One woman in town, Dorothea Reeves, had already begun a one-woman campaign to raise the money – Dwyer was asking for $500,000, or $1250 per acre - to purchase the farm for the town, hoping one end result would be shared farmland for Marshfielders to grow their own crops. By September 1980 a growing army of conservation-minded citizens calling themselves the Committee to Preserve the Dwyer Farm for the People of Marshfield, joined her. About 70 people showed up to the committee's first public rally on September 28 at the parish house of the First Congregational Church.