designated growth area - and had development rights for 225 homes, because it was not zoned for agriculture.
The program offers several advantages for landowners, said William D. Amoss, the county's agricultural land preservation administrator, who himself comes from a long line of northern Harford farmers.
The owners can stay on the land and work the land, he said. The money raised from the easement also offers a revenue stream for such expenses as making improvements to milking parlors and barns or buying and repairing expensive equipment.
Owners can take a lump-sum payment or installments over 10 or 20 years, he said, and they receive county property tax breaks and possibly a capital gains tax break.
Amoss has been with the program for 15 years and says it is a bit of a race with developers, though he shrugs off any resulting tension. "They certainly understand what it is trying to do and the value of it," he said.
"The biggest thing you can do is try to get around and talk to everyone," Amoss said, adding he may talk to farm owners once a year for five or 10 years before they make a decision. "I'm not a high-pressure salesman."
He also speaks to students in the county about the work he does.
