Environmental organization Scenic Hudson has struck a land deal that enabled a group of young farmers to purchase land. The deal also protects a Hudson River tributary, buffers a public water supply, and protects views.
Poughkeepsie-based Scenic Hudson has acquired a conservation easement in Columbia County, protecting 62 acres of productive farm fields and watershed lands in Greenport, just south of the City of Hudson. The easement’s purchase enabled a group of young farmers who had been leasing the property to purchase it. Faith Gilbert is one of the farmers of the Letterbox Farm Collective. She says the land deal allowed her and two other Letterbox farmers, along with two outside partners, to literally dig in after a year of farming the land through a temporary lease.
“And the way that we farmed in that first year with a one-year handshake lease, very little security, is very different than the way that we’re approaching it now that we have that long-term tenure on this land,” says Gilbert. “We have much greater access to the equipment and buildings that were on that property. And we also just think very differently about our time there and how we’re going to make investments. And we feel secure in being there so we can really dig in, do what we want with the soil, invest more in it.”
Seth McKee is Scenic Hudson Land Conservation Director.
“The new U.S. Census of Agriculture came out and indicated that 60 percent of New York farmers are 55 years or older and it finds that more than 7 million acres of our state’s farmland will need to transition to new farmers in the next decade. And here in the Hudson Valley land values are such that that’s a real barrier, generally, to young farmers who aren’t inheriting the land themselves,” says McKee. “And so the purchase of conservation easements, such as through this project, allowed the value of the property to drop to the point where it was affordable to a group of young farmers.”
Gilbert says the cost dropped by about one-third. McKee says this particular land deal meets a lot of Scenic Hudson’s goals.
“Protecting farmland, creating access for young farmers, protecting drinking water supplies - the Town of Greenport’s wellhead is immediately adjacent to this property, so it protects the Town of Greenport’s drinking water supply - protecting a significant tributary of the Hudson River, and creating an opportunity for access to several hundred acres of woodland very close to the City of Hudson so there’s a lot of urban recreational access as well,” says McKee.
The newly protected property, historically known as Wyda Farm, features 26 acres of state-designated prime agricultural soils as well as forested slopes and wetlands adjacent to South Bay Creek. In addition, the easement protects views from the Olana State Historic Site and of the Catskill Mountains from Route 9. Scenic Hudson simultaneously acquired a public access easement that will allow for the creation of a public walking trail and trailhead on 321 acres along South Bay Creek. That walking trail could bring business to Letterbox, which Gilbert says is launching a CSA, or community supported agriculture, program in the spring.
“So we will have our CSA pickup right at the corner of this public parking lot that will be developed as a trailhead,” says Gilbert. “And, at some point in the future when we’re able, we’ll be developing out that. There’s a little barn at the corner, you’ll see, and that will be our future farm store.”
Letterbox Farm supplies specialty vegetables, herbs, pork, poultry, rabbits and eggs to a variety of regional and New York City markets. Meanwhile, McKee says he hopes the upcoming state budget contains funding for similar farmland protection.
“We were thrilled that the state funded farmland protection projects last year. And we worked with partners to secure some of those grants for protecting critical farmland,” says McKee. “And we’re very hopeful that the state will have, again, in this year’s budget a robust commitment to farmland protection so that more farms like this can be conserved and access for young farmers be enabled and aided by a partnership of land trusts in the state and municipalities.”
The transaction is part of Scenic Hudson’s Save the Land That Matters Most campaign. It also supports Scenic Hudson’s Foodshed Conservation Plan, a blueprint for ramping up collaborative farmland protection efforts to create a secure source of fresh, local food for the Hudson Valley and New York City.
