On a snowy day along Corn Hill Road in Boscawen, your car might struggle a bit up Hanson Hill.
If you manage to make it over the hump, congratulations: You’ve officially made it past the point where rain usually turns to snow on those right-around-freezing days.
You will have graduated to one of the more forested areas of Boscawen, where long driveways curve off and disappear between trees, with no houses in sight.
Along one of those paths into evergreen forever, there sits a wood-paneled house. Its roof slants downward to the east, leading to the massive woodpile nearby.
Both the house and cords of wood are dwarfed by the still-living sister trees stretching skyward all around them. No other buildings are visible, and, on at least 81 of the 86 acres of property, things will stay that way. Always.
That’s because owners John and Barbara Keegan recently put their property under conservation easement with Five Rivers Conservation Trust.
After more than three decades of managing the forest and wetlands there, the couple, in their 70s, said they wanted to preserve all the work they’ve done to this point.
“Somebody can’t come in and make a total mess of what we spent years trying to improve,” Barbara said.
Barbara, who is originally from Montana, and her husband John, from Franklin, moved to their Boscawen home after years abroad.
The couple met while both were volunteering for the Peace Corps in Panama. John said he worked for the country’s ministry of agriculture, while Barbara worked with teachers there.
John said he was particularly affected by living in a remote area with indigenous people.
“That was my work experience, living with people who are marginalized, isolated, trying to eke out a living and using whatever resources they had at hand,” he said.
The couple stayed in central America for 10 years, also living in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and Guatemala. They adopted their oldest daughter from the latter country, and they had their younger daughter within six months.
When they returned to the States, the Keegans bought some undeveloped land in Boscawen in 1978.
“It took a while to scope out,” John said. They did some logging, and he took more time to design their house-to-be. To show Barbara what his vision was, John built a smaller scale replica, which would eventually become the chicken coop.
People came before poultry, though, and the Keegans camped out in that miniature version of their house while the real thing was built.
“Haven’t camped since,” Barbara said.
With the help of a sawyer in Salisbury, the Keegans were able to move into their freshly built home in 1983. There, they would start carving out their own existence with what they had at hand.
A painted portrait of the family in Guatemala – the couple’s oldest daughter, John and Barbara still pregnant with their younger daughter – hangs high on the living room wall.
A good 33 years later, the Keegans have created a legacy on their land.
After passing the “certified tree farm” sign along the driveway, the couple’s sprawling, deer-proofed garden plot comes into view. Were it not December or snowy, it would likely be bursting at its fence seams with greenery.
Just beyond the garden is the sugar shack. There of course is the miniature model of the house where the chickens, geese and ducks live.
A wood pile is close by – the couple sold corded wood for years – and just beyond, tractor tires lead back to into the woodlands, wetlands and wildlife tracks that criss-cross between it all.
Tramping along his main logging road in snowshoes, John took a break to gaze up one particularly tall, lightning-cracked tree trunk.
“I’ve seen as many as three porcupines up in there,” he said.
Deer and squirrel tracks were visible in the snow falling Thursday morning, and the Keegans have seen moose, bears, coyotes, hawks, turkeys, foxes, otters, barred owls, weasels, fishers, woodpeckers and beavers on their property, too.
There has been the occasional bobcat that’s tried to plunder the chicken coop for a snack.
It’s with these animals, the trees and sustainability ethics in mind that the Keegans decided to get their tree farm certification and create a forest management plan 10 years ago.
“That’s where the conservation easement came in,” John said. “We didn’t want to make all this investment and then have someone purchase it and do whatever.”
With the help of the Boscawen Conservation Commission and the connections provided by town Co-administrator Alan Hardy, the Keegans found their way to the Five Rivers Conservation Trust.
The group has been around for 29 years and had previously put 65 properties under easement. The Keegans’ land is the 66th, and the first in Boscawen.
On all those properties, no development is allowed.
“Forever,” Ken Stern, a Five Rivers board member, said.
The Keegans conserved 81 of their 86 acres, leaving out the little patch around their home in case the next owners want to use the space for, say, a pool.
Though the process can cost $70,000 for land appraisal, transactional fees and money for the land trust to continue its stewardship, Boscawen’s conservation commission paid for it all. (The commission uses land transfer tax money for all its revenue).
The process for the Keegans was completed in May. Both said they felt some sort of relief at having taken care of their property’s future as they grow older.
As for Five Rivers Conservation Trust, they’ll be there for years to come.
“This is a beginning point for us,” director Beth McGuinn said.
(Elodie Reed can be reached at 369-3306, ereed@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @elodie_reed.)