McGovern, Comerford celebrate DCR preserving 262 acres of Deerfield forest

SOUTH DEERFIELD — Congressman Jim McGovern, state Sen. Jo Comerford, representatives from the state Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), and town officials gathered at Mount Sugarloaf on Tuesday to celebrate DCR acquiring 262.5 acres of forestland in Deerfield and to call attention to the importance of conservation.

“This is the landscape that tells the story of the Connecticut River Valley. From here, you can see the river, the farmland, the forest and the ridgelines that define this region,” said DCR Commissioner Nicole LaChapelle. “As we do all this work, we understand that these lands are all connected — they support biodiversity, they strengthen climate resilience, and they help preserve the character and economy of this region.”

The forestland, consisting of three parcels, stretches along Keith Cross Road and Pine Nook Road up to the Pocumtuck Ridge Trail. The property was acquired through DCR’s Land Protection Program, which facilitates land conservation for the purposes of protecting plants and animals, conserving natural and cultural resources, and providing recreational spaces for the public.

DCR acquired the property on Sept. 30 for $1.52 million from the Rogers family, who owned Hilltop Farm before it closed in 1994.

“For me, this is like therapy — coming here to a place that is so beautiful at a time that there’s so much ugliness in the world,” McGovern told attendees. “This reorients us to focus on things that are beautiful that do matter.”

The personal and political collided as speakers shared family memories of the land’s history and steps ahead for legislators to continue prioritizing conservation.

McGovern and Comerford highlighted efforts in the works to ensure the state and federal governments support conservation projects, including the “Act to Build Resilience for Massachusetts Communities,” a $3.64 billion environmental bond bill before the House Ways and Means Committee after passing in the Senate.

Comerford described the bill as “a way for our municipalities to express their commitment to the [Connecticut River] and get work done that ultimately will help in the service of conservation.”

At the federal level, McGovern announced his plans to partner with U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire to reintroduce the Connecticut River Watershed Partnership Act, an act to “[create] a dedicated funding stream for non-regulatory conservation, restoration, education and recreation in the watershed,” according to the Connective River Watershed Partnership website.

“Trump and his allies are trying to take us backwards on climate, on conservation, on corruption, on civil rights, on democracy itself,” McGovern said. “It’s easy to throw your hands up, to give up, to listen to the people who want you to think that things can’t get better, but this is about dreaming again, having hope again, rebuilding again. This is about looking to the future and saying that things will get better because we will make them better.”

Other speakers stressed the importance of the state’s Forest Legacy Program, which channels federal grant funding to “protect environmentally important forestland,” according to mass.gov. DCR Land Protection Specialist Nick Rossi informed attendees that the program funded 75% of the 262-acre project.

“It’s a keystone of the whole area,” Rossi said of the Deerfield forestland. “You can see peregrine falcons flying by while looking over the Deerfield Valley, watch tadpoles in a pool, or find some peace and quiet in the deep woods. So, when I saw the Rogers’ land on the map, I thought, ‘Somebody should really talk to those folks.'”

On a walk with Arthur “Tooey” Rogers II in November of 2023, Rossi posed his idea to Rogers.

“Nick had done his homework, and after our walk, he asked, ‘What about the forestlands?’” Rogers recalled to the attendees. “I was as delighted as I think he was.”

For Rogers, DCR’s interest meant the backdrop to his childhood, and the critters who grew up with him in the woods, would be protected.

In between daily chores of feeding the calves, cleaning out pens and “relentless milking, haying and putting up silage,” he and his two siblings roamed the woods, meeting raccoons, opossums, skunks, deer, rabbits, beavers, salamanders, frogs, barred owls and red-tailed hawks along their adventures. He recalled picking apples from the orchard before tossing them into the dam of “two intrepid beavers” by his home.

“The trees themselves developed personalities — the sadly lost elms, the oaks, the sugar maples that we tapped and made syrup and maple sugar from, and those amazingly limber and flexible birch trees of Robert Frost fame,” Rogers said, letting the listeners in on his early memories. “The forest, with all its plants and animals, was our neighborhood, and we loved it.”

Rogers thanked McGovern for his work in securing the Forest Legacy Program funds that made DCR’s acquisition of the land possible, and gave the congressman a mug with an illustration by local artist David Sibley of a pileated woodpecker and the cap for Hilltop Farm’s milk bottles. Then, he shared one last anecdote of the forests DCR now protects.

During Rogers and his wife Laura Johnson’s early days of dating, he took her on a picnic along the ridge before attempting to teach her how to swing on the birch trees.

“I got hung up on a red maple on the way down and fell ingloriously, fracturing two vertebrae,” Rogers said as the audience winced and chuckled. “However, if my magic failed, the forest’s magic didn’t, because Laura is here with me today, and I truly hope, now that this forestland is protected into the future, that another lovestruck college couple swings on the birches.”