D’VILLE ‘SOLAR FARM’ DRAWS FIRE

Dozens crowd library meeting

A proposed “solar farm” on North End Road in Deltaville drew about 75 people to the Middlesex County Public Library’s Deltaville branch Monday evening. Most in the group expressed opposition to another solar farm in the county. (A solar farm is a large collection of photovoltaic solar panels that absorb energy from the sun, convert it into electricity and send that electricity to the power grid for distribution and consumption by customers.)

The proposed 76-acre solar facility is on the T. H. Crittenden & Son Inc. family farm on North End Road and Crittenden Lane in the area of Deltaville that was once known as Amburg. North End Road is named for the steamboat dock that was at the end of the road from the late 1880s to the 1930s.

Farm history

Tommy Crittenden, who is proposing the project, gave a history of the farm and the reason he is considering shifting the land use from agriculture to solar. The farm is a third generational farm. Tommy’s grandfather, Tom Crittenden, started the farm in 1924 and operated a truck farm and crop farm. Tom Crittenden also was a longtime treasurer of Middlesex County, said Tommy.

Tommy’s father, a longtime member of the Middlesex County Board of Supervisors representing the Pinetop District, Fred Crittenden, diversified the business in the 1950s and 1960s by growing purebred hogs and he continued to crop farm. The 125-acre family farm was not large enough to afford an exclusive crop farming business, so the family rented land and worked up to 500 acres. With the expansion of the area’s residential real estate market in the “early to mid-1980s” much of the rental land went to housing. Also, the hog business shifted to large “factory” type farms eliminating the small hog farmers, said Tommy.

When Tommy graduated from college in the mid-1980s, he and his father started Heart Seventeen Produce raising and marketing produce. He explained that changes in that business, surrounding labor and marketing challenges, led him to the decision to use part of the farm for a solar farm. “Solar allows us to maintain ownership and carries us into the next generation,” he said.

A too small venue

The Deltaville library conference room holds 50 people. There were 20 or more people who could not get into the room. From the start there was tension and concern that the meeting venue was too small…