Friends Of Claude Moore Farm Make Final Plea To Stop Closure

MCLEAN, VA—As the National Park Service's planned closing of Claude Moore Colonial Farm gets closer, Friends of Claude Moore Colonial Farm is pleading for the public and lawmakers to take action. The living history farm depicting life in 1771, will close on Dec. 21.

The Friends are asking residents to contact federal lawmakers to pass Save the Farm legislation before Dec. 14. McLean's current representative, Barbara Comstock, introduced HR 6678, which would convey the Claude Moore Colonial Farm land from NPS to the Friends. A companion bill would be needed in the Senate.

NPS opened Claude Moore Colonial Farm in 1971 before turning over the operations to the Friends a decade later. The Friends group has operated the farm's programs on the NPS-owned land under cooperative agreements since 1981.

Negotiations for a new long-term agreement came to a standstill earlier in 2018. The Friends, who want an agreement like they've gotten before, opted not to sign NPS's agreement with new terms. On March 30, NPS told the Friends it would sign a short-term agreement through Dec. 21, effectively closing the farm on the latter date.

An NPS spokesperson previously said in a statement the long-term agreement offered to the Friends had standardized terms used in other agreements with NPS partners. The Friends say in a statement the "new terms that would make it impossible to operate the Farm."

Since NPS announced the intent to close the farm, the Friends launched a Save the Farm campaign. A petition has received over 10,000 signatures.

May Ohman, a farm volunteer, said in a statement the closing negatively impacts her kids, students and others who visited the farm for over 40 years. "Shutting down the Claude Moore Colonial Farm would be a personal loss of huge magnitude for me," said Ohman. "As a teacher, I routinely took my students to the Farm to participate in their educational events. As a parent, my children were able to see and feel what it was like to live and work in colonial America."

The farm has seen over 2 million visitors since it opened. The living history program is supported through private admission funds, donations, grants and hundreds of volunteers.

Image provided by Friends of Claude Moore Colonial Farm