The county clerk told me the conservation restriction had been recorded in 1977, long before my husband and I ever bought the property. It covered the back acreage where the apple trees stood and prohibited permanent structures, excavation, and removal of established vegetation without written approval. I asked whether a pool or sauna would qualify, and she said both would require permission that was almost certainly impossible to obtain. I took a certified copy home and read every page twice. Then I noticed my husband’s name in the original paperwork. He had signed an acknowledgment in 1981 confirming that he understood the restriction and agreed to preserve the acreage.
I called my son and told him about the restriction. He said he had already spoken to the contractor and didn’t care what an old document said. I reminded him that he had never owned the back acreage in the first place, but he insisted the restriction had expired years ago. I took the documents to an attorney, who checked the county records and found that it was permanent and still fully enforceable. More importantly, the deed transferring the property to my son specifically referenced the restriction. He had signed that deed himself. His wife had apparently never seen the paperwork, and my son had never bothered to tell her that the land she had designed a pool for couldn’t legally be developed.
The following week, the contractor canceled the project after receiving a copy of the restriction. My son was furious and accused me of using paperwork to keep him from improving the property. I told him he was free to improve the house, but the orchard wasn’t his construction site. I kept selling my preserves at the markets and added another dozen names to my waiting list that fall. Months later, my son finally apologized and admitted he had never read the deed before signing it. The trees weren’t protected because I was their owner—they were protected because someone had thought forty-nine years ahead and decided that no pool would ever be more important than that land.
