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- i \ space,we need an interval setting, and we love this piece of land because it does have the streams in the back, which would be protected, and will serve as nature study, and it has a wonderful area right in the middle where we can build out school. It already has pasture for the farm animals that we'd like to have. Right now, were looking at maybe a couple of goats and maybe a sheep or two, and then every year we'd do a 4-H project where we borrow Gary Nantz's dairy calves and the children work with them for six weeks, and then they show them at the 4-H dairy show, and then we send them back to at Nantz spoiled rotten and they probably aren't able to live in a pasture by themselves at that point. That's the kind of animals that we're looking at. We of course have all of the typical classroom animals such as bunnies, guinea pigs, gerbils, frogs, that type of thing. We're really not intending to raise the next generation of farmers. What we intend to do is raise the next generation who will protect farms and the farmers pet, and farming as a way of life. Fred Stewart. I'm the architect and I have been sworn in. Is it possible to go back to the courtyard sketches? Michael Harvey did a great job of describing the buildings, so I'll just speak more to the aesthetic of it. There were three main objectives that I was asked to address in the design. The first was that the design should blend into the neighborhood as much as possible. The way to do that, we felt, which is also consistent with the school's mission, was to have the buildings be drawn from farm vocabulary. The second was to reinforce the mission of the school, which was to teach a strong connection of nature to children and also to help them understand the responsibilities that are in farming, and to teach life responsibilities that farm life can teach. The third was to utilize as many green strategies as possible. These would include passive and active solar and rainwater catchment for reuse and the use of non-toxic materials as much as possible. The reason for the courtyard was really two-fold. One of them was that we wanted the roof of the buildings to minimize the impact on the site, and the other was to create a protected environment for children to have a more concentrated connection to nature. So the would be a play area. We wanted to site this as far back from the road as we could, so there is a slight rise from the road that goes up to just the middle of the site, and then we sited all of the buildings except for the barn just beyond that, lust back from the road on that crest and behind some trees. PUE_JI-J-CCPVIMENT: Keith Tilley: I have been sworn. I have copies of a presentation here I'd like to pass out to the County Commissioners. I'm representing a large percentage of our neighborhood here tonight, and wanted to address the Council and the Planning Board. I'll share with you a little bit about myself and my wife. We are the adjacent property owners to the southern side of this property. You can't really see our property from this representation on the map here that you have in front of you, but we own 21.5 acres to the south of this property. We purchased that land back in November of 2005 with a specific intent around agricultural residential. We purchased the land with a lot of specific purposes in mind. We had kind of our own unique vision and I wanted to start off by saying tonight that we appreciate everything that the Montessori Farm School is trying to do, we're not against their concept of what they're trying to build, but we are pretty adamantly opposed to the location and the design of the layout that they've got. When we purchased our land, we basically wanted a private location with limited views of other homes and other houses in the neighborhood. We're actually current residents in Orange County now living in Grand Oak Estates subdivision and have an acre lot and actually have fairly good privacy in the neighborhood we're in, but we always had desired a much larger piece of property with limited visibility and a quiet, peaceful setting. We have a lot of concerns with this construction. Back last year, we actually started the process of building and actually hired our