State, county funds help preserve family farm in Laurel, 35 others

The Oliphant family farm in Laurel has for at least five generations created a harvest of corn, soybeans and memories, and family members gathered Oct. 10 with state and county officials to preserve that heritage.

Sitting under a tent overlooking the field and nearby family homes along Whitesville Road, Gov. Matt Meyer, Agriculture Secretary Don Clifton and Sen. David Wilson, R-Lincoln, announced the state’s 29th round of agricultural easement funding.

The latest round purchases development rights and preserves 2,800 acres on 36 farms staetwide, including 28 in Sussex County, at a cost of $14.9 million. That includes about $410,000 for the Oliphant farm agreement. Clifton said landowners on average receive about half of the development value of their farms.

The Oliphant farm easement includes 109 acres of the nearly 140-acre property. The balance where the family’s houses are located is not part of the easement.

The Aglands Preservation Foundation to date has preserved nearly 160,000 acres spread over 1,250 farms across the state. That is about 29% of the state’s farmland, and there are contiguous parcels stretching much of the state’s length.

“The land we’re looking at, like the Oliphant family, for so many families across Delaware is their 401K,” Meyer said. “It is their retirement. It is the financial stability for generations to come. This program enables us to support these farm families long into the future while still retaining a sense of food security, while still preserving land.”

“We’re a part of history and will be in perpetuity,” said Clifton, whose father agreed to a similar easement for their family farm in the program’s third year. 

The Sussex County government contributed $1.9 million toward eight easements in the county this year, including the Oliphant Farm, said Councilman Matt Lloyd. County funds allowed the state to expand the number of farms included in the program, Lloyd said.

The Oct. 10 event in Laurel was timed to celebrate National Farmers Day, which was two days later.

Elijah Oliphant purchased the land in Laurel that would become the farm in 1822, and the family is doing research to determine if their roots in the land run even deeper.

Three sisters had owned the property, Colleen Herman, Lorraine Bozman and Beverly Shockley. When Shockley died in March of 2024, her interest in the land passed to her daughter Belinda and son Clifford.

Colleen Herman’s husband, Ed, suggested the remaining four family members who owned the property pursue an easement through the state program to keep the land in agricultural use.

“My three sisters and I grew up in the house over there, which was built in 1880,” Herman said. “That was our great grandparents' house. And then the house over here was our grandparents’ house.”

Family members live in the three of the four houses on the property, and one is vacant.

Some family members met on the property a week before the ceremony with representatives of the state agriculture department and walked the property.

“The memories that it brought back,” said Herman, who now lives in the Long Neck area. “We just took a walk along the farm road. That was my playground growing up.”

Those family traditions will continue, Herman said.

“We’re so happy that it’s being preserved,” she said. “We continue to farm the land and get the profits from that. We just can’t sell the land to a developer. We were told we can sell the land, but it has to remain farmland.”

Colleen said her father began leasing the property to Paul Spear, whose family has farmed the land since 1947. Tom Elliott, a descendant who still farms the property, said before the Oct. 10 event that he had harvested corn the prior week.

After the ceremony, family members recounted their youths growing up on the farm. There were walks in the woods, sledding on a hill on the property, climbing into tree forts and picking leftover corn by hand for a grandfather.

“I was always kind of a tomboy,” Bozman said. “I would roam the fields. My son, Jared, had built what we called an outpost out in the woods, a tree house. I spent a lot of time outdoors.”

Being close to a highway and in a desirable school district, there has been development pressure in the area, said Belinda Shockley, who lives in a house on the property.

“I’m just happy knowing that this will always be farmland and be able to honor the family,” Shockley said. “I never wanted to see some huge housing development take over.”

Sussex County farm easements

Ariosa LLC, 87 acres, $638,724

Ariosa LLC,  196 acres, $1,217,245

Beauchamp Farms LLC, 106 acres, $452,231

C&S Land Holdings LLC, 87acres, $467,161

Douglas and Laura Corey, TTEES, 93 acres, $368,742

Cromer Management LLC, 189 acres, $506,381

Cromer Management LLC, 14 acres, $77,634

Adam and Brianna Dickerson, 96 acres, $408,972

Dorey Heritage Farms LLC, 57 acres, $446,189

Fry Farms Inc., 147 acres, $751,533

Shelley Givens, 38 acres, $155,223

Gregory and Holly Hudson, Co-trustees, 12 acres, $120,379

Mark Isaacs, TTEE Revocable Trust, 75 acres, $400,368

J&D Vanderwende & Sons Farms LLC, 188 acres, $771,103

Richard and Tracy Jamison, 30 acres, $149,527

Joyce Kenton, 36 acres, $214,312

Charles and Terry Kopple, 32 acres, $425,766

Garry and Rita Manaraze, 30 acres, $124,961

Rodney Messick, TTEE, 30 acres, $196,957

James and Wendy Palermo, 42 acres, $383,626

RCDG Partnership LP, 75 acres, $816,479

Lee and Mary Robinson, 59 acres, $533,895

Gregory & Martin, Melissa Sellers, 21 acres, $255,027

Clifford and Belinda Shockley, Lorraine Bozman and Colleen Herman, 109 acres, $409,454

Heather Torres, 58 acres, $426,582

Turkle Pond Farms LLC, 145 acres, $708,233

Everett and Marlene Warfel, 79 acres, $146,072

Whispering Pines Estates LLC, 110 acres, $326,766