Kennett Township officials have opened the Spar Hill Farm and Preserve. The ribbon-cutting ceremony represented a victory in the nearly decade-long effort by the township to save the farm from residential development in order to maintain it as a site where history, farming and agriculture converge. “Before us here are over 100 acres of rolling meadows and woodlands stretching from Burnt Hill Road to the Delaware state line,” said township Supervisors Chairman Geoffrey Gamble in his opening remarks. Gamble thanked the many agencies who helped the township secure, repair and sustain the 103-acre farm, including Mount Cuba Center, the township’s Land Conservation Advisory Council, the township’s Historical Commission and the first responders from the Longwood Fire Company. The township purchased the property in fall 2018 for $3.2 million — including $1 million received as a grant from Mount Cuba Center — and spent the next several years conceiving ideas that would convert the property into open space that would provide a trail network and redefine it as an educational center to demonstrate what agricultural life in southern Chester County looked like during the 1800s and early 1900s.

Source: Chester County Press; 5/16/2023