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APRIL 3, 2026
THE LOCAL VOICE OF YOUR COMMUNITY.
Court sides with State on offshore substation By Kerin Magill Staff Reporter The state Court of Chancery last week ruled in favor of the Delaware General Assembly in a dispute that has pitted the state legislature against the Sussex County Council and the Town of Fenwick Island. On Wednesday, March 25, the Delaware Court of Chancery upheld the General Assembly’s authority to ensure construction of an electrical substation that is part of proposed offshore windfarm project. The substation, proposed for a parcel adjacent to the nowshuttered Indian River Power Plant, is designed to connect offshore wind turbines that would produce electricity to be dispersed over the regional power grid. The Sussex County Council last year had denied a request from an arm of windfarm developer U.S. Wind to build a substation at the former power plant near Dagsboro. The council had denied the permit despite a unanimous recommendation to approve it from Sussex County’s own Planning Commission, which found that the project would not
See COURT page A4
Ocean View candidates speak to residents By Susan Canfora Staff Reporter The status of the Ocean View Post Office — closed months ago without explanation — was among topics at a meet-the-candidates forum for the town’s mayoral candidates, Tom Maly and Randy Robust, and town council candidates John Planchart, the incumbent, and challenger Richard Dimock, both competing for the District 1 seat. “Good luck. You’re going to have to work through your representatives, but the Town has a role in this, too, and that role is to call our congressmen and senators and put pressure on them,” PlanSee CANDIDATES page A5
Volume 23, Issue 14
FREE
From chicken to veggies Father-daughter team transition chicken houses to plantings By Kerin Magill Staff Reporter What do you do when you’ve been a chicken farmer for decades, with 120,000 square feet of chicken-house real estate, but the next generation says “nah” to growing chickens? When you’re Bill Owens and your daughter is Amanda Owens, you take stock of your assets, take a look at some cool new innovations and get creative. The father-daughter pair, doing business near Frankford as A&B Indoor Farms, are in the process of converting the chicken houses to indoor growing facilities for greens, herbs and vegetables. “I had always worked on the farm since I was a kid,” Amanda Owens, 34, said, “but I didn’t want to do chickens.” “Most young people don’t want to do chickens,” Bill Owens said. “I told her, ‘You can do anything you want, but you’ve got to get an education,” he recalled. Amanda Owens left home to attend school in Virginia Beach, Va., and then pursued a career as a paramedic, licensed in Maryland, Delaware and Virginia. Eventually, she said, “I fell out of love with the health field,” partially due to the stress of being a healthcare worker during COVID. She said she realized what she wanted more than anything was to Coastal Point • Kerin Magill come back and work with her dad on the farm. Bill Owens himself had taken over the poultry op- Bill and Amanda Owens have transformed Bill’s chicken houses into indoor growing facilities for greens as Amanda is set to beeration when his father, Al, died, he said. And he had come the next generation in charge of the family business. always been interested in growing something other than chickens. “I used to love the greenhouses on the farm when I was a “I said, ‘Let’s grow some plants of some sort,’” he recalled kid,” she said. “I really just wanted to go back to being on telling his father. the farm. This is where I’m meant to be.” “He laughed at me, and so did everybody else,” Bill Since none of the Owens kids wanted to continue to Owens said. farm chickens, according to Bill Owens, “I said, in order to A few years passed and, “It just kept on my mind. So I keep the farm going, you have to generate some kind of instarted actually growing in his pole building/garage behind come. So we really got serious about trying to grow sometheir house. I wound up growing some tomatoes and pepthing inside the chicken houses.” pers and a bunch of different things.” With 120,000 square feet of existing chicken houses, he Along the way, he reached out to the University of said, “The potential was to go as far as we could. However, Delaware’s agriculture department. Gordon Johnson, who we’re going to start off really, really, really small,” in the front leads UD’s agriculture program, began bringing his students end of one of the chicken houses. Our hope is that we can to see the Owens’ experimental farming efforts. start building orders, clients and customers and just keep exThat led to growing strawberries in one of the chicken panding.” houses, “And it just kind of took off from there,” he said. His In hydroponic farming, only the plants’ roots are touched daughter “was helping me every step of the way. We built by water. The only chemical the Owens family uses in their our own little bucket systems, out of stuff that we had,” he growing system is hydrogen peroxide added to the water. said. At that point, Amanda Owens interjected, “He made me go to school.” See FARM page A3