Johnson Homestead

TLC Protects More than 1,000 Acres in 2000

by Beth Wickham
(excerpt from TLC News, April 2001)

Johnson Homestead is a 320-acre farm in Chatham County, southwest of Siler City. Ann Von Gruenigen donated a conservation easement that protects her 120-acre cattle operation and farmstead, a 50-acre mixed pine/hardwood forest for wildlife habitat, and her 150-acre tree farm. Johnson Homestead is the largest protected farm in the Triangle region. Ms. Von Gruenigen spent one year living in a country house on the Connecticut River in Chester, Conn., when she was five years old and has been interested in conservation ever since.

"My father was in graduate school," Ms. Von Gruenigen said, "he was an outdoorsperson and he had time. He and I used to trek through the woods a lot, and he would stop and show me things. I've been like that ever since."

When she purchased her farm, Johnson Homestead, in 1974, she intended to protect it. After hearing about a conservation easement placed on a farm in northeastern Chatham County, Ms. Von Gruenigen decided that this was what she wanted to do.

A conservation easement satisfies two of her most compelling goals: to protect her farm from development and to set an example for others to follow.

"I realize that this area is under threat. I hope that by doing this others will be similarly inspired. I read that, indeed, one conservation easement sometimes motivates additional ones. If we could get this part of the county peppered with conservation easements, it would certainly thwart massive commercial development."

Ms. Von Gruenigen speaks proudly of the Johnson family who originally owned the farmstead and seems to be grateful for the opportunity to keep that heritage alive.

"Grandma Johnson was known all over the neighborhood and the little kids just loved her. She cooked in the fireplace and baked thimble cookies."