I had the privilege of living on two different farms in Ijamsville. My husband, Ralph Gordon, and I chose that life for ourselves and our children in 1976. Our values were farm values. We believed in preserving the land.

Following Ralph’s death in 1999, I purchased and moved to a second, smaller farm where I stayed until I was 70. I am committed to stopping the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project because it will upend farm life in three Maryland counties: Frederick, Carroll and Baltimore.

This project, which calls for building a 70-mile power line across Central Maryland, is affecting farmers and landowners I have known for more than 48 years in Frederick County. The Maryland farmer is already under great duress and this transmission line will be a death knell to family farms that go back more than a hundred years. Some of the affected farms currently support three generations: parents, grown children and several grandchildren. The children knew the worth of the farm and dedicated themselves to that life, returned to their parents’ farm after college. Farming is their calling, not just a way to make a living.

This transmission line will not only destroy these farms; it also seeks to negate farming vision and values.

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Many of these farms provide direct services to families who have cut Christmas trees, picked apples or pumpkins or brought home cider doughnuts, fresh eggs, beef or pork. These farms knit our community together.

This is land that needs to be preserved, not stolen to serve corporate interests. Farms with their crop rotation put nutrients back into the soil; their woodlots collect carbon; their very land prevents water run-off. These farms do not just feed us. They are saving us.

Conservation easements will not be respected by PSEG, the contractor on the project. Farmers who seek to keep their land green are being denied that right.

PSEG also said in a webinar that they would take the land they desire by eminent domain, but “only as a last resort.” Is “last resort” to be employed against a farmer who refuses to capitulate to the demand that their land be taken?

This is not a Republican or Democratic issue. This is an issue that should bring people across the political spectrum together, because this is an issue of regular folks against big, deep-pocket, monied interests.

Susan Gordon, Frederick