May 11—LONDONDERRY — A five-acre piece of town property will be under the watchful eye of a local farm and orchard.
Town Council approved a lease agreement with Sunnycrest Farm at a meeting April 24.
The five acres was acquired by the town as part of a land deal that voters approved at the polls.
Town Manager Michael Malaguti gave councilors a history lesson on how the property came to be under town control and the sequence of information to get to the final vote.
Historically, Malaguti said, the five acres were part of a larger piece of land that formerly belonged to the Mack family and the orchard business.
It was subdivided into two parcels with the five-acre piece having frontage also along Mammoth Road.
There were no conservation or open space restrictions put on this smaller piece, Malaguti said, but the larger portion along Pillsbury Road— about 21 acres — is under the watchful eye of the Conservation Commission and is protected to be used as open space and to keep major development projects away.
Lease deals were then considered to also keep the five-acre plot as protected and open as possible.
"We needed someone to care for it," Malaguti said,
The town solicited interest for someone to lease the five acres and work to keep the apple trees safe and the land agricultural. The cost of a lease would be $1 per year.
The town received interest from 12 applicants, but not all had apple-growing experience.
That led to the new owners of the Mack's property, who took on the lease agreement for one year.
The agreement expired in November of 2022.
The new agreement put in place will also give Sunnycrest Farm a lease price of $1 per year, and the job of keeping the land open and under agricultural use.
Malaguti said Sunnycrest and the Hicks family are well integrated in the community and have been farming since 1943 and are willing and able to take on the lease.
"So these apple trees can be preserved for the future," Malaguti said.