Today, its five members and two alternates comprise four long-term farmers and three other members bringing legal, land use, organizational and marketing experience:  Chair Curt Chapin, Vice Chair Steven Kleppin, Secretary-Treasurer Dan Readyoff and committee members Bill Weed and Jeremy Schulz.  Alternatives are Julie Bailey and Curtis Ek. 

NMFP’s priority preservation target consists of the Ridge Road area farms on our eastern border with the town of Washington. At over 1,000 acres with an average of 50% prime agricultural soils and soils of importance (Litchfield County on average consists of only 12-15%), the five Ridge Road farms—Chapin, Davenport, Harris, Kimberly and Reimer--represent one of the largest and most important contiguous stretches of surviving working farms left in southern Litchfield County.  The goal is to ensure continuation of active farming in the Ridge Road area.

To date, a significantly-sized agricultural easement has been obtained on one farm and most of two others is already in the CT state queue for purchase of development rights (PDR). If granted, this will mean they will never be sub-divided.

Demand for locally-grown is soaring, and since NMFP was founded four years ago, it has seen over 500 acres of largely fallow lands in New Milford returned to active agriculture.  The 210-acre preserved Smyrski Farm has been leased to a successful grass-fed Black Angus operation.

At the 100+acre-acre Town-owned Sullivan Farm, the New Milford Youth Agency has spent a decade energetically revitalizing a 170-year-old former dairy farm as a successful produce, maple syrup and haying operation that has more demand for its youth-grown products from restaurants, retail outlets and supermarket chains than it can presently meet.

In 2010, two small new Community Supported Agriculture operations (CSAs) owned by the Schulz and Pouder families, became the second and third New Milford CSAs after seven-year-old Nature-Conservancy-owned and Sunny Valley-based Fort Hill Farm, one of the largest in CT with over 550 families as shareholders.

At CSAs, shareholders assume the risk right along with the farmer in return for weekly share of fresh produce from June into October—a successful farming model that is only one in a range of 21st century approaches being implemented in New Milford.

As New Milford Hospital’s nationally-recognized healthy eating outreach, Plow to Plate, works with local families, schools and youth to raise awareness of the value of eating locally-grown, demand for more area farm output is sure to increase. 

A study released by the University of Nebraska in 2009, Sustaining Agriculture in Urbanizing Counties noted that over 60% of farming today in the US takes place at the urban edge. Why not, then in our own hometown? 

Almost 90% of our residents when surveyed recently by the Center for Research and Public Policy responded that they strongly or somewhat believed the town should preserve its surviving farms.  Over 75% said they believed the town should set aside funds to do so. It is NMFP’s mission to ensure that the New Milford farmlands to make this happen do not continue to disappear.