| APRIL 12, 2013 -- The Connecticut Farmland Trust is excited to start off 2013 with great news: all of the funding needed to permanently protect the 23 acre Gunther Farm in Tolland and Vernon has been confirmed. Working with the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), CFT assembled funding from DEEP’s Open Space and Watershed Land Acquisition Grant Program and the Farm and Ranchland Protection Program at NRCS to cover 100% of the $700,000 purchase price. The project will close by the end of the year.
“As budgets get smaller we need to be creative,” said CFT’s Executive Director Jim Gooch. “Our Director of Conservation, Elisabeth Moore, deserves kudos for seeing how the pieces might fit together and then going out and making it work.”
In addition to having the best agricultural soils, Gunther Farm boasts important grassland habitat, the flood plain of Gages Brook, and endangered wildlife habitat- all of which will be permanently protected. The farm is adjacent to the Tolland County Agricultural Center (TAC), whose mission is to “provide an environment for agricultural production education, ecological landscape education, and leadership education for all ages, for all citizens of the State of Connecticut.” TAC will use the farm’s fields and woodlands to expand its agriculture and environmental education programs and to create an incubator farm.
Gunther Farm’s 23 acres of fields, woods, and agricultural structures will be added to TAC’s existing 32-acre property. Surrounded by commercial development in an expanding area just off Interstate 84, TAC has very few options for growth. Acquiring Gunther Farm, which TAC has used for various events over the years, is the only opportunity TAC has to add prime, active farmland to its complex.
The Gunther Family has owned the farm since the late nineteenth century. Similar to many Connecticut farms, the property has changed uses several times in those 130 years. Operated by the family as a dairy farm until the late 1980s, the farm then transitioned to raising cattle and other livestock. A local beef farmer now hays 15 acres of the former pastures. Ellen Rodzen, the eldest of the Gunther children, said, “The land has been in our family since the 1890s and had been farmed continually by the family up to my dad’s death in 1983. With this much farming history invested in the land, it just did not feel right to consider development of these acres.”
Doris Ostrowski, Ellen’s sister, concurred, “The family all agrees that placing Gunther Farm under protection and keeping it as open space is the right thing to do.”
TAC is not eligible to apply for land conservation funding from government programs, so CFT stepped in to orchestrate the deal. When negotiations for the conservation easement terms with the state and federal agencies are complete, CFT will purchase the farm and then sell the restricted land to TAC for $1. This project is CFT’s first “by-protect-sell” deal, and one of the few farm protection projects to receive funding from DEEP. The Open Space Acquisition Program administered by DEEP assists the purchase of conservation land using state bonds and funding from the 2005 Community Investment Act- money that your calls and letters helped to protect last fall.
“This is a deal only CFT could- or would- orchestrate,” said Gooch. “This doesn’t happen without Elisabeth to structure the deal and find the money; and it couldn’t have worked without CFT as a conduit for these funds. Because we are qualified to apply for that funding, we were able to act in the interests of TAC and then turn the land over to them. The family’s farm is protected, TAC can expand, and we’ve fulfilled our mission- it’s a win, win, win.” |
