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Land Deal Preserves a 23-Acre Woodland
By Kara Lopp
The Journal Gazette (Thursday, October 19, 2006)
 Charles
Knight has found a way to save not only the wooded acreage on his property,
but the childhood memories he has there.
A 77-year-old Wolcottville resident, Knight recently signed an agreement
with Angola-based Wood-Land-Lakes Resource Conservation and Development to
preserve 23 acres of wooded land near his house on LaGrange County Road 500
East.
Knight – who grew up in Kendallville – has fond memories of combing through
the wooded area with his dad and uncle to hunt for squirrels, he said. Today
his six grandchildren, ranging in age from 11 to 22, use the woods for
cross-country skiing when they come to visit in the winter. Making
sure the area would stay a wooded retreat – and out of the hands of
developers – was enough reason to sign the agreement, Knight said.
“There’s not so much land left, and to my way of thinking, there’s way too
much of it going to 5- or 10- acre plots,” he said. “This being all timber,
and there not being that much timber left, I just wanted to keep it the way
it is.”
Under his agreement with the conservation group, the land can never be used
for anything other than lumber or woodland purposes, said Kathy Latz,
coordinator of the organization. The agreement is a permanent arrangement,
she said, and anyone Knight sells or leases the land to must abide by the
stipulation. Representatives from the organization will inspect the
land each year to ensure it’s being preserved as woodland.
The Wood-Land-Lakes organization currently has almost 1,000 acres they
protect scattered through Whitley, Steuben, Allen, LaGrange and Elkhart
counties, Latz said. Knight’s agreement marks the second entirely wooded
area they’ve been entrusted with. They also have farms and other
agricultural sites.
Organization members, who also help people start their own land trusts, are
thrilled with their latest addition, Latz said. The group started in 1994
with the goal of preserving agricultural land – something that other
conservation groups weren’t touching, she said.
The group has four other farms under its protection and one piece of land
near Hudson, where Little Turkey Lake is located. The group is in the
process of expanding its reach to agricultural land in DeKalb, Noble,
Huntington, Kosciusko, Marshall, St. Joseph and Wabash counties. Officials
are also hoping to be able to preserve land in the Ohio counties of Defiance
and Williams, Latz said. "The thing that is exciting to us is that a
landowner would trust us to be that steward for the life of the land, and
that's a long time," she said.
 Once
part of a more than 400-acre farm belonging to his family since the 1880s,
some of the trees on Knight’s property now are being grown for commercial
lumber and will be replanted, Knight said. The area, which has thousands of
oak, hickory and walnut trees, includes trees that are at least 100 years
old, Knight said. The original farm, where his great-grandfather grew
corn, wheat and oats, was split up after his mother died, Knight said. He
bought his share in 2000 and built a house on the property a year later.
Knight said he wouldn't mind passing the property down to one of his six
grandchildren to enjoy, but it's a decision they'll have to make.
"It's hard to tell what that generation is going to do," he said, laughing. |
