Land Projects
The Homesteaders on Tunnel Road
Billy Hardison, an artist, and wife Leonda Hardison, a musician who has played with the likes of Muddy Waters, moved to their Tunnel Road homestead in 1968 in search of a rural, creative life immersed in nature. “We wanted a place where we could raise our children in the country and give them the kind…
Read MoreConserving A Little Piece of New England
This fall, the Franklin Land Trust completed the permanent conservation of 93 acres of forest and farmland along Adamsville Road in Colrain, MA, owned by the Judson M. DeCew, Jr. Trust. The land, spread across three parcels between Ed Clark Road and Hillman Road, includes about nine acres of hayfields and 84 acres of actively…
Read More88 Acres Conserved in Gill and Greenfield
Franklin Land Trust is thankful to the Stotz Family, whose land in Gill and Greenfield we have just permanently conserved with a Conservation Restriction (CR). The Stotz Family donated a CR over 88 acres of forestland, protecting over 6,000 feet of the bank of Fall River, a cold water fishery that originates in Guilford, VT…
Read MoreThe Old Dean Farm
The Franklin Land Trust (FLT) is pleased to announce that Catherine “Kiki” Smith, wife of the late Charlie Cohn, FLT’s former board President and Treasurer, has generously donated a conservation restriction (CR) on approximately 47 acres of land on the east side of Reynolds and Patten Roads in Shelburne. The land, which was part of…
Read MoreYou Can Never Make More Land
Kenburn Orchards Farm is a 151-acre property in Shelburne, Massachusetts, that has been in the same family for nearly 100 years. Thanks to Susan and Larry Flaccus, the current owners of the farm, it has now been conserved. Susan and Larry generously sold a conservation restriction on their land for a price lower than the…
Read MoreCandid Camera
By Alex Wahlstrom In Plainfield, on the edge of a babbling Meadow Brook, a great blue heron steps into focus. No more than two feet away from the camera lens, the heron cautiously continues to work the edge of the water. A few days later, in the woods of Heath, a Coyote darts through a…
Read MoreSomebody Has to Be Here
By Sebastian LaMontagne In 2022, millions of Americans were introduced to the minutiae of land conservation through an unexpected source, the television series Yellowstone on the Paramount Network. The show revolves around the fictional Dutton family, who own the vast Yellowstone Dutton Ranch in Montana, led by Kevin Costner’s portrayal of John Dutton III, the…
Read MoreHome Is Where The Heart Is
Article by Sebastian LaMontagne “You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl” says Thelma Nye Pilgrim as we walk across the open field behind her homestead in Plainfield. Thelma has lived in Springfield Massachusetts, Hartford and Wallingford in Connecticut, and even Florida over the…
Read MoreLetter From The Executive Director
Preserving a multi-generational legacy poses numerous challenges for landowners, ranging from succession planning to economic pressures. Each family’s situation is unique, and in our new series of blog posts covering some the work we’ve done this year, we explore the differing approaches that two such families took to conserving their land. In “Home Is Where…
Read MoreThe Franklin Land Trust Receives Gift Of 151 Acres in Ashfield
The Franklin Land Trust is delighted to announce that it has received a generous gift on the part of the Norcross Wildlife Foundation, Inc., of 151 acres on Spruce Corner Road in Ashfield. In 2001, the Franklin Land Trust led a grassroots effort to prevent this quiet piece of land, owned for generations…
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