LandThink

I talked with an old friend last week about selling a large New England farm that’s been in his family since the 1930s. The farm is in a pretty setting, at the foot of publicly owned mountains. Land prices have risen dramatically during the last 15 years, driven by second-home buyers and retirees from southern New England and, primarily, the Boston area.

About 10.6 million privately owned acres — an area about twice the size of Connecticut — now carry conservation easements. This land base is growing by more than one million acres annually.