Easement Examples
Ridgefield Farm
In December 2006, LTLT aquired a conservation easement on Ridgefield Farms (Brasstown Beef). The 695.80 acre farm is located in Cherokee County, North Carolina. Ridgefield Farm is a fully-integrated system from breeding to feeding and supplying all natural, premium, locally-raised beef to fine restaurants and retail meat markets. For more information on the farm visit their website here. Whole Foods Market now sells Brasstown Beef, they made a short video on Ridgefield Farms, click here to watch.
Picturesque Jackson County Property Conserved
Laura and David Adams placed their 98 acre tract of land near Big Ridge into a conservation easement with LTLT this past December. The Jackson County property is within close proximity to four State-designated Significant Natural Heritage Areas that contain numerous rare species and exemplary or unique natural communities, including Robinson Creek Gorge and Panthertown Valley. “We wanted to try and preserve what we could of a disappearing mountain landscape,” says Laura Adams, “there aren’t many places like this left. This area of Jackson County is so remote and beautiful. It deserves protection.”
Farmland Preservation at the Gateway to North Carolina
In mid-December 2004 LTLT acquired a "working farm conservation easement" on the Spring Ridge Dairy - one of the largest riverfront farms at the head of the valley. The dairy lies at the gateway to North Carolina for visitors traveling up US 441 to the mountains from the south. The Spring Ridge Dairy was built by the hard work of Jim Moore, and his late wife Judy. The creamery, located on the four-lane highway a mile north of the Georgia state line, sells the richest milk and ice cream in the region.
Read more: Farmland Preservation at the Gateway to North Carolina
Middle Creek Easement Establishes Family Legacy
Dick and Gill Heywood live in a 120-year-old, meticulously restored, log cabin on Middle Creek in southern Macon County. Since the Civil War, the land has been farmed, producing corn, beans, cattle, and chickens. In 2001, the Heywoods conveyed a conservation easement on their 35 acres, with half a mile of Middle Creek frontage, to the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee. This was the very first conservation easement that LTLT received.
