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The roof of the old train station on Ethan Allen Streethas been repeatedly hit by trucks in recent years.
Patrick L. Sullivan
SALISBURY — First Selectman Curtis Rand told the Board of Selectmen that the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) is not willing to fund moving the old train station building on Ethan Allen Street in Lakeville. Nor is it interested in paying for a new foundation.
The selectmen have been discussing moving the building, which is awkwardly situated across from restaurants and near the approach to the town Grove. Truck drivers in particular have a hard time with it, as evidenced by the half dozen times the building has been hit in the last couple of years. The town currently has concrete barriers in front of the building.
Rand said SHPO is considering putting up $30,000 for a bid package for engineering plans to move the building and put in a new foundation.
Transfer Station update
Salisbury-Sharon transfer station manager Brian Bartram told the selectmen that three new trash haulers have appeared in town. The problem is the haulers are not bringing the trash they pick up to the transfer station.
He said he is working on getting in touch with the haulers and explaining that Salisbury and Sharon trash needs to come to the transfer station, and that residents who use these haulers are still obligated to purchase transfer station stickers.
Crossing guard
Rand said Salisbury Central School needs crossing guard(s) for the Lincoln City Road/Route 44 intersection. A couple of volunteers have been handling the job, but their term of service is up.
The position is paid.
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Public hears farm zoning change proposal
Sep 17, 2025
SHARON — At the Sept. 10 meeting of the Planning and Zoning Commission, residents weighed in on a proposed zoning amendment that would codify accessory uses for Sharon’s farms.
The regulation is meant to help farmers support their farming operations with supplementary income and is geared towards “sustaining the local agricultural economy and retaining the town’s rural character,” according to the regulation draft language.
The proposed uses available for special permit applications include year-round farm stores, farm-to-table dinners, wineries, breweries, farm product processing facilities, farm vacation stays and general indoor and outdoor events.
The draft stipulates that the proposed accessory use must be secondary to the primary agricultural operation of the farm, and the farm must be at least five acres and actively cultivated.
Some members of the public felt the language was dangerously vague and could allow for unintended consequences.
“This is way too general for what’s coming to this town in terms of development,” said Carol Flaton, voicing her concern that the loose definition of a cultivated farm could be abused.
Land Use Administrator Jamie Casey said that Sharon’s regulations are intentionally general to allow for greater collaboration between the applicant and the land use commissions during project design. It’s better when things are “a little bit vague,” she said, allowing applicants more breadth and room for creativity and working with the commissions to formulate the details. “These things are worked out at a meeting,” she said.
P&Z Vice Chair Betsy Hall pointed out that the requirement of the accessory use being secondary ensures that proposed uses overshadow the agricultural aspects of the property. “It’s not like we’re going to let a manufacturing operation open on the farm,” she said. “We’re talking about the working farmers.”
P&Z alternate Jill Drew concurred that “the vagueness is a feature, not a bug.”
Selectman Lynn Kearcher suggested that the minimal property size be greater than five acres, which Hall said the Commission would consider when it picks the discussion back up at the next meeting.
The Commission plans to discuss the issue of noisy chickens in residential areas at its Sept. 24 planning session. Casey announced that she had received a complaint from Sharon Valley Road resident Letitia Brazee about a flock of chickens at a neighboring property. Brazee wanted clarification in the zoning regulations as to what animals are considered farm animals and how a farm is defined.
The current regulations, last modified in June 2023, allow farms in any zone in Sharon providing the lot is three acres or greater. The term farm, however, is not included in the regulations’ list of definitions, and the only animals currently regulated for lot area are horses.
Further complicating matters is the state’s “Right to Farm” law, which exempts agricultural activity from being “deemed to constitute a nuisance” unless the municipality adopts an ordinance or regulation “to the contrary.”
Another situation in Kent involving complaints over roosters in 2024 found the town upholding its protections against agricultural nuisance claims.
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Pamela Berkeley won first prize for her painting.
Provided
LIME ROCK — The Trinity Gallery juried art show opened Friday, Sept. 12 at Trinity Episcopal Church in Lime Rock.
The winner was Pamela Berkeley’s “Marigold, Comet, Eclipse and the Ghost.”
Organizer Theresa Kenny said there were over 120 works in the show, the largest number of submissions in recent memory.
The show continues through Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 20 and 21, noon to 4 p.m.
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Attendees listen as Ellery “Woods” Sinclair describe the history and importance of the American Chestnut at the American Chestnut Orchard in Falls Village on Sunday, Sept. 14.
L. Tomaino
FALLS VILLAGE — On Sunday, Sept. 14, a small crowd gathered at the American Chestnut Orchard at the foot of The Great Mountain Forest on Undermountain Road in Falls Village to hear Ellery “Woods” Sinclair talk about the American chestnut tree – the restoration of which he has championed for many years. The orchard was planted for that purpose.
Sinclair, a former English teacher, is manager of the orchard, planted in 2006 by students of the Ag-Ed Department of Housatonic Valley Regional High School and its teacher Mark Burdick. They planted 25 trees in each row, for a total of 80 trees across the two-acre lot. Students have returned ever since to help maintain it.
It had been, Sinclair said, “the single most abundant tree” in America, with one out of five trees being an American chestnut and “an important food for wildlife, from bees getting, to caterpillars eating its leaves, to deer and bear eating the chestnuts.”
Sinclair said that the American chestnut is an “iconic tree.”
“Many of the houses around here were built from white oak or chestnut. But chestnut is impervious to rot.” It was used for furniture, house framing, shingles, firewood, and coffins, and it provided the wood preservative, tannin.
In 1904, an Asian fungus, cryphonestria parasitica, was accidentally introduced into the United States. “By 1911, thirty percent of the American chestnuts in the United States were hopelessly infected,” Sinclair said. “By 1950, four billion, over nine million acres were destroyed by the blight.”
Sinclair said, Dr Leila Pinchot, restoration ecologist from the US Forest Service, who’s specialty is reintroducing American chestnut trees, was instrumental in helping to start the orchard.
Sinclair explained, “The trees in the orchard are hybrids. Fifteen-sixteenths American chestnut and one-sixteenth Chinese chestnut.” The Chinese chestnut is resistant to the fungus causing the blight.
Jack Swatt, President of the Connecticut chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation, stated that they now feel that the amount of Chinese Chestnut should be higher because all of the trees in the orchard have been infected by the blight to some degree.
He added that the solution to getting blight-resistant trees will probably be a mixture of techniques including adding genes from trees like willows which are resistant to the fungus and which trigger attacks on the fungus and kill it.”
Before introducing any genetic engineering into the environment, Swatt said, “It must be approved by many agencies and deregulated. It must be proven not to be a danger to the environment.”
Swatt feels it is well worth pursuing genetic engineering in order to “restore the environment” that the American chestnut had a large part in sustaining, being a keystone species.
Sinclair said, “A greatest pleasure has been rediscovery and regeneration of interest in and appreciation by family and students for the American chestnut.”
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