Our Stewardship Role as a Land Trust
A Spring letter to Centre County Farmland Trust supporters from Jen Shuey, CCFT Treasurer and past-president
April 22, 2023
Earth Day seems a particularly appropriate day to write to you—someone who cares about the land, the farmers who work it, and the abundance it delivers to sustain and nurture us all.
Your gift to the Centre County Farmland Trust allows us not only to protect new tracts of farmland, but also to continuously steward those lands we are protecting to fulfill the easement donors’ dreams that the land stay open and productive for future generations.
As an organization, we are entering a period of greater transition when the lands we protect with conservation easements are changing hands. New landowners are acquiring their farms with conservation restrictions in place.
Our conservation stewardship role becomes much more important as we meet these new farmers, teach them what their conservation easement means, and build important new partnerships with the people who live on the land and will care for it every day.
We become their partner in conservation and serve as a resource for their questions and their concerns. We also have an obligation to monitor the conserved lands each year and take action when the restrictions placed by the original landowner are not being upheld. We must defend any conservation easements that are being violated.
Of course, we hope that never has to happen. That is why our stewardship role is so important. We steward the land by stewarding our relationships with the people who now own the land that our conservation easements protect.
This is where you can help!
It takes time, resources, expertise, and lots of attention to detail to effectively monitor our 17 conservation easements and steward those landowner relationships. It also takes collaboration and lots of communication amongst our partners.
Please give a donation to help the Centre County Farmland Trust continue to steward our conserved farmland. In turn, you’ll also be supporting the landowners who inherited the responsibility to protect the farmland under their care.
All of this is important because we commit to carrying out the original landowners’ wishes for their land in perpetuity, so they can rest assured that their land will always remain farmland for those who come after them.
A healthy local agricultural community benefits us all. Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution that is meaningful to you to support this crucial component of our conservation work.
Centre Gives is coming soon, and if you give then, your donation will do even more. Your donation releases funds to us from the event’s $300,000 stretc
h pool. Mark your calendar for May 10 and 11 and find us at centregives.org.
Or, mail your gift right now to “Centre County Farmland Trust, PO Box 604, Centre Hall, PA 16828”.
Your donation makes a big impact and will help us immediately as we schedule our spring monitoring visits and strengthen our partnerships with the landowners who care for the land each and every day.
Thank you for all that you do to support farmland preservation! Protecting and then stewarding the farms we conserve is only possible because of your support.
Jennifer Shuey, Treasurer
Centre County Farmland Trust Board of Trustees
P.S. Your tax-deductible gift is an important way for you to support farmland preservation in the heart of Pennsylvania… and the hands and lands that feed us. Please take a moment to donate on May 10th or 11th at Centre Gives—or donate now online or by mail.
If we don’t have your email address, send a quick note to centrecountyfarmlandtrust@gmail.com to request the Trust’s enewsletter.
