My wife and I are thinking about buying a piece of land near Lawrence. It’s kind of amusing to think of land ownership in general…sort of like planting your flag and pretending that somehow this particular land belongs to you and no one else. Aside from this human urge to claim what is not ours, I want to protect a small part of the earth and act as a good steward.
Kiva and I are both interested in sustainable land stewardship and doing what we can for long-term preservation. Conservation easements, or the practice of legally protecting land from subdividing, is an amazing concept. It’s been increasingly popular in the United States, particularly where land is more threatened by urban development. You won’t end up having ethically flexible developers coming and creating an expanded city in a pristine area.
There are a few protected land sites around this city that are owned by the local universities, including KU , Baker, and HINU. It would be cool to have land that’s adjacent to one of those sites...having that peace of mind that your surroundings won’t end up like postage stamp mini subdivisions is rewarding enough, but we could also create another conservation easement and increase land that is protected in perpetuity.
We’ve been looking at deeply wooded sites, which are few and far between around here. There are obvious benefits in a site like that…privacy and wildlife in particular. The main drawback is trying to decide where a veggie garden might go…and you might as well dismiss a photovoltaic setup, since you’d have to chop down half your site to get the prerequisite sunlight. I think overall though we’d prefer the woods over any pasture land. Like Kiva said, we can always lease out a neighbor’s field if I ever got the gumption to be an organic farmer. Who knows…
No comments:
Post a Comment