Letter: Mid-States Corridor will destroy our Hoosier Homestead Farm and so much more

My family owns a farm south of Huntingburg that just received a Hoosier Homestead Award at the Indiana State Fair.  Parts of our farm have been passed down through the family since 1851.  The people behind the Mid-States Corridor project want to destroy my farm.

In the years that my family has farmed the land, we have cleared the land, drained swamps, installed carefully planned drainage systems, and worked hard to make it some of the best farmland in Dubois County.  This road would cut diagonally through the property, cutting our nice rectangular fields into triangles.  You can’t get farm equipment into any angle of less than 90 degrees, so every corner becomes dead space.  Some of the triangles may be too small to even turn the equipment around in. 

Almost every building on our farm is in the preferred path of this road, including my 85-year-old mother’s house.  She would be forced to leave the place she has called home for 68 years.

This road threatens three woods on our farm, potentially cutting down hundreds of trees, nature’s air filters. Open fields that currently absorb most of the rain on our farm will be replaced by pavement that the water will run off into Short Creek. The additional runoff caused by this road has the potential to increase the flooding in the city of Huntingburg.

Our farm is a haven for many wildlife species, including deer, wild turkeys, rabbits, squirrels, waterfowl, coyotes, and bobcats.  Destroying their habitat on our farm will push them into areas where they are not wanted. 

Although our farm will be one of the most affected properties in this project, we did not know the road-preferred route would come through our property until they started having public meetings. After all, we’re only farmers, not important business leaders. Why should they keep us informed? While we see our farm as a heritage that needs to be preserved and protected, the people behind this project see only land that could be developed into something they consider “more useful”.

Tom Bartelt,
Huntingburg