The Open Space Committee is continuing the quest to protect 70 acres of apple orchards and farmland on Prospect Hill Road from being broken up into house lots. The orchard property is currently owned by the Community Harvest Project, a nonprofit farm organization that supplies fresh produce to area food banks.
At a Sept. 16 meeting, the OSC asked the Conservation Commission to support a request for funds to ensure the land will always be used for agriculture. ConCom unanimously agreed to support a request for $100,000 from the Community Preservation Committee. If approved both by that committee and by voters at next month’s Town Meeting, the money would go toward the purchase of an agricultural preservation restriction (APR) for the property. The Community Preservation Committee has already put $300,000 toward the project—$150,000 in each of the past two June Town Meetings.
The state’s APR program is designed to pay landowners the difference between their land’s value as farmland and its “fair market value”—what it would be worth if sold for development. In exchange, the owner accepts a permanent deed restriction that maintains the property as farmland.
Based on a state appraisal of the land’s value, the total cost of the Prospect Hill APR is $2.5 million. The state has committed to pay $1,239,000 toward that total. The Harvard Conservation Trust and the Sudbury Valley Trustees are also raising funds for the APR, and the Community Harvest Project itself has applied for several grants, according to Jim Lee, who presented the OSC’s request to ConCom.
The original deadline for getting the money together was this December. But Mike Morton of the Harvard Conservation Trust told the Press the deadline is being extended into spring of 2022.
Tori Buerschaper, the executive director of Community Harvest Project, said in a telephone interview that a majority of the organization’s board voted to use the $2.5 million as an endowment in support of the group’s agricultural use of the orchard and fields. She said the organization surveys its partner food banks, and the surveys show apples “top the list” for the most popular produce they supply.
Christa Collins, who is director of land protection for the Sudbury Valley Trustees, was asked what would happen to the land if Community Harvest were to cease operations at some future date. She said the state, as the largest contributor to the APR, would have the right of first refusal and would step in to find a new farmer to keep the land in agricultural use.
