MOUNT HOLLY — Burlington County will auction off eight preserved farms totaling 700 acres that will be restricted for agricultural use only.

It will be the second major auction of farmland that the county board of freeholders have purchased through its preservation program using a dedicated county property tax and state grants.

The freeholders approved the auction of the eight farms in six municipalities by a unanimous vote Wednesday night.

"By transferring these farms back to private ownership, the county will get these lands back into the hands of farmers who can invest in and sustain these farms in the future at no cost to taxpayers," said county Freeholder William Haines Jr.

Haines said the sale is expected to raise between $5 million and $6 million and will be held early in 2009 after public notices and hearings. No specific date has been set.

He said all of the farms were being marketed for sale by previous owners for nonagricultural development before the county bought them.

The farms are: Armstrong in Mansfield, 260 acres; Orchard Enterprises in Chesterfield, 41 acres; Bell in North Hanover, 125 acres; C. Pettit in Pemberton Township, 125 acres; William Pettit in Springfield and Pemberton Township, 62 acres; Ashmore in Florence, 45 acres; Blaetz in Pemberton Township, 45 acres; and Conover in Pemberton Township, 40 acres.

The freeholders also hired Max Spann Auction Co. of Clinton to sell the farms. Spann conducted the last county farmland auction of 964 acres in 2006 that raised $5.9 million. The money was placed in a county account for more farmland and open space preservation.

In another preservation action Wednesday, the county paid $346,500 to preserve the 66-acre Angelina Puglia farm on Jacksonville-Mount Holly Road in Eastampton and Springfield.

In other business, a consultant updated the freeholders on its study of encroachment issues around the pending Joint Base New Jersey -- a merger of Fort Dix, McGuire Air Force Base and Lakehurst Naval Air Engineering Station into one megabase.

Brandi Bartolomeo, project manager for lead consultant Paulus, Sokolowski and Sartor of Warren, said a public hearing in Burlington County and another in Ocean County will be scheduled in September to get public comment on data gathered so far and on land use maps.

Burlington and Ocean counties, the Department of Defense and 10 municipalities in the two counties are collaborating on the $300,000 land use study aimed at minimizing or eliminating certain types of development around the 44,000 acres that make up comprise the contiguous Army, Air Force and Navy facilities. The Defense Department funded the study.

The Web site for the study is www.jointbasenj.org.