[ Mid-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Engine starts ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> I'm from here.

This is my home.

This is where I was born.

This house up here actually was my grandmother's, so this farm here has been in four generations.

I'm lucky to say that my daughter now owns the place.

This whole system here is part of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Old mountains wear down and make good soil, so we have the proper soils for fruit.

In my dad's generation, processing apples were profitable, so it was fencerow to fencerow.

Everything was planted in apples.

So we started going to a couple farmers' markets.

What we've done, going from growing apples and peaches to just about anything that a customer asks for.

You keep your ear, you know, to what your customers are telling you and try to grow it.

And we've been pretty successful.

Some of it just break even, but you get them in your stand to buy one thing, they'll buy something else.

We tried 14 markets one year.

We've come back to what's efficient, which is like 10.

And we can do them justice and do it right.

[ Mid-tempo music plays ] >> We have a fifth-generation farm here in Adams County.

We grow mostly apples.

And we've been here since 1900.

We've done pick your own here a long time.

I think -- I just asked my grandfather this question the other day, but we've been doing pick your own cherries since probably the 1950s -- like, as far as he can remember back.

So it was, I think, my great grandmother that really started it with her father.

We've done it for years, and we've established this great customer base that enjoys visiting our farm because of that, and they've been coming for generations.

But we wanted to expand that and, you know, have people here more often, so we do pick your own blueberries and pick your own apples.

I think people like the freedom of coming here, you know, free to wander and just pick fruit.

It's important that farmers, you know, provide those opportunities for people to be connected to nature and to the land and where their food comes from.

♪♪ ♪♪ >> Adams County is located in South Central Pennsylvania, so it's in the middle of the state, but on the southern border with Maryland.

And it's the home of Gettysburg.

I guess it is probably the largest town, but it's only a town of 8,000, so it's quite small.

I live right in town, and I live like a block off the square, basically.

And that's great to be, you know, close to where I work and close to restaurants and bars and shopping in downtown Gettysburg.

And another benefit, honestly, is that within about a minute, I can be within the battlefield.

So I leave my apartment and 30 seconds later, if I'm biking, I'm going down a road towards Culp's Hill.

I'm in beautiful, historic, preserved, open space.

And just beyond the battlefield are even more protected, beautiful, rural landscapes.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ When I was hired by the Land Conservancy in 2009, Patrick Naugle was the president.

I hadn't decided yet if I wanted to make the move to Gettysburg, but I came to check out the town to see what it was like.

And Pat actually called me on the phone, spurring me on to make a decision.

And I said, "Well, actually, I'm in Gettysburg right now, looking around."

And he asked if we could meet for coffee.

So we met at the Ragged Edge, had a cup of coffee, and I guess our friendship started there.

I don't remember when I learned that Pat had a goal to bike every road in Adams County, but it's very likely that when he met me for coffee that day at the Ragged Edge, before I'd even accepted the job, that he came on his bicycle.

>> I really appreciate biking.

I appreciate it for more than just getting out and getting the exercise.

These roads are really quiet, and you can get out there and just enjoy yourself on a bike.

But I decided that Adams County was so neat and unique that I wanted to ride every road in the county.

And my wife and I -- we used to start from Gettysburg and we'd ride to Littlestown different ways, have breakfast down there and then come back.

If you just went out like that, pretty soon, you have a lot of it covered.

Unfortunately, my wife and I lost our focus on that, and we never did complete it.

There are other people that are a little more focused than I, and they are close to completing it.

This area over here, I kind of regret not doing more of that, 'cause it's easy stuff.

>> It's flat.

Yeah.

Get over there, it's not bad at all.

>> Then you get over there and there's a lot of Hanover Shoe Farms -- you know, some beautiful territory over that way.

I can only claim partial credit for inspiring them to do that.

>> So as someone who was unfamiliar with Adams County and who was new here and who felt like for my job, it was really important to be familiar with Adams County, I decided to adopt that goal for myself as a way to explore and just as a way to get to know Adams County better.

[ Mid-tempo music plays ] >> My name is Dave Salisbury.

And my wife, Cynthia, and I moved to Gettysburg in 2012.

When Cynthia and I were making decisions around how we would plan our retirement, there were multiple options.

And one of them that rose very quickly to the top was Gettysburg.

We both went to the college, and I remember it was such a beautiful place to be.

And when you're young and you're in college, you've got so much on your mind, and there's so many things that you're focusing on, trying to contemplate about your future and getting through classes, taking exams.

And, you know, I just remember all of that was sort of backdropped by this beautiful landscape.

I used to love to go biking and hiking and walking and running through the battlefields.

And we were very fond of the area when we were here in the college, and decided it was a wonderful place to potentially retire to, which ultimately became the case.

And when we came to Adams County, we learned more about the Land Conservancy.

Its mission is very simple -- to preserve the rural lands and character of Adams County.

And it's done a wonderful job doing that.

And the Land Conservancy became an organization that was dear to our hearts and an organization that I want to be a part of and help to do better.

>> My job is to do the entire preservation process from beginning to end, and then actually beyond that.

We begin that process with some kind of standard real-estate transactional processes, like title searches and doing surveys.

And of course, one of the big thing we do is working on the language of the conservation easement deed that gets attached to their property in perpetuity.

Another part of my job is doing what we call baseline documentation, which is developing a record of the property's characteristics today so that in the future, when we do annual inspections or if there are any changes, we know what to compare it to.

We now have 173 conservation easements, and those easements cover 12,000 acres of land.

>> Those of us that have evolved with the Land Conservancy of Adams County know there's a difference between preserved and protected, the difference being that when the land conservancy preserves something, there is an easement that's ironclad.

It's backed up by court actions and IRS rules that you have to live by the conditions of the easement.

When it's protected, these things aren't quite as clear cut.

If you love open space, which I do, and you want to make sure it's there for your kids and your grandkids and their grandkids, you better preserve it through something like the Land Conservancy because of all the legal protections that it has.

[ Down-tempo music plays ] >> I currently live on Scott Road.

It's a preserved, 124-acre farm.

In 1741, the Penn brothers warranted this valley to the Scotts, and to this day, everyone except for us that live on this road are descendants of the Scott family.

It's a beautiful area along Marsh Creek that has gorgeous views.

There are active farming practices being done.

And it's, in my opinion, the most magnificent road in all of Adams County.

Today we hosted at our barn here on Scott Road a wonderful event that was designed around the HGAC, Historic Gettysburg Adams County Barn Tour event.

And there were nearly 200 participants that signed up to drive around Adams County and see a half a dozen or so barns.

It's nice to see that there are people who genuinely appreciate the beauty of the architecture of Pennsylvania bank barns and these barns that exist on many of them on preserved properties.

And it's no surprise that the people that are interested in barns and property are the same kind of people.

I look around this area.

Everything around us is preserved here.

I would like to see more places in the county that we can have that same conversation.

>> So, in total we have about 1,800 acres, and the Land Conservancy has preserved about half of that.

A lot of it is wooded property.

It's hilly ground, very stony, rocky ground.

And because of the topography, there's a lot of, like, neat, vernal pools and streams that come off of the hillside and its headwaters for the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac watershed.

We wanted to preserve that part of it, 'cause we can't really use it for farming production.

And it's not only important for groundwater, but it's important for our farm, 'cause it all plays into the ecology of growing fruit.

>> Water and land use is just inextricably connected, and you just can't separate them.

So I got involved in water issues mostly.

I'm a past president and current president of the Watershed Alliance of Adams County.

The water situation in Adams County is somewhat unique.

90% of our water comes from groundwater.

So, you know, you need to make sure that you protect it while it's still in good condition.

[ Mid-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ >> My dad wasn't into fishing.

My brother wasn't into fishing.

It was just kind of a solo thing.

It just felt good.

And I could lose myself in it.

I still can't.

It's one of those things that gets you in trouble.

"When are you gonna be back?"

"Oh, I'll be back at 5:00."

You know, and you come in at 9:00.

I can get completely lost in it.

Actually, I could come down here and bring the fishing rod and sit in the bank and maybe never throw the line in.

It's meditation.

It really is.

As a kid, I spent all my time in the stream down through here and up there in that hillside, exploring.

I was allowed, when I get home from school, to come down here and turn over rocks and catch salamanders and crayfish and all that.

And mom would yell off the front porch, and I come up to eat supper, hogged up in mud.

So I always loved doing that kind of stuff.

And then my kids did it, and now my grandkids do it.

So there's value in that.

But my friends and I have talked about when they were kids, and we fished the streams and stuff around here.

I think they're actually in better shape now than they were then.

Preservation of different parcels of it.

They're not getting trashed all the time.

We had decided we're never going to do anything with that, so why not put it in the Land Conservancy?

I'm glad this part is as-is, you know, preserved.

>> If it's a farm that we preserve, we require conservation plan.

You have to do a whole list of things that go back to water quality.

If you look at our map of preserved properties, you will see clusters.

But one of them is they targeted easements along this stream, the Marsh Creek right behind us.

It's so clear and good that the Borough of Gettysburg Municipal Authority gets their surface water intake just about a mile downstream from here.

>> Land preservation limits impervious surfaces, so it limits things like pavement and rooftops on a property.

Limiting those things allows rainwater to filter into the ground directly, recharging our groundwater resources and our aquifers.

So we need those open spaces to have groundwater recharge.

Typically, we have forested buffers along waterways and streams and creeks, which are the best for filtering rainwater and groundwater that runs to creeks and streams.

So it filters things like sediment and pollutants.

And that, of course, helps us protect our waterways for quality.

♪♪ One of my favorite things to do in the creeks and streams of Adams County is just to cool off in the summertime.

Often when I'm doing these property inspections, I'm secretly scoping out swimming holes.

And not that I ever would trespass or use someone's private property for that, but Middle Creek is a nice, cool stream that comes off the mountain.

You can bike out there.

It's eight miles from Gettysburg.

So you get hot on your bike ride, you cool off in the creek, and then you can bike back home to Gettysburg.

♪♪ ♪♪ >> I do a lot of fishing up at Conewago Creek.

They have a special regulation for fly fishing only.

It's catch and release.

And the local Trout Unlimited chapter and Mummasburg Sportsman Association do an excellent job of putting big trout in there, so it's a really good experience.

And since it's catch and release you know they're there.

♪♪ This place provides all kinds of opportunities to learn how to fly-fish.

♪♪ >> I look up to Pat for a lot of reasons, not only his commitment to the Land Conservancy.

You know, he served on our board of directors, he served as our president, and he continues to serve on our conservation committee, as well as our finance committee, communications committee.

So he really spends a lot of time for the organization, and you can tell he's very dedicated to our mission.

He's a person who's clearly very invested in his community.

You know, he gets involved with the things that are important to him, and, also, acting as a mentor to those who want to get more involved in their community or spend more time outdoors.

[ Soft music plays ] >> Places that are beautiful like this are the ones that are most subject to the development pressures.

>> Land preservation often is supported or comes about as a reaction to development.

But really to make sure that we have a critical mass of farmland and, you know, a critical mass of open space and protected lands, we have to get ahead of development and to have good planning and zoning and land-preservation programs in place to make sure that we do protect our open, rural landscape.

>> The Land Conservancy of Adams County is not against development.

It's a matter of responsible development.

We know people need to live in places, work in places.

And it's critical that we work very carefully to make sure that we are preserving, as other areas are being developed so that we have a fabric that we can pass along to future generations.

>> Development pressure is real, and I hope that the Land Conservancy will continue to direct development and growth to places that are appropriate, so places near our existing towns and boroughs and villages.

I hope that we increase our pace of preservation and shape the way that the county develops and grows.

People take for granted that things won't change.

♪♪ ♪♪ >> There's something really rewarding about holding up a piece of fruit, "I grew this.

I grew this."

It's lost in our society anymore.

It's lost.

>> There's a huge decline in farmers.

I think less than 1% of our country is involved in farming or agriculture, and that continues to decrease.

So it's great that, you know, our farm and all the farms in this region can provide ways for people to connect to the food they eat.

We wanted to preserve this valley.

It's been, you know, special to our family, obviously.

But we want to share it for future generations.

>> I really believe that preserved properties are a gem for not only current owners, but for future property owners.

And it's not only just for them, because that would that would be selfish if it was just for an individual.

>> It's not to benefit me.

You know, it doesn't matter -- If we sell the whole thing, the next guy has got the same covenant on the land.

It stays that way.

And that's good.

And if you believe you want to leave the land better than you found it, that's certainly part of it.

This is just a beautiful place to live.

♪♪ >> Land preservation always has an element of public benefit to it, so things like protecting open space, wildlife habitat, protecting farmland, protecting recreational resources, protecting historic resources -- all of those things have a public benefit.

We all value what makes a place have a particular feel.

And that's what land preservation does.

It preserves that sense of place and the uniqueness that we have in our rural countrysides and rural landscapes.

>> Any resident of or visitor of Adams County will appreciate driving down Scott Road or any other road in Adams County past a preserved property and enjoying the open space and the beauty of what it has to offer.

And that is something that is going to exist beyond any property owner's ownership.

It's a matter of perpetuity.

And that's just a beautiful concept to me.

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