PARADISE, Cache County — Jon White's great-grandfather drove the first pioneer wagon into Paradise about 1885, and descendants of Bernard White have been working the land on 1,600 acres in the valley's southern corner ever since.
Like the first white settlers who saw green hills and wildflowers in the area and called it Paradise, four generations of Whites have loved and lived on the land. And as part of a landmark arrangement for this part of the state, these acres under northern Utah skies will forever be preserved for farming, camping, hunting, fishing and grazing.
"It's been in the family forever," said Jon White, 54, from his Cache County property this week. "We'd always envisioned it would be a farm and that's the way we want it to stay."
But the Whites are getting older. In their 50s, they are young farmers by Cache County standards, but none of the couple's four children is poised to take over farm operations. Farming isn't in their future. "So we talked it over as a family and decided this was the right thing to do," White said.
Today the White family, dignitaries and a national nonprofit land conservation group will celebrate the farm's protection and formalize an easement that will assure the Brooke Ranch stays agricultural land forever, said Alina Bokde, who has supervised the project for the Trust for Public Land, based in Santa Fe, N.M.
"This easement will help preserve the community identity and heritage so critical to Paradise and Cache County by protecting a working farm and ranch characteristic of the valley," Bokde said.
White says simply: "It's been a long time coming."
As part of the easement, the White family sells its right to develop the property to the Utah Department of Agriculture. White and his family will continue to live and work the land now. The children can sell it down the road, but it must continue to be used for agricultural purposes, according to the agreement.
Part of the Little Bear River are on the property, which is also home to elk and deer, sharp-tail grouse, pheasants, chukars and Hungarian partridge.
The fair market value of the Brooke Ranch conservation easement is $1.75 million and funding for the project includes $857,500 from the Federal Farmland Protection Program; $250,000 from the State LeRay McAllister Critical Lands Fund; and other funds from the George S. Dolores Dore Eccles Foundation, private contributions and a landowner contribution.
Mark E. Rey, U.S. Department of Agriculture undersecretary for natural resources and the environment, will speak at the ceremony today along with officials from the Trust for Public Lands, Cache County government, the state agriculture department and Utah's Quality Growth Commission.
These kinds of farmland protection are especially important in agriculture-rich Cache Valley, which is losing an average of 600 acres a year to development, Bokde said. "Not only is Brooke Ranch protected, but the Cache Valley agricultural community has a vivid example of how the purchase of development rights can protect working lands and of the local, regional and national support that such efforts attract."
"Protecting Utah agriculture protects our food supply, our environment and our heritage," Cary G. Peterson, Utah commissioner of agriculture and food, said in a press release announcing the celebration. "Protecting these acres in Cache County sends a positive message to other land owners who are considering what to do with their land for the future."
The White family established the farm in 1906, and Cache Valley's first creamery, built in the late 1800s, is on Brooke Ranch. It was a dairy farm way back then. There's an old red barn built by the pioneers, old style, where the wood is woven together without nails.
The Whites always have grown hay and grain. They farmed trout for awhile in the mid-1930s, and raised turkeys in the '50s. They operated a cannery and raised sheep at other times through the century. Since Jon White has operated the ranch — about 25 years now — he's grown hay and other forage crops on 600 acres and run cattle on the remaining 1,000 acres of foothill rangeland.
But the farming business has not been lucrative and White has watched development emerge all around him. With the easement in place, and his debts paid off, he can work his land without worry.
"I'm one of the few people you'll talk to that does a job he loves every day of his life."
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