Mark Schiltz continues family tradition of saving open spaces

Bigfork Eagle

The starlings had just arrived back at Joe Brenneman’s place near Creston.

Walking down from his house to his pasture, Brenneman paused briefly to listen to the birds’ enthusiastic singing — the first of the spring.

Brenneman has been on this land a long time. He grew up here and managed the family’s dairy farm until last fall, when he sold all his cows to a Mission Valley dairy startup. He keeps about 100 cows around that he’s raising for a Eureka farmer.

Brenneman is a former Flathead County commissioner who, as a political leader, straddled both sides of the property-rights debate. But as a private landowner he wants to make sure this 155 acres on the Flathead River that his family has farmed for two generations will remain agricultural long after he is gone.

He’s working with the Montana Land Reliance to put the land into a conservation easement that would forever keep it in agriculture production.

Mark Schiltz works for the Montana Land Reliance to preserve farms like Brenneman’s. Schiltz, whose grandparents homesteaded and farmed near Echo Lake, wants to see Flathead Valley land preserved for future generations to grow food and preserve wildlife habitat.

The Bigfork office of the Montana Land Reliance opened in 1991, well before the land-rush of the early 2000s began. The Montana Land Reliance is the second-largest land trust in the United States, with 1 million acres placed in conservation easements.

A conservation easement is a perpetual, legal obligation that a landowner places on their property. An easement usually requires that the land be used only for agriculture and cannot be subdivided or developed. Organizations like the Montana Land Reliance often purchase easements from a landowner to protect the land. A landowner can also donate an easement.

Schiltz’s family worked with the Montana Land Reliance to place a conservation easement on their land near Echo Lake, where the family has had a tree farm since 1965. His family’s roots go back much farther though, to when the property didn’t even have electricity.

The Montana Land Reliance, founded in 1978, focuses on preserving land in the Flathead Valley for open space, wildlife and agriculture.

The Reliance has 10,000 acres under easement in the Flathead Valley for agriculture and timber production. “We protect a lot of ground,” Schiltz said.

Schiltz said a common perception of conservation easements is that a landowner gives up control of their land when they sell or place an easement on it. “People think you have to give up management, and that’s not true,” he said. “An easement protects open space but doesn’t tell you what to do with it. And all easements are different.”

Prior to the economic recession that started in 2008, the land-conservation movement was gaining momentum. But when appraisals started to drop during the recession, and there was less pressure from developers on landowners to sell, landowners started to postpone deciding on an easement, Schiltz said.

Conservation easements have held steady in the last few years, but with land prices starting to increase again, there will come more pressure to develop to it, he said.

Estate planning is a time when a conservation easement may come up within a family that owns acreage. For his family, Schiltz said his mother and her brother had the debate 20 years ago over what to do with the family farm. “We had that crisis,” he said. “It was a hard discussion, but we used an easement to figure things out.”

The easement his mother, Bigfork native Sharon Schiltz, and his uncle placed on the land near Echo Lake means the land stays workable for generations. And it means future generations can’t squabble over the land. It’s a gift he respects. As an heir, he said, “I shouldn’t be able to just cash out. It’s a values question.”

Often it’s a family transfer of land — not development — that takes large pieces of land out of production, Schiltz said. Family transfers continue to split up agricultural land. “The biggest complaint ag producers have is they don’t have enough land to run a cow/calf operation,” Schiltz said.

AT the Brenneman farm north of Bigfork, Joe Brenneman was recently in his shop working on a tractor. After getting out of the dairy business, where he milked cows twice a day, his job now entails hauling silage (fermented hay) from his farm to the outfit near Ronan that bought his cows. The silage is used for feed.  

“I still have cows around,” Brenneman said, “I just don’t have to milk them.”

His custom-beef operation may be the direction he’s headed. Brenneman’s work is tied to the land and always will be.

On a shed behind his house lies a head from a deer that a family member harvested last fall. There are small signs all around the Brenneman place of lives tied very closely to the land. There is even a fenced-up garden to keep the deer out.

This is the land where Brenneman has built a life — and raised a family. “I haven’t gone very far,” he said.

A conservation easement means the next generations will maintain that tie to the land. When he and his father began discussions with the Montana Land Reliance about an easement, Brenneman said his father was at first wary of the idea. “But he liked the potential for income and keeping the land,” Brenneman said.

There are easements on the land up and down the Flathead River around Brenneman’s place. An easement on the Brenneman farm will contribute to preserving several hundred acres of farm land near Old Steel Bridge. “I’m philosophically in favor of conservation easements,” Brenneman said.

His farm will help feed the Flathead Valley, too.

“We actually do get our food from the ground,” he said.

Schiltz started a project three years ago called the Flathead Agricultural Forum. The project looks at the future of farming in the Flathead Valley, and it takes place each fall.

Open space helps preserve land values in the Flathead Valley, Schiltz said. “That’s what draws people here,” he said. “The irony is that subdivision kills that.”

The Roth family, whose namesake created the Roth IRA, recently placed a conservation easement on 738 acres in the Swan Valley that will protect a long corridor along the upper Swan River.

Montana is at a “critical point” in land use and preservation, Schiltz said. With farmers aging and their offspring living out of state or not willing to take over the farm, the agriculture landscape in Montana could be changing.

“The next generation may or may not have those same values,” he said.

“I joined the Montana Land Reliance because of my passion for the land.”