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Planning chairman still trying to make farming work
Sees little compromise in land-use fights
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by REID SILVERMAN
Steve Reeves, chairman of the St. Mary's County Planning Commission, restored and repaired the Red House in Chaptico after a year of work. The house dates back to 1775.
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Steve Reeves didn't want to become chairman of the St. Mary's County Planning Commission. It wasn't even his idea to become a member 6 years ago.
"I was asked by Herbie Redmond and Joe St. Clair, and I almost turned them down," Reeves said last month from his farmhouse in Chaptico. He and St. Clair joined the planning commission at the same time and St. Clair eventually become the chairman, but resigned from the commission to make an unsuccessful run for county commissioner in 2006. That left Reeves as the chairman and since then, he said, he has learned lessons — not all of them pleasant.
"I don't think anyone compromises," he said, among developers, nearby neighbors and the regulators.
"We're not developing virgin land anymore," he said. "We're dividing up and selling the county itself. You're basically selling the county and you don't know who the buyer's going to be.
"Once you subdivide something, there's no going back," he said. He knows from experience in trying to reassemble parts of the family farms.
Now, "I've let it be known I think my days [as planning commission chairman] are numbered because I'm burned out," he said. Members of the planning commission serve five-year terms, appointed by the county commissioners.
Asked if he intends to finish his second term, which expires in 2012, he said, "We'll see. I'm just trying to get to a calm spot."
Shelby P. Guazzo, planning commission member, and Reeves often come down on the same side of development issues — on the side of the neighbors of a proposed project.
It's not a surprise to her that Reeves has misgivings. "I have heard him say that. I don't think he likes to be tied down and I don't blame him," she said.
But she said she admires the job he has been doing. "He has the one quality absolutely required for a good chairman, and that's to be kind to people." When citizens come out to a meeting, they are often nervous and anxious about the development process. "Steve always lets them have their say," she said.
Farming has never been an easy way to make a living. Between them he and his brother Brad own more than 600 acres in Chaptico and the surrounding area.
Reeves, 60, is a bachelor and has no children to pass the farm to. His ancestors' history reaches far back in Chaptico and that has left him land rich, but not wealthy.
The family grew tobacco until the buyout started under the governorship of Parris Glendening in 2000. He didn't grow enough tobacco that he felt it was worth entering into the buyout.
Now Reeves grows field corn, soybeans and grain, and he's been exploring getting back into livestock, but the profit margin looks too narrow there. "I'm ready to step aside [from farming]. I've used every idea I've got," he said.
It takes huge farms to make a living from raising and selling livestock. Outside of the beef industry, "big business has gotten enough control that they're controlling the margins and they're really putting the screws to" the small, independent farmer, he said.
Reeves never liked pigs "'cause they stink," but there is a chance for regular cash flow by raising and selling them.
In the old days, a tobacco farmer would take the crop to the market and get paid on that one auction day. The rest of the year was spent carefully doling out that money to cover expenses.
Hogs can be sold more frequently. Property fed, a pig can get up to 240 pounds in 214 days, he said. But "with the price of corn today and the price of hogs today, there's no way to break even.
"I would say it's a bad spot but any small business is having the same thing — they're all struggling to survive," he said.
While he mulls over the future of the farms under the family's ownership, Reeves looks proudly at another project of his. Across Hurry Road on the Red House Farm, he renovated an ancient home. It dates back to 1775, according to the Maryland Historical Trust, and is now the amalgamation of three parts of houses. It took a year to complete the renovation and Reeves paid for it out of pocket and now a family rents it.
He said the project's origin came from "trying to leave things better than you found them."
In 1885, the St. Mary's Beacon reported the discovery of a stone marker on the Red House Farm. It described it as "having nicely chiseled on one side L.C., 1668; on the other T.M., 1661."
Reeves' own farmhouse home was built in 1905 on the farm called Grampion Hills.
