Presenters included Steve Lemon of Martin, Hopkins & Lemon; Robert Lambeth; Sam Long of Miller Long & Associates; Fulton Galer of McLeod & Company; and David Hurt and Kelli Hopkins of Conservation Partners.

This was the third consecutive year that the land trust has offered a continuing education program. This year’s course, “Conservation Easements: From the Client’s Perspective,” will be available throughout the year for viewing online, and on computer disc. Visit the WVLT Continuing Education page for more information.

The WVLT Prius at the Floyd Country Store

The Western Virginia Land Trust recently completed 11 workshops for landowners in its 10-county service area. From Hillsville to Martinsville and from New Castle to Bedford and beyond, area landowners learned about ways to conserve their land with conservation easements.

An especially good time was had in Floyd on April 22, when WVLT hosted its first “Bluegrass and Green Beans” event featuring a catered barbecue dinner and music from the Zephyr Lightning Bolts at the Floyd Country Store. About 30 people were on hand to enjoy the food and music and listen to an educational program from WVLT.

Watch and hear the Zephyr Lightning Bolts:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Prior to the meetings, WVLT staff mailed a copy of their 2010 landowner special edition of Saving Land to nearly 5,000 landowners who own larger tracts of land in WVLT’s service area. Every who attended the meetings also received a copy of the trust’s landowner DVD, Your Land, Your Choices.

Funding for the meeting on Bent Mountain and in Floyd was provided by the Foundation for Roanoke Valley.

Braeloch lodge is the setting for this year's Conservation Celebration.

The Western Virginia Land Trust will hold its fall Conservation Celebration on Sunday, Sept. 12 from 4-7 pm at Braeloch in Vinton, VA. Dr. M. Rupert Cutler of Roanoke will accept the A. Victor Thomas Environmental Stewardship Award for his commitment to open space preservation in Virginia, and WVLT will present James and Esta Wilson of Martinsville with the land trust’s first conservation easement donor award. Please mark your calendar and plan to join us at the event! An invitation will be mailed to all current WVLT members in August.

The Celebration will feature a catered dinner by Blue Ridge Catering, beer from Floyd’s Shooting Creek Brewery made with local hops, local wine from Valhalla Vineyards, live music from Easy Pickin’s, and a silent auction. At last year’s event, around 250 land trust members, conservationists, elected officials and business leaders gathered on the campus of Hollins University to honor former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine.

For more information, visit the Conservation Celebration website!

Listen to the PSA running on 101.5 The Music Place:

WVLT-ROS PSA

View the Race for Open Space PSA from Cox cable:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Read Mountain rises above the Kegleys’ farm in northeast Roanoke. Credit: Josh Gibson.

Originally published Winter 2007-08. Roanoke resident Louise Kegley and her husband, WVLT Trustee George Kegley, have donated a landmark conservation easement on their 116-acre Roanoke City farm to the Virginia Outdoors Foundation and the Virginia Board of Historic Resources.

The easement on the farm, situated between the Ole Monterey and Blue Hills golf courses in northeast Roanoke, is the first and only conservation easement within Roanoke City limits.

Listen to George and Louise Kegley talk about their conservation easement:

Click here to view the embedded video.

A map of the Kegleys' farm

With its low profile, large windows, and use of porches, the house is more typical of the Greek Revival of the Gulf states than of Virginia. The house is listed on both the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places.

The Read family bought the property from Oliver shortly after Monterey was built, and owned it for more than 100 years until Louise Kegley bought the property in 1968. The house is scenically located on a knoll above Tinker Creek with beautiful views of Read Mountain and the surrounding Roanoke Valley.

“We’re doing this because our children want to save one of the last green spaces left in the valley,” said Louise. The easement allows the property to be subdivided just twice, with no division to be less than 100 acres. The easement allows for one additional dwelling to be built, which must be less than 2,000 square

feet, and it requires a 35-foot riparian buffer along Tinker Creek.

The easement also provides special protections for the home itself to maintain its historic

integrity and character.

The Kegleys’ property is and will remain the largest undeveloped tract of agricultural land in Roanoke. While the land is within city limits, it is zoned Residential Agricultural, making it eligible for an easement under state laws that require conservation easements to be compatible with local zoning and comprehensive plans.

The Kegleys’ son Andy also placed a conservation easement in September 2004 on the 298-acre farm he bought from his uncle in Wythe County.

Roger Holnback

We have been very busy with accreditation, 11 landowner meetings and a first for us, an online continuing education credit program for attorneys, accountants and estate planners. We have our second annual Race for Open Space on Saturday, June 5^th at Green Hill Park. Staff, board members  and friends will be on hand to make it happen and we hope you can run or walk our Green Hill Park course to support your land trust.

You may be wondering why an E-dition of Saving Land in Western Virginia.  To put it bluntly, it’s about the money it costs to print and deliver our usual 1,000 newsletters to members.   It costs almost $3,000 each quarter to provide you with what we hope are informative news items and stories of the wonderful families who have conserved the places they hold to be so special. Despite record support from our corporate friends who sponsored our last Conservation Celebration and great support by our board, staff and many generous members, we still have not been able to make up for the loss of the May Foundation Grant prior to 2009 that had provided $40,000 of critical support annually for13 consecutive years. The story has been told in past editions of Land Protection News and now Saving Land in Western Virginia. At the end of our fiscal year on June 30, we are anticipating a significant budget shortfall at WVLT.

We will be addressing budget issues in the coming weeks and while we have some cash reserves, the situation is becoming critical. With only two staff and a great free office space (thank you Jim Woltz) there are not many options to make up the shortfall by cost savings, without decimating the organization’s ability to do the important work we do.  This year we have been more entrepreneurial, placing ads in our landowner special edition and soliciting more sponsors for the Race for Open Space. We will be asking all those great corporations that came through for us for last year’s Celebration to dig deep and come through for us again, and new ones will be approached by our board and staff in the coming weeks.

So please join WVLT if you are not already a member. And if you own a business, join our other outstanding sponsors and support our September 12^th Conservation Celebration.

Thank you!

-RBH