The properties are a 355-acre farm east of New Castle donated by Dr. Karen and George Barnhart, and 1-1/2 miles on Craig Creek frontage on a tract of land used for hunting by the Arrowhead Club LLC.

George and Karen Barnhart. Photo by George Kegley, courtesy Western Virginia Land Trust

The Barnharts’ farm six miles east of New Castle lies on both sides of State Route 614 and shares a boundary with Jefferson National Forest for approximately half a mile. It includes 1 mile of Craig Creek. The easement was donated to the Virginia Outdoors Foundation. It protects the creek, which has a pair of bald eagle nests, with a 35-foot riparian buffer and cattle exclusion.

Dr. Barnhart is a family practitioner at Carilion’s Salem office and medical director of Richfield Retirement Community. She grew up driving a tractor on her father’s farm on Meadow Creek, west of New Castle. Her husband came from a dairy farm near Boones Mill and retired after 36 years as a bridge inspector for Virginia Department of Highways. Both have deep feelings about their land.

George Barnhart, who comes from a strong Church of the Brethren background, explained: “Stewardship of the land is my theology. I hope people will look at the land as more than a place to live.”

“We would like to keep it in a farm,” Dr. Barnhart added.

The other easement on land used for hunting by Arrowhead Hunt Club is held jointly by the Western Virginia Land Trust and the Mountain Castles Soil and Water Conservation District . The easement will make certain the bottomland along the creek is kept in trees and cannot be timbered or built on. The club can still hunt it, maintain trails, and possibly replace the stream ford with a bridge one day.

Lenden Eakin, a Roanoke attorney whose family has owned the land for 230 years, said that the 13-member hunt club obtained the easement to preserve the stream. Eakin serves as the club secretary.

“Our goal is to keep the land in everyone’s family,” he said. “We locked up creek frontage so they can’t do anything that will damage the James River and the Chesapeake Bay. Craig Creek is a popular stream for outdoors people.”

The Roanoke-based Western Virginia Land Trust has led efforts to educate Craig County landowners on the benefits of land conservation and donating easements, and holds two easements. VOF, the primary easement holder in the state, holds 16 easements in Craig County. Easement holders are responsible for making sure the properties remain protected in perpetuity.

Conservation easements are voluntary agreements with landowners that permanently protect the land’s natural, scenic, historic, open-space, and recreational values from development while keeping the property in private ownership. State tax incentives have increased the benefits of gifts of easement, especially for landowners of modest means. Virginia’s Land Preservation Tax Credit for a conservation easement is 40 percent of the appraised value of the easement.

To learn more about conservation easements and associated tax benefits, visit www.virginiaoutdoorsfoundation.org or contact Josh Gibson at (540) 951-0449 or jgibson@vofonline.org, or Roger Holnback at (540) 985-0000 or rholnback@westernvirginialandtrust.org.

– Information provided by Western Virginia Land Trust

They are Marlon Old and his father, Charles M. Old, of Craig County, and Dr. Karen and George Barnhart. The Arrowhead Club LLC has also put land club members use for hunting into an easement to protect it for the future.

Olds farm

Craig County residents Marlon Old, a former forester, and his father, veteran farmer Charles M. Old, have protected their family farm on Craigs Creek with a conservation easement.

“We’re happy that it won’t be subdivided,” said Marlon Old, who works in best management practices for the Mountain Castles Soil and Water Conservation District in Craig and Botetourt counties.

Craig County landowners Marlon Old, left, and his father Charles M. Old, center, talk with George Kegley about their decision to protect their family farm with a conservation easement along Craigs Creek. Submitted photo

Charles Old protected 136 acres and his son added 55 acres, although they consider it as one farm. The senior Old, a retired beef cattle and hog farmer and former hauler of pulpwood to the Westvaco plant in Covington, purchased the farm in 1959. When he started, he said he was a “pilot—pile it here and pile it (manure) there.”

A native of the Catawba Valley, Charles Old helped build roads with the Civilian Conservation Corps, worked as a mechanic for the old Norfolk & Western Railway, and served in the Marines in the Pacific in World War II and later in Korea. Now slowed by health problems at 86, he supervises from chairs in both ends of a family garden.

He said he signed the easement “to keep it from being broken up. I want to leave it in one piece…Developers are using good farm land.”

The Old farm, which is two miles east of New Castle, once was part of a larger parcel of 10 tracts. Forty years ago, Old fed as many as 150 hogs—“They rooted the mortgage off the farm”—and he once helped butcher 42 in one day. He built a herd of beef cattle to about 200 cows and calves.

Their farm, now leased for hay production and beef cattle pasture on meadowland and forest, is bisected by a mile of Craigs Creek. Encroachment is everywhere, said Marlon Old. Craig County has seen “remarkable growth” since he returned from a career with the Forest Service in the West.

A forestry graduate of Virginia Tech, Marlon Old was a forester in Craig County and then westward for a total of 13 years. He also attended law school and practiced law in Arkansas, later working on water rights for the Forest Service legal department.

When they completed the easements, the state tax credit was more than Charles Old paid for the farm 50 years ago.

Charles Old’s other children are Sam, who has a commercial garden across the road and works for the Craig-Botetourt Electric Co-operative; Patrick, who works for WDBJ Channel 7 TV in Roanoke; Dana, who lives in South Carolina, and daughter Luana Price, a retired teacher who lives in Blue Ridge.

– By George Kegley. Reprinted with permission from “Saving Land in Western Virginia,” Western Virginia Land Trust newsletter