The Francestown Land Trust has purchased a conservation easement for Abbottville Farm after three years of negotiations and fundraising.
The easement, which finalized on Dec. 23, protects 40 acres of scenic agricultural fields and adjacent forest visible along the 2nd New Hampshire Turnpike.
“It feels good,” landowner Robert Abbott said.
For him, the process began three years ago, when a developer approached him about buying the land.
“He made me a sizable offer,” he said. “I got to thinking about it, I said this is not what I want.”
Abbott’s house abuts the property, and he said he didn’t want to see a bunch of condominiums or a development going in next door. He approached the Francestown Land Trust, which he said had already expressed interest in the property.
“After doing some research, I decided maybe this would be the best thing for me to do,” he said.
The easement allows Abbott to continue to farm the land, which is one of the few parcels with prime farmland soil still in agricultural use in Francestown.
“I try to keep it fertile,” he said.
Abbott’s brother grazes beef cattle on the 17 acres of pasture in the parcel.
“He’s a hard worker and he wants to do it,” Abbott said.
The land has been used by Abbott’s family for more than 100 years, and it supported his grandfather’s dairy farm, which milked up to 120 cows at a time. Abbott said that at one point the land got sold out of the family, and about 25 years ago he decided to buy it back.
“When I look back on it, it was painful to come up with those payments to keep it, but it was well worth it,” he said. “I think it was the right thing to for the town and myself,” he said.
Francestown Land Trust project manager Greg Neilley said preserving the parcel helps to preserve a rural vista when entering Francestown from the more heavily-developed south and east – an asset, Neilley pointed out, that residents said they valued and wanted to preserve when the Francestown Conservation Plan was written in 2013. The property is contiguous with over 800 acres of conservation land.
The project was made possible by the support of the U.S.D.A. Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Agricultural Land Easement Program; New Hampshire’s Land and Community Heritage Program (LCHIP); the NH State Conservation Committee Conservation Grant Program, with funds made possible by the sale of NH Conservation and Heritage License “Moose” Plates; the Merrimack Conservation Partnership, a public/private effort for land conservation in the Merrimack River Watershed; and the Town of Francestown through the Francestown Conservation Committee.