Selectboard approves funding

At their regular meeting on Monday, Sept. 13, the town’s Selectboard approved the expenditure of $50,000 from the Charlotte Conservation Fund for a conservation project.

The applicants for the funds are the Charlotte Land Trust and the Vermont Land Trust.

The two organizations applied for the funding for the easement acquisition price of a 59-acre parcel owned by Clark Hinsdale.

Hinsdale’s property is located between Spear Street and Bingham Brook Road.

According to the application submitted to the town by both organizations, the property is accessed through farm roads on an adjacent property owned by David Nichols.

The property is suited for agriculture use, with 83 percent of the soils on the land ranked as Statewide, one acre designated as wetlands, two acres designated as woodland, and no waterways on the property.

With the conservation project, the organizations intend to protect the farmland and to add the land that has been protected through earlier conservation projects, including the adjacent Nichols Farm, the nearby Fat Cow Far, Adam’s Berry Farm, and Dylan Preston’s farm.

The application notes that the project will help to possibly transfer farmland to the next generation of farmers “…and to further the success of an established farm business, the Nichols Fodder Farm.”

The organizations note that there will be no public access to the land.

The total amount for the conservation project is $468,000, with $288,000 in funding from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, $30,000 from the Charlotte Land Trust, $50,000 from the Charlotte Conservation Fund, and $100,000 in bargain sale funds.

“This is one of the most straightforward applications we have ever brought forth to the town,” Charlotte Land Trust representative Kate Lampton said. “The land is entirely open and, except for a couple of acres, it’s entirely farmable.”

“Clark has had conservation of this property for several years. The idea is for the property to be acquired by Nick Powden.”

Lampton said that Powden is in the process of taking over Nichols’ business and property and will eventually acquire Hinsdale’s property as well.

“One of the things that I learned from my mother, who is 90, is to embrace each stage of life,” Hinsdale told the board. “What I have been doing for the last several years is conserving land, and also selling to conserve land for the next generation of farmers. I couldn’t be more proud of the job everyone is doing in getting a great crop of young farmers on our land. We’re going to have a critical mass of skilled young people to take over the next generation of farming. It’s going to be very different from what some of us old-timers did.”