WHITEHALL, Pa. – \u201cHow many chickens do you have?” 69 News Reporter Bo Koltnow asked Heather Skorinko as they walked toward her chicken pen.<\/p>\n
“We have about 100 chickens they are all egg layers,” she said. “These are beef cows. It’s a heritage breed called America British Park White.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her farm has been in her husband’s family since the 1870’s. They’re in the process of preserving\u00a0all 170 acres.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re a family operation,” she explained.<\/p>\n
“What’s the value of you keeping it the way it is?” Bo asked her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s invaluable. You can’t put a price on it. It has more to do with family heritage and where your heart lies, as opposed to an actual dollar cash value,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Data centers and other development continue to pressure what remains of the county’s open space.<\/p>\n
“We have some land owners that are looking to talk about preservation,\u201d Donna Wright said.<\/p>\n
As the head of Lehigh County’s Farmland Preservation Program, Wright says she is hearing from more and more landowners.<\/p>\n
“All this talk of data centers? I mean, it’s been in the news,” Bo said to her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s triggered a bunch of landowners,\u201d Wright said. \u201cJust today, I’ve already received three calls from landowners that are looking to find out what preservation is about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wright adds it’s also triggering some municipalities to be more proactive in protecting their land. The 426 preserved county farms cover nearly 29,000 acres. Thirty farms are on the county wait list.<\/p>\n
“For us, retirement is not in our vocabulary. It’s a way of life. For some people, selling their farmland is their retirement. So, it’s both sides,” Heather said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But for those like Heather, the most dollars don’t always make the most sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WHITEHALL, Pa. – \u201cHow many chickens do you have?” 69 News Reporter Bo Koltnow asked Heather Skorinko as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253676,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,56411,62082,2116,1510,63953,433,395,6569],"class_list":["post-253675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-chickens","tag-cows","tag-data-centers","tag-family","tag-farmland-preservation-program","tag-lehigh-county","tag-municipalities","tag-whitehall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}