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Robert Vollinger on his Northampton farm off North Farms Road. A majority of the farm, which has been in the family for three generations, is now preserved for agricultural uses and wildlife habitat, thanks to a unique conservation effort that Kestrel Land Trust used for the first time. -
Robert Vollinger on his Northampton farm off North Farms Road. A majority of the farm, which has been in the family for three generations, is now preserved for agricultural uses and wildlife habitat, thanks to a unique conservation effort that Kestrel Land Trust used for the first time. -
A majority of the Vollinger Farm off North Farms Road in Northampton, which has been in the family for three generations, is now preserved for agricultural uses and wildlife habitat.
NORTHAMPTON — A majority of one of the largest remaining unprotected farms in the city is now conserved for agriculture and wildlife habitat, thanks to a unique conservation effort that taps into federal funding.
Working with Kestrel Land Trust, an Amherst organization that conserves forests, farms, trails and waterways in the Pioneer Valley, the three-generation Vollinger Farm has conserved over 122 of its 217 acres located off North Farms Road.
Vollinger Farm is part of the landscape north of Broad Brook-Fitzgerald Lake Greenway, the largest conservation area in Northampton. For the past five years, farm owner Robert Vollinger, whose family owns the hayfield, woods, pasture and crop fields, worked with Kestrel to conserve the farm.
“It’s really an iconic farm,” Kestrel Conservation Director Mark Wamsley said. “There are a few roads in Northampton that are named after the area’s farming heritage. This is one of the last big remaining farms on North Farms Road. And it is one of the last largest developable farms left in the city.”
The farm is at much higher risk for development than farms in the Meadows area closer to the Connecticut River floodplains, according to Kestrel.
To conserve the farmland, Kestrel for the first time is using a federal initiative called the Regional Conservation Partnership Program, which is administered through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. The program allows Kestrel, The Nature Conservancy and other partners to hold a federally funded easement on the property, or a legal agreement that restricts future land use and development on a property to protect its natural resources.
Wamsley said qualifying for agricultural land easements is a complex process. The designation is important because it protects the long-term viability of the nation’s food supply by preventing farmland from being converted to non-agricultural uses, according to Rita Thibodeau, the Massachusetts assistant state conservationist for programs with the Natural Resources Conservation Service. The easement supports protecting croplands and grasslands, preserving productive soil and ensuring that land remains in private ownership while limiting non-agricultural land use.
Wamsley said that in addition to being important for local agriculture, many farms in the area also support a lot of wildlife habitat, saying that farmland conservation “absolutely supports wildlife habitat.”
“That’s one of the things we want to do through this RCPP program. A lot of programs look at protecting either farmland or forest land and wildlife habitat,” Wamsley said. “We saw in our area the fact that … wildlife don’t know boundaries. We knew a lot of the farms, particularly the larger farms in the area, besides being important … for local agriculture, also supported a lot of wildlife habitat.”
Kestrel chose the RCPP program because it specifically encourages innovative conservation approaches, such as conserving an entire farm, forest or fields. This can be difficult to accomplish in Northampton because farms farther from the Connecticut River often have smaller areas of fertile soil while the rest of the farm is working forest land — large forests are often excluded from conservation and the whole farm cannot be conserved.
RCCP provided $749,500 in funding, and Mass Audubon’s Catalyst Fund provided an additional $100,000 to conserve the majority of the farm. Another 80 acres is temporarily enrolled in the Massachusetts Farm Viability Program, and Kestrel hopes to permanently protect that acreage going forward.
Wamsley noted that expanding conservation would help protect more wildlife and that this conservation process is part of Kestrel’s core mission to protect farmland.
“The help of our federal partners and local federal partners was just really critical … They were just a great resource to have, and we hope to do more projects with them in the future,” Wamsley said.
Vollinger said in a statement from Kestrel that conserving the farm was always his goal. He took over the land from his father, when the farm was more focused on dairy cows, and first transitioned it to a variety of hay products.
With complications from climate change, he has diversified the farm by adding beef cows and seasonal crops, like mums, squash and Christmas trees.
“Now it will also help me plan for the future and contribute to my retirement. I’m looking forward to spending more time on the farm and being out on the land in the coming years,” he said.