LITTLE COMPTON – One of the town’s largest working farms, the site of an important moment in early Rhode Island history, will be protected from development for decades to come thanks to a deal between its owners and a coalition of environmental and land preservation groups.
The Nature Conservancy, the Little Compton Agricultural Conservancy Trust and a handful of state and federal agencies cobbled together $3.6 million to purchase conservation easements on most of Treaty Rock Farm.
The agreement was announced in a news conference today at the farm. Michael Sullivan, director of the R.I. Department of Environmental Management, and Janet Coit, director of The Nature Conservancy’s Rhode Island office, were among those expected to attend.
Treaty Rock Farm, a 120-acre property of rolling meadow, woods and coastal habitat, extends east from the Sakonnet River to West Main Road. It has been owned by the Richmond family and actively farmed for more than 350 years. History was made there in 1675, when Awashonks, a chief of the Sakonnet tribe, and Benjamin Church, a colonist, forged an alliance at Treaty Rock to join forces in the King Philip’s War.
“The owners’ commitment to conservation coupled with our efforts and those of our partners have ensured that historic Treaty Rock Farm remains an open landscape with active agricultural use,” George Mason, chairman of the Little Compton Agricultural Conservancy Trust, said in a statement today.
Three sisters – Josie Richmond Arkins, Lawre Goodnow, and Helen Richmond Webb – have owned the farm since the late 1990s, when they inherited the property from their father. For several years, they have been seeking a financial deal that would enable them to continue operating a working farm and conserve the rural, historic character of the property, according to John Berg, a spokesman for the Nature Conservancy. The sisters currently sell beef raised on the farm to the Rhode Island Beef Co-op, and hope to start supplying wool from the farm’s sheep to the Rhody Warm Blanket retailers, he said.
The Little Compton Agricultural Conservancy Trust and the Rhode Island Agricultural Lands Preservation Commission now hold the development rights for agriculture on 95 acres of the farm, while The Nature Conservancy holds a conservation easement on about 20 acres of land and tidal zone along the Sakonnet River.
Arkins, Goodnow and Webb will retain ownership of Treaty Rock Farm, as well as the right to build on two relatively small building lots on the parcel.
The DEM and the U.S. Department of Agriculture provided matching funds to assist the local conservation groups in securing $3.6 million to purchase the farm’s easement and development rights. Other funding partners included The Champlin Foundations, the Sakonnet Preservation Association, and many private donors in the community.
“For the Little Compton Land Trust, it was about protecting really one of the biggest working farms in Little Compton, and for The Nature Conservancy it was about protecting it and restoring almost a half mile of shoreline along the Sakonnet River,” Berg said.
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A slightly longer version of this article will appear in the print and online editions of the Dec. 3 Providence Business News.
