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This project aims to show the struggle of small family farms against national trends such as commercialization and industrialization. Often small farming is thought to be a quaint and simple lifestyle; the yeoman farmer. The idea of a self-sufficient farmer is not a new idea, but its meaning has changed1. The idea is now unrealistic, commercialization of the farming industry all throughout the 1900s, focusing on the 70s-90s, especially runs rampant. Bolstered by data showing a decrease in farmland, overall farms, but an increase in average farm size points to big farms overtaking and driving out the smaller.2

This leads to the breakdown of the small farms, often forcing them to subdivide and sell the farmland. Such is the case with the parcel of land at 143 Drytown Road in Lancaster Pennsylvania, and its upper 51 acres. Emmett and Eunice Lehman, owned both, and in the midst of the small farming crisis, subdivided their upper 51 acres in 1978 and sold their land to a land developer, B.R. Kreider and Sons Inc, who turned the 51 acres into 32 residential lots and created the neighborhood that exists there today.3 

Emmett and Eunice were part-time farmers, as records indicate Emmett practiced law,4 and Eunice acquired her real estate license,5 which supported their lifestyle. But the same cannot be said for all other small farms lost to these factors. Appreciating the not so simple lifestyle small farms live, leads to a greater appreciation of those that still exist today.

The homestead as it sits now on the original 143 Drytown Road parcel of land.

  1. Thomas D. Isern, “An American Dream: The Family Farm in Kansas,” The Midwest Quarterly 26, no. 3 (1985): 361. ↩︎
  2. U.S. Department of Agriculture Census of Agriculture Historical Archive, “Agricultural Census Archive, 1974,” accessed February 7, 2025, https://agcensus.library.cornell.edu/. ↩︎
  3. Office of the Recorder of Deeds. “Final Plan of Laurel Hill.” Lancaster County: Pennsylvania, February 13, 1978. ↩︎
  4. Office of the Recorder of Deeds, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Land Deed. May 15, 1981. ↩︎
  5. Department of State. “Eunice Lehman License Information.” BPOA Portal. Accessed April 8, 2025. https://www.pals.pa.gov/#!/page/searchresult. ↩︎