No headline
A horse runs through the pasture behind the Brosten house on the southeast shore of Mud Lake near Creston. The land has been in the family since Arne Brosten’s father homesteaded the property in the 1930s. Recently a conservation easement was placed on the land with the help of Montana Land Reliance. Chris Jordan photos/Daily Inter Lake
By JIM MANN
The Daily Inter Lake
Linked to the land
Longtime Flathead families preserve their property
Long ago, Arne and Alice Brosten pondered possible ways to protect the family property and this year, with the help of their sons, they settled on the matter: a conservation agreement through the Montana Land Reliance.
The agreement, which closed a couple months ago, was one of several achieved this year. Amy Royer, the Reliance's Northwest Montana field representative, said the common denominator for all of them was their deep ties to family land.
"Of the four that we're finishing up in the valley, they all involve long-time families," Royer said.
That's the case for the Brostens, who live on land homesteaded in the 1930s by Arne's father northeast of Bigfork, and just off the eastern shore of Mud Lake. The house was built from logs off the property in 1940 and the barn out back was built in 1948. It has been managed as a tree farm since 1976, and for a while, the land was home to the Brosten Dairy, which churned milk into Brosten Butter until 1992. Just a short stroll from the house are the cattailed banks of Mud Lake, which is bustling with geese and ducks.
The Brostens like the way the place is now, and they have been thinking long and hard how to keep it that way.
"We started thinking about this 15 years ago," says Alice Brosten. "We knew we wanted to do something but we weren't sure what. We finally made a decision."
"We just wanted to see the place preserved as an open space," adds Arne.
Royer said it took considerable time to develop the details of the agreement, which essentially sets aside space for an additional homesite, and provides for continued timber management and livestock use. The only thing the agreement bans for perpetuity is subdivision and housing development, Royer said.
"It's been a lot of fun to develop it, to think about how we want the land to be and to get it down on paper," Alice said.
Developing the agreement has been an ongoing "family project" that involved input from the Brosten's two grown sons, Mark and Troy.
What is perhaps most remarkable about the Brosten's conservation agreement is the way it meshes with a series of previous conservation agreements on other properties in the Mud Lake area.
There are protections for 500 acres of farmland across the lake, and for another 100 acres on a nearby tree farm and for a 190-acre tract to the east. Further south, on the other side of Montana 83, there are 254 acres with conservation protections. And all of them were developed with the help of the Montana Land Reliance, a Helena-based organization that boasts "Cows Not Condos" as its motto.
"That's part of what the Reliance looks at - making sure there's some connectivity not only for habitat but for open space and keeping communities intact," Royer said.
The Reliance has been busy in the Flathead, closing on 50 conservation agreements covering roughly 6,500 acres in the valley since 1994. Royer expects the Reliance and other similar organizations, such as the Montana Land Trust, will get even busier over the next two years because of recent federal legislation that temporarily expands tax incentives for landowners who make use of conservation agreements.
"It's a phenomenal change" that provides more options that should attract the interest of more landowners, Royer says. But the expanded incentives are set to expire at the end of 2007.
Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com