Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank trails aren’t usually crowded on a November afternoon. But the combination of perfect weather, unprecedented access and a guided tour by farmer Arnie Fischer Jr. was enough to draw over 100 people and three dogs to Flat Point Farm on Sunday for the first Vineyard Conservation Society winter walk of the season.
VCS winter walks have been going on for 30 years and offer tours through some of the Island’s most beautiful tracts of land. Flat Point Farm is especially treasured because of the long effort to preserve the land and the working farm.
At the beginning of the hike, VCS executive director Brendan O’Neill gathered the crowd of walkers and introduced Mr. Fischer. For over 50 years, VCS has been advocating for the preservation of land on the Vineyard and they assisted in the preservation of Flat Point Farm.
“Our footprints are all over the Island... in this case maybe it’s fingerprints,” said Mr. O’Neill.
Situated on the edge of Tisbury Great Pond, Flat Point Farm encompasses about 120 acres of field and forest that has been owned by the Fischer family since 1939. In 2013, the land bank bought 12.9 acres of land outright and placed an agricultural preservation restriction on an additional 25 acres of abutting pastures for $3.45 million.
“It took years of work to get some protection for this property,” said Mr. Fischer. “Thankfully, finally, it got done.”
The walk began with a tour through the low-ceilinged barn that was originally built for dairy cows in the late 1930s. Now retrofitted for sheep, the only inhabitants on Sunday were a flock of hens who peered out from behind wired windows at the passers-by.
The walk then cut across the private fields of the farm before meeting up with the Land Bank trail which was opened to the public in 2014.
“This is how the cows and sheep go from one end to another,” said Mr. Fischer as walkers passed through a grassy field and into the trees, eventually emerging at another open field with views of the Tisbury Great Pond. Just across the water, Manter’s Point jutted out into the cove.
Deceptively tranquil, the property has a long history as a working land. At Muddy Cove (or Pear Tree Cove depending on whom you ask) four men built docks for oyster harvesting in the 1950s. They no longer harvest oysters, but the docks and the shuck shack remain. Another part of the land was used for salting herring. When Mr. Fischer’s father bought the land, he used it as a dairy farm. Now, about 20 acres of the land are hay fields, their main cash crop. Sheep and beef cows roam the fenced in fields of the peninsula, and Mr. Fischer’s daughter, Emily Fischer, keeps goats on the farm and makes goat milk soap.
From Muddy Cove, the walk merged with the Land Bank trail and continued down a narrow path flanked on one side by the cows and sheep, and the other by the sparkling blue water, before looping back into scrubby woods.
Jim and Debbie Athearn walked together down the trail leaving Short Cove. Mr. Athearn is the president of the VCS board of directors.
“You get to see land that is not always so open to the public,” he said. He said though he grew up around Flat Point, it wasn’t until a few years ago that he made it out onto the edges of the property. In fact, many of the walkers on Sunday were new to the property. Mr. Fischer was happy to welcome them.
“It’s a hidden gem, out here at the end of the world,” he said.
The land bank trailhead for Flat Point Farm is located off Tiah’s Cove Road. VCS winter walks will continue once a month through March.
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