The Franklin Land Trust & The Deal That Conserved (a piece of) Foxbard Farm
Bardwell
The Bardwells, Enoch, Sr., and his son, Enoch, Jr., could have scarcely imagined that their land, located in, Shelburne, would end up, centuries later, subject to the protections of tax laws that parallel “early practice[s] in colonial land settlements, where a town held the right of first refusal on land granted to new settlers [which] prevented land speculation and promoted long term stability in the community.” Nor could I have imagined, when traipsing the corn fields of Massachusetts’ South Shore over thirty years ago potsherding (pot-sherding), that is hunting for indigenous peoples’ relics in freshly plowed corn fields with my friend Darrell, that I would again find myself scouring farmland—Foxbard Farm, Bardwell Farm and others—for something not lost, but not yet found. But here we are.
People have used and managed the lands of the Pioneer Valley for at least 9,000 years, yet the pastoral feel and look of the region remains. At the time of European contact, it has been estimated that some 12,000 people lived in the Valley. Indigenous corn hills remained visible in Northampton and Southampton into the 20th Century and may still remain, showing the industry of locals. Today, it can be said that part of the charm of the area includes the red tobacco barns dotting the fields of regimented rows of crops. These form a geometry that invites me to seek a cohesion that can be captured and composed into images that are engaging and tell a story, despite being managed lands. That was the case when I started making images for a project at two of Shelburne’s first colonial farms—Foxbard and the nearby Bardwell farm property up Orchard Road—harkening back to my days with Darrell in those managed lands of the South Shore of Massachusetts. The stories that my images and essay try to tell may not have been told at all were it not for conservancy efforts directed at farmers and landowners who resist development. Such efforts at conservancy come both through government interventions and the assistance of regional land conservation non-profits, including the Franklin Land Trust.
According to MassWoods.org, “constitutional amendments approved by the citizens of Massachusetts have authorized three programs which require cities and towns to reduce assessments of farm, forest and open space lands, provided the owners make a commitment to keep their lands in one or more of those uses.” MassWoods.org was “developed to help landowners at . . . critical decision-making times.” Those decisions faced John Payne, then owner of Foxbard Farm, in 1999 when he was offered to purchase land, 95 abutting acres that had previously been placed by its owner into the statutory tax relief program, Massachusetts Chapter 61A, a current use property tax program directed at landowners engaged in agriculture or horticulture and can even include forestland. Payne’s family had owned and operated the adjacent Foxbard Farm since 1943, raising Black Angus cattle there since 1967. Payne’s father, after retiring, ran the farm full time from 1971 until his death. In 1999 Payne himself retired and ran the farm from then to his passing in 2018. The family still owns the Farm in trust but have ceased to raise cattle for sale “in 2022 to focus on land preservation and conservation.”
That land abutting Foxbard that was offered to Payne in 1999 had been part of the Smith Farm, another one of the original colonial farms in Shelburne, much of which had been sold off over the years by the original owner’s descendants. Payne would not meet the then owner’s asking price, which was apparently based on value for future residential development. Pursuant to the law, Shelburne had the right-of-first-refusal to purchase the land at the price offered by a willing buyer, but only had 120 days within which they could have exercised that right. The proposed sale to the private owner would have would have removed the land it from Chapter 61 conservancy protection and allowed development.
Locals living near the land up for sale did not want to see it developed into residential units. They urged the Town to exercise its right-of-first-refusal. The Franklin Land Trust, established in 1987 to help landowners protect their land from unwanted development, became involved. Citizens of Shelburne, through a nonbinding vote, urged the Selectboard to pass their right-of-first-refusal to FLT. The Selectboard, sensing the urgency, agreed and voted to give their right-of-first-refusal to FLT. The Trust’s Executive Director, their first, Mark Zenick (an artist in his own right) “initiated a campaign to raise the money to buy the land at the asking price.” It took several months, but Zenick completed fundraising, and purchased the land, then turned his attention to what to do with the it: FLT “did not want to be in the business of managing the land.” John Payne agreed to manage the property long term, signing a 99-year lease with FLT.
In the years that followed, Payne “manage[d] and improve[d] the land as part of his overall farm operation. He . . . had an 8-acre pasture cleared of scrub pine and brush and . . . re-seeded a small hay field to clover and other forage grasses. . . . He manage[d] the land `as if it were his own, [adhering to the] provisions of the lease . . . that agricultural and forest management [were] acceptable practices or uses of the land, but [allowed] no major alterations . . . such as sale of stone walls or gravel excavation. Due to increased hay and pasture land, John [was] able to increase his herd by 12 to 18 more head, and the woodland . . . contribute[d] important periodic income to the operation.” Not surprisingly, Payne, according to his daughter, Helen Payne Watt, “really thought of himself as a steward of the land he owned, and his project in retirement was to make it a working farm, and then to conserve and put under agricultural restriction as much as possible to retain the rural character.” By 2018, Payne and his wife, Margaret, “had 330 acres protected under the state’s Agricultural Preservation Restriction program.” Just before he passed away, Payne placed into trust an additional 124 acres of land located along scenic Route 2 in Shelburne. “Franklin Land Trust helped the Town of Shelburne accept a conservation restriction on” that Dragon Hill property, ensuring that it would remain woodland and pastures.
Foxbard
I recently caught up with Mark Zenick, now an ex-pat artist and writer living in England. Mark was the “architect” of the deal that resulted in the 1999 purchase and conservation of those 95 acres. During his 17-year tenure as Executive Director of FLT, Mark told me he “was proudly able to exercise a range of creative strategies to permanently preserve more than 12,000 acres of farm and forest land under forever binding Agricultural Preservation and Conservation Restrictions.” To this day Mark takes pride when looking back his accomplishments of preservation, but for him, “it is the farmers, neighbors of threatened properties and generous local citizens who invested their money into making projects possible” that come to mind when recalling his several years of land conservation work. Mark retains a deep fondness for having helped “farmers … extract their valuable equity from their beloved farmland through methods which retained the conservation of agricultural value and use for new generations of farmers as a bountiful natural resource.” John Payne was one such farmer and the deal in 1999 was but one piece of the mosaic of Mark’s land conservation efforts.
By that time, Mark, according to MassWoods.org, had “extensive experience brokering similar deals between sellers and conservation buyers, and had good insight into how to raise funds, structure the deal, negotiate with potential donors, and make the case.” Mark, the “creative force behind the deal,” acted as a counterpoint and sounding board for Payne’s skepticism about the plan. Mark tells me that he still recalls “Payne's passion and eagerness to sensitively oversee the care and conservation of [the] project.” Mark went so far as to say that “Having John as a partner in protecting for posterity's sake this vulnerable, special property made the construction of the project's structure possible and implementable.” Mark was a true conservationist but a longtime artist as well. Interestingly, Mark’s creative side inspired him in his land conservancy work confessing that “my art sustained me in working to preserve the beautiful natural landscapes around me.”
For me, as someone whose art, at an elemental level, serves to preserve something, some bit of the beautiful natural landscapes around me, I confess an affinity with Mark’s confession that “the great gorgeous tapestry of farm and forestland in the hills and valleys” in the Pioneer Valley, have “beckoned me into their tranquil serenity.” Mark and I also share a sacrosanct fondness for and a connection to the places we go and interact with. Mark told me that before moving to England, “I could not drive by a property I had saved from the whims of human development without feeling an affinity for that special, single and sacred place.” For me, the same sentiment, the notion that places we come to know, and love become special, sacred, when we form reciprocal relationships with them—relationships, I think Mark would agree from his home in England, that go on in the face of passing time and great distance. For me, one such place is the childhood home I moved from over 50 years ago.
Foxbard
My earliest memories are of living in a small farmhouse on a nonoperational farm in the rolling countryside of Stillwater, New York. On three sides of the house were unmanaged fields overrun with thickets of bramble amid overgrown grasses, weeds and wildflowers. The fields were peppered with dilapidated outbuildings, a moldering bulldozer and a very old car somehow embedded, upside down, in a small, dirt cliffside. During the summer, in an undulating field across the street stood an army of cow corn, arrayed in a formation as organized as any battalion, frozen in a march that would cease only with autumn’s scything. I would gaze out into that field of corn in the summer and imagine being a farmer myself. My brothers and I were friends with the farmer’s kids, a young boy and girl, and would spend time at the farmhouse that was around the corner, up the road edged with corn. There were chickens and pigs, cows and goats lolling in the shady farmyard. A large silo, a big red barn, a rustic farmhouse and an outbuilding or two phalanxed the army of cow corn. A move to a city took all this from me and now, I get the sense, my amblings about the fields and furrows of the farms of the Pioneer Valley with my camera are attempts to capture what was lost then. A Google Earth search today shows that over time much has been as well lost on those rolling hills of my youth in the decades since we moved. The house we lived in has doubled in size and sits on more well-tended plot, outbuildings razed, weeds now sod and the magical upside-down car pulled from the cliff like a molar. The corn arrayed across the street has been replaced by an array of solar panels. The farmhouse around the corner is no longer part of a farm, barn gone, lidless silo sulking in the background. Progress marches on and solar panels make for better neighbors than many in the city we moved to. We move, time moves and places change. Here’s to hoping that through the efforts of FLT, their dedicated people and the community they serve, change comes more slowly to Foxbard and to Bardwell and to the rolling hills that Enoch, Sr., and his family made their home some 250 years ago.
—Doug Butler