Sabot Family Buys Cricket Creek Farm In South Williamstown

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In a $2.2 million transaction, the Sabot family has bought Cricket Creek Farm in South Williamstown, nearly 500 acres of mostly protected land where they plan to ultimately create an incubator for agricultural entrepreneurs. Richard Sabot, emeritus professor of economics at Williams College, is a founder of eZiba, the e-tailer of world handcrafts, and of Tripod, generally credited with tripping off the development of Internet businesses in North County. And just as Tripod launched business entrepreneurs, Sabot said his family hopes this venture will help launch “a new generation of agricultural entrepreneurs.” For the Sabots themselves, and many in Williamstown, the purchase inoculates the fields and pastures that overlook the Hopper of Mount Greylock to the east and the Taconic Range to the west from purchase by developers. The purchase was called “incredibly important” in assuring an “agricultural continuum,” by Leslie Reed-Evans, executive director of the Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation, which was instrumental in structuring the transaction. Yesterday Richard and Judith Sabot, from their early-19th century farmhouse adjoining the property they have purchased, talked about their plans for the property, which legally changed hands Friday. The Sabots, who are the principals of the Cricket Creek Farm Nominee Trust, bought the property from longtime owners Norris A. and Betty-Jim Phelps, who sold off its dairy herd last July after the death of their herdsman Eugene Johnson the previous month. The Sabots said that initially, for about the first two years, Jim Galusha of Fairfield Farm on Blair Road will grow corn and hay on the fields for his dairy herd, and keep the pastures open. Galusha bought some of Phelps herd at last summer’s auction. That two-year interim will give them time to devise more long-range plans for the property, plans for a model farm that they say they expect to base, to some extent, on Shelburne Farms in Vermont, they said. Attorney Sherwood Guernsey II is trustee of the Cricket Creek Nominee Trust, which bought part of the property from the Phelpses for $1.464 million. Richard H. and Judith A. Sabot also bought additional parcels for $736,000 at the closing Friday. According to a release handed out yesterday, “Cricket Creek Farm, if it is able to be farmed in its entirety, has an enormous potential to use and showcase the best, most environmentally sound, sustainable farming techniques available.” These uses can include organic market gardening (vegetables), cut flowers, specialty cheese production, fruit orchards, and grass-based, rotational dairy farming for cheese production. “It’s a bit of a dream,” said Judith Sabot. Said Richard Sabot, “We want to create an umbrella by providing land and facilities. We have no interest in making money from the property.” And, he stressed, “This is not just Jude and me, it’s the whole family.” The trust is the family, including four children, Diana, Topher, Oliver and Julia. The Sabots moved to their Oblong Road house 16 years ago. From their windows, the view encompasses snow-covered fields and woods, and beyond them, the Hopper and Mount Greylock. “We used to walk along Oblong Road and have a little, niggling fear of what it might turn into if houses were built along it,” said Judith Sabot. The more than 200 acres they purchased that are under state Agricultural Preservation Restriction join more than 1,000 acres in the area that are preserved. One of the Sabots’ purchases adjoins Field Farm, owned by The Trustees of Reservations. The Phelpses will continue to live on their land on Woodcock Road, which they did not sell. Sabot said they will strive to continue the good stewardship of the land practiced by the Phelpses. “They set quite a high bar,” he said. The 91 acres fronting on Sloan Road are among the 130 acres not protected by agricultural preservation restrictions. “In dollar terms, those are the most valuable acres,” Sabot said yesterday, declining to speculate on whether plans might eventually include some sales similar to the WRLF-managed development at the nearby Reynolds property, housing created on the margins of arable land, maintaining meadows and pastures. “If we had our druthers, we’d rather have not even that,” said Sabot. “We don’t have a definitive answer” about the unprotected land but, he said, “We didn’t want a developer to come in and buy those pieces.” Said Judith Sabot, “The children feel this way, too. Ideally, what we’d like on the unprotected acreage is nothing.” The Phelpses at one time kept as many as 400 cows at the farm. The property includes two houses, three silos, two ponds, a gambrel-roofed old stone barn, the large dairy barn and other farm buildings. The Sabots said they expect that John Sylvester will remain and help with the operation. Said Reed-Evans, “We’re very lucky that Norris Phelps wanted to sell the parcels together and not cut and slice.” Sabot said they have had great support from the neighbors — “everybody in South Williamstown.” Sabot said he plans to remain actively engaged in his other enterprises. Guernsey noted that the area has seen a regeneration of business, and that the Sabot purchase may signal a regeneration of agriculture, which he termed “an exciting concept.” The Sabots and Reed-Evans said Alex Webb of the family that created Shelburne Farms has been tremendously helpful. Shelburne Farms has a strong educational component, and ties with Middlebury College and the University of Vermont. There are historical connections between the properties, as all were at one time owned by members of the Vanderbilt family. Sabot said he has been in touch with Samuel and Elizabeth Smith of Caretaker Farm about vegetable farming. Potential agricultural entrepreneurs may call the Sabots, they said. “I think it’s going to take a while to put these pieces together,” he said. And while the Sabots may have paid $2.2 million for the land, it, they said, “priceless.”
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MCLA Selects Pennsylvania Educator as 13th President

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff

 Diana Rogers-Adkinson

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The board of trustees on Thursday voted 8-2 to offer the 13th presidency of Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts to a Pennsylvania higher education executive.

Diana L. Rogers-Adkinson is senior vice chancellor for academic and student affairs and chief academic officer for the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, providing system-level leadership for 10 universities serving approximately 80,000 students.
 
"I thought she was really able to articulate the value of a liberal arts education and our mission to both society and, you know, to our students in their lives," said Trustees Buffy Lord before presenting the motion to offer her the post. "I think that she'll be a fantastic advocate for MCLA within Berkshire County, but also in Boston. You know, my sense is that she's going to be able to fight for us if it needs to happen."
 
Rogers-Adkinson accepted the post by phone immediately after the vote, pending negotiations and approval by the Board of Higher Education. 
 
She was one of four finalists for the post out of 102 completed applications. All four spent time on campus over the past month, speaking with students, faculty, trustees and community members. 
 
Trustees expounded on her experience, leadership and communication style. She was also one of two candidates, with preferred by the faculty, the college's unions and Higher Education Commissioner Noe Ortega.
 
The second candidate preferred, Michael J. Middleton, provost and vice president at Ramapo College of New Jersey, withdrew after consultation wiht his family, according to Lord. 
 
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