Dear Friend of the Land,
Our Top 5 Accomplishments
We’re quite proud of all that we accomplished in 2023:
- 1 Protected additional farms and woodlands through conservation easements
- 2 Coordinated with the Southern Maryland Conservation Alliance to identify critical properties throughout Southern Maryland urgently needing protection from development
- 3 Transitioned from all-volunteer, with hire of a conservation easement manager
- 4 Worked to protect public lands from invasive species
- 5 Resumed public activities in this post-COVID period
Taking a Deeper Dive on 2023
PTLT completed a purchase in May of a conservation easement on an 86.7acre property. By the end of this year, we should close on two more conservation easements totaling 93.58 acres. With these new easements, we will have protected more than 10 square miles of land from development – forever! Funding for these easements came from the Maryland Rural Legacy Program and from the U.S. Navy. Sue Veith of St. Mary’s County Government assisted us in evaluating conservation values of each of these properties.
We completed acquisition of a forest conservation easement in April, allowing Historic St. Mary’s City to clear enough land to build a boating facility at Chancellor’s Point.
Early next year we will be closing on a conservation easement of more than 400 acres. More easements are in the pipeline, thanks to the hard work of our new conservation manager, Abby Greenwell.
Originally from St. Mary’s County, Abby graduated from Ryken High School and Old Dominion University before serving as an officer in the Navy. She moved back to St. Mary’s County where she and her husband James are raising three young children and managing a small farm. From the day we brought her aboard in March, Abby has been doing an outstanding job of enlisting property owners willing to place their properties under conservation easements.
We held an event June 15 at Jubilee Farm to thank our donors and volunteers. The event was made possible by a generous donation by the farm’s owner, Maggie O’Brien. On October 14, we held PTLT’s inaugural Turtle Trot, (a 5K walk/run race) at Point Lookout State Park. All participants finished before the rain started. We staffed an information table at the Earth Day observance at Summerseat Sanctuary. Unfortunately, we were rained out at St. Mary’s Watershed’s Riverfest in September, courtesy of Tropical Storm Ophelia.
We also continued a favorite PTLT tradition: our annual winter Weed Warrior workdays to clear vines and invasive plants at Myrtle Point County Park and Historic St. Mary’s City. This fall, our winter campaign started at Myrtle Point on November 4th.have helped to improve the health of our planet.
PTLT board member David Moulton reported on a study of modifying hay harvesting schedules to protect ground nesting birds. The findings: a modest delay in the first cutting does indeed improve fledging success.
The Southern Maryland Conservation Alliance, of which we are a member, is proving to be quite effective. We identified two large properties in Prince George’s County that will probably be saved from development. Meanwhile, the US Fish and Wildlife Service presented its proposal for a Southern Maryland Woodlands National Wildlife Refuge. Stay tuned. Our Huntersville Rural Legacy Area, including much of the MacIntosh Run watershed, falls within this priority conservation area.
In keeping with a key component of PTLT’s mission, we monitored all our conservation easements. One function of this land monitoring includes helping resolve landowner concerns.
Our thanks to all who made this happen. Until March we were an all-volunteer organization. Volunteers are handing off the easement acquisition work to Abby, but are continuing to conduct public outreach, training, and attending meetings – including the (virtual) Non-Profit Risk Summit and the kickoff of the Southern Maryland Heritage Area, volunteer coordination, easement monitoring, financial management including required IRS and state filings, as well as publicity via social media, our website, and newsletters.
Finally, special thanks to our donors. Donations help us fund such activities as the incidental costs of acquiring conservation easements and building a dedicated endowment for long-term stewardship of donated easements.
As you make your contributions this season, please consider PTLT in your charitable giving. PTLT is a tax exempt 501(c)(3) organization.
Thank you. I look forward to seeing you in the outdoors!
Frank Allen, President, Patuxent Tidewater Land Trust
A Conversation with Abby Greenwell
PTLT’s Manager of Contracts discusses her background, views on land stewardship, and her hopes
Interview by Phil Hayward
Abby Greenwell remembers a time not so long ago when traffic on Rt. 235 (aka Three Notch Road) would come to a standstill, not because of an uncountable succession of traffic lights, but because drivers of two approaching cars had paused for a cross-lanes conversation. Such was the 1980s transitioning into the ‘90s in St. Mary’s County.
In the following question-and-answer session, Greenwell digs deeper into her views on conservation and how she expects to apply them for PTLT. (continued on "Read More" page)
Abby Greenwell, PTLT Conservation Manager,
sharing the love of nature with her children
Happy New Year!
PTLT wishes all their Friends, Partners, and Volunteers a Happy New Year! Thank you for caring about the future of OUR local land for future generations. PTLT Closes out 2022 Protecting 133.5 Acres in Central St. Mary's County with a New Conservation Easement.
Patuxent Tidewater Land Trust has announced the November 29th closing of its latest conservation easement: 133.5 acres of forests and wetland east of Leonardtown.
Aaron Leroy and Judith Fay Mast own the property, which is located off of Leonardtown-Hollywood Road. This easement protects forever a particularly sensitive landscape in the McIntosh Run watershed. It is also the first transaction between PTLT and members of the county’s Mennonite community.
The property consists of narrow, forested plateaus topping steep forested hillsides draining south toward 40.87 acres of forested bottomland on either side of Brooks Run, a tributary of McIntosh Run which feeds into Breton Bay, a tidal tributary of the Potomac River. The easement provides permanent forested stream buffer to 8,242 linear feet of stream channels, including smaller streams located in steep swales draining through areas of highly erodible soils and occupying the wooded slope and main stem of Brooks Run.
“We’re very pleased with this transaction because it involves extremely sensitive environmental conditions,” PTLT President Frank Allen said." The entire property has been identified by Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources as likely habitat for state-designated Forest Interior Dwelling Species. Simply put, the Mast property is significant for biodiversity conservation. A large portion of the site is in the state’s Sensitive Species Project Review Area established for rare, threatened, and endangered species within the watersheds of the McIntosh Run and its tributaries, including Brooks Run.” When Aaron Mast bought the property, the seller told him she wanted it to be kept undeveloped. With the sale of this conservation easement, the Masts have been able to comply with those wishes and still be able to manage the property for agriculture, forestry, and hunting, and have a place for their children to play.
The Mast property easement brings PTLT’s total protected land in Southern Maryland to over 6,250 acres.
The mission of the Patuxent Tidewater Land Trust is to sustain the region’s biodiversity and water resources through a network of protected landscapes. The organization recognizes that forest and farmland and the region’s unique historic and scenic character are vital to a healthy economy and citizens’ sense of well-being. PTLT acquires land and conservation easements by purchase or donation. It has conserved more than 6,250 acres of land in perpetuity.
ptlt has a new agricultural easement!
On July 22nd, the Patuxent Tidewater Land Trust (PTLT) acquired a new conservation easement on the Webb farm in Valley Lee. This is an agricultural easement – the first such easement PTLT has acquired - through the MARBIDCO (Maryland Agricultural and Resource-Based Industry Development Corporation) Small Acreage Next Generation Program. This program helps farmers afford the land they want to purchase and farm. The closing for this sale took place at the same time that Jackson and Hattie purchased the property that they have been renting. The funds from the easement sale made it possible for them to satisfy the previous owner’s asking price.
Now that they own their farm, the Webb’s are excited to add their work to the farming community of Southern Maryland and plan to increase the size of their flock of sheep with a strong focus on rotational grazing and intensive management.
PTLT offers congratulations to the Webb’s on the purchase of their farm which will provide a lovely place for their young family to grow up.
new PTLT easement
On December 9th the Patuxent Tidewater Land Trust closed on yet another easement: a 56-acre property on Medleys Neck Road in Leonardtown owned by the Thorne family.
This beautiful parcel consists of nontidal wetlands, forests, and roughly three acres of cleared land for the farmstead and a farm field. Two primary nontidal streams flow through the forested area, providing approximately 3,400 linear feet of forested riparian buffer. The wooded section includes dense stands of laurel, holly, and some specimen-sized trees of varying species. There are also as many as several acres of healthy stands of lycopodium (club moss).
The Navy, through its REPI program (Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration), provided funding for half of the value of this conservation easement while the Thornes generously provided a donation for the balance. After closing, PTLT will co-hold the easement with the Navy and with Maryland Environmental Trust to protect the property in perpetuity.
Rose Thorne recalls fond memories of growing up on the property with her siblings and playing in the woods. She says the Thornes are not only thrilled to be able to protect this land for future generations but also as a remembrance of their parents for giving them such a lovely place to grow up.
An interview with Merideth Taylor
The Past is Alive
An interview with Merideth Taylor, author of Listening in: Echoes and Artifacts from Maryland’s Mother County.
Shortly after arriving at St. Mary’s College of Maryland in 1990 to teach dance and theater, Merideth Taylor set about exploring the backroads of Southern Maryland, camera in hand. Her forays would result in a 162-page book of photos and stories – Listening In: Echoes and Artifacts from Maryland’s Mother County.
Her book consists of brief entries accompanied by color photographs of one-of-a-kind built houses, stores, schoolhouses, churches, and barns – many far from their best years. Some still function, many are in advanced ruin, and some have since been demolished. Taylor’s stories depict imagined voices associated with each structure: children of tobacco workers, the young African American janitor at the schoolhouse at Sotterley Plantation, a moonshiner, a boardinghouse operator, and many more. Some voices are in the first person, others in the third person.
What comes through, in story after story, are takes on people connected to land – by virtue of farming, hunting, fishing, and engaging in everyday activities, such as school kids collecting firewood for their one-room schoolhouse. Taylor’s ghost voices echo a culture that hadn’t yet been overtaken by shopping centers, housing developments, car dealerships, fast food, and branch banks – such as in this partial entry:
Growing up on a farm by Chesapeake Bay, life was hard, but the family had good times, too. They were sharecroppers back then and didn’t have much. . . . Their dad wasn’t big on hunting and oystering, but he was a hard worker. Every year when the tobacco market time came, he’d ride up to Hughesville with Mr. Ford, the farm owner, and come back with a few hundred dollars. He hadn’t gone past the fourth grade in school, and the family was never sure whether that money was truly their fair share. But Mr. Ford ended up selling them a little piece of land with their house on it for a price they could afford, so they figured he was basically a fair-minded man. It was hard work, and the family never had money to spend, but they loved each other. They loved being together. And they learned a lot of important lessons about life, about how to stick together and do right by people.
In the following Q&A, Taylor tells how she came to bring these echoes to the page as well the photographs that connect them to the Southern Maryland landscape.
Patuxent Tidewater Land Trust: What inspired you to make something more of your exploratory road trips in Southern Maryland? Was it an evolution of an idea or did you know from the start what you wanted to accomplish?
Merideth Taylor: I took the photographs over a period of many years with no particular use in mind other than enjoying them hanging in small frames on the wall. I was lucky enough to be able to retire in 2012, and retirement provided me with the time to explore creative pursuits I had put on the “back burner” due to a heavy workload teaching, choreographing, and directing at the College. The idea for the book simply bubbled up because I had time to relax and think.
PTLT: You’ve lived in St. Mary’s County for close to 30 years. What have you observed in terms of changes to its landscape? Have you ever retraced your routes taken in the researching of your book and, if so, what changes have you noticed in what you photographed?
MT: Thanks for asking that - it gives me a chance to rant a little. The environmental changes since we arrived in 1990 have been enormous. The county could still have been described as having a “rural character” then, if not being actually rural. Former tobacco fields were just beginning to sprout houses here and there. There were many forested areas as well as farms. Willow’s road, for example, which is our main route into Lexington Park, was wooded almost all the way from Rt. 5 to town. It is now a strip of housing developments, storage businesses, and an industrial park. It’s painful to me to drive down it now, because I feel the loss. I do drive by many of the houses I photographed, and some are no longer there. I still feel attached to the sites. But I don’t feel romantic about that loss or the passage of a way of life so much as I feel very sad about the environmental degradation and the disappearance of natural habitat. This was one of the last relatively undeveloped peninsulas on the east coast. Though there are still pockets that seem rural, suburban sprawl and strip malls are becoming dominant.
PTLT: What are some of your more memorable entries in Listening In?
MT: If you mean are there favorites, not really. I identify more strongly with some than others maybe, because they’re closer to my own experiences. There’s one on development that reflects very much what I said about the way I feel about the loss of forests, farms, and natural surroundings.
PTLT: How do you see these structures connecting with the landscape in which they were built? Is it possible these structures “belonged” in the landscape while what has been replacing them hasn’t?
MT: Not sure. The buildings I photographed had a purpose, and that was to serve family needs in a way that was affordable, and, to the extent possible, pleasing to the eye. They were pretty utilitarian, but also reflected the skill and aspirations of the builder. The owner-built homes, even though they were, by and large, traditional and relatively simple, seem to have character in a way that the tracts of uniform, big, boxy houses don’t have. They are human scale. Generally, more inhabitants shared less space. Conspicuous consumption, whether of space or objects, was not rampant as it is today. And people lived much of their lives outside. Today we have big houses with small yards because lives are lived indoors, connected to the outside world through electronic devices.
PTLT: Do you see an inevitability in what’s happening to the region’s landscape, or if not completely inevitable, then what could mitigate the losses?
MT: Since the changes are largely fueled by population growth, mitigating factors are limited. And there is a strong cultural belief that growth is good; growth is equated with progress. While, it is good that people have homes and have jobs, we are seeing now the costs of unchecked growth and consumption, and we are facing a climate crisis. We can learn to cooperate and join together to take measures to reduce our carbon footprint. Science has defined the problems and led us to potential solutions. What is missing is the political and popular will to act. So maybe the inability to overcome our political polarization is the bigger crisis. But there are many promising signs. People are beginning to recognize that, when it comes to the health of our planet, we are all affected and all connected. We are all in the same boat.
PTLT: What would you like to see people get from reading Listening In?
MT: I hope they will gain a new perspective on local history and feel a connection to this interesting place and its diverse community, and that, whether they know it well, are newcomers, or have never been here, that they empathize with the characters and relate to their experiences. Of course, I hope they will enjoy it!
Listening In was published by George F. Thompson and is distributed by University of Virginia Press. It is available through the publisher and distributor, as well as in local shops, and on Amazon. Link to the author’s page at GFT Publisher: http://www.gftbooks.com/books_Taylor.html
Fundraising success!
Thank you to Becky Benton, organizer of the March 7 immensely successful French Stitch Bookbinding class. The proceeds from the event amounted to a $1442.80 check to benefit PTLT! Wow! Thank you!
Carol Morris and Margaret Mackie of Art Artcrossings led a great all day class. The extensive preparation for the class and instruction were superb. And a hearty thank you to Becky's husband, Fred (who is a superb cook), and provided a most delicious lunch. Good Samaritan Lutheran Church scheduled the class in the Fellowship Hall for patrons and instructors. Thank you to The Good Earth Natural Food Store, Leonardtown, for the tasty and healthy snacks.
It was a lot of work, but well worth it. A lot of beautiful new books were created and 16 more people have a new skill. Again thank you Becky, for your vision and hard work and Happy Birthday!
