Vermont Housing Conservation Board 2005 - Vermont Housing and ...

YANDOW FARM, ST. ALBANS AND SWANTON
In Franklin County, Farmland Conservation
Comes in the Teeth of a Development Boom
Bob Eddy
20
The sale of development rights this year on Jon and Lise Yandow’s dairy farm
in St. Albans Town and Swanton added 441 acres — many of them with topquality
soils — to a large block of conserved farmland in the two Franklin County
towns.
And that, believes dairy farmer Jack Brigham, who chairs the St. Albans Town
Select Board, came not a moment too soon.
“We’re in a really rapid-growth situation up here,” says Brigham, who also conserved
his land this year. “We’ve got about 300 housing units permitted or ready
to permit, we’ve got a Wal-Mart coming in — and it’s all happening on farmland.
We’re getting hammered with development.”
Jon Yandow says he “absolutely” had the opportunity to sell out for development.
He and Lise were working farmland that they owned in company with a number
of family members, through a partnership set up by Jon’s dad, Isador, who started
the family farm in 1982. Family members were pressing Jon and Lise to buy the
land outright or sell it — and they had to decide.
They decided to stay on the land. VHCB funding made it possible for the Yandows
to conserve three adjoining farm properties; that made the purchase of all
three by Jon and Lise affordable.
“If I had gone the development route, I would have had a lot more money — but
I would not have had the land,” says Jon. “Farming is a whole different way of life.
Real estate and farming are different worlds, you know”
“If I had gone the
development route,
I would have had a
lot more money — but
I would not have had
the land. Farming is
a whole different way
of life. Real estate and
farming are different
worlds, you know”
— Jon Yandow