Above: At Brubaker Farms near Mount Joy, Pa., a corn planter places seeds in a field adjacent to a new housing development.

Good neighbor relations is one of the few things most farmers have not had to worry about. Not anymore. Farmland within commuting distance of metropolitan centers is being subdivided for residential and commercial development at an alarming rate, and the countryside is getting crowded. Nowhere is this trend more evident than in the fertile valleys of southeastern Pennsylvania, where farmers who want to remain in agriculture but are being squeezed by higher property taxes and business costs may feel pressured to sell out.

Lancaster County farmers (from left), Michael, Tony, and Luke Brubaker work with their nonfarming neighbors to foster peaceful coexistence. Their modern farm is a large operation with a 400-cow dairy, a 1,200-hog finishing facility, and housing for 48,000 chickens.

Brubaker Farms in Lancaster County has been a family farm for more than 100 years. To stay profitable in today's competitive economy, the Brubaker brothers, Michael and Tony, and their father, Luke, doubled the size of their dairy herd about 20 years ago and added a poultry enterprise in 1990. They currently have a 400-cow dairy operation, a 1,200-hog finishing facility, and housing for 48,000 broiler chickens on their 150 acres. They also rent 650 acres to grow feed for the livestock. Twenty years ago, their only neighbors were other farmers. Now housing developments are cropping up all around them, and they worry that the rented fields will be developed too, threatening their dairy enterprise. They also must worry about local residents who are disturbed by the smells, flies, and noise that come with larger-scale farming and more intensive animal agriculture.

Savvy producers like the Brubakers are reaching out to their new neighbors, listening to their concerns, inviting them onto their farms to learn more about production agriculture, and adjusting their farming practices to promote peaceful coexistence. The Brubakers' number one problem is the huge amount of manure produced by the livestock, most of which is used on their own fields, within sniffing distance of the neighbors. To avoid complaints, the family carefully plans when and how to apply the manure. In areas close to developments, they lessen the smell by injecting it into the ground and move it at night to be less intrusive. Most of the hog manure, which scores high on the pungency scale, as well as the poultry manure is used on fields close to the farmhouses. "We also put corn next to the developments periodically, because when the corn gets high, the neighbors can't see what's going on and it doesn't seem to bother them as much," says Mike Brubaker. In some fields directly adjacent to houses, the Brubakers plant buffer strips of crops that require less manure.

The Brubakers make this Civil War-era springhouse available to local groups and organizations as a meeting hall.

To be a good neighbor, the Brubakers also host tours for local elementary and high school classes during the school year and for guests staying at a local bed and breakfast in the summer and fall. They also have fenced their creek, put in some rocks and boulders to create better trout habitat, and invited neighbors to fish on the farm. This summer the Brubakers may hold an open house for the entire community. "We just want to make sure that if the neighbors have a complaint, they call us first," Brubaker says. "This is a beautiful place to live. If I were in their shoes, I'd want to live in the country too."

The Brubakers have continued to thrive by adjusting to life at the "rural-urban interface," a term that describes how America's landscape and communities are changing as cities and suburbs expand outward into traditionally agricultural areas. Nowhere is this social movement more clearly visible than in Pennsylvania, which has more rural residents than any other state. Nearly a third of the state's 11.9 million residents live in communities of 2,500 or fewer people. Of the 67 counties in Pennsylvania, 42 are considered primarily rural. At the same time, many traditionally agricultural counties, especially in the southeast, are experiencing rapid population growth as people move away from metropolitan centers into the countryside. Eight of the state's 10 most productive farming counties also are among Pennsylvania's fastest-growing counties.