Amber Waves Now Owns Its Amber Waves, Buys Amagansett Farmers Market Property

The owners of Amber Waves Farm this week inked an agreement to purchase the Amagansett Farmers Market and the 9 acres of land behind it that has been the anchor of its farming operation for the last eight years.

The deal is a first for East Hampton Town, with the two women who founded Amber Waves Farm in 2009 agreeing to a package of covenants and restrictions as part of their purchase that will mandate that the land be actively cultivated almost exclusively with food crops in perpetuity. The deal prohibits the use of the land for equestrian or vineyard uses and demands that at least 80 percent of the farmland be in food production. If the farm is fallow for two years, the trust has the right to lease the land to another farmer.

The agreement also restricts the land’s resale value at a 3.5-percent annual appreciation above the approximately $25,000-per-acre sale price, a measure intended to keep it affordable to other food crop farmers, and retains the right to approve or reject any future buyer should it ever be put up for sale again.

Resale values will not be an issue for a long time, the new owners say. The two women say the deal to purchase their first tract of acreage anchors them in the farming community and gives them a foundation to advance their enthusiastic promotion of their business.

“Owning the soil underfoot allows us to control our own destiny,” co-founder Katie Baldwin said on Monday. “It gives us the deep sense of security that we can make some business decisions that advance our business.”

In 2007, the Peconic Land Trust brokered a four-way deal with Amagansett Farmers Market owner Pat Struk, East Hampton Town and the wealthy conservation-minded family of Maggie de Cuevas that saved the market property from being developed with houses. At the time, Ms. de Cuevas purchased the land and then sold the housing development rights to the town, and handed over management of the farmers market and farmland to the trust.

A year later, the trust found its first farmer tenants in Ms. Baldwin and Amanda Merrow, who had met that year while doing a farming apprenticeship at nearby Quail Hill Farm, which is owned by the Peconic Land Trust.

Since then, the two women have been among the most visible of a group of young East Hampton farmers who have garnered splashes of fame in the Hamptons and beyond for their bountiful enthusiasm for high-quality produce—and found substantial business success as well. The Amber Waves Farm focuses primarily on its 150 CSA, or “community supported agriculture,” members who receive the bulk of the women’s produce in regular installments throughout the growing season, and on a variety of food and produce education efforts that the women lead.

The Peconic Land Trust and Southampton Town have partnered on a handful of similar deals using Community Preservation Fund money to purchase the rights to use land for anything other than food crop cultivation, in an effort to combat the trend of land preserved from housing development still commanding six-figure-per-acre prices for use as horse farms and polo clubs, because courts have ruled those uses to be forms of agriculture. The covenants, however, cleave the value of farmland down to just $20,000 to $30,000 per acre.

East Hampton Town has yet to adopt its own policy of folding the so-called enhanced rights purchase into its CPF program. Recently, members of the town’s Agricultural Advisory Committee told the Town Board that they would prefer to see the town purchase additional rights beyond just housing development that would cap the resale price of land and would require that it remain in active agriculture, but would not limit the type of agriculture that could be practiced on the land—leaving the potential of the land being planted with landscape nursery stock or even a horse farm.

With nothing ahead but expanding their food production operation, and with their sights set on someday acquiring more land, the women from Amber Waves say they are happy to proceed with the more stringent limitations on use.

“We feel so fortunate to be part of the Amagansett community, and it’s extraordinary to be a part of the agricultural heritage of the East End,” Ms. Merrow said Monday. “As much as this is a milestone for our farm, we’re really excited that the purchase is going to start the next chapter. This steps us up—it means we’re in it for the long haul.”