Picone Farm in Middleborough. Video by Reel Quest Films. (Click the center arrow to play.)

By Scott MacFaden, Director of Land Protection

In a series of closings in late August, the effort to permanently protect the 190-acre Picone Farm in Middleborough finally reached its long-sought conclusion. The project involved the Town of Middleborough, the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR), Wildlands Trust, and the Hanover-based Greensmith Farm.

Success wouldn’t have been possible without this diverse partnership that mobilized to secure the farm’s preservation. In December 2020, a 378-unit manufactured home development was proposed for the farm. Because the farm was enrolled in Chapter 61A, the Town had a Right of First Refusal on the property. This Right of First Refusal enabled the Town and its partners to devise the optimal preservation strategy, which proved to be dividing the farm into two halves: a “Town” component and a “farm” component. The Town of Middleborough acquired the Town component, and Greensmith Farm acquired the farm component. Wildlands will hold a Conservation Restriction (CR) on the Town component, and MDAR and the Town will hold an Agricultural Preservation Restriction (APR) on the farm component to ensure its permanent protection.

As one of Middleborough’s largest and most significant remaining farmland tracts, Picone Farm had been a long-standing preservation priority for the Town and several of its open space partners. In addition to its extensive areas of prime farmland, the property includes approximately 6,000 feet of frontage on the Nemasket River. Juxtaposed with that river frontage are scenic rolling fields, a pond, several pockets of mature woodland, and a small stream that drains into the Nemasket.

In the larger landscape context, Picone Farm was the largest remaining unprotected assemblage along the lower Nemasket River corridor north of Route 44 and one of the largest unprotected assemblages anywhere along the Nemasket’s 11.2-mile extent.

The Town’s portion of the property will include community gardens and walking trails extending into the adjacent Town-owned Oliver Estate. The farm component will be privately owned and operated by Greensmith Farm, which plans to establish a farmstand offering agricultural products grown on site.

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