In 1986, Albert and Judy Hudson placed a conservation easement on a portion of Windale Dairy Farm, home to what is now Picadilly Farm. This year, Bruce and Jenny Wooster plan to conserve the entire Picadilly Farm property as an affordable, working farm, in perpetuity. To carry out this project, we are partnering with The Monadnock Conservancy, a land trust for southwestern New Hampshire, whose mission is to work with communities and landowners to conserve the natural resources, wild and working lands, rural character, and scenic beauty of the Monadnock region.
Our approach for conserving this farm for future generations of farmers has two layers: the establishment of a conservation easement on the not-yet-protected portion of the farm; plus the addition of an affordability provision, called an Option to Purchase at Agricultural Value (OPAV), to the combined conservation easement for the entire property. By design, when the farm changes hands, the farm will be purchased by farmers who can afford to pay for the land by farming the land.
The Picadilly Farm conservation project has financial support from The Monadnock Conservancy, the New Hampshire Land and Community Heritage Investment Program, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resource Conservation Service Agricultural Land Easements program, and the New Hampshire Association of Conservation District’s Farm Future Fund.
As well, nearly 75 individual friends of the farm contributed close to $20,000 in 2021 to the Monadnock Conservancy, donations toward the costs of funding a stewardship endowment, money that will care for the land in perpetuity, and to also cover easement transaction costs.
We are so grateful for community support toward the conservation of this working farm! As of October 2022, The Mondadnock Conservancy is working on the language and logistics of the easement. We will keep posting here about the progress of the easement.
