The Land Report Winter 2012

Ring in the holidays with the latest edition of the Land Report!

Travel to Sonoma County and enjoy a rare and revealing portrait of John Jordan and his family’s renowned vineyard and winery. Learn the latest about the white hot market for Midwest farmland. Or follow the twists and turns of the Yellowstone River as it winds its way onto your iPad courtesy of the new documentary Where the Yellowstone Goes, sponsored by Trout Headwaters.

All these and many more stories So be our guest and enjoy our latest issue HERE.

For more up to the minute reports on listings, auctions, sales, and breaking news pertaining to land and landowners, be sure to follow The Magazine of the American Landowner on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Land Report July 2012 Newsletter

WATER. Thanks to the ongoing drought and a spate of wildfires, it’s a top priority for landowners from coast to coast this summer.

Be sure to check out ways to improve your waters courtesy of the Summer issue of The Magazine of the American Landowner. Mike Sprague at Trout Headwaters shares a variety of different ways to use water to add beauty – and value – to your property, and many of the improvements he suggests are low cost or no cost. Read more HERE.

For up to the minute reports on listings, auctions, sales, and breaking news pertaining to land and landowners, be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

The Land Report Summer 2012

Did you know that the Supreme Court just issued a landmark ruling? I’m not talking about health care. I’m talking about land. That’s right, the high court came down 9-0 for landowners in a suit that was brought against the EPA by Idaho’s Sackett family.

We’ve been following Sackett v. EPA for over a year. It’s one of the many eye-opening stories you’ll enjoy in the Summer 2012 issue of The Land Report, now on newsstands from coast to coast.

You can access the digital edition free of charge HERE.

Our summer issue also features the story of an innovative gift to the University of Wyoming, one that kicks in when Wyoming’s River Bend Ranch sells. It’s a great example of stewardship, one that Greg Fay brought to us and that we are proud to share. Learn five great ways to add value and beauty to your land by improving your waters. And be sure to have a look at our third annual roundup of the nation’s leading auction houses. No surprise here … farmland prices continue to best record highs.

So be our guest and enjoy our latest issue HERE.

For more up to the minute reports on listings, auctions, sales, and breaking news pertaining to land and landowners, be sure to follow The Magazine of the American Landowner on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

P.S. Our award-winning quarterly magazine is available in a print version via subscription.

Land Report May 2012 Newsletter

Many items to consider from our May newsletter, but let’s stick to page one material. The Land Report Top Ten has a brand-new look with Montana’s Broken O Ranch now crowning the list. The 124,000-acre Bates Sanders Swan listing features more than 20 miles of the Sun River, carries 3,500 mother cows, and produces about 25,000 tons of alfalfa hay and 700,000 bushels of small grain crops annually. At $132.5 million, it’s not a ranch. It’s a hedge fund, one built on a rock-solid agricultural asset.

Two properties have joined the Top Ten: Hawaii’s Dillingham Ranch, our new No. 5 at $65 million, which is listed by Zackary Wright with Christie’s; and Swain’s Neck on Nantucket Island, the new No. 7 at $59 million, courtesy of Gary Winn at Maury People Sotheby’s International Realty. There has been a $5 million reduction on No. 4 California’s Rancho Dos Pueblos, which Kerry Mormann & Associates now has listed for $79 million.

For more up to the minute reports on listings, auctions, sales, and breaking news pertaining to land and landowners, be sure to follow The Magazine of the American Landowner on Facebook and Twitter. The Land Report is now on Pinterest.

P.S. Our award-winning quarterly magazine is available in a print version via subscription.

The Land Report Spring 2012

Enjoy the Spring issue of The Land Report!

Learn the stories of America’s Best Brokerages in our second annual survey. More than 70 are profiled from coast to coast. Read how Bernie Uechtritz pulled off 2011′s Deal of the Year by selling Camp Cooley Ranch in just 45 days. Find out why George Clooney has such strong ties to the land in the Academy Award-winning movie The Descendants.

For more up to the minute reports on listings, auctions, sales, and breaking news pertaining to land and landowners, be sure to follow The Magazine of the American Landowner on Facebook and Twitter. Better yet, Land Report is now on Pinterest.

P.S. Our award-winning quarterly magazine is available in a print version via subscription.

Land Report March 2012 Newsletter

The Spring issue of The Land Report has arrived!

Right now it’s en route to bookstores such as Barnes & Noble and subscribers’ offices around the world, but thanks to the miracles of modern technology you can read right now right HERE.

Learn the stories of America’s Best Brokerages in our second annual survey. More than 70 are profiled from coast to coast. Read how Bernie Uechtritz pulled off 2011′s Deal of the Year by selling Camp Cooley Ranch in just 45 days. Find out why George Clooney has such strong ties to the land in the Academy Award-winning movie The Descendants.

For more up to the minute reports on listings, auctions, sales, and breaking news pertaining to land and landowners, be sure to follow The Magazine of the American Landowner on Facebook and Twitter. Better yet, Land Report is now on Pinterest.

P.S. Our award-winning quarterly magazine is available in a print version via subscription.

Our Holiday Gift to You: The Story of Taylor’s Trees

Most everyone who knew Taylor Emmons marveled at his athletic abilities, sense of sportsmanship, love of the outdoors, and his empathetic nature. His untimely passing was felt by thousands, as evidenced by the capacity crowd at his celebration of life service. Thanks to his purpose-driven father, a ton of collective effort, and some foresight from Taylor himself, the passions that marked this great kid’s life will be perpetuated through the Taylor Emmons Scholarship Fund and Taylor’s Trees. At the heart of these dual philanthropic tributes is a rich parcel of Maine timberland.

This whole process started before Taylor died, and it just kind of dovetailed into his legacy,” says his father, Mike Emmons. Some seven years ago, the family moved from Maine to Sarasota so that Taylor’s older brother, Mikey, could develop his baseball skills at the world renowned IMG Academy. Taylor was enrolled at The Out-of-Door Academy (ODA), and he flourished at the college prep school. The National Honor Society member was captain of the golf team, co-captain of the baseball team, and named Homecoming King by his schoolmates. “He loved The Out-of-Door Academy,” says his dad. “He did well academically, did very well in sports, and was just a very popular kid.”

Taylor graduated from ODA and was a University of Miami sophomore when he was fatally struck by an SUV near the Coral Gables campus in December 2010. He was 19.

“The thing about Taylor — and it’s easy for me to say because I was his dad — but you talk to anybody and they’ll tell you that even though he was a really good looking kid and a good athlete, he treated everybody the same. He liked everybody, and everybody liked him. I don’t know what the final number was, but when he died, the funeral home had never seen a crowd that big.”

Emmons, a 30-year veteran of the land game, got his start with Harry Patten in 1980 (see Land Report Summer 2009). He also pursued investments on his own. A few years ago, he came across the parcel of timberland from which Taylor’s Trees would evolve.

“I had an acquisitions guy who was out looking for property,” Emmons recalls. “I had moved to Florida and went up to Maine for a week to Sugarloaf to go skiing, and he said, ‘Mike, I think you ought to come take a look at this piece of property. It seems like a pretty good deal.’

“So I skipped a day of skiing and went and looked at this piece of property in Maine. It was a great deal, and I bought it. It was 9,000 acres. It didn’t really have any timber value. About 2,000 acres had been put into a conservation easement to protect the two streams. I took the other 7,000 acres and subdivided it into some 500-acre tracts and just never got around to selling it. The more time I spent up there, the more I fell in love with the place. The idea of owning 7,000 acres and growing timber on it and passing it on to my kids started appealing to me. So I decided not to sell it,” he says.

During his junior year, Taylor had participated in an Out-of-Door Academy program in which the school’s students stuffed backpacks with basic school necessities for kids without the means to buy them themselves. The experience was an eye-opener, and the teen expressed concern about the thousands of homeless kids in otherwise affluent Sarasota.

“Taylor said, ‘there seems to me there’s something we ought to be able to do,’” recalls his dad. “It really bothered him.” The thought stuck with Mike as well:

“I got to thinking about it from time to time, and then one day I got a call from Josh Rhodes, who hunts bear on our property in Maine. Josh says, ‘do you mind if my wife goes tipping on your property?’ I said, ‘Under one condition. You’ve got to send me a wreath.’ So two weeks later, I get this absolutely beautiful wreath from the clippings off my property, and it smells just like Maine. I got to thinking that maybe we could grow some Christmas trees and ship them down here and the kids from the academy, in conjunction with the underprivileged kids, could sell them [as a fundraiser].” After factoring in the logistics of clearing the land, planting 1,000 trees per acre, and shipping the harvested ones from Maine to Florida, Emmons realized it could be more than a moneymaker. As Taylor had hoped, it could be a great way to help others.

While the first crop of trees grew in, wreath sales would provide a little cash flow. At the same time they would help develop a customer base.

“Originally my thought was to raise money for the school as well as the disadvantaged kids,” he says.

Emmons and David Mahler, headmaster at ODA, held a series of meetings to discuss the project. Mahler was intrigued with the idea and encouraged Emmons to pursue it. “We talked about it before Taylor’s passing, the idea of using some of the proceeds from the tree farm to help these kids,” says Mahler. Today, Emmons’s long-term goal is to create a place in Maine where students from ODA and underprivileged kids from Sarasota can experience the great outdoors while hunting, fishing, pulling lobster traps, and, of course, planting trees.

“It takes about six years for a planted pine to become marketable,” Emmons says. “My daughter, Samantha, was moving from the Lower School to the Upper School, and I said, ‘wouldn’t that be cool if the kids who were in sixth grade actually participated in planting the trees, then six years later, when they’re harvested, they’re actually selling the trees that they helped plant six years before?’”

As summer 2010 got underway, Emmons’s crew cleared the land and planted the first 4,000 trees. Six months later, Taylor’s life was tragically cut short. In lieu of flowers or other tokens of sympathy, the family established the Taylor William Emmons Scholarship Fund and asked for donations in Taylor’s name.

“We’ve received over $136,000 in donations from family, friends, and people we didn’t even know,” Emmons says. “The outpouring was just incredible. To this day the money still pours in.”

In keeping with the legacy, the memorial foundation has partnered with All Faiths Food Bank to sell handmade wreaths from Taylor’s Trees in Maine. All proceeds from the sale of the 22-inch double-sided wreaths will go to the Taylor William Emmons Scholarship Fund and the corresponding backpack program, which feeds hungry children through the food bank.

This past June, the ODA’s baseball field was dedicated in Taylor’s honor. Topping off the ceremony was the announcement of Desmond Lindsay as the first recipient of a Taylor William Emmons Scholarship.

“Desmond possesses a lot of Taylor’s qualities. We have no doubt … he is going to carry on his name perfectly,” says Taylor’s mom, Katie.

“What I want is that every year a kid gets to go to the academy because of Taylor,” Mike Emmons says. “I want to have four kids in the school on scholarship in Taylor’s name. One in every class.” To that end, Emmons has set a goal to generate $1 million so that the scholarship fund can be self-sustaining.

Says David Mahler, “Taylor was a great kid: a strong student, an exceptional athlete, fun-loving, friendly, and outgoing. The Taylor Emmons Scholarship Fund is an incredible way to maintain Taylor’s legacy. It’s really a testament to Mike and Katie and the strength of the Emmons family that in a time of such sorrow and sadness, they’ve decided to changes lives for the better. This scholarship will change innumerable lives going forward.”

The Emmons family also has a living, breathing memento of Taylor’s big-heartedness. Through a Facebook connection, Taylor rescued a dog while in college. When he brought Bella home for Thanksgiving, Mike insisted that Taylor take her to the local shelter in Bradenton. His message was a simple one: college is no place to raise a pet.

The day after Taylor’s tragic accident, his older brother, Mikey, rallied the family to call the shelter and get Bella back. Though she had already been adopted, the shelter understood the family’s circumstances, and made the necessary arrangements for Bella to come home. Another timeless reminder of this wonderful life. — Nancy Myers

To place a wreath order, log on to www.temmons.org. To learn more about the Taylor Emmons Scholarship Fund, call Executive Director Sandy Albano at (941) 915-9249 or send her an email at salbano@temmons.org.

Vistas: Maine’s Chadbourne Tree Farms

Selected from what is undeniably one the finest White pine ownerships in the Northeast, Chadbourne Tree Farms is a 2,470-acre portfolio located in Western Maine near Bethel. The property consists of six tracts ranging in size from 111 to 687 acres, all well-stocked with timber. Collectively, it boasts an impressive 17,407 MBF of saw timber, more than half of which is white pine.

Total stocking averages 29 cords per forested acre, with over 40% of the sawtimber volume in trees 18” DBH and larger. In addition to its superb timber resource, the portfolio includes nearly three and a half miles of water frontage, most notably a mile and a half stretch along a pristine 155-acre cold water trout pond. This superior timberland investment opportunity is poised for strong performance well into the future.

$5.9 million
www.landvest.com

For Sale: Vermont’s Teal Farm

Set at the western base of Camels Hump State Park, Teal Farm is a world unto itself.  Its 500 acres includes a sustainably-managed northern hardwood watershed with streams, pond, wetlands, extensive trail network, waterfalls, and mountain pastures.  The forest provides much of the property’s bio-fuel, as well as ideal wildlife habitat.  The fenced pastures support a mixed herd of grass-fed Devon and Angus cattle that is rotationally grazed, which adds to the healthy stewardship of the land.  The property has a 100-year master plan, which includes a 10-acre permaculture orchard, believed to be the largest in North America, featuring fruits, nuts, fuel-wood, berries and fertilizing groundcovers that grow in sculpted microclimates around the buildings.

The property is an integrated, ecologically-designed farmstead that was created as a prototype for perpetual food, building and energy systems that are responsive to climate change, fluctuating energy supplies and a shifting global economy.  The flagship project of not-for-profit foundation LivingFuture, Teal Farm is located in the Green Mountain State of Vermont and is being offered for sale to support LivingFuture’s next project.

Founder and Executive Director Melissa Hoffman describes LivingFuture’s work as “living systems design.” It is an approach that strives to mimic natural processes and evolutionary dynamics in the re-design of physical and cultural infrastructures so that they become perpetually life-enhancing and foster creative, adaptive communities at local and global scales.  Melissa believes that our actual survival is at risk, and as such it falls on us to begin the project now, to invent the structures, both physical and cultural, internal and external, which will allow our species, and the system of life as whole, to thrive beyond the enormous challenges we are only beginning to encounter.  To that end, her foundation undertook the Teal Farm project, whose mission is “to create an ecologically intelligent food, energy and building system that perpetually enhances the environment and serves the evolution of its occupants”.

The farm complex includes an 8,000-square-foot, green-designed, farmhouse that dates back to 1865. Other improvements include an iconic 12,000-square-foot Douglas Fir-framed energy barn that houses the property’s state-of-the-art renewable energy and heating system, a converted post-and-beam barn apartment studio, a caretaker’s residence, and a utility barn/garage.  The farmhouse and energy barn set a whole new standard for green design and construction by running on renewable energy systems that marry cutting-edge technology with exquisite design and craftsmanship.

Teal Farm is a place of inspiration, a creative retreat, and a living laboratory intended to support innovation around issues of global importance.  Tucked away in a charming New England town, Teal Farm is only one hour by plane from Boston and New York City. The property is not protected from future development, leaving conservation tax advantages available for the next steward to explore.

$15,495,000
(802) 434-7798
www.EarthAsset.com

 

Albany to Pay $30 Million to Preserve Adirondacks

The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has sold conservation easements covering 89,000 acres in New York’s Adirondack Mountains to the State of New York. The deal is the most recent transaction related to the conservancy’s 2007 purchase of 161,000 acres of Finch Paper Holdings forestlands. In 2009, it sold 92,000+ acres of this timberland to a subsidiary of the Danish pension fund ATP for $30+ million. TNC has now the sold conservation rights and certain access rights to 30 miles of snowmobile trails on the ATP land to the state for $30 million.

According to the New York Times:

The latest transaction will result in improved public access to thousands of acres of forest, the Nature Conservancy said. It includes provisions for a better network of snowmobile trails in the region, important to the winter tourist economies of several small towns. The plan, approved by 27 towns on or near the former Finch lands, relieves some villages of having to make annual lease payments for snowmobile trails.

“It’s a very exciting day for us, and I think a really strategic investment by the state of New York in the Adirondack economy, and really, the tourism economy of the state,” said Michael T. Carr, executive director of the Adirondack chapter of the Nature Conservancy.

Mr. Carr said the conservation easement contains an innovative provision meant to allow biologists of the future greater flexibility in coping with climate change. With species expected to migrate north and to migrate higher up mountain slopes in a warming world, the conservation easement requires biological monitoring and a re-examination of management plans for the property, allowing for course corrections to be made if plants or animals require greater protection.

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