Butlers Ensures Family Farm Stays a Farm

A secure local food supply depends on a simple resource: land. Across the Saratoga region, farmland is becoming an increasingly limited resource as communities grow, and landscapes change. In Saratoga County, where 94% of farms are family farms, according to the 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture, the future of local agriculture is closely tied to the decisions of the families who own and work this land. 

The Butler family is among those choosing to protect their farmland for future generations of farmers. Seventy-five acres of the third-generation Butler Family Farm in the town of Northumberland are now permanently protected through a conservation easement with local land trust Saratoga PLAN (Preserving Land and Nature). The easement ensures that the land will remain privately owned and available for farming while preventing future development. 

Don and Gwenne Butler and their daughter, Holly, operate their third-generation family farm. Recently retired from producing milk from a small mixed-breed dairy herd; they continue to grow and sell crops and pasture-raised beef. 

Holly also owns Farmers Cone Creamery and is currently working to expand the business and build a creamery on the farm. 

Their interest in preserving their farmland grew from watching Don’s parents sacrifice to pay off their mortgage and fight to protect the farm from potential conversion to a landfill.  

When they learned that neighboring Barber Brothers Dairy conserved its property with Saratoga PLAN, they reached out to Saratoga PLAN and began the process of placing a conservation easement on their land. Once agricultural land is converted to residential, commercial, or other development, it is often impossible to return that land to farming. 

Don Butler shared, “Our family thinks of land as something we’ve been given the honor of using and holding in trust for generations to come. To that end, we are grateful to work with Saratoga PLAN and the County Board of Supervisors to ensure these 75 acres will be forever farmland. Those before us cleared and tended the land through hard work and sacrifice. In our time, we improved and stewarded as best we knew how. Now those dedicated to the public service of growing food will have their opportunity to till these rich soils. May the chain be unbroken.”