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Nibley • Every week, Sheri Schiess says she hears from people who are grateful she’s holding onto her farm.

Her 25.5 acres in Nibley sit on the corner of 4000 South and 640 West, not far from rapidly developing parts of the town.

But Schiess’ vast, open farmland couldn’t feel more different from the nearby hustle and bustle. And because she entered into a conservation easement with the nonprofit Bear River Land Conservancy, that’s not likely to change.

“I always tell everybody that comes here this will be the last piece of green in Nibleyville,” she said. “It just fills my soul.”

The nonprofit, which was founded in 2011 to preserve land at the banks of the Bear River near Trenton, uses a mix of government and donor money to buy the development rights of properties like Schiess’ farm.

Gabriel Murray, the executive director of Bear River Land Conservancy, said Schiess and her late husband, Boyd, donated most of the development rights in this case.

The agreement — which the couple made in 2022 not long before Boyd died — means that Schiess can never develop the land. Neither can her children, nor her children’s children.

Such arrangements are growing in popularity in Cache Valley as governments and organizations seek to preserve the area’s open space.

For people looking for publicly accessible open space, though, these agreements have some drawbacks. In Schiess’ case, the deal didn’t come with any guaranteed access.

But Murray said this kind of agreement is beneficial — even if the land is closed to the general public.

Public access can be costly

If the main purpose in preserving open space is securing public access, Murray said governments will often purchase the land outright.

This, he pointed out, happened locally in 2025, when Cache County purchased almost 800 acres of the Sherwood Hills area in Wellsville. The county said at the time that the $7.5 million deal left it with 471 acres open to the public, with another 300 privately owned acres in a conservation easement.

It’s also been the case for some of Park City’s open space preservation efforts. Mayor Ryan Dickey says the city owns 6,000 acres, with more than half of that land protected through easements. Additionally, he said, Park City co-holds conservation easements of about 4,000 acres at Park City Mountain Resort and Deer Valley Resort.

But buying land for public access, according to Murray, doesn’t make sense for some of the open space preservation goals that conservation easements seek to accomplish.

Schiess’ hay-bearing farm, for example, was preserved as working agricultural ground.

And, Murray added, things like wildlife habitat conservation or waterway preservation may call for protections without public access.

“There’s many different things that qualify something for a conservation easement,” he said.

In an interview earlier this summer, Christopher Sands — a member of the Cache Open Space Advisory Committee, which guides Cache County’s open space preservation efforts — said skipping outright land purchases is a sensible way to stretch a buck.

“When you’re purchasing an easement,” he said, “you’re just buying the development rights off the property.”

‘We did it’

For Schiess, who lives just a few blocks away from the farmland, the preserved ground means she can keep feeding hay to sheep, whose wool she teaches school kids how to dye.

It also means that those who walk along the popular 4000 South will always see the open expanse of her late husband’s family farm speaking to the agricultural roots of the area.

The effort to lock the property into its preservation agreement started before Bear River Land Conservancy even existed, and took 14 long years of a bureaucratic nightmare, she said.

“I kept saying, ‘I just want my husband to live long enough to appreciate what his dream was, because that’s what he wanted,’” she said. “And by cracking, we did it!”

Note to readers • This reporting position is a partnership with Utah Public Radio, a division of Utah State University.