112-year-old family farm no longer fits into ever-expanding urban area

Lois Brown and Ace.
(Emily Spartz, Argus-Leader)

Steve Young writes a story for the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls about a 112-year-old family farm that soon may not exist anymore, now that urban growth has surrounded the area. Lois and Kelly Brown, in their mid-60s, "are ready to ease back on the work it takes to maintain a place that came into the family’s possession in 1901," writes Young. As a result, the Browns are selling the horse farm, and it's only a matter of time before it's torn down.

“The consensus from city staff is that it was more likely a residential development opportunity,” Parks and Recreation Director Don Kearney said. That's nothing new for the once-rural area, where "suburbia has sprung up where corn, soybeans and potatoes once grew." New additions include a four-lane road, a school, apartments, library and a community center.

Young writes of Lois: "She can close her eyes, listen to the roar of traffic to the south and conjure up an image of her grandpa Greg pulling a plow behind a horse into the rising sun and carving Sixth Street out of the earth."

"You think about all the other people in the area who have gone," Lois said. "Slowly but surely, this dairy farm goes and that dairy farm goes, and now the city is here. Things change. Life changes.” (Read more)