Land Conservancy of Adams County

... preserving the rural lands and character of Adams County, Pennsylvania

Welcome to the June 2015 issue of the Land Conservancy e-News! Read on to find out about upcoming events like our Summer Picnic (aka the Land Conservancy's 20th birthday party!), a unique training opportunity, and more! (Photo: Loy Elliott.)

Upcoming events

Tuesday, July 7: Land Conservancy Ambassador training (see below)
Sunday, August 16: Summer Picnic, Ag Center (more below)
Saturday, October 17: 17th annual Fall Classic Road Rally
Sunday, April 24, 2016: 19th annual Art Auction! Mark your calendars today!

Stay tuned or visit our website for more information as these events approach.

A quick question...

With each conservation easement we hold, we take on a perpetual responsibility to monitor and defend its terms. This is our promise to the landowner who works with us to craft the easement. But what exactly does monitoring an easement on a preserved property entail? Read on to find out! (Photo: Sarah Kipp)

Land Conservancy Ambassador Training 7/7 @ 7!

Our 17th annual Road Rally, "The Year of the Pennsylvania Barn," is scheduled for October 17, 2015—not far off when you consider the preparation involved! With your help, this year's Road Rally is set to raise more than $25,000 toward our mission of preserving Adams County's beautiful rural lands—an exciting 25% jump over 2014! Help us stretch to this goal—join us at our first Land Conservancy sponsor-recruitment workshop at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, July 7 in the Ag Center (7/7 @ 7!). Light refreshments will be provided. Just let us know you're coming—RSVP to Mark Clowney at mclowney@adamscounty.us.

Celebrate our 20^th anniversary at the Summer Picnic

Please join us August 16 to sing “Happy Birthday” to the Land Conservancy at our 20th anniversary Summer Picnic. We’ll gather for potluck, birthday cake, live entertainment, games—even a birthday hat contest!—from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Adams County Ag Center, 670 Old Harrisburg Rd. in Gettysburg.

Our annual Summer Picnic is always a fun occasion to get together with old friends, make new ones, and celebrate our many volunteers. Join us for this especially festive occasion as we celebrate 20 years as part of the fabric of Adams County. Bring a covered dish to share, a chair, a set of reusable dining utensils—and your most festive birthday party hat!

And of course, if you'd like to help celebrate the occasion with a “birthday gift,” we'd be thrilled—cash and checks only please!

Help grow the Stewardship Circle

This year's Stewardship Circle campaign is well underway, and we invite you to make the circle bigger by making your donation today.

Every year we enter into partnerships with local landowners to preserve their land. Each of these partnerships entails a promise to monitor and defend the terms of their conservation easement—forever.

To help ensure that we can keep this promise, in 2011 we established the Stewardship Circle, a committed group of donors who are helping us build an endowment for the purpose of paying the expenses of monitoring and defending easements in perpetuity.

We hope you'll help us make the Stewardship Circle a little bigger this year with your donation of $500 or more to our stewardship fund. Want to learn more? Read here.

And the answer...

Question: What does monitoring an easement on a preserved property entail?

Answer: Each spring, Land Conservation Coordinator Sarah Kipp sets out on her annual property visits. Since we now hold more than 135 conservation easements, this is a big job! Sarah begins by contacting each of the landowners with whom we hold an easement to set up her visit, trying to arrange them so that she and a volunteer from the Conservation Committee can visit several properties in one day.

While the property owner is not required to be present for the visit, some look forward to the visits and enjoy socializing and catching up, and others make a point of being available to ask and answer questions about their property. Others are simply busy and can’t be present, which is no problem.

Equipped with a copy of the easement, property maps, and previous monitoring reports, Sarah and her volunteer walk and/or ride around the property to make sure the conditions of the easement are being observed. Typically they look for new buildings, land use changes, any increase in impervious surfaces, trash or debris, unauthorized timbering, and other land management concerns such as the encroachment of invasive species. Sarah will provide the landowners with educational materials and other resources to help them manage issues on their property, and in cases where the terms of a landowner’s easement require a land conservation plan (typically focused on minimizing erosion), Sarah will bring along an expert to check for erosion issues and help the landowner address them.

Back at her office, Sarah writes a report for our files and sends a letter to the landowner discussing the results of her inspection and any concerns she has. Typically, these concerns are minor and easily resolved. Monitoring visits are one of the most important parts of our land conservation coordinator's job, since maintaining the integrity of each conservation easement we hold is the promise we make to every landowner who works with us. It's also one of the best parts of the job, Sarah says, because she enjoys visiting beautiful preserved properties throughout the county and reconnecting with the landowners we've worked with over the years.

When you include a gift to the Land Conservancy in your estate plans, you join a growing number of visionaries committed to protecting Adams County’s special places for future generations. Contact us to learn how you can support the Land Conservancy’s mission to preserve Adams County’s rural lands and character through your will, living trust, retirement plan, or life insurance policy. Click here for more information.

The Land Conservancy is an accredited, member-supported 501(c)(3) nonprofit land trust with the mission of preserving the rural lands and character of Adams County. Won't you join us?

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