Three Harford County farmers have been honored for their efforts to preserve farmland, help the environment and develop more efficient farming infrastructure.
The Barrow Family, Chris Dixon and Courtney Miller were honored Saturday during the county's 2015 agricultural preservation banquet. The banquet and awards ceremony were held at Deer Creek Overlook in Street, which is also the home of Harford County's 4-H Camp.
Members of the local agricultural community, including county officials involved in agriculture such as Harford County Executive Barry Glassman, Director of Administration Billy Boniface and County Councilman Chad Shrodes, attended. The awards ceremony included video interviews with each winner.
Miller, a dairy and grain farmer who operates the My Girls Glen farm in Darlington, received the Innovative Farmer of the Year award from the county's Agricultural Preservation Advisory Board.
"I was shocked when they said I got the award," Miller said after the ceremony.
Miller has been working on her family's dairy farm since 1997, after her father died in a farming accident while she was a student at Virginia Tech.
Miller left college to help run the farm, and she continues operating it with longtime hired hand Phillip Bennington.
"I just felt like I needed to come back and be with my family and help them run the operation," she said.
Miller has 75 milking cows and 50 "replacements," which are younger cows being bred for milking; she also raises corn, hay, soybeans and wheat on 360 acres. Miller said most of her grain crops are used to feed her cows.
She has made some major upgrades to her facilities since 2008, including renovating a nearly 60-year-old stanchion barn and building a "double six parabone milking parlor" in the barn.
Miller said the parabone parlor makes milking "more efficient and comfortable, so it's better for the cows and the operator."
She has also put in a new calf barn.
"You're always trying to make improvements," Miller said. "I try to look for ways to be efficient and make it less labor intensive."
Dixon, 31, is the youngest of the three award winners. He received the Conservation Farmer of the Year award from the Harford Soil Conservation District.
Dixon, a dairy farmer who operates Quietness Farm in White Hall, did not attend; his parents, Reg and Cheryl, accepted the award.
"He's milking," Cheryl said of her son after the ceremony.
Dixon has 82 milking cows and about 100 replacements on a farm started by his great-grandfather, Oliver Winfield Preston. He took over the dairy operation when he was in his early 20s, according to his parents.
"I think it's fantastic," Reg Dixon said Sunday about the award. "He's worked really, really hard."
He said he was 23 years old when he took the farm over from a family friend.
Dixon said he "got hooked" on farming while showing cows when he was younger.
"I always thought it was neat, growing crops and seeing how much milk you can get out of the cows, just breeding and genetics and raising better animals," he said.
Dixon has implemented conservation measures such as a pit to store cow manure, fencing off streams to keep cattle out, planting cover crops to prevent soil erosion and using no-till practices to plant crops such as corn.
"It keeps erosion down by keeping [machinery] from working the ground up," he said of no-till.
Dixon said conservation efforts also "help my operation as far as making life easier on me."
He said he thought it was "neat" he received the conservation award.
"It's been quite a while since they gave it to a young, full-time dairy man," he said.
The Barrow family, which owns various farming tracts around Bel Air and Churchville, was recognized as Land Preservationists of the Year. The award came from the county government's land preservation office.
"We wanted to take the time to highlight them this year and show our appreciation for coming into the program," Bill Amoss, chief of the agricultural and historic preservation section of the Harford County Department of Planning and Zoning, said of the Barrows.
J. Carolyn Barrow, her younger brother, Fay, plus their sister and niece, own nine tracts that have been in their family since their grandfather, Wilbur, acquired them during the early 1900s.
Carolyn and Fay Barrow raise beef cattle and grain, and they have also raised dairy herds in previous years.
"As a kid, we all went with my father to do the feeding of the beef cattle," Carolyn recalled.
The family's tracts have been preserved through the county's agricultural land preservation program, through which the county purchases the land development rights, and the property can only be used for agriculture.
"I didn't want it developed," Carolyn said of her tract. "It was a beautiful place."
Carolyn said the land can only be sold or passed on to someone who will also use it for farming. She said the land is the farmer's "connection to the earth."