A 105-acre greenbelt area around the town of Tisbury will see a small expansion thanks to a purchase by the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank. The land bank announced this week that it has bought a three-acre lot in Tisbury abutting its Wapatequa Woods Reservation.

The pastoral sheep pastures and hayfields at Flat Point Farm will be placed into conservation after the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank announced plans to purchase a large piece of the West Tisbury farm.

The land bank is set to purchase 12.9 acres of land and an agricultural preservation restriction on an additional 25 acres of abutting pastures for $3.45 million from the Fischer family, who has owned the property since 1939, land bank director James Lengyel said this week.

And although money is coming in, executive director James Lengyel said the lank bank is not in the position to be acquiring new properties, with a still slumping real estate market. Last week, the land bank reported revenue of $0. Mr. Lengyel said a week without revenue is infrequent for the land bank, though it has happened before. The last time, he said, was within the last year.

A trail-widening project by the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank on its properties has sparked strong reaction from a small group of bikers and horseback riders, who took their concerns to the land bank this week.

Laura Bryan, an off-road biker who lives on Chappaquiddick, said she and her friend Michael Berwind were biking through Pennywise Preserve last week when they came upon a land bank crew working with a brush cutter and a freshly-cleared trail.

The low-key green and white signposts that mark properties owned by the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank so often belie the grandeur of what lies at the end of a short trail. Think Aquinnah Headlands, Poucha Pond, Waskosim’s Rock, to name just a few.

So the property purchase announced by the land bank last week sounded, well, underwhelming: just under twelve acres of nondescript wooded land off the Edgartown-West Tisbury Road.

The Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank announced this week that it has purchased nearly 12 acres in the rural wooded perimeters of Edgartown, completing a long-planned project to protect the westerly entrance to town as largely undeveloped land — both the fields and woodland.

The land bank paid $900,000 for 11.8 acres. The seller was Philip J. Norton Jr. The purchase will boost the total size of the land bank’s Ben Toms Preserve to nearly 30 acres, with some 2,000 feet of frontage on the West Tisbury Road.

A joint purchase last month by the town of Tisbury and the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank completes a decades-old aquifer protection plan around the Manter well.

The town and the land bank paid $400,000 for 9.5 acres off Old Holmes Hole Road, with the town putting in $300,000 and the land bank $100,000. The transaction took place on August 24.

One of the listed sellers was Ron Monterosso, acting as a trustee for Redmont Realty Trust, which owned a fractional interest in the property. The sale was handled through a trustee appointed by the Dukes County Probate Court.

After a turbulent decade in the housing market, the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank is reporting a second relatively flat year of revenue, perhaps indicating that the market is climbing onto steadier ground.

Land bank executive director James Lengyel said this week that revenues are expected to be down about seven per cent for fiscal year while transactions are up about three per cent.

“The numbers speak for themselves,” Mr. Lengyel said, calling them “essentially flat.”

The fiscal year ends Saturday.

The five women range in age from 66 to 84, and their goal is to hike every single one of the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank walking trails. Thus far they have checked off twenty of them, even repeating a few favorites.

Last Sunday the women allowed this reporter to join their hike. We met at 9 a.m. in the parking lot of the Up-Island Cronig’s. The temperature that morning was 29 degrees.

The Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank added a small but significant piece of land to its holdings at the scenic Gay Head Cliffs this week with the purchase of a single acre near the historic clay cliffs in the westernmost reaches of the Vineyard. The seller was the Vineyard Open Land Foundation. The purchase price was $225,000.