If Newfields Can Redefine A Conservation Easement, Can Any Town?

By Taylor Millard, NH Journal

A long-running legal and regulatory battle over concerts and large events at Vernon Family Farm has grown into a test case with implications far beyond one Newfields hayfield — raising alarms about whether towns can continue to enforce conservation easements on public land.

Opponents of the farm’s expanded event operations warn that if the town’s current interpretation prevails, municipalities across New Hampshire could see their authority over conservation easements weakened, allowing elected boards or commissions to effectively rewrite land-use restrictions long after voters and taxpayers paid to preserve them.

Despite those concerns, the Newfields Conservation Commission (NCC) voted 5–2 last November to side with the Vernon family, concluding that vehicle parking associated with concerts and events could continue on land protected by a town-held conservation easement.

The dispute centers on roughly 33 acres of pastureland along the Piscassic River, most of which is subject to a conservation easement adopted in 2004 using public funds. That easement explicitly prohibits “industrial or commercial activities,” allowing only agriculture, forestry, and conservation uses.

While Vernon Family Farm operates as a working livestock farm and farm store, neighbors argue the property has evolved into a seasonal entertainment venue, hosting ticketed concerts, private events, and prepared-food service — with hundreds of vehicles parked directly on conserved fields.

The Vernon family has said those agritourism events are essential to keeping the farm financially viable. Neighbors counter that economic hardship does not permit rewriting legally binding conservation terms.

Tensions escalated during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the farm significantly increased the number and scale of events. Complaints followed, including concerns about noise, traffic, safety, and environmental damage from repeated vehicle parking on protected land.

In 2022, the Newfields Planning Board approved the farm’s event operations with 17 separate conditions, including limits on hours, noise mitigation, and operational controls. Two years later, a group of neighbors sued the Vernon family and the town, alleging violations of zoning rules and conservation easement terms.

Among their claims: that the family constructed and operated a restaurant and bar without proper inspections and approvals, and that the events exceeded what was legally allowed on conserved land.

That lawsuit was dismissed last year on procedural grounds. An appeal to the New Hampshire Supreme Court is expected.

While the court case stalled, opponents filed a separate complaint with the New Hampshire Charitable Trusts Unit(CTU), which oversees conservation easements created or supported with public funds.

The complaint argued that using the conserved field for event parking — along with plans to remove a historic stone wall and install a septic system — violated the easement outright.

A CTU review issued last summer agreed in part, finding that the proposed septic system and stone wall removal would violate the easement’s terms.

But CTU Director Mary Ann Dempsey raised deeper concerns about process and precedent. While acknowledging that the NCC consulted legal counsel and visited the property, Dempsey questioned why the commission initially ruled in favor of the Vernon family without first holding a public hearing.

She urged greater transparency, particularly on how commissioners concluded that large-scale vehicle parking — unrelated to crop production or livestock management — complied with a conservation easement that explicitly bans commercial activity.

After the CTU intervention, the NCC held public hearings last fall focused on parking. Days before an October hearing, former CTU Director Thomas Donovan issued a blunt warning to commissioners.

“It does not matter whether the business activity is labeled agritourism,” Donovan said. “That concept appears nowhere in the easement.”

Donovan argued the Vernon family was attempting to “bootstrap” a modern agritourism theory onto a decades-old legal document that never contemplated concerts, sit-down dinners, or entertainment venues.

“The easement allows a farm stand,” he said, “not a restaurant, not a bar, and not live entertainment.”

Opponents say the NCC’s ultimate decision — allowing parking to continue subject to future soil studies and mitigation plans — undermines the very purpose of conservation easements.

Former Newfields Town Board chair Michael Sununu, brother of Gov. Chris Sununu, believes the commission failed in its role as easement steward.

“Commission members inserted their own definition of agriculture in order to justify continuation of the activities on the property,” Sununu told NHJournal.

Sununu said agritourism as it exists today was not contemplated when the easement was created more than 20 years ago and should not be retroactively applied.

He has urged the Charitable Trusts Unit to take more direct action, arguing the NCC misled the Planning Board and withheld a monitoring report that raised red flags about compliance with the easement.

Sununu and other critics warn the case could ripple statewide if left unchallenged.

In 2021, lawmakers rejected House Bill 82, which would have allowed government bodies and landowners to modify conservation easements to “correct an injustice” or advance the “public good.” Critics argued the bill would gut easement protections by making them politically negotiable.

Sununu sees echoes of that rejected policy in Newfields.

“The next town will say, ‘You let Newfields do it — why can’t we?’” he said. “That opens a Pandora’s box. And once you start redefining conservation easements, they stop being conservation easements at all.”

For now, the question remains unresolved: whether conservation land paid for and protected by the public can be repurposed through administrative interpretation — or whether easement terms still mean what they say.

As the legal and regulatory battles continue, Newfields has become ground zero in a broader fight over who controls conserved land in New Hampshire — the voters who protected it, or the officials who later reinterpret it.

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.