PORT ANGELES — Clallam County property owners have begun to bite back at a state ruling that could cut some of their property rights in two.

At a public workshop of the county planning commission last week, an 81-year-old farmer complained that he could not subdivide his land — now split into five-acre lots — into the 2½-acre plots he was entitled to before a Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board issued its ruling last spring.

Morris Quinn farms 70 acres of land northwest of Sequim and wants to subdivide some of it for his retirement — if there is any retirement for a man whose son-in-law said has worked 25,000 days with only 100 days off.