ATLANTIC -- Douglas Coulter always hoped that his 194-acre spread south of Conneaut Lake would stay a farm, long after the third-generation dairyman milked his last cow.

While he doesn't yet have assurances that his sons or grandchildren will continue working the land that his grandparents bought in the 1940s, Coulter has secured a guarantee that the property won't be carved up for development.

Coulter got that guarantee at $1,000 an acre on Wednesday, when Crawford County's Agricultural Land Preservation Board bought the conservation easements on his East Fallowfield Township farm.

Coulter's was one of the first two farms to be preserved under Crawford County's 4-year-old Farmland Preservation Program. The preservation board also voted Wednesday to buy the conservation easements on Lloyd and Phyllis Gerber's 115-acre farm along Adamsville Road, also in East Fallowfield Township.

"This is something important not only to the heritage of the county, preserving the heritage and values, but it's preserving farmland," board member John Tautin said during a signing ceremony with the property owners in Woodcock Township on Wednesday afternoon. "It also preserves open space."


The 309 acres secured on Wednesday are the start of what board members said they hope will be a growing movement toward protecting the county's farmland for the future.

They are already working on buying conservation easements on a farm near Cochranton, and they have a list of other potential program participants to consider in the future as funding becomes available, said Lynn Sandieson, district manager of the Crawford County Conservation District.

The funds to purchase easements on the Coulter and Gerber farms came from $376,000 in state Department of Agriculture allocations, Sandieson said.

The preservation board plans to use $200,000 in state Growing Greener II funds for future easement purchases, she said.

Crawford became the 55th of Pennsylvania's 67 counties to join the state's Agricultural Conservation Easement Purchase Program when county commissioners enacted the local program in 2004.


A similar program exists in Erie County, where conservation easements have been secured on 43 farms totaling 5,151 acres, said Matt Elwell of the Erie County Planning Department.

The state program was created in 1988 to help slow the loss of prime farmland to non-agricultural uses, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. Under the program, a farmer can continue to work the land while receiving payment for the difference between the land's value for farming and its value for development.

There were 2,834 farms totaling 323,366 acres in the statewide Farmland Preservation Program as of 2006, the last year that data was available from the Department of Agriculture.

In order to qualify for the Farm Preservation Program, the land must be located in a designated agricultural security area. Nineteen of Crawford County's 35 townships currently have agricultural security areas, and three other townships are in the process of establishing them, Sandieson said.

Farms are ranked for inclusion in the local program based on a variety of factors, including the soil type, the existence of a farm conservation plan and whether or not the farm is productive, she said.


"These two went right to the top when the first farms went through the ranking sheet, " Sandieson said of the Coulter and Gerber farms.

Coulter said he had watched intently as farmland preservation programs were created in neighboring counties, and was the first one in line when Crawford County established his program.

"They tore up a couple of farms around here pretty good by selling off 5- and 10-acre lots," he said. "I made a good living here. I just wanted it to stay a farm."