A view of the Beaver Valley farmland that’s being protected with a restrictive easement, which will be offered for sale through an open application process.
Family farms are among our most valuable resources; they’re an essential part of our region’s cultural and physical landscape — shaping our economy, our food security, and our way of life. Unfortunately, with farmland prices soaring and a generation of farmers eying retirement, farmland is becoming more and more vulnerable across the nation.
Wanting to increase our pace of farmland conservation in a fast-moving real estate market that demands quick capital, the Land Trust has been looking at using the Buy+Protect+Sell farmland conservation model used by many land trusts across the country. With this model, a land trust buys important farmland, protects it with an agricultural conservation easement, and then sells the land to the next farmer or rancher at a price that‘s reduced because of the conservation easement.
In 2023 and 2024, Jefferson Land Trust bought two adjacent farmland parcels (together totaling 47 acres) in Chimacum’s Beaver Valley. We’ll soon be placing an agricultural easement that permanently protects the property’s prime agricultural soils and ecological habitat values and that also establishes a building envelope. The easement restrictions will lower the value of the land and the 47 acres of farmland will be sold to the next farmer or farming collaborative at its reduced value.
Jefferson Land Trust plans to sell this protected farmland in Beaver Valley, Chimacum, through an open application process that’s now underway.
All interested applicants should read the Request for Proposal and complete a pre-application questionnaire before midnight November 17, 2024.
A volunteer community selection committee will review pre-applications in November and invite up to 10 applicants to submit full proposals, which will be due in late February 2025. The applicants invited to submit full proposals will be notified during the first week of December and will have the option to visit the property on Saturday, December 7.
A virtual information session was held on Thursday, October 10 from 4:30-5:30 pm. The recording is below.
Both the pre-applications and the full proposals will be evaluated against the following criteria:
All are welcome to apply. This opportunity is funded in part by two Washington state programs (the Farm Protection and Affordability Investment program and the Farmland Protection and Land Access program) that aim to protect important at-risk farmland in order to keep it in production while lowering barriers to land access for farmers or ranchers who are defined as: “Limited Resource, Beginning, Socially Disadvantaged, or Veteran” by the USDA.
If you have questions, please reach out to Jefferson Land Trust by emailing info[at]saveland.org.
