As a city boy born and bred in the canyons of New York City, there's a lot about farming that I have yet to comprehend.  Like why farmers enjoy their work.  It seems like a hard, back-breaking, sweaty, labor-intensive effort, and I'm just talking about carrying all those heavy seed catalogues from the mailbox to the house.

If you have cows you have to get up early to milk them. If you have chickens you're up with the roosters, as are your neighbors.  Same with all those other annoying farm animals that need early morning attention.  I have enough trouble getting up in the morning to let the dog out.

And growing crops is no better. You have to plow the fields before you plant the seeds before you worry whether it will ever rain again before you worry whether it will ever stop raining.  I have enough trouble deciding whether to take an umbrella with me when I go to lunch.

That's why it was so unique and inspiring to sit in a room full of dedicated farmers at last Monday night's Selectman meeting.  They'd all been invited to discuss the state of agriculture in Lincoln.  And, while this could have become an opportunity for them to complain about things (wildlife, land costs, the weather), what came through loud and clear was their shared love of the land and their dedication to growing things. 

There was Ray Adamson from Codman Community Farm, Ari Kurtz from Lindentree Farm, Ellery Kimball from Blue Heron Organic Farm on Rt. 117, Kim Johnson from Red Rail Farm, and a few Food Project representatives. Jim Arena from Arena Farm and Steve Verrill from Verrill's Farm were also there.  The latter two have retail operations in Concord but farm Lincoln land.  The proprietor of Lincoln's own Turtle Creek Winery, Kip Kumler, attended this farming pow-wow, as did former farmer and current part-time shepherd, Karl Van Leer--he tends a flock of six sheep on ten acres. 

The purpose of the meeting was to see if Lincoln town government was doing all that it could to promote farming in our community.  It came about at the behest of Selectman Sara Mattes, a former U of W (as in Wisconsin) farming student.  Usually I get nervous whenever Mattes proposes new initiatives, but this seemed different.

Recent conversations between the Selectmen and Conservation Commission members revealed a concern that perhaps more could be done to preserve and promote agriculture in Lincoln.  Had conservation commission members become so overwhelmed with controversial wetlands issues that Lincoln's farmers' concerns had inadvertently gotten short shrift? Inquiring minds wanted to find out.

Conservation Commission member Jim Henderson kicked the meeting off by acknowledging that farmers have a different set of issues from those concerned about land conservation, yet both groups are stewards of the land.  He gave a brief overview of what some other Boston-area towns are doing to promote agriculture, and then opened it up to discussion.

Some of the farmers had ideas for working closer with Lincoln's public schools, perhaps creating a lunch menu using Lincoln-grown produce. Others discussed the need for a more permanent retail operation in town, perhaps connected with Donelan's. 

Others spoke of the need for longer-term leases.  Most farmers work town conservation fields. The Conservation Commission's policy, under state law, is to limit the rental terms to five years.  Some farmers pointed out that it takes three or four years to prepare a field for quality planting.  It's difficult to commit the time, money and energy required to cultivate a field if you're not sure you'll be able to reap the benefits after that fifth year.

Town officials seemed to be seeking farmer input on whether to form an agricultural committee or subcommittee of some kind, or maybe just a farmland advisory group.  Some thought it was a good idea while others felt it would be better if the Conservation Commission remained in direct control. In the end, no decision was made.

Nobody argued, they just shared their thoughts. And when Ellery Kimball shared her utopian vision in which community farming in Lincoln would serve as an example for farming practices across the country, everyone applauded.  It was a fun night of farming camaraderie.

The endgame is upon him. His time is almost up. The auction sign has gone up in front of his Weston Road home. Three weeks from today, if no solution is found, if no agreement can be reached, Charley "Kim" Fitts will lose the house he grew up in. The house he still lives in and clings to.

To his credit, it’s taken quite a while to get to this point. Four long years of court battles with powerful Boston real estate developer Phillip DeNormandie over the ownership of his family’s property have ensued. Four years of worrying about what he would do if he lost the lawsuits. Four years of obsessing over the details of the nightmare he is being forced to endure.

Charley’s father, Charles Sr., was a Lincoln selectman from 1956 until he died in 1963. When his mother, Beanie, passed away in 1994, she left the Weston Road property to her two children: Charley and his sister, Sylvia, who lives in England.

The bucolic, almost 16-acre property includes a modern-looking, ranch-style house designed by Henry Hoover. The house sits on a beautiful piece of land, with a pond and a horse cart path running through it. Much of the property is wetlands, but there has always been speculation that at least one additional buildable lot could be carved out. Even without taking that possible lot into consideration, appraisers have consistently valued the property in the $3.5 million and up range. And we all know that a buildable lot in such a desirable location could add close to a million bucks to that price tag.

The property’s value or its development potential never meant much to Charley. Born in 1943, he attended the Lincoln schools, graduated from UMass-Amherst, and then returned home to live. More of an eccentric, artistic type than a practical businessman, Charley has lived a spartan existence, particularly over the last decade, as he’s had to fend for himself. He lives within his thoughts, content to get by on less than what most of us pay in property taxes. If that meant the phone got turned off, or that he had to survive the winter without heat, or that he went a day or two without eating, then so be it.

The Fitts siblings agreed, upon their mother’s death, not to sell the property for at least five years. And they both signed a Memorandum of Understanding, giving each the right of first refusal should either want to sell their half-interest. Unfortunately, that memorandum was never recorded with the deed and before long, property tax bills accrued and needed repairs to the house fell behind. Sylvia couldn’t count on Charley to pay the bills, he’d spent much of his inheritance restoring the pond. So, when Phillip DeNormandie came along offering $690,000 for her half-share of the property (assessed at $3.5 million or more), she accepted it, leaving Charley to fend for himself.

Speculation at the time was that DeNormandie wanted the property for its Weston Road access to his family’s abutting land off of Trapelo Road. Was he interested in developing a cluster of homes at the bottom of DeNormandie Hill, the town’s de facto sledding hill? He’s quoted in a February, 2001 news article in the Lincoln Journal as saying, "I plan to just hold onto [the property]. We’ve held it in our family since just about as long as the Flints. We have no intention of developing it."
 

Well, if that’s so, why’d he buy half the property in the first place? Ask yourself: are any of your neighbors trying to buy half of your property for no reason at all? Once he acquired half of the property, why’d DeNormandie try to charge Charley rent to live in the house he grew up in? And why is he hounding him relentlessly through the courts, ultimately forcing the sale of Charley’s interest through an auction? Why throw one of Lincoln’s most vulnerable citizens out in the street?

Anytime you make a public offer to sell something valuable for pennies on the dollar--and all that has to be done is evict a harmless, helpless person--you can expect the vultures to come out of the woodwork. Speculators have already driven their BMWs and Mercedes up Charley’s driveway, hoping for an advanced peek at the secluded property. But if Phillip DeNormandie has anything to say about it, come August 19, they’ll all go home empty-handed.  And Charley will be homeless.


 

I'm clearly a "the glass is half-empty" kind of guy.  While others laze around, content to enjoy this awesomely beautiful summer, I spend my time fretting over the things that annoy all Lincolnites.  Nature?  Too buggy.  And how about those noisy frogs?  All night with their ribbit-ing.  Who can sleep?

See what I mean?  I can't just sit around happily watching the grass grow.  I get too aggravated just thinking about having to mow it.  Warm, sunny weather?  Uh-oh, higher air conditioning bills!  About the only unmitigated good thing about summer is that the Board of Selectmen take the month of August off.  Even then I worry about chairman Gary Taylor and his penchant for behind-the-scenes activities that we won't find out about until September.

Here's a short list of things that are annoying me this summer.  The list could be longer, but why spread the aggravation even further?

Bugs - This should really be a multiple category, there are so many to choose from.  One of the two most annoying summertime bugs is the one with a fanned wing-span that look like a mini-F18 fighter jet.  Take a walk in the woods and they'll find you.  They especially like to land in your hair and bite you. How annoying is that?

Speaking of bites, can any bug ever really beat the good, ol' mosquito for pure, unadulterated annoyance?  This summer has been so bad, I've hardly ventured out since Memorial Day. My wife, Kathy, is so sensitive to their bites that we keep a vat filled with cortisone cream (full-strength, 1%).  Whenever she gets a bite she immediately slathers the affected body part with the stuff until the itch subsides.

Invasive plant species - Purple loosestrife, buckthorn and honeysuckle are three that are running rampant around these here parts.  Would-be landscape artists come from miles around to paint the loosestrife-covered fields at Nine Acre Corner in Concord, adjacent to Lee's Bridge on Rt. 117.  It's quite a sight in the late afternoon sun.  Too bad there isn't a market for the plants.   

People who drive too slow - They're easily spotted by the "Lincolnites drive 20" bumper stickers on their cars.  Those stickers are put  only on cars whose gas pedals have been permanently removed. Drivers operate those vehicles in a manner similar to one of those Segway balancing scooters.  They lean forward to gather some vehicle momentum and use the brake to slow down.  Amazingly, the brakes on these cars always work.  Boy, do they work.

People who drive too fast - Otherwise known as out-of-town commuters.  After all, none of us would ever speed around town, now would we?

Greedy neighbors -  We're not talking about a neighbor who borrows the Tupperware and neglects to return it.  We're talking about the scion of a deeply-rooted family who holds out a false apple of hope to one weak sibling and, in so doing, manages to divide another family to his own advantage.  We're talking, of course, about the Charlie Fitts/Phillip DeNormandie conundrum.

It's now two weeks until the auction of his 16-acre Weston Road property, and Charlie has made no plans for the future.  He has no money so he can't move, even if he wanted to.  And where could he go?  He has arthritis in his hip that requires him to use a cane. He has no car, with or without a gas pedal. He's lived a hermit's existence, obsessing about keeping his family's property ever since his sister bit the apple.  His house and the land have been his universe for sixty years.

Boston developer Phillip DeNormandie, whose family owns the forty acres of farmland and the hill abutting the Fitts property, wants to get his hands on the half of this property he hasn't already finagled. In a key legal victory, his lawyers have prevailed upon the court to auction the property in two separate lots on the same day, rather than as one whole property.  However, this is a case of the whole being way greater than the sum of its parts.  

The first auction will include the house and the conforming lot around it.  If DeNormandie wins that auction, it is likely that nobody will want to bid on the larger, landlocked parcel, which includes the pond, the horsecart path and the potentially developable, additional lot.  DeNormandie could end up getting those 13 acres for a buck.  Heck, if the auction goes really successfully for him, he may not have to pay Fitts another penny for his prime property, which would instantly catapult him to robber baron status.

It's disappointing that the First Parish Church's Social Concerns Committee or the Rural Land Foundation, which is fully capable of putting a deal together--and did so to acquire conservation rights to the Cannon Holden property next door to Charlie's--have remained silent through the years of Charlie's battle. Had either organization stepped in sooner, Charlie wouldn't be in the fight of his life right now. 


 

With one week to go before the home he's lived in for the past sixty years is auctioned off, a feeling of deep concern has settled over Charlie Fitts.  He talks on the phone with his lawyer. He meets with supporters who have been seeking a solution to his desperate situation.  But the clock keeps ticking.

Fitts' attorneys filed a motion to delay the auction that was to be heard this week. Three reasons were cited for the requested delay.  The first is Charlie's health.  Besides his chronic asthma and the hip and lower back problems that require his use of a cane, the wear and tear of constant worry over this matter has taken its toll.  He has no money, so he doesn't eat well, when he eats at all. Worry and obsession have affected his sleep. As a result, his attorneys state, he's too frail to be thrown out of his house at this time, and they have a letter from his doctor confirming this.

The other two reasons are more financial in nature.  Fitts' attorneys contend that selling the property in separate parcels will diminish the property's overall value. They assert that the only way to ensure the highest bids for the property is to auction the property as one complete16-acre parcel, including the house and all the land.  As it is now planned, the second parcel to be auctioned next Thursday comprises the bulk of the land, roughly 13 acres.  The only problem is, it's a landlocked lot and of little value without the access parcel containing the house, and a conforming lot with all of that Weston Road frontage.  It's possible that the second parcel might go for a buck to whoever wins the first auction. After all, why would anyone else have interest in the larger parcel if they can't access it?      

Their other fiscal reason is the auction's timing. Fitts' lawyer points out that the end of August is not the best time to try to get top dollar for a $3 million property.  Many potentially interested buyers are off to Italy, or at least Nantucket, in the weeks prior to Labor Day. Wouldn't it be better, they ask, to wait until the market for such a trophy property returns to town?  Wouldn't it be best to hold the auction in late September, just a month later, when the leaves are beginning to turn?

One of the minor ironies of the Fitts/DeNormandie brouhaha is that this week marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Thoreau's Walden.  In fact, there's a lecture scheduled at the Thoreau Institute for the night of the auction.  The topic is "Stewarding the Spirit of Walden."  Had Charlie lived 150 years ago, he might have hung out with Thoreau.  They might even have shared that shack near Walden Pond.  Unfortunately, Charlie was born more recently, and he doesn't know Don Henley.

But perhaps the biggest irony (or is it outrage?) is the inaction of our town institutions to react to Charlie's plight.  Here's a golden opportunity for the town to acquire a key center-of-town parcel abutting DeNormandie Hill AND a possible affordable housing unit, yet the Selectmen have been remarkably silent.

The Fitts team met with Rural Land Foundation Administrator Geoff McGean a few weeks ago and, subsequent to that meeting, one of the RLF trustees approached Phillip DeNormandie to see if there was a way to work out a fair and equitable deal.  However, DeNormandie demurred, content to let the auction take its course.  

This has caused consternation among Lincolnites committed to open space conservation, who remember this developer as the one who wanted to build office buildings near Walden Pond, until Don Henley came along.  They worry that gaining access to the DeNormandie family's abutting Trapelo Road and Silver Hill Road properties from Weston Road would enable Phillip to more readily develop all of that land. 

This is land whose development rights  the RLF has been trying to acquire for many years with no success.  Yet it appears that the RLF has no plans to bid at the auction.  Why not? 

A few years back they raised all the money needed to acquire the Drane Property, which nobody ever sees, in a very short time.  Surely they could do it again.  The now-former Drane property sits at the end of Todd Pond Road, on which two key RLF Trustees live.  Is that the difference in the RLF's level of interest?  Or are the trustees afraid of ticking off the DeNormandies?  Whatever the reason, one thing's for certain.  If DeNormandie acquires the Fitts property, the value of the development rights for his family's land will increase exponentially, along with the ultimate cost to the town. 

The theme for this year's anniversary is "Lincoln: 250 Years of Caring for Community and Land."  In light of Charlie's plight perhaps that should be changed to 249 years of caring, one year of looking the other way.