Selectmen Hope to Have Farmer in Tea Lane Farmstead by June

It was standing room only at the at Monday night’s special town meeting. Over 100 people attended the meeting and authorized selectmen in a vote of 65 – 5 to lease the Tea Lane farmstead to a resident farmer and sell the farmhouse, barn, garage and two outbuildings to that farmer for $1. The town also agreed to allow $100,000 in community preservation act funds to be used to renovate the 18th century farmhouse.

The board of selectmen and the town land bank advisory board, based on criteria developed with the town farm committee, will select the farmer. The winning applicant will have to compose a plan for the property to be approved by the farm committee and selectmen. The lease for the farm will last for a period of 75 years.

Selectman and chairman of the farm committee, Warren Doty, said that the town is planning to send out all the information, including a draft lease to all applicants by February 17th. The farm committee will meet this Thursday to discuss further, but Doty said he believes that applicants' plans will be due sometime in March.

“Once they are chosen, they’ll sign the lease and the property is theirs to do whatever they want to do. We believe that the house needs to have repairs done to it before anyone can move in, but they could start doing things on the land right away. We are hoping to choose someone and have the lease signed by the first of June,” Doty said.

Except for a few cows that were kept on the land this past summer by Mermaid Farm, the farm and farmhouse have not been used since Bobby Silva died in 2010.

Plans to renovate the farmhouse have been shot down by the town twice before this past vote.

“It’s been a long process,” said Doty, “but I believe we got a good consensus that the town agrees with the selectmen that this is going in a good direction. Now we will have a farmer in there in months rather than years, and that’s very encouraging.”