Business has been booming at Springfield Farm, with rising demand for locally grown food helping to double the sales of meat, eggs, dairy and produce, and straining the confines of David Smith's basement retail stand in the northern Baltimore County community of Sparks.
Smith, 68, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, has a solution: an expansion that would add a three-level, 6,000-square-foot barn for storage, an office, an egg-washing machine and service for drive-up customers.
But after proposing the $250,000 project four years ago, he still doesn't have zoning approval. A band of neighbors is fighting it, saying that Smith has twisted the notion of "farmer's roadside stand" so he can erect the largest ever in Baltimore County.
They call the project a food-distribution warehouse in farm stand's clothing, and worry that the building would draw traffic that the winding, two-lane Yeoho Road cannot handle, jeopardizing their rural way of life.
At first, the Miller family wasn't concerned about their neighbor's proposal, envisioning a few tables by the side of the road. But they were shocked when they learned the specifics of Smith's plans.
"Our jaws just dropped," said Gillian Miller, who lives a short walk from Springfield Farm, describing her and her husband's reaction. "How can this be a farm stand?" she recalled thinking. "What is he up to?"
Smith's plan has turned into a colossal headache. His lawyer calls it the "case from hell." A county land-use official granted initial approval in 2008, but neighbors kept up their challenge. An appeals panel recently concluded the last in a series of five sessions on the project by setting an August date for lawyers to submit written arguments, a development that sent Smith over the top.
"Do I still have to be living when this is done?" Smith asked the three-member board and anyone else who would listen.
The complexity and length of the case underscores the difficulties that county farmers can encounter as they try to meet demand for local food onsite. It also illustrates the tensions that arise as property owners try to make a living from land that Baltimore County long ago severely restricted from suburban residential development to preserve the area's agricultural heritage.
In a similar case, Bobby and Pam Prigel have fought for years to build a creamery producing organic milk, ice cream and other products in Glen Arm, where some neighbors argued that the proposal could pave the way for factory operations in a rural area. Last year, the family received a low-interest $250,000 loan from the county to complete the project.
Smith's family ties to the Yeoho Road property go back to the 1600s. He started farming 67 acres along both sides of the road in 2000, after retiring from a marketing position with Raytheon -- a job he took after leaving the Army. He also leases about 23 acres next door and co-owns 150 acres of farmland in Cecil County.
Smith said he looked to farming as a later-in-life occupation that would allow his family to work together. Two of his daughters and their families, including four grandchildren, help him operate it. He'd like to have more space in his home, though.
"I have a three-car garage that is consumed by the ÃÂÃÂ operation, and approximately another thousand [square] feet in the basement that have been commandeered, if you will, and used for storage and processing," he said.
Baltimore County rules are generally friendly to roadside farm stands. Within certain size and location limits, permits are easy to come by, officials say, barring opposition from neighbors.
Chris McCollum, executive director of the Baltimore County Center for Maryland Agriculture, said the county tries to make it easy for farmers.
"We think it's important for the farmers to be able to sell things directly to the consumer," he said. Such sales can help increase profits, he said, "helping them stay on the farm as long as possible."
Sam Nitzberg, who lives on Yeoho Road, said Smith's proposal violates the spirit of the roadside stand definition in the zoning rules.
"What he's essentially putting in is a market," said Nitzberg, who owns Chesapeake Sign Co. in Cockeysville. "Like any businessman, he wants it to grow and prosper. It's going to build and grow, and what does that mean for the neighborhood? That's our fear."
Zoning Commissioner William J. Wiseman III heard similar arguments more than two years ago and granted Smith's permit with a few restrictions: Hours would be limited to 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.; only the main floor could be used for the stand; and Smith had to abide by a rule that says that just over 50 percent of the products sold at the stand had to be raised on land being farmed by Smith along Yeoho Road or elsewhere.
Opponents and their lawyer, Michael McCann, are continuing the fight. Litigants can appeal the zoning ruling to the highest level of state court.
The so-called "50 percent rule" on farm stand sales has been a focus of the proceedings before the board, with Smith questioned extensively about his operations. A complication is that Smith runs both a wholesale operation that sells to local restaurants and markets, and the much smaller retail operation that runs out of the 600-square-foot room in the basement equipped with a few tables, a freezer and display cases.
Smith has acknowledged in testimony that the wholesale operation accounts for about three-quarters of his business. He and his lawyer, former zoning commissioner Lawrence E. Schmidt, insist that the two operations should be considered separately.
Opponents have tried to figure out where Smith's products come from but have been stymied. They subpoenaed years of Smith's financial records and records of several of Smith's suppliers, but Smith fought the subpoena and won.
That refusal got the attention of the People's Counsel, Peter Max Zimmerman, whose job is to represent the public interest in zoning cases. At a hearing in February, he said that if Smith were complying with the sales ratio rule, "you would think he would be pleased to present these documents."
Smith supplied Wiseman with documentation showing that until 2006, he was raising 80 percent of what he was selling in the retail operation. He said in an interview last week that he fought the subpoena because "I'm not under indictment."
Lawyers for both sides have until Aug. 23 to submit briefs. The board plans a public deliberation Sept. 28, when the decision is expected to be announced.
Smith is confident that he'll prevail and can begin putting up the barn, in just about the spot where his great-grandfather built one in the 19th century.
"If I'm still alive," Smith said.