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.

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.

Woods Hole never witnessed a morning quite like July 1, 1995.

Sunrise in the port town revealed a thick trail of overstuffed sedans, wagons, trucks and jeeps snaking its way from standby line at the packed Steamship Authority terminal to the Woods Hole Road and beyond. The standby line itself topped 400 cars; more than 1,000 passengers awaited ferries to begin a four-day holiday weekend.

It was, in a word, gridlock.

Martha's Vineyard 1996 was a year of storms. There were tempests of the natural sort: September's Hurricane Edouard, though less fearsome than predicted, tore into the Island with gusts up to 80 miles per hour, tossing tree limbs around like chopsticks. An unexpected January blizzard dumped 20 inches of snow on the Island, the biggest one-day tally in nine years. Rain was a dreary, dull constant. The Vineyard absorbed a record 61 inches of rainfall this year, and the Island often looked more like Seattle than a sunny paradise.

The operators of Alley’s General Store in West Tisbury have traditionally been known as the “Dealers in Almost Everything.”

But it seems that the current Alley’s operators cannot deal with their landlord, the Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust.

The current operators — Victor Spelman, Emily Milstein and Will and Deborah Ware — have decided to sell their interest in the State Road general store in order to concentrate on a new retail business in Oak Bluffs.

A man participating in this weekend's Oak Bluffs Monster Shark tournament was injured Friday afternoon when a blue shark bit him on the forearm.

Peter Phillips, 36, of Taunton was fishing more than 10 miles off the Island's South Shore in the boat Sea Tern when he landed a large blue shark, tournament officials said. When he attempted to bring the shark on board the boat, Mr. Phillips was struck on his outstretched forearm.

"Apparently, the shark just lunged out at him," Edgartown deputy police chief Paul Condlin said.