Mike Willis, his wife Judy, and stepson Wesley know that farming is not for the faint of heart. Though farming has many rewards, keeping up with demands on one’s time and resources can be unpredictable and challenging, especially when you’re trying to plan for the future.

When Wesley’s skill and love of cattle, which took root early on as he grew up on a nearby dairy farm, turned into an opportunity to partner on Mike’s cattle operation, they decided to go all in and expand. This gave Mike, Judy, Wesley, Wesley’s wife Mandi and even their two farming-inclined young boys, confidence that there would be someone to care for the Somerset, Va. land they all loved so much.

The next piece of the puzzle for that expansion was making sure the land, and the finances, were in place. This is why, after some initial hesitation, the trio behind M & W Farm decided to place their 450 acres under conservation with the Piedmont Environmental Council through the USDA’s Agricultural Land Easement (ALE) program.

Agricultural Land Easements are conservation easements used specifically to protect working farms and ranches by limiting non-agricultural uses of the land. They are meant to protect the nation’s food supply, recognizing that there is danger in converting productive working land into non-agricultural uses, like residential or commercial.

Under the ALE program, the federal government provided a grant to PEC to purchase a conservation easement that extinguished the subdivision and development rights. Now, the land is reserved for the agricultural uses permitted by the easement, and the farmers are able to use the cash and tax benefits how they wish.

“The ALE program has been attractive for farmers who want a better guarantee that they’re going to be able to continue to work their agricultural business, because they can take the dollars they received for the purchase of the easement and then reinvest that back into the farm,” PEC Deputy Director of Conservation Valerie Peterson said.

M & W Farm is one of nine ALE farmland conservation projects that PEC has initiated since 2019, when we launched our Rappahannock-Rapidan conservation initiative with a focus on accelerating purchased easements on major working farms in the watershed. Thanks to a grant from The Volgenau Foundation, we have been able to leverage more than $7 million in federal and state funding for these conservation easements.

“There’s a lot of money involved,” Mike said. “And when you put things into easement, you can use those dollars to pay down debt to pay off farms. When you’re old and retired like us, you try to get out of debt. So, not only did we put it in easement because we’d like to protect the property, but it was a big money thing also. It helped keep the farm operating; it pays off debt so that we’re able to keep the land.”

The roughly 500-head cattle operation is successful, selling directly to a natural food distributor who sells to Wegman’s and Chipotle. But the costs of mortgages on more land, fencing, waterers, wells and maintenance can be significant. Wesley says one of the main reasons his family’s dairy farm went out of business is because they lacked access to more land to grow the farm. He views their easement as a way to ensure that doesn’t happen again.

“If by doing an easement, I can protect the land, keep it all together, take the money that’s valued out of it and put it back toward the price of what we paid on the land, that’s a good thing,” Wesley said.

“I’ve got two boys, a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old, and they’re both into it [farming]. The oldest is an animal nut and can probably name off at least a dozen different breeds, and he can visually tell you the difference between heifers and bulls and steers. And the youngest is the complete opposite; he’s super into tractors and equipment and stuff.”

Making several generations of farmers a reality can begin with planning like this.

“That was a major part of our decision [to place the land in ALE] because he wanted to farm, and his children are interested in farming,” Mike said. “Although they’re young, they love to get out and ride in the tractors. So hopefully we can bring the next generation along on the farm. That’s a good way to raise kids too. The kids enjoy running around on the farm, they like to go swimming in the river, and it’s just a good way to raise a family.”

Wesley’s boys have spent much of their childhoods down by the Rapidan River, but thanks to the Culpeper Soil and Water Conservation District and other organizations, the cows have not. CSWCD’s cost share programs provided funding and technical support that allowed the family to fence out rivers and install wells and cattle waterers, which helps the ecosystem downstream.

“Keep the streams clean because they all flow,” Mike said. “Everything we have flows into the Rapidan River, which feeds water to the town of Orange, and it goes on to the Lake Woods operation and into the Rappahannock River and Fredericksburg. So you want to keep all the pollutants you can out of these streams, so that everything works like it should.”

This conservation easement through the ALE program is another tool in M & W Farm’s conservation toolbox for both improving the environment and supporting their farm, now and into the future. 

“I like to know that a hundred years from now, it hopefully will still essentially look the same,” Mike said. “Somebody else may own it, and somebody else may do things differently than me, but it’ll still essentially look the same.”

This article appeared in the 2024 fall edition of The Piedmont Environmental Council’s member newsletter, The Piedmont View. If you’d like to become a PEC member or renew your membership, please visit pecva.org/join.