Through a combination of town money, private donations, a state Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness grant, and much hard work, 39 acres of farm fields and forest on Littleton County Road are becoming Harvard’s newest conservation land. After well over a year of effort, the purchase by the Harvard Conservation Trust took place last week.
John Lee, chair of the HCT’s Land Protection Committee, led the group’s effort to buy the land. Peter Dorward, an HCT associate trustee and former chair of the Open Space Committee, applied for the crucial state grant. Conservation Agent Liz Allard and Jim Lee, the current Open Space Committee chair, also worked long and diligently to bring the project to fruition.
Town groups that supported the effort with money, votes, or letters include the Harvard Conservation Trust, the Open Space Committee, the Conservation Commission, the Community Preservation Committee, the Climate Initiative Committee, the Agricultural Advisory Committee, and the Select Board.
The new conservation land is part of an area known as the High Ridge Corridor, along the Harvard-Boxborough border. “[T]his area is defined by steep hillsides above broad flats dominated by agriculture,” according to the 2021 Apple Country Natural Climate Solutions Project Report.
Those broad flats have been farmed since 1778, often as orchards, according to Harvard historian Susan Lee. In 1919 a portion of the land was purchased by Ida Harris, author of “A History of Harvard Massachusetts.” In 1952 Eleanor Carlson bought one of the orchards, and the land has stayed in the family since then. Two Carlson family homes will remain on private plots surrounded by the new conservation area.
Of the 39 protected acres, about 14 acres are forested and two are wetlands. Some 12 acres are still being farmed. Will Pickard of Idyllvale Farm in Littleton leases the farmland, along with several other parcels in Harvard, to raise feed for his dairy cows.
Overall, the new land is part of a 345-acre block of protected open space. It abuts the Muller Land, the Harvard Conservation Trust’s first property, which was donated by Erhart and Ruth Muller soon after the HCT was founded in 1973. The land also abuts the 200-acre Eastern Greenway, which the HCT acquired in partnership with the Sudbury Valley Trustees in early 2022.
A complex arrangement
The Harvard Conservation Trust paid $555,000 for the Littleton County Road land. In turn, the town will pay the trust $495,500—the appraised value of the parcel’s development rights—for the conservation restriction. The state, through a Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) grant, will reimburse 75% of the town’s expenses, which include the cost of the conservation restriction, legal fees, and various other costs, for a total of $401,250. The restriction, after approval by the state, protects the land permanently for agricultural and conservation uses.
This complex arrangement makes the HCT the legal owner of the property, while the town—acting through the Conservation Commission—holds the conservation restriction, which specifies what may or may not be done on the land. Dorward, who also worked on the conservation restriction, explains the farmland will be governed by different restrictions from the forest land.
The Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness grant, obtained by the Open Space Committee, was key to acquiring the land. The MVP program, created in 2017, provides funding for communities to plan for resilience in response to climate change. Among the goals listed in the grant application by the Open Space Committee were to protect ecologically sensitive land; to preserve active farmland; and to keep open-space corridors intact.
One requirement for MVP grants is that a town match at least 25% of the grant amount. Harvard topped that challenge when voters at the April 2023 Annual Town Meeting approved $200,000 from money raised under the Community Preservation Act to support the project. The MVP grant for Harvard was announced late in August 2023, although the HCT’s purchase of the land was not completed until May 16.
