Town’s Conservation Easement Protects 74 Acres Of Ferris Farm

By John Voket

With the stroke of a pen, the Ferris family last week inked a contract that honors the legacy of all its farming forefathers, along with all future generations who may want to carry on their agricultural heritage.

The Trust for Public Land (TPL), a national nonprofit conservation organization, culminated its work with Newtown officials November 20 administering the acquisition and sale a conservation easement on 74 acres of the Ferris Farm, ensuring its permanent protection as farmland.

The historic property, located on Route 302, is currently the last operating dairy farm in Fairfield County and the destination of thousands of visitors every summer to its popular ice cream stand.

Outgoing Newtown First Selectman Herb Rosenthal said the town acquiring the easement provides both quality of life and economic benefits in the form of a $500,000 state grant to help fund the purchase. The acquisition of the Ferris easement was the first of five high profile land acquisitions transpiring in recent days that will protect more than 183 acres from residential development (see related story).

While the Ferris acquisition preserves primarily working farmland, most of the remaining land acquisitions from an approved $10 million fund established for such purposes will enhance the towns passive and accessible tracts of open space.

Owned and operated by the Ferris family since 1864, the farm straddles a gateway into town. Its cornfields, pastures, and prominent rock outcroppings offer a scenic vista to passersby, and greatly contribute to the look and feel of the community.

The TPL has been working with the Ferris family for nearly two years to permanently protect the farm, and negotiated the deal to sell the conservation easement to the Town of Newtown for $2 million, according to Melissa Spear, the Connecticut state director of the TPL.

“Through this conservation effort, Newtown has permanently protected an historic farm that has contributed so much to the community for over 140 years,” she said. “This decisive action by the town highlights the importance of local farms to our economy, our food supply, and to the character of communities in which we live.”

Shirley Ferris, a former Connecticut Agricultural Commissioner and family spokesperson, assured residents and taxpayers that her family was not selling development rights to save the current farm business.

“This project is about conserving the soil,” she said. “If future generations of the family decide not to farm, we can rest assured that the land will be available — forever — to someone that does want to farm it.”

Under the terms of the conservation easement now held by the town, the Ferris family will continue to run the farm and carry on the family’s legacy of farming in Newtown. The creamery, which is managed by Terry Ferris, the wife of Charles Ferris IV, remains on a parcel still owned and controlled directly by the family.

The property can never be developed or converted to nonagricultural uses according to a release issued by the TPL. The $2 million cost to the town to protect the property will be defrayed by a $500,000 grant from the State’s Open Space grant program.

Ms Ferris said while the creamery provides the market for Ferris farm products, the ability for the family to preserve as much of the remaining land takes a huge burden of concern off of her sons, who plan to continue and possibly expand their commercial dairy offerings in the future.

“The next logical step would be to bottle our own milk for retail sale at the farm,” she said. Her sons also expressed their appreciation to the town for its efforts.

“This is keeping the farm preserved and focused,” said Charles Ferris IV. His brother Brendan added that the preservation effort will allow his family, and especially the next generation of Ferris children, to continue working in the agricultural arena if they so choose.

“It gives the next generation a chance to move forward,” Brendan Ferris said.

Charles Ferris III, who has been conducting preservation work on the farm and its highly valued soil, credited his wife and family for their dedication to the family enterprise.

“The boys put their whole lives into this farm, and now their wives, and my wife too,” Charles Ferris III said. “I couldn’t have done this without all of them.”

Standing atop a now desolate patch on the southwestern corner of the newly preserved tract, Charles and Shirley Ferris talked about the unique system of planting and harvesting that produces record-setting quantities of corn, while creating a natural system to eliminate water erosion and retaining rich minerals and nutrients in the topsoil.

Ms Ferris said she was once told a prehistoric lake near the property was drained and flipped by ensuing glacier activity, depositing the nutrient-rich lake bottom on top of the picturesque hill opposite the ice cream stand where today, Ferris cows graze oblivious to the traffic whizzing by on Route 302.

The Ferrises’ private soil conservation effort was one of the major contributing factors in the TPL being able to secure the state grant to offset the full easement purchase Ms Spear said.

The TPL works with others to conserve land for people to enjoy as working landscapes, parks, gardens, and natural areas, ensuring livable communities for generations to come. The organization has played a key role in protecting more than 5,000 acres of open space, watershed land, working farms and forestland, and historic resources in 32 Connecticut communities to date.