Easement means farm is forever

PARADISE, Cache County — Jon White's great-grandfather drove the first pioneer wagon into Paradise about 1885, and descendants of Bernard White have been working the land on 1,600 acres in the valley's southern corner ever since.

Like the first white settlers who saw green hills and wildflowers in the area and called it Paradise, four generations of Whites have loved and lived on the land. And as part of a landmark arrangement for this part of the state, these acres under northern Utah skies will forever be preserved for farming, camping, hunting, fishing and grazing.

"It's been in the family forever," said Jon White, 54, from his Cache County property this week. "We'd always envisioned it would be a farm and that's the way we want it to stay."

But the Whites are getting older. In their 50s, they are young farmers by Cache County standards, but none of the couple's four children is poised to take over farm operations. Farming isn't in their future. "So we talked it over as a family and decided this was the right thing to do," White said.

Today the White family, dignitaries and a national nonprofit land conservation group will celebrate the farm's protection and formalize an easement that will assure the Brooke Ranch stays agricultural land forever, said Alina Bokde, who has supervised the project for the Trust for Public Land, based in Santa Fe, N.M.

"This easement will help preserve the community identity and heritage so critical to Paradise and Cache County by protecting a working farm and ranch characteristic of the valley," Bokde said.

White says simply: "It's been a long time coming."

As part of the easement, the White family sells its right to develop the property to the Utah Department of Agriculture. White and his family will continue to live and work the land now. The children can sell it down the road, but it must continue to be used for agricultural purposes, according to the agreement.

Part of the Little Bear River are on the property, which is also home to elk and deer, sharp-tail grouse, pheasants, chukars and Hungarian partridge.

The fair market value of the Brooke Ranch conservation easement is $1.75 million and funding for the project includes $857,500 from the Federal Farmland Protection Program; $250,000 from the State LeRay McAllister Critical Lands Fund; and other funds from the George S. Dolores Dore Eccles Foundation, private contributions and a landowner contribution.