The Centre County Farmland Trust celebrated its 30-year anniversary and thanked donors and supporters with barbecue, art, birthday cake and wine at its 2024 Summer Solstice Thank You Picnic at Mount Nittany Vineyard and Winery, June 19, 2024.
“With this event,” said Dan Guss, president of the CCFT Board of Trustees, “we are celebrating land preservation in the Centre region, our connections to and love of the land, and especially our donors, volunteers and supporters without which this organization would not exist.”
Members of the Farmland Preservation Artists of Central Pennsylvania including Jennifer Shuey, former CCFT president, Susan Nicholas Gephart and Brienne Brown painted on the winery’s beautiful grounds during the event.
The Farmland Trust presented Shuey with an appreciation gift painted by Brienne Brown, in recognition of Shueys decade-long service as a CCFT Trustee. Brown’s painting depicted colorful banners hung over a tent-lined Allen Street, an iconic scene from Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts.
Heather Luse of Delectable Delights created the birthday cake. Erin Condo McCracken of EcoVents catered the barbecue dinner. Mount Nittany Vineyard and Winery discounted the cost of its Vintner’s Loft Tasting Room.
Thank you to the donors, volunteer Trustees, supporters and partners who make our farmland preservation work possible!
A Brief History of CCFT
Lynn Miller and William Keough co-founded the Centre County Farmland Trust. Both served on Centre County’s Agricultural Land Preservation Board, established in 1989 to administer Pennsylvania’s new agriculture preservation program in Centre County.
Keough chaired that board until 2014.
Miller, a landscape architect, professor and preservationist, was frustrated that there were more landowners eager to preserve their farms than funds to purchase easements — partially compensating them for rejecting the often-lucrative scenario of selling their land to be developed, recalled Dan Pennick, Centre County’s Chief Planner at the time following Miller’s death in 2020.
That sparked the idea of a nonprofit Trust that could serve as another way for landowners who were willing to donate their development rights to preserve their land.
But it would take 10 years before the Trust preserved its first farm. Fundraising was a very slow process and by 1999 there was just over $1,000 in the treasury.
In April, 2000, the county planning office hired Norm Lathbury to oversee the county’s ag land preservation program and serve as the Trust’s Executive Director. During Lathbury’s tenure, the Trust preserved eight properties. Lathbury retired in 2010.
By 2003, the Trust had raised enough money to begin the process of preserving the 176-acre Hugh and Barbara Hodge Farm in Penn Township, and in May 2004 preserved the Hodge Farm.
The late Hugh and Barbara Hodge were teachers who loved the land. The farm is known for its historic, double-bank barn, designed and built in 1832 by George Gentzel (1789-1854.)
By 2010, CCFT preserved six farms: The Ripka farm (122 acres, Miles Township, 2005), the Cole Farm (100 acres, Haines Township, 2006), the Leach Farm (152 acres, Curtin Township, 2007), the Rishel farm (31 acres, Potter Township, 2007), the Rossman farm (104 acres, Potter Township, 2009) and Schempf Farm (41 acres, Harris Township, 2009).
Since then, thanks to former executive directors Lathbury and Sarah Walter, and volunteer leaders including Bob Anderson, Pete Schempf, Jennifer Shuey and Dan Guss, CCFT has preserved and maintains 17 easements over 1,483 acres.
Recently, as CCFT’s work grew beyond county government’s available support, volunteer Trustees steered through a reorganization with help from a bequest from Miller, who died in 2020 and a three-year, capacity-building grant from the Hamer Foundation.
Visit Our History for more details.