By DEBORAH E. LANS
AUSTERLITZ–In late January Scenic Hudson Land Trust and its partners entered into conservation easements that will permanently protect more than 600 acres in the county at two sites: in Austerlitz, at Steepletop, the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay’s property, and in Taghkanic, at an historic and still-working farm. Both properties are part of an important belt of forests and farmlands that stretches from southwest to northeast Columbia County and supports wildlife habitat, diversity and ecological resilience. Conservation easements permanently limit and define the development that can occur on a site.
Steepletop was Ms. Millay’s home for some 25 years until her death in 1950, when her sister, Norma, took occupancy. At Norma’s death in 1986 the property was turned over to the Millay Society, a non-profit. The property is a National Historic Landmark, and it was there that Ms. Millay wrote most of her mature poetry. To her, it was “one of the loveliest places in the world”.
The grounds include Ms. Millay’s 1892 New England farmhouse, gardens and writing cabins, and also, and now subject to the easement, her gravesite and a poetry trail sited within 185 acres of woods, fields and wetlands. The property is, in turn, surrounded by the Harvey Mountain State Forest and, according to Scenic Hudson’s Executive Director Seth McKee, part of a contiguous 4,000-plus acre block of state land. The Steepletop lands, Mr. McKee says, was a donut hole in a large protected area that has now been made whole.
In 2020, Hawthorne Valley’s Farmscape Ecology Program (FEP) reported on the biological inventories it had conducted at Steepletop over the prior decade. FEP documented 268 plants species, of which 192 were native; an “ancient” (i.e., never clear-cut) forest primarily of oak and maple; areas of new forest; and, most importantly, a swath of “old fields” that support native plant species that are rarely seen in the county, such as Golden Alexander, Gild Geranium, Narrow-leaved Mountain Mint, Wood Lily, Spiked Lobelia, American Harebell and several types of orchid. In addition, rare in the county, dragonflies, damselflies and butterflies were identified.
While Steepletop has been closed to the public since 2019, Millay Society President Vincent Barnett says that in 2025 she hopes the property will be open on select summer weekends (keep an eye on the Millay.org website for dates), if enough volunteer docents can be recruited.
Since 2019 the society has made significant capital improvements to the structure on the property, and some exterior work remains to be done. An inventory of the poet’s 3,000 volume library was begun before the pandemic, and Ms. Bennett hopes to restart that project as well.
Importantly, the money received in the easement transaction will help the society in its search for a long- term partner and its plans to reopen the property. Funding for the easement was derived from the first round of the state’s new Forest Conservation Easements for Land Trusts (FCELT) program and from the Land Trust Alliance, a non-profit that serves land trusts throughout the country. FCELT is designed to protect climate-resilient, forested, private lands that preserve water quality, build wildlife corridors, strengthen biodiversity and expand recreational opportunities.
In Taghkanic, some 400 acres, consisting of “prime foodshed acres in an agricultural district,” 180 acres of forest and 57 acres of freshwater wetlands that drain into the Taghkanic Creek were conserved by life-long resident Albert Christiana. Part of the land is currently leased to Lyn Main who grows hay, corn and sorghum there. The wetlands support the water supply of the City of Hudson.
Funding for this easement was raised through private sources, and Mr. Christiana also transferred the easement at less than its fair market value, thereby contributing to the project finances as well. The easement includes a feature that will help ensure the property will remain affordable as farmland in the future—a “preemptive purchase right” that will allow Scenic Hudson to see that future sale prices are at the property’s agricultural (not development) value.
Scenic Hudson is a regional environmental organization that, among other things, works to safeguard important Hudson Valley landscapes and promote balanced and sustainable development.
To contact reporter Deborah Lans, email deborahlans@icloud.comn.
