Great Barrington — The Great Barrington Land Conservancy has partnered with David Inglis, owner of Mahaiwe Harvest on South Main Street, to preserve his property for agricultural use “into perpetuity,” in which he — and anyone who owns the land in the future — gives up development rights…forever.
The Conservancy’s work with Inglis and the organization’s long-range projects were celebrated at the organization’s first annual Community Feast at the Great Barrington train station Saturday evening, August 2, an open-to-all, give-what-you-can-in-the-basket event designed to involve the community in the Conservancy’s mission, explain its work, and raise money for its immediate and long-term projects.
Outside the historic station, roasting spits turned, while inside it was a festive farm-to-table feast in the building owned and renovated by Dale Culleton, and currently occupied by Olga Dunn Dance.
Dale’s son, Ethan Culleton, a Conservancy board member, and Jen Harvey of Berkshire Property Agents organized the event, and Ethan tended bar, serving up locally distilled spirits. Supporters dug in to platters of food grown or reared in the very same hills the Conservancy aims to preserve.
The Conservancy’s work is about “mindfulness of open spaces,” explained President Christine Ward, of the 22-year-old organization run entirely by volunteers and a “new, strong board,” to provide “stewardship and conservation” of the Berkshire landscape.
Conservancy projects include the Lake Mansfield Alliance, Great Barrington Trails and Greenways, several large nature preserves, and historic landmarks such as the W.E.B. Du Bois River Park. The largest preserve under the Conservancy’s stewardship is the Peter Berle Wildlife Conservation Area, “300 acres of private land near Monument Mountain that will be forever in a natural state.”
But it is David Inglis’ farm between Sheffield and Great Barrington, at the convergence of the Housatonic and Green Rivers, that is the organization’s immediate project, said long-time board member Dale Abrams.
Inglis, who ran the Mahaiwe Harvest C.S.A. on North Plain Road for 18 of his 40-year farming career, has struggled through a lengthy review process over this farmland at the 900 block of South Main Street, which he acquired in 2011. The property was out of agricultural use for five years, during which time it lost its wetlands and flood plain exemptions, leaving Inglis to apply for agricultural use as if it were a “new enterprise,” he said. The situation is complicated by the two endangered species that call the land home. He is not yet allowed to reveal what the species are.
“The conservation restriction has to be managed by a third party,” added Inglis. And that’s where the Conservancy comes in. For every acre of the 14- to 15-acre property, Inglis will have to set aside 1½ acres for species use.
In his work with the Conservancy, Inglis, the guest speaker at the event, said he has found an “intelligent, compassionate” organization to partner with, one that “doesn’t see protecting wildlife and agricultural use as mutually exclusive. That is unusual; it’s usually one or the other.”
Conservancy legal counsel, Ira Kaplan, said that Inglis is “very generous” to “give up development rights on land so he can farm there and protect wildlife. So I’ll donate my time for the legal effort and the Land Conservancy will donate its time.”
Kaplan later explained that Massachusetts is “forward thinking,” as the only state that will approve a conservation restriction in perpetuity. The town must approve it as well, he added.
He noted that all the other states have “a problematic model” in not allowing a property owner to “tie up the land forever.” As a result, Massachusetts is the only place where there is no risk of a legal challenge to the status, said Kaplan, who added that what Inglis is doing is “a lot more extreme” than your average conservation restriction.
