Monday, January 25, 2010

A Bit of Background about Sterling

Today January 25th 2009 is a rainy day and their will be no work on the farm. Looking back on all the work that the orchard requires, my sister and I will continue to work the orchard. The initial idea was to have a nursery to grow perennials and seeds. We did not have any land, so we started to look for land. Oh, and of course we did not have any cash hanging around. Seeing that an acre of land in our area is about $50,000 and up, we were quickly looking at properties with falling down houses that may have a 1/4 acre of land with it. Even those properties were too expensive. So we investigated the prospect of leasing lands. The positive side is that there are no taxes and if you have no money the price is right. There is a wide range of prices that someone will lease land to you for. We found that existing farmers that had acres of unused property were reluctant to tie up their land with two girls saying they wanted to be farmers.
The town of Sterling is a former agricultural town. Up until the 1950's people that lived here grew enough quantity and variety of foods to feed themselves and their neighborhoods. Sterling is knoNew Postwn for its apple orchard, and still has many working orchards. Since that time Sterling has gradually transformed to a bedroom community. There is much undeveloped land. Some of that land is private property discontinued farms that the owners look to selling off part of it for development. Some of this private unfarmed land is put into agricultural preservation, where the development rights of the property are given to the state in exchange to money for the farmer. This type of land can from that point on only be used for agricultural purposes. A larger proportion of privately owned lands have been subdivided and developed as homes with a quarter of an acre to 5 acre plots. The town has retained the look of its agricultural past , but the majority of people commute from their homes to jobs in other cities and communities.
In Sterling now, there are no large supermarkets. To do a shopping, people have to drive to another community. There is no pharmacy, there is one hardware store and one Dunkin Donuts coffee shop. The coffee shop is in a small newer strip mall, along with a dance studio, a hair salon, a coin shop, and a convenience store. There is another small market/convenience store in the center of town. Sterling is a town for commuters.

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