Teri Ptacek leaves legacy of farmland protection in two local counties

SCHAGHTICOKE — When Teri Ptacek recently stood in the lettuce fields at the Denison Farm, she was in the middle of one of the 116 properties she’s helped keep farming and preserved from future development in Rensselaer and Washington counties.

After leading the Agricultural Stewardship Association for 18 years, the 64-year-old Ptacek is retiring in October as its executive director.

But before she leaves, Cambridge-based organization plans to preserve about 6,500 more acres of farmland as part of 24 projects. It will push the total amount of preserved land to 31,390 acres from the current amount of 24,890 acres.

“I will miss Teri terribly,” said Justine Denison, whose 164-acre farm that she owns with her husband Brian, is among the farms Ptacek helped preserve.

It cost $173,328 to purchase the Denison Farm’s development rights, giving the family much needed revenue and ensuring the land will always be used for farming. But money was short for putting together such a transaction when it was put in place in 2010-2011.

“She was eloquent and instrumental in pulling it off,” Denison said, describing Ptacek’s leadership as she knit together funds from private foundations, federal grants, donations and other public entities to finance the purchase.

Ptacek’s love for farms began with visits to her grandmother’s farm.

“We used to always go visit my grandmother’s farm growing up. You just started seeing the farmland disappear and the houses appear. That really hit me when I came back to visit one time in college. It was the only farm standing,” she recalled.

“To me that was wrong. We shouldn’t be turning over our good farmland and turning it into McMansions. There’s a place for farmland and a place for housing. I’m pro farmland. We have to keep that resource,” she said.

After learning Chinese, graduating from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, going to Georgia Tech and the Pratt Institute, Ptacek came to the Capital Region when she and her husband Andrew Kelly, a lawyer, moved back to his hometown of Greenwich. There, they raised a son and a daughter.  Ptacek went to work for the American Farmland Trust for nine years in Saratoga Springs then moved to ASA as its first staff member and executive director.

ASA, at that point, had preserved 30 farms, keeping 3,300 acres from being swallowed for development. Over the next 18 years, Ptacek would leverage more than $24.7 million in state funding, $2 million in federal funding and $2.2 million in private funding to bring the total protected land to 146 properties in the two counties.  ASA uses the money to acquire the development rights to the land from the current farmers. The land is then preserved for future farming.  It can take up to two years to preserve a farm.

Ptacek is slowly easing her way into retirement. Her successor is Renee Bouplon, ASA’s current associate director and a member of a fourth-generation farm family in White Creek.

Ptacek said she’ll miss playing a key role in preserving local farms and protecting the landscape.

“The thing that is wonderful about conserving land is I know which farms have been conserved.”

She described rolling through farm country and spotting places she’s worked on.  “I know as I drive along that one’s protected, that one’s protected. It’s something that will always be protected. It’s a great sense of accomplishment.”

“I will miss not being part of the stories of the new farms, the next farms that will be protected.”