LITCHFIELD PARK, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) — The future is up in the air for a popular Litchfield Park organic farm. A developer is buying some of the land that they lease, which could force them to close. At Blue Sky Farm, there’s a relationship with the land.
“You have to love it,” said owner David Vose. “It has to be in your DNA.”
It’s in Vose’s DNA who cared for these 42 acres for more than 25 years, but an imminent separation is coming. “It’s very sad,” said Vose. “There’s no way around it. I mean, I feel every day I’m working here, I will lose this, and it’s like a part of me is being ripped out.”
The farmer leased 23 acres for at least two decades, but he said a buy by Fulton Homes is taking it away and transforming it into a housing community. Vose owns the remainder of the farm, roughly 19 acres, that houses his retail shop and other buildings. But once Fulton Homes moves in, he said he’ll no longer be able to sustain his operations with the little land he has left.
“Emotionally, it’s crushing,” said Vose. “For all I’ve invested and all I’ve done, that I didn’t own enough land to keep doing it and that the market forces, the free market would decide for me that I was done.”
Vose said he couldn’t afford to buy the land when it was offered to him years back by another owner. In the past year, he’s looked for other properties but can’t find anything in the West Valley he can afford. Time is running out; he has until July to find new land.
“I want to be here,” said Vose.
Arizona’s Family reached out to Fulton Homes about the development and have not heard back.
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