Weather permitting, the Martha's Vineyard Prescribed Fire Partnership will conduct the burn at the Hoft Farm in West Tisbury.
Weather permitting, the Martha's Vineyard Prescribed Fire Partnership will conduct the burn at the Hoft Farm in West Tisbury.
For more than a hundred years, the barn at Hoft Farm has born witness to the hard work and heartbreak of Vineyard rural life. The large barn, rising three stories high from its substantial fieldstone foundation, marked the ambition and optimism of the Hoft family, who settled on the Island after ocean journey and shipwreck. John Hoft, born in Hamburg, Germany, planted an orchard of apples, pears, peaches and plums.
The day was cold and clear at the old John Hoft Farm. Pale grasses danced in the wind buffeting the pasture, and nearby ponds were alive with wavelets. Gathered by the farmhouse were more than two dozen Islanders, walkers ready for a tour of this historic property off Lambert’s Cove Road.
The Massachusetts chapter of The Nature Conservancy announced this week it will purchase the John Hoft Farm, 90 acres of rolling pastures and unspoiled morainal woodlands which embrace Duarte’s Pond and the moist bogs off Lambert’s Cove Road in West Tisbury.
The farm is owned by Daniel Alisio and will be named the Hoft Farm Preserve, in memory of his late wife, Marguerite Hoft Alisio, whose family owned the farm for over 100 years.
John Hoft Farm on Lambert’s Cove Road is a spectacular place, a 90-acre expanse of pasture, woods and lowlands that, for many people, symbolizes the almost-vanished farming tradition of Martha’s Vineyard.
But now, the Hoft Farm is an unlikely battleground.
That’s because the farm is for sale, and developers, conservationists and private buyers are elbowing each other in an effort to secure this gorgeous parcel of West Tisbury history.
As the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank prepares for a confrontation with its new neighbors in Makonikey, pressure is mounting on its West Tisbury advisory board to buy a major inland property off Lambert’s Cove Road.
At issue is a handsome, 90-acre stretch of rolling woods and lowlands which is regarded as one of the last great, undeveloped pastures along Lambert’s Cove. The property, operated for generations as a family farm, is currently owned by Dan Alisio of Tisbury, who is trying to sell the property for $2.5 million.
