# forest owners



## MyWorkingForest (Aug 2, 2011)

i am trying to figure out how can forest owners live off the land if they have protected their land with a conservation easement and so they can not clear a little for a food garden. how can they live self sufficiently and still enjoy local fresh food?


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## Our Little Farm (Apr 26, 2010)

Surely you would clear space for a garden where the forest naturally thinned. It does not have to be a huge area! How many people are you talking about. What kind of forest? So many variables!


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## Pam6 (Apr 9, 2009)

It seems to me this should be in the Gardening forum or in the HT Questions unless this is a rant because you are a lumber mill cutter and people have their properties protected with conservation easements and you can not make any money from cutting lumber off of their land.


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## Ken Scharabok (May 11, 2002)

At least in TN, a conservation easement is a negotiated agreement between the Land Trust and the Owner(s). For example, I know of one dairy farm in Western TN which wrote in the agreement they could build two more homes on the property (for their children). If farmland, owner can continue to farm, and they can will it to someone. It is just nothing can be developed on the property without getting the Land Trust's permission as development rights belong to them.

For example, the Land Trust may let the property owner build a haybarn, not not allow another house to be put on the property.


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## Evons hubby (Oct 3, 2005)

MyWorkingForest said:


> i am trying to figure out how can forest owners live off the land if they have protected their land with a conservation easement and so they can not clear a little for a food garden. how can they live self sufficiently and still enjoy local fresh food?


I guess they could eat a lot of squirrel and hickory nuts. :shrug:


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## ChristieAcres (Apr 11, 2009)

Garden on the roof, a balcony, a deck, on top of any building on the property, I suppose. Not enough info in the OP.


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## Ken Scharabok (May 11, 2002)

A conservation agreement is a legally binding contract. You need to get a copy of it and see what it actually says.

You may well allowed to clear some trees to a garden or to make a yard larger. You might be able to clear cut the land if timber rights were not included in the conservation agreement, as long was waterways and such were protected. You may be able to selective cut trees over a certain diameter at the stump for 'dead-breast high', which is typically about 4' above ground.

A conservation easement may only pertain to a certain area of the property, such as wetlands. I have such on one partion of a field. A grove of water-loving trees grow out into the field in a finger shape. Local Soil Conservation District declared it a wetlands and I've never challenged it as it is too wet to farm and provides a very nice, cool shade area for cattle when in that field.

On conservation agreements be cautious of who it is with. I can't remember name (Nature Conservency?), but the largest of them works worldwide. If you were to say deed them a 100 acre farm, there is nothing to prevent them from swapping it to someone for five areas with endangered specials on it in Latin America.

When locals built a hour on the top of a hill across the road from me the local Power Co-op had to get a right-of-way easement to put a power poll in one of my pasture areas. I still legally own the land, but they have the right of access to maintain the pole and wires and such.

My agreement with the Land Trust of TN doesn't kick in until I've dead. Thus, I have full usage of property until then.


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