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05/21/2019 02:30 PMAfter more than 100 years as a working farm in Madison, the Barberry Hill Farm is up for sale. Farm owners and operators Kelly and Kingsley Goddard recently made the tough decision to sell in light of economic challenges plaguing small farms, but the Goddards are still hoping there might be some way to preserve and protect the land.
The farm, located on Boston Post Road, is approximately 17 acres. The five-bedroom home on the property dates back to 1910 and the history of the farm stretches back even further than that. The Goddard family has always operated the farm, so Kingsley Goddard said the decision to sell was not made lightly.
“I have been doing this as a commercial venture for 40 years and farming in this day and age is sort of an economic anomaly,” he said. “It’s come time that we need to start thinking about our future. I am getting older and I am not sure I can keep doing this much longer.”
Kelly and Kingsley have five children and while Kingsley said they all have an appreciation for the farm, his children don’t have interest in taking over the farm because, as he put it, “My kids are smarter than that”.
So the decision was made to put the property on the market. According to the real estate listing, the entire 17-acre property is up for sale at a price of $5.6 million. While the property is used as a farm, the parcel is zoned residential and could be subdivided and developed. The possibility that the property could be developed has sparked concern amongst residents and Kelly Goddard said she hopes someone can come forward, purchase the property, and protect the land.
“We would love to have some kind of collaboration with someone,” she said. “We would love to see a consortium of individuals come together to put a conservation deed on the property and then they hold the deed and we get the money. We have tried working with the state, but that didn’t work out.”
The Goddards have looked into the Trust for Public Land and had conversations with groups like the Madison Land Conservation Trust and the town itself to see if someone could purchase the land, but money is tight.
“Economically it hasn’t really worked for us,’ said Kingsley Goddard. “That is where we have been for the past 8 or 10 years; we have been investigating various possibilities and now we are throwing it out there and seeing if anybody else want to try the venture. We would love to see it preserved as such, but whether that is a viable alternative I am not certain. It would be great for the town, we would love to see it preserved in some way and we have tried many different avenues to preserve it, so we will just have to see what happens.”
On the property itself, the front fields are used for organic farming, the back fields are pastures, and there is an orchard on the property along with the home and barn.
“It is a very unique, rare piece of property,” Kelly Goddard said. “The barn is on the Register of Historic Places. We hate to see this go, but we would like to keep it in the community.”
Town officials have also expressed concerns about what could happen to the property. As it stands now, the property could be easily subdivided into up to 12 lots for residential homes. Director of Planning and Economic Development Dave Anderson said seeing that property developed would be a loss to the community
“I have been talking to Kingsley and Kelly on and off for several years now to try to figure out ways to help preserve the farm as much as possible in town so that is certainly an interest of mine as director of planning and economic development,” he said. “I have had some conversations with the Planning & Zoning Commission and I know it is an interest of theirs as well, so I personally don’t want to see that property developed into single-family lots. I mean you really can’t replace the character that provides to the community along the Post Road. So one thing that I told Kingsley and Kelly is if someone comes up with creative ideas to help save the farm, I think the community should be open to considering those.”
The Goddards have said they are open to creative solutions or ideas for the property because continuing to run it as a farm just isn’t a viable option anymore. Kingsley Goddard said the sad truth is that running a small farm just isn’t a financially viable enterprise anymore.
“I have loved every minute that I have worked here,” he said. “Obviously farming is a labor of love, but at the same time the economics don’t really help. It has been the way of the family farms probably for a century—slowly they get parceled out. It’s not a unique problem to us…this is going to be something that affects every farm going into the future.”