Lucien Lebreux , the owner of Middle Acres Farm in Tiverton, has worked with The Nature Conservancy and state and federal agencies to preserve one of the largest forest tracts in the East Bay.

The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

TIVERTON — Soon after he bought a farm and forest on a ridge above a swamp, Lucien Lebreux’s phone started ringing. In the ’60s and ’70s, developers surveyed his lot, photographed his fields and envisioned houses and a golf course on his Crandall Road land.

Lebreux considered a few of their offers. But the money was never right, and one developer even went belly up. Working with a rundown tractor, Lebreux instead cleared about a third of his 240 acres for a dairy farm, two cranberry bogs, a commercial greenhouse and a roadside stand.

Then the price of milk plummeted and the money dried up. In the ’90s, Lebreux asked the state to buy the development rights to his property, a farm since the 1820s. But saving the historic site wasn’t a top state priority. In 2003, Lebreux started talking to John Berg, a landscape manager with The Nature Conservancy in Rhode Island. The Conservancy wanted to protect the farm and forest — a big chunk of the 400-acre Tiverton Great Swamp, a key wilderness and wetlands area in southeastern Rhode Island.

After much talk, Lebreux in January sold the development rights to his Middle Acres Farm for $1.5 million. Under the deal, the land can still be farmed, but never developed.

Several agencies will help preserve the land. Lebreux gave The Nature Conservancy and the state Department of Environmental Management a conservation easement on 150 acres of mostly forest land. The state Agricultural Land Preservation Commission got the development rights on another 90 acres of farmland. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture also have an interest in the property.

The groups are responsible for managing and maintaining the wildlife and property, which is not open to the public.

The Nature Conservancy also relied on organizations such as the Champlin Foundations to help pay the bill.

Says Berg, “The land costs are so high that we have to cobble these deals together using federal, state, local and private sources.”

The $1.5 million is about 85 percent of the full market price, says Berg. Because it’s less, Lebreux will be able to claim the difference as a charitable gift and write it off at tax time.

It’s a good deal for Lebreux, who paid $15,500 for the land in 1956. Faced with climbing tax bills and falling profits, Lebreux had little money left for maintenance.

Now he plans to repair an aging barn. Also, some of the money will be used to help the 78-year-old farmer retire, and maybe build a new home. The agreement allows him to develop a small lot.

But Lebreux’s new house will be the last on the land. Under the deal, the open fields, which could have been divided into 42 lots with new roads, will be preserved.

That’s fine with Lebreux, who never married. He has deeded the farm to a nephew, Dana Lebreux, a joint partner in his cranberry operation. “You hate like hell to see houses go up after all that hard work,” he says.

The land, which forms a valley, is bordered on one side by Weetamoo Woods, part of one of the largest forests in the East Bay. And the cranberry bogs and fields sit astride an aquifer that provides water to the west branch of the Westport River.

Although he can afford it now, Lebreux doesn’t act like a man ready to quit. Farming is in his blood, he says. As a young man, he herded cows on his father’s one-acre farm, on the state line.

Now, in red suspenders and a worn red cap, he sells tomatoes, corn, cranberries and Christmas trees in season. He also produces hay, feed corn and beef cattle. On some days, he rises before dawn to work his cranberry bogs, a moneymaker last year, he says. In the early spring, honking geese fly over the bogs while white-faced steers chew on hay scattered in a nearby trough.

The Conservancy hopes to protect other privately owned forests near Lebreux’s land. But there aren’t many farms left. Lebreux remembers that when he was a boy there were 5,000 fewer houses in town. The conservationists, he says, started too late. “They could have saved a lot more.”

pdavis@projo.com