The century-old Morrill Farm in Penacook has completed one of the family’s long-held goals with the sale of a 193-acre conservation easement on its dairy farm to the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, the latest move to preserve land that they own.
The purchase of the land, which includes a mile of frontage on the Merrimack River, follows a conservation easement placed on the family’s 124-acre property in Boscawen in 2021 as well as preservation of several other parcels of land owned or leased by the Morrill family. The Morrills say they want most of their landholdings to be put under conservation easements, keeping them available for future farmers.
The property placed under a new conservation easement is managed as cropland producing barley, oats, wheat, corn, hay, and small grains for the distilling market and contributing to their own feed for the animals.
The preservation of the parcel, which abuts the Randall conservation easement owned by the city of Concord, is part of the Forest Society’s goal of conserving land along the Merrimack River to help preserve the quality of drinking water used by a half-million people.
“Over the past decade, the Forest Society has conserved 13 parcels of land with direct frontage on the Merrimack River between its origins in Franklin and the Forest Society Conservation Center in Concord,” said Brian Hotz, vice president for land conservation at the Forest Society.
State and private donors also helped meet what the Forest Society called a “generous sale price” by the Morrills.
“Conserving land of the Morrill Farm will not only support local agriculture and a family business, but it also protects the natural qualities of the meandering banks of the Merrimack River, a source of food and trade over centuries of human settlement and seasonal migration,” said Paula Bellemore, Executive Director of the New Hampshire Land and Community Heritage Investment Program, which helped buy the conservation easement.
