AGNEW — The $1.7 million needed to buy a conservation easement to protect the 60-acre Finn Hall Farm from development has come from federal and state grants.
The money came through a last-minute federal grant and unexpected extension of a state deadline, said Robbie Mantooth, volunteer communications director for the North Olympic Land Trust.
North Olympic Land Trust Executive Director Greg Good said Friday he had received notification that a federal grant of $853,853 will go to Clallam County, the project’s official sponsor, which then will disburse them to the land trust.
The money from the Natural Resource Conservation Service’s Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program will match a grant of $868,075 from the state Recreation and Conservation Office’s Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program.
Three years of work
Volunteers of Sequim-based Friends of the Fields, which is now a division of the Port Angeles-based land trust, began working with Finn Hall Farm owners John and Carmen Jarvis and their heirs in 2007.
The Jarvis family wanted the working Dungeness Valley farm to remain in agricultural production, but the owners wanted to retire.
They wanted to arrange a conservation easement. Under the agreement, the nonprofit land trust protects the land and keeps it as farmland in perpetuity.
The state grant already had been approved, but could not be used without an equal match.
The amount of funding required is based on official appraisals of the farmland if it were developed according to county zoning, as well as such costs as legal work and ongoing stewardship to make sure conditions of the agreement are upheld, Good said.
Short on state match
Although $225,000 had been raised to protect Finn Hall Farm, that was far short of the state grant’s matching requirement.
After missing one deadline for state grant matching funds, Friends of the Fields volunteers applied again for the state grant and the project again was chosen for funding.
They also applied for federal funds for the required match.
“We’d about given up because we thought the federal funds had been used up and another state deadline passed,” Good said.
“But the same day we received notice of the additional federal funds, we also got word that the state grant deadline had been extended.”
The $225,000 raised for the Finn Hall Farm project will be available for other farmland protection.
“Volunteers from Friends of the Fields did a tremendous amount of work over the past three years to work with the farm’s owners, handle grant applications and raise money,” Good said.
Dungeness Valley
When the Finn Hall Farm conservation easement is completed, a total of 331 acres of farmland in the Dungeness Valley will be protected permanently under legal agreements with the land trust.
For more information, see www.nolt.org or phone 360-417-1815.