Farmlands effort regroups because of high prices

Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Peninsula News Network

Sequim, WA - A drive to save a 24-acre piece of farmland in Dungeness is being re-worked because the price of the plot is too high for the amount of money that could be raised by spring.

Last fall, Friends of the Fields launched an effort to raise over $300,000 to be used as matching money for a state grant application to save part of the land Nash Huber uses for his organic farm near the Dungeness River. Backers of the effort were buoyed that more than a third of the money had already been raised through an anonymous donation at the time of the announcement and confident of raising all the money by this spring.

But backers of the drive tell the Sequim Gazette this week that the price of the land being targeted for preservation has simply gotten too expensive. Friends President Jim Aldrich told the paper the group hadn’t worked out a deal with the family that owned the parcel, but says the assessed value of $100,000 an acre showed the land was out of the drive’s price range.

Aldrich says the group is pressing ahead by searching for another piece of comparable land with hopes of finding an alternate parcel with enough time to apply for the state money. In the meantime, the money that’s been donated already will be held in reserve since its dedicated to farmland preservation.