{"id":5644,"date":"2022-01-21T11:38:58","date_gmt":"2022-01-21T16:38:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ctfarmland.org\/site\/?p=5644"},"modified":"2022-03-04T11:16:10","modified_gmt":"2022-03-04T16:16:10","slug":"joan-barney-1-22-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ctfarmland.org\/site\/joan-barney-1-22-22\/","title":{"rendered":"Protecting Farmland is Personal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Kimball Cartwright, Director of Development<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Protected farmland benefits everyone. Yet protecting farmland is also a deeply personal decision for the farmer. I\u2019ve often wondered, \u201cWhat does that decision look like from the inside?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Joan Barney next to the \u201cRapid Picker\u201d her father invented for faster fruit harvesting from the upper branches. He designed and obtained a patent for the picker and even built one for another farm!  <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

A month ago, I took a walk with Joan Barney, who with her brother David dreamed about protecting their family farm, Lakeview Orchards in Easton, for years. They finally fulfilled that dream when they closed on the sale of an agricultural easement in 2021 that will permanently protect the land as farmland. Joan confessed it wasn\u2019t easy to get started protecting their farm before Connecticut Farmland Trust (CFT) got involved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the most difficult things to wrap your mind around as a farmland owner, is what it means to sell or donate your \u2018development rights,\u2019 you are exchanging something highly conceptual instead of something tangible\u201d <\/p>– Joan Barney<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Joan\u2019s\n grandparents emigrated to the town of Fairfield from Hungary where they\n rented an apartment and gradually saved enough money to buy some land \nin Easton. Joan\u2019s grandfather was a carpenter and built one of the houses on the property. Joan\u2019s grandmother raised chickens for eggs for the family, a couple cows for home milk consumption, and turkeys for sale.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joan\u2019s father was born around 1919 and grew attached to the soil quickly, learning how to run an orchard from Aspetuck Orchards in Easton. Though he did not have advanced schooling, he taught himself enough to cultivate apple and peach trees and invented a lot of the farm equipment he used.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Tree
One of the most important activities in a fruit orchard is pruning and this lift, designed and built by Joan and David\u2019s father, makes the work more accessible.  <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The 37-acre farm was named Lakeview Orchards because it had a great view back in the 1940s or so of the Easton Reservoir, prior to the trees growing up around it. The reservoir has changed hands a couple of times and the State of CT now owns it, part of its Centennial Park. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we rounded a large barn full of apple crates, headed to the peach trees, Joan offered that the idea of tearing down the fruit trees and replacing them with fancy houses every five acres was an incredibly emotional image. Then she confided that before learning about land conservation programs available in Connecticut, she didn\u2019t know any options to ensure the land would be kept in farming.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kathleen and Elisabeth from CFT met with Joan and David, and many other people, to find the resources needed to buy an agricultural easement on the land. Ultimately, CFT, the Town of Easton, a committed group of volunteers on the Easton Agricultural Commission, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, and CT\u2019s Department of Agriculture joined together to preserve the farm. Lakeview Orchards is now protected as farmland in perpetuity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we finished the tour, Joan offered that Kathleen and Elisabeth\u2019s ability to weave together multiple partners behind the scenes while giving her the time she needed to make her personal decision made it easy to decide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a deeply personal decision\u201d Joan noted, when we walked by some very tall spruce trees which Joan noted were what remained of her father\u2019s experiment in growing Christmas Trees on the farm. Joan explained.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cKeeping the land in farming is not exciting, it is just a good thing, the right thing\u201d <\/p>– Joan Barney<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

CFT supporters can take pride in helping both Joan and David preserve an historic family farm in one of the last two agricultural communities in Fairfield County. Thank you again to CFT supporters who contribute to our partnership-focused approach to protecting farmland! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Kimball Cartwright, Director of Development Protected farmland benefits everyone. Yet protecting farmland is also a deeply personal decision for the farmer. I\u2019ve often wondered, \u201cWhat does that decision look like from the inside?\u201d  A month ago, I took a walk with Joan Barney, who with her brother David dreamed about protecting their family farm, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctfarmland.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctfarmland.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctfarmland.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctfarmland.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctfarmland.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5644"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/ctfarmland.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5751,"href":"https:\/\/ctfarmland.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5644\/revisions\/5751"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctfarmland.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctfarmland.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctfarmland.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctfarmland.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}