FREEPORT

The Freeport Conservation Trust has been awarded a state-sponsored grant, bringing the nonprofit closer to its goal of purchasing an agricultural easement for a local equestrian farm.

Winterwood Farm, on Webster Road in Freeport, is a roughly 45-acre horse farm owned by Robert and Simone Rodgers, containing “productive soils” and “gently sloping land and managed woodlands,” according to a report from the Land For Maine’s Future Board of Directors.

At its July meeting, the board allocated $9.1 million of the voter approved Land For Maine’s Future bonds to 30 projects statewide, which include habitat preservation, working commercial waterfronts and working forest and farmland, among others.

“By protecting it in perpetuity, it could be a horse farm or another type of farm,” said Freeport Conservation Trust Executive Director Katrina Van Dusen, “but it couldn’t be developed.”

The farmland will remain private property, and the current owners are under no obligation to sell. When the property does pass from the Rodgers’s hand, Van Dusen said, it passes with the restrictions placed in it by the easement, which do not require that it continue to be farmed, but do prevent it from being developed.

“It’s a really unique piece of property. It’s near the highway, so it is definitely at risk, and it has good farm soil,” said Van Dusen. “We’ve been talking back and forth with the owners for a few years now. They’re nearing a retirement age and they’re trying to figure out to meet their spiritual goals and financial goals.”

The property is also located over an aquifer, said Simone Rodgers, and the Freeport town wells are located nearby.

“Anybody who loves the land will understand the desire to do this,” said Rodgers. “There’s no going back once it’s chopped up for house lots — it’s gone forever. We need to preserve the land for food, and our animals and just for something beautiful to look at.”

Simone said the purchase of the easement has been three years in the making, but has not been a difficult process so far.

“It’s been time consuming but I knew from day one that this land needed to be protected,” said Rodgers. “Our street is busy with bikers, joggers and people driving their kids to school, and they’ll often slow down here and just look at the land and the animals.”

Approximately 38 acres of the farm would be subject to the easement, excluding a 7- acre area around a homestead on the property. Excluding these buildings from the easement simplifies the process involving the construction or repairs that may have to occur on the homestead, said Van Dusen, but the two parcels cannot be separated for a sale.

Two years ago, the Freeport Conservation Trust was awarded a Land for Maine’s Future grant to purchase an agricultural easement to protect Winter Hill Farm, located off Wardtown Road, under similar conditions.

The grant total is approximately $105,000, said Van Dusen, though this could alter after an appraisal of the land is completed.

“The project could be more than twice that amount — about $250,000 to $300,000,” said Van Dusen, noting that the trust is also working with the Natural Resource Conservation Service program to identify additional funding.

“There is a hole in the budget so (the Freeport Conservation Trust board is) getting together later this week to figure out how to get from where we are to a closing,” said Van Dusen. “It will probably involve some fundraising, but I’m pretty confident that there would be a closing.”

rgargiulo@timesrecord.com