Recently 151 acres of the Mawby family farm was protected with a conservation easement with the Leelanau Conservancy, which keeps the land in private hands but restricts it from development forever. 

And since 1953, the Mawby homestead has never been offered for sale. Until now.

“It’s simply a rare and special property with much history to share,” says listing real estate agent Cory Beuerle of Century 21 Northland in Suttons Bay. She explains that the entire parcel — listed at $1,699,999 — includes 161 acres with M-22 frontage and views of the countryside, the nearby village of Suttons Bay and West Bay. 

First up, the 10 acres home to the classic barn and sprawling 1920s farmhouse with a wrap-around porch. Beuerle says it is (literally) out of a Montgomery Ward catalog, adding that the property’s zoning could allow it to be a potential tasting room for a winery or cidery.

Then there are the adjoining 151 acres — protected into perpetuity with a conservancy easement — which includes five acres set aside to build on, and approximately 80 acres in mature orchards.

The Mawby siblings — Larry Mawby, retired Leelanau vintner who founded MAWBY Vineyards in 1973; Ron Mawby, now of Kentucky; and Joan (Mawby) Dunklow, who operates Dunklow Maintenance in Suttons Bay with her husband, Dave — grew up in that farmhouse. They decided to protect 151 acres of the homestead purchased in 1953 by their fruit-growing father and grandfather to ensure that the land overlooking Power Island and Grand Traverse Bay will never change.

“There’s a contractual easement that goes with the land which restricts what they (buyers) can do on it. It can’t be split,” explains Larry Mawby, though buyers could build a farmstead complex.

“The conservancy has for two decades been pretty consistently working to protect farmland in Leelanau County,” adds Mawby. “You look around Leelanau, or anywhere that’s beautiful, and development pressures are huge. The conservancy is dedicated to preserving land for future generations.”

The farmland program relies on the availability of federal dollars as well as funds from the conservancy — via its donors. Protecting the land via easement costs the conservancy 25 percent of its value, while the owner — in this case the Mawby family — contributes 25 percent of the fair market value of the land to the project cost as a charitable donation. The federal government pays the remaining 50 percent.

“We can’t afford to just give away the land, but for us the 25 percent was the appropriate tradeoff,” says Mawby, who, along with his siblings, recently shared more of the backstory of the property and their motivation to protect the land with conservancy staff. 

The private lands protected through conservation easements are not open to the public for exploring, but protecting them from future development offers preservation of views, water quality, and wildlife.

Meanwhile, many of the properties owned by the Leelanau Conservancy do include trails for hiking, snowshoeing or the like. The conservancy currently manages 25 miles of trails — and counting. 

And in this season of COVID-19, they have been seeing more use than ever before.

“We’ve witnessed a dramatic uptick in visitors to our natural areas and preserves,” says Tom Nelson, the conservancy’s executive director. “Leelanau County is a place where people connect or reconnect.”

And with the number of people using it, it’s a good thing the number of properties the conservancy has protected continues to grow.

“I’m delighted to say that we’ve acquired four new properties for the public to enjoy this year,” says Nelson, citing the Stites Natural Area in Suttons Bay, Pat’s Preserve at Lime Lake in Cleveland Township, a new ridgeline and fen addition to Cedar River Preserve in Solon Township, and a 350-acre addition to Palmer Woods Forest Reserve in Glen Arbor and Cleveland Townships.

Ray and Jan Pezzi wanted to preserve the character of the land surrounding their house. That’s why they donated what is now the Stites preserve.

They live next door, and Ray says he and Jan bought the lot where the home is because they wanted a quiet place near town. “It was kind of magical. You can walk to Suttons Bay but it’s shielded.”

Or at least that’s what they thought when they bought the lot. The surrounding land had specific building restrictions, but when a developer purchased that property, he said he was going to ignore the restrictions and put in a housing development.

The Pezzis and other nearby landowners banded together and sued to keep it from being developed. After winning the suit (the developer eventually went bankrupt), the Pezzis decided to purchase the land themselves. Then they gifted it and another parcel across the road — nearly 50 acres in all — to the conservancy.

“We’re not going to live forever. The land Jan and I donated, if we hadn’t, it would be gone. We want to preserve it, keep it undeveloped,” says Pezzi.

As to those visitors, Pezzi agrees with Nelson’s assessment of the increased numbers this year. Pezzi says there were far more people visiting the relatively small Stites Natual Area since it opened this fall than he anticipated, and adding, “What we’ve given is very nice, but it’s no comparison to Houdek Dunes.” 

It goes back to what Nelson says is the draw: “Lots of people reconnect outdoors. There’s a lot of polarization in the world, but land and clean water are things we can agree on.”

Since its inception in 1988, the conservancy has protected 14,000 acres of land and 47 miles of stream and lake frontage.

Photo: a portion of the Mawby farmstead, by Mark Smith