Main Street at Dollar Pond

Just in time for the holidays: give the gift of land and life!  You can help the Brewster Conservation Trust preserve 2.6 acres at Dollar Pond. Make a tax-deductible contribution in honor of your family or friends.  Use our website’s handy and secure donation-by-credit card link.  Or send a check made out to BCT at P.O. Box 268, Brewster MA 02631, referring to “Dollar Pond.” 

The Swift family owned this property for the past 50 years; we are buying it from Brewster’s Jackson Crocker, part of that family.  The Swifts and Crockers lived on Stony Brook Road for many years.  The cranberry bog on the property was pretty much gone by the time they acquired it, but Mr. Crocker farmed potatoes there for a while.  Now, the land has grown up to maples and tupelos and highbush blueberries, a terrific habitat for songbirds and hiding dens for deer. 

We need $60,000 to buy this property, which includes 450 feet along Brewster’s busy Main Street, just east of the Lemon Tree Shops.  Help us preserve shoreline on little Dollar Pond as well. For more about this acquisition, please see the front page of our December 2011 newsletter.

Here is a map showing the strategic importance of this parcel, outlined in orange, as it adjoins conserved areas (in green) between Main Street and Stony Brook Road (click on map to enlarge):

Here is a photo showing the healthy wooded shoreline on Dollar Pond along the parcel (click on photo to enlarge).  The arching shrubs in the foreground are Water-willow (Decodon), which is the only host plant for the larval stage of the rare water-willow stem borer moth (Papaipema sulphurata).

BCT hopes to buy 2.6 acres on the Dollar Pond shore

Read about the Trust’s two new fundrasising campaigns to save shorelines on Round Pond and Dollar Pond as part of the Priority Ponds Project; update on recent lands acquired; a profile of land donor Daryl Massey Bladen; our Conservationists of the Year; and the last BCT cartoon by the recently-deceased Gordon Brooks.  Click on this link: BCT News December 2011

 We have made in several new land purchases over the past year and currently have impressive opportunities.  One of my favorite themes is being on the lookout for important pondshore parcels to preserve.  In a 2003 Cape-wide study conducted by The Compact of Cape Cod Conservation Trusts (our conservation advisor), Brewster had 48 of the Top 200 pondshore parcels on the Cape.  In other words, of the most important pond parcels to preserve for water quality and habitat significance in our county, almost one of four was located on a Brewster pond.  And Brewster is only one of 15 towns on the Cape.

The BCT believes that the best way to save water quality is to save the land around a water body or drinking well, rather than having to resort to costly remediation after the water source has become contaminated.  An ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure, to use another old saying.  Buying land around the edges of our beautiful ponds preserves space for wildlife and buffers the drainage entering the pond. 

 Earlier this year, we rallied the Stony Brook Road neighborhood to purchase a 2-acre building lot on Smith Pond.  Now we are raising $185,000 to buy a 2-acre lot on Round Pond and a 2.6-acre parcel on Dollar Pond.  Our steeply-discounted purchase prices reflect a true opportunity for us.  We ask support from Brewster citizens to raise the funds for these bargain sales. Please take this leap with us.  

 You can be reassured to know that 94 percent of general donations to BCT got to land purchase and stewardship.  With an all-volunteer board, only 6 percent goes to administrative services.  We ask you to help us protect Brewster’s land and water.

Burgundy-colored huckleberry atop the 134-foot high hill, highest in Brewster!

The Brewster Conservation Trust has begun a fundraising campaign to preserve 10 acres atop the highest hill in Brewster.  We need $120,600 to buy this parcel in East Brewster.  We hope our members and the public will support this effort.  All donations are tax-deductible and make a nice gift for someone.  You can donate online by clicking on the ”Donate to BCT Today” image at the top right of this screen.

You cannot get a nosebleed climbing Brewster’s highest hill.  At only 134 feet above sea level, you can barely get out of breath.  Still, when we had a chance to buy part of its eastern flank, we jumped at the chance.  But we will need support of the community of Brewster to succeed.  Please contribute.

Huckleberry Hill is our made-up name for this landform located between Baker’s Pond and Nickerson State Park in East Brewster.  Take a look at the photo and you will see the knee-high carpet of huckleberry shrubs at the autumnal peak of their color, a wine-dark sea out in the forest. 

The 10-acre forest tract is composed of white and black oaks, and pitch pine, with occasional wispy white pines, mockernut, American beech and sassafras trees.  It abuts a 90-acre assemblage of town-owned conservation lands.  Well-grooved narrow foot trails wend their way through this area.  It is a favorite haunt for white-tailed deer.  It is truly a forgotten pocket of Brewster, perhaps even more so than the Punkhorn nowadays. 

To be able to secure 10 acres for $12,600 per acre is a bargain at any time.  But the time is now and the need is urgent.   Please help us.

We were particularly delighted to have had John Kemp provide us a humorous and educational presentation on colonial history in Brewster and the Plymouth Colony.  John appeared in character as Stephen Hopkins, a Mayflower Pilgrim.  (Mr. Kemp has “played” the role of Hopkins and other Pilgrims at Plimoth Plantation for many years.)  Hopkins has been described as ”New England’s first free spirit or America’s first true democrat who struggled against rigid other-worldly Puritanism.”

We also hosted the public premiere of several BCT “shorts,” two-minute videos highlighting some of our recent projects.

BCT presented its Conservationists of the Year Award to Mark H. Robinson and the non-profit The Compact of Cape Cod Conservation Trusts, Inc.   The Compact is currently celebrating its 25th anniversary as the nation’s oldest self-sustaining regional coalition of local land trusts.  BCT was a founding member of The Compact in 1986 and since then BCT has relied heavily on the technical expertise of Mr. Robinson and his staff to guide BCT’s open space projects and non-profit administration.   Mr. Robinson also serves as a consultant to the Town’s Open Space Committee, negotiating many of the Town’s open space purchases and securing State and other grants for those purchases.  Founding president of The Compact  Ansel B. Chaplin of Truro, recalled that BCT’s leaders in 1986 were instrumental in getting The Compact off the ground.

The trail will be dedicated to the memory of the late Mary-Louise and Ruth N. Eddy, founding trustees of the BCT and donors of more than 18 acres here.  While we are polishing a trail guide, click here for a simple sketch map of the property and trail.

We thank the volunteer “hot shots” George Thurber, Hal Minis, George Platt and Brent Bowers for their time and effort, cutting the trail and installing the new footbridge over the ditch. 

Watch a short video of the bridge installation, trail-cutting, and happy community gardeners…

The Town had previously permitted a single family home to be built on the lot, and, in fact, a septic system had already been installed.  Wetlands on the lot required that the house would have been built tight up against the scenic roadway.  BCT already owned a 3-acre parcel on Smith Pond (where the big boulder sits by the road) and we liked the idea of buying this last unbuilt lot on the pond, if the neighbors could cobble the funds needed.  

This acquisition is part of the BCT’s Priority Ponds Project, created in 2003 to identify and support freshwater pondshore parcels whose preservation is important to the habitat and water quality in our many Brewster ponds.   By the way, did you know that Stony Brook Road follows one of the original Native American east-west trails through Brewster?

Our thanks to the dozen neighbors and their friends who donated.  And thanks to Realtor Howard Hayes of oldCape/Sotheby’s Realty who negotiated the bargain price for us and contributed his fee to the BCT.

Spotted salamander

We’re at it again–asking our members and friends to help us buy a critical habitat parcel in Brewster.   We need $16,000 to purchase and preserve three acres of a pine/oak forest surrounding the whole of a vernal pool.  Watch a 2-minute video of our volunteers documenting the pool’s amphibian inhabitants by clicking: Vernal Pool Visit.

You can donate via our secure online-payment account.

A vernal pool is a small, shallow pondlet required for spawning by rare salamanders and wood frogs and invertebrates such as fairy shrimp.  Typically, it dries up often enough to prevent fish from establishing residency and eating the egg masses of the amphibians and insect larvae.  In the video, BCT volunteers, led by Jim Van Baalen and Don Keeran, show how a vernal pool is documented–with chest waders, dip nets and cameras.  These citizen-scientists provide their findings to State wildlife officials who will certify the pools.  Certified vernal pools receive greater regulatory protection under state and local wetlands laws.

The 3-acre woodland to be acquired is part of a 60-acre mosaic located in SE Brewster that has been acquired for conservation over the past 18 months by BCT and the Town of Brewster, with supplemental funding assistance from the Town of Orleans and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Division of Conservation Services.  The preserve is anchored by the 23-acre Read Kingsbury Conservation Area, named in honor of the late member of the Brewster Conservation Commission and BCT trustee.  See story.)