Hidden in the back of the Orchard Homes neighborhood are a number of apple trees, rows of raspberry bushes and a tall fence that surrounds them. Three newly constructed homes next door are juxtaposed with the farmland.
Fred Stewart, 80, purchased his 7-acre vegetable farm, Green Bench Orchard, in 2004. The Orchard Homes neighborhood has historically housed Missoula’s prime agricultural land, boasting irrigation canals, orchards, small ranching operations and vegetable farms.
Stewart runs a u-pick orchard with apples and raspberries. In the summer, he said kids run in between the rows, picking and eating berries as they fill their bins. Every year the kids come back and he watches them grow up, a tradition he loves.
But at 80 years old with no one to take over the orchard, Stewart has been looking for a way to preserve his land.
“I’m old and at some point I won’t be here anymore,” Stewart said.
In Missoula County, the number of farms has been decreasing over the last several decades. According to Missoula County’s profile on the Census of Agriculture, there were 35 fewer farms in 2022 compared to 2002 countywide.
At the same time, the City of Missoula is planning for 39,000 more residents by 2045, leading to the development of the “Our Missoula 2045 Land Use Plan,” which has a goal to add 19,000 to 23,000 housing units over the next two decades.
While the plan notes that Missoula’s agricultural areas are “increasingly threatened by residential expansion,” it also says “current zoning regulations do not require developers to protect these vital lands.”
As Missoula’s population climbs and development increases, some farmers and ranchers are looking to preserve their land through conservation easements.
“Prime ag land is pretty limited,” Stewart said. “It’s primarily in the valley. It’s not on the hillsides. Where do we subdivide? Well, we subdivide on the flat land.”
What is a conservation easement?
A conservation easement is a legal tool used to protect land that serves as a voluntary agreement where a landowner gives up rights related to development. These rights are typically given to a conservation organization or government agency to protect the land’s open space, farmland or natural habitat from future development.
Conservation easements are most often overseen by a city, state, federal, tribal government or a nonprofit entity like Five Valleys Land Trust, according to Ben Horan, associate director of the nonprofit that operates out of Missoula.
Horan said once a landowner puts their property into a conservation easement, they no longer have the right to build on the property or subdivide it.
Five Valleys Land Trust has been based in Missoula for the last 53 years but operates regionally. They’ve preserved some of the notable Missoula landmarks such as Mount Sentinel, Mount Dean Stone, and Jette Farm. Five Valleys has put a total of 100,000 acres into conservation easements across western Montana, according to their 2023 annual report.
Stewart’s been working to put his land into a conservation easement with Farm Connect Montana, a statewide nonprofit that also works to conserve farmland. The nonprofit’s Small Ag Land Protection Program is working with Missoula County to put farmland parcels that are 100 acres or less into conservation easements.
There are a number of reasons people put their land into an easement, Horan said, including to preserve it or for financial reasons (Five Valleys can pay a landowner for the development rights and the easement offers tax benefits). But he noted that an easement doesn’t allow you to control everything about your property.
“So we will have people sometimes call and say, ‘Hey, we want to make sure that our family ranch is a cattle operation forever.’ And we can’t do that. We can’t make someone do something on their property. Conservation easements are not good for that,” Horan said. “What they’re better at doing is telling you what you can’t do. And so we have the ability to say, well, this 5,000-acre ranch will never be subdivided.”
South Hills landowners team up
John Rimel, a small cattle rancher in the South Hills, is another landowner using a conservation easement to protect his land from development. Rimel’s parents bought the 160-acre ranch in 1955, which at the time was considered “out of town,” he said. As Rimel grew up on the property, he said he watched the houses spread up the hills from the valley floor.
“When I was growing up, none of these houses were here,” he said at his property this summer. “I could ride my horse from here down to the roundabout in Miller Creek and I would ride bareback, never setting foot on pavement. And now, if I’ve left our pasture either down there or up and back, I would probably never be off of the pavement getting there. So I’ve watched this whole hillside get developed, and I’ve watched the houses go up above.”
In the early 2000s, Rimel and two of his neighbors who also operated ranches on their land in the South Hills, started to discuss how they could prevent more homes from encroaching onto their land into the future. Rimel said the three neighbors knew if only one of them were to put their land into an easement, it would immediately increase the value of the others’ and in term increase the risk of it being purchased and subdivided.
In 2007 the Rimels, along with the Line and Hayden families, decided that together they would put their land into easements, which preserved over 1,000 acres in the South Hills.
But the COVID-19 pandemic brought an added pressure to Missoula that Rimel said led to an even greater demand for land and housing.
Since 2020, Rimel said the increased interest in people wanting to move to Montana has led other neighbors to sell their land, including the ranch in front of his, which he said was immediately subdivided. He said the listing noted the land was adjacent to a conservation easement as a selling point. Rimel said he expects houses to go up in the field in front of his land in the next 10 years.
A Potomac family’s legacy
Denny Iverson has been working with Five Valleys Land Trust for more than 20 years to preserve his property. Iverson runs a family cattle ranch in the Potomac Valley with his brother Les and a handful of each of their kids.
Iverson’s parents bought the property in 1975 and as he’s grown up on the ranch, he said he’s watched house after house go up around them as the highway becomes busier too. Standing in his back field this summer, Denny pointed out the newer houses surrounding his property.
He said back in the 1980s, the land where the houses are now was also previously a ranch. But he said the landowner decided to subdivide, adding that several ranches in the area have done the same.
“We have 300 residences up here,” Denny said. “You never guess that driving up the highway, but if you live here, you know it, because they’re all driving by on county roads. There’s only two or three ways through here.”
The Iverson family contemplated what might become of their property if they didn’t protect it in some way.
“I mean both of our wives had had decent retirement plans through their work. But we didn’t, and the land was our retirement,” Denny said. “But then after a while, we realized, if somebody buys this, they’re going to put houses on it, and we didn’t want to see that.”
Denny and Les started exploring a conservation easement and kept their kids in the loop. In 2006, they were able to put their 260 acres into an easement with Five Valleys Land Trust.
“We thought, well if we’re going to sell it to the kids at some point, then we need to develop a plan to have some kind of income in retirement years,” Denny said. “And so the easement allowed us to put some money away.”
Denny has helped a number of producers secure conservation easements themselves since after he got involved with the board of directors at Five Valleys. In total, the Iverson family has put 700 of their own acres into a conservation easement.
“You need to love the land. It’s not a great business decision always, because you’re devaluing the property by putting an easement on it. It can’t be subdivided, can’t be developed,” Denny said. “So if you’re a family that wants to see the place stay in production, or stay in wildlife habitat or connectivity, it’s really the only way to permanently guarantee that.”
Emily Messer is the Missoulian news intern.
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