One Week for Operators, Animals of Claude Moore Colonial Farm to Leave

WASHINGTON — WTOP has learned the National Park Service told the non-profit group that has operated Claude Moore Colonial Farm since 1981 that they have one week to leave the premises — and to take their farm animals with them.

Friends of Claude Moore Farm operates the popular tourist attraction, which realistically depicts life on a 1771 farm, as part of a cooperative agreement with the Park Service. The agreement expired in 2006, but it was extended each year, with a final extension through Dec. 21, 2018.

The Friends group declined to sign a new agreement, and said the Park Service is requiring onerous, administrative-based changes that would make it impossible to operate the farm — maintaining animals, buildings, crops and employees — on its yearly budget of $400,000.

Friday, in a letter to the executive director of the Friends group, the Park Service said time is up.
“You are required to remove all temporary, movable improvements and personal property, including livestock, porta-potties, and property in the pavilion area,” wrote Blanca Alvarez Stransky, acting superintendent of the National Park Service. “Any property not removed by December 22, 2018, will be considered abandoned property.”

Elliott Curzon, director of the colonial park told WTOP he is not optimistic.

“Hope springs eternal, but the harvest of goodwill toward the Farm is meager,” Curzon said. “That little drummer boy you hear this time of year is pounding out a funeral cadence for the Farm.”
While a bill is still pending in the House of Representatives that would have the Park Service give the land to the group to operate the colonial attraction, Curzon said without a companion bill in the Senate, “the legislative Hail Mary will die with the 115th Congress, and the Farm will likely die with it.”

Curzon said the group has more than 12,000 signatures on its Save the Farm petition.

“Congress, the White House and the Interior Department have abandoned us,” Curzon said. “We appear to be the redheaded stepchild of the National Park Service — neglected, mistreated and unwanted, except by our visitors, schoolchildren and patrons.”

Jenny Anzelmo-Sarles, chief of public affairs with the park service’s National Capital Region said the “next chapter” of the land the farm sits on is unclear.

“Early in the new year, the NPS will invite the community, the farm’s volunteers and any interested parties to share their vision for the park’s future,” she said in a statement. “Should the NPS offer farm activities, return the area to its natural state, provide connections to neighboring trail systems or something else altogether?”

One thing Anzelmo-Sarles rules out? “The NPS will not pursue any kind of commercial development or sell the property.”
“We value the memories that people have made at the farm, and remain committed to a public and transparent process as we work with the community, public, and the farm’s many dedicated volunteers to determine its future.”