Articles
Giving Away The Farm
Posted: January 12, 2010
Well, the deed is done ... so to speak!
After fifty years of family ownership the deed to Dahl Forest is now in the hands of the Haliburton Highlands Land Trust. At the flick of a pen, the smack of a rubber stamp, our 500 acre stewardship project leaves the family and becomes entrusted to a community group ... forever.
Forever? An elusive concept, and one of the first we had to tangle with. Nothing is forever – we can only try to get close. There aren’t many options for people wishing to preserve a property for posterity, but selling the place was obviously not one of them.
Not everyone becomes truly attached to a piece of land. Most of us view land as a commodity – a place to live, perhaps to farm for income, a speculative investment, or a place to enjoy for recreation. When times change we move on. A phone call to the real estate agent, sign some papers and it’s gone. Take the money, use it for something else. Buy another place.
For my family, disposal of our property in Haliburton County was not so simple – not by a long shot.
My father purchased the land in the mid-1950s. It didn’t cost much then because it wasn’t worth much. The meagre topsoil was all but gone and wouldn’t grow weeds. Real crops were out of the question and scrawny cattle ranged free, scrounging for what they could get.
Dad came from Sweden and brought with him the romantic European ideal of the great Canadian wilderness: endless forests, hunting and trapping, aboriginals living off the land. That’s not what he found. But part of that Swedish culture was the principle of sustainable forestry – planting and stewarding forest, replacing it as it was harvested. He determined to replicate the model by setting up a ‘tree farm’, and it became known to family and friends as ‘the farm”.
A tree farm, as a small scale private venture, was almost unheard of in those days. There were no breaks, tax or otherwise, for an individual with land to practice reforestation. But he did it anyway, completely at his own expense and trusting in the value of a long term investment.
When I was young, my mother, my sister and I all participated in the annual planting operation. Local helpers were hired for the springtime event. Fifty years and 110,000 trees later the naked sandy fields and rocky outcrops are now dense woodland. For those 50 years we watched the land change fundamentally from failed farmland to natural wilderness. Wildlife returned to the river valley, beaver changed the scenery with their wetland projects. The field birds disappeared as the forest inhabitants moved in. The old farmstead laneways became moss covered trails winding through ever thickening cover.
For most of our lives we lived away from the area and only returned to the farm occasionally – sometimes two or three years would pass between my ability to visit. For those who live continuously around land that reverts to its natural state the change is slow and almost unnoticeable. On my visits there were always surprises. An expansive vista was now obscured by growing trees. A trickling creek had become a stream. A meadow now a wetland. The old buildings sagging and rotting away.
The farm has been an integral part of my mother’s life and she has always been adamant that the property be managed – but mostly left alone to return to nature. If there is a theme to our more recent ownership of the land it was just that – leave it alone.
Sell it? Not an option.
An alternative appeared in the form of the Ecological Gifts Program and the Haliburton Highlands Land Trust. Designed for situations like ours, the program helps community groups identify ecologically sensitive lands and facilitates gifts from owners who want to see their treasured properties secured for posterity.
This turned out to be a complex process, but the land trust, with the enthusiastic and hard working leadership of Sheila Ziman, helped us work our way through the maze of surveys, assessments, legal issues and government bureaucracy. A property severance had to be made, a life interest in the house negotiated and an agreement on the future uses of the land worked through. It was a process that took over a year and countless phone calls, emails and meetings, but in the end we can be proud of the result: the Dahl Forest will remain as a conservation reserve – forever.
This isn’t the end of the story. The HHLT is a community based charitable organization run entirely by Haliburton County volunteers who want to make a difference. The costs of maintaining the Dahl Forest property – insurance, signage, maintenance, etc. will now be borne by the Land Trust with community support. A significant sum must be raised for an endowment fund to cover these costs into the future. The Land Trust has a good start on this fund, but a long way to go. Community members who value the perpetual conservation of areas of natural woodlands in the county will be asked to chip in and take over where my family leaves off.
Dahl Forest is not longer in our hands. Help the HHLT preserve it for future generations. Let’s see what another 50 years will bring!
- Peter Dahl
- Victoria, BC
- tel: 250 598 8701
- email: ptrdahl@shaw.ca
Last Updated: Jan 20 2010 1:28:01 pm.
Photo: Lyn Winans
Did You Know...
As of August 2009, 7 new species that have been identified in Haliburton County have been added to the Ontario government's Species at Risk list. Chimney Swift and Whip-poor-will are now listed as Threatened. Snapping Turtle, Common Nighthawk, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Canada Warbler and Bald Eagle are listed as Special Concern. Read the full article.
