An Original from 1935.

Homesteaded by the Eckert family in 1935, the farm was purchased by Sarah Phipps’ family in 1967. Sarah’s family grew potatoes for their two local restaurants and raised horses, chickens and dairy cows. The farm had been abandoned for 13 years when Sarah decided to purchase it from her family. With help from family members, she began cleaning up and restoring the land, renovating the barn and planting 1100 peonies and hundreds of cut flowers in the fields.

Conserved & Protected

The farmland is put into a conservation easement with the Alaska Farmland Trust.

After seeing so many small farms disappear in her hometown over the years, Sarah went to the Alaska Farmland Trust to talk to them about donating the development rights of the arable farmland to the Trust as a conservation easement in 2018, so it would stay farmland forever. The farmland was protected with a conservation easement, fulfilling Sarah’s hopes that it would never be developed. Her dream of the farm becoming a working farm again, as well as a gathering place for her family and the small town community of Palmer, Alaska, is now coming true. Other local farms are coming forward to talk to the Alaska Farmland Trust about donating their development rights.