Galen Koch: [00:00:02] It is November 30^th, and we’re here at the Presumpscot Regional Land Trust Office in Westbrook. If you wouldn’t mind just saying your full name and introducing yourself a little bit.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:00:15] I’m Valerie DeVuyst, and I was an original member of the Windham Land Trust in 2000 and then when we merged, I was on the board for a short while.

 

Galen Koch: [00:00:29] What town do you live in now?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:00:31] I live in Windham.

 

Galen Koch: [00:00:33] Did you live in Windham in 2000?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:00:35] Yes.

 

Galen Koch: [00:00:36] Great. So you’ve been there for a while. How long have you lived in Windham?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:00:40] I think it’s twenty-eight years this year. The longest I’ve ever lived anywhere.

 

Galen Koch: [00:00:46] Wow. What was your first experience with the Windham Land Trust?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:00:51] Yes. So, in the late ’90s, a developer wanted to build forty houses on a property, a hundred-acre property near my house. The neighbors were very upset because it was basically a wetland, and they were afraid that all of that would pollute the Black Brook, which runs into the Presumpscot. So, for three years, the neighborhood group fought the developer, and finally, at the very end, it was discovered that he had made a mistake in density calculation, and he just gave up and said, “If you want to buy it, I’ll sell it to you.” Which was wonderful, but, of course, we were just like a bunch of neighbors. [laughter] We were able to get a mortgage, and then Bill Diamond, who – I don’t know if you’ve heard of him – was a state senator and few other things in the government. He was able to help us get a Land for Maine’s Future grant. So, at some point, we were able to pay off our mortgage.

 

Galen Koch: [00:01:58] And what was the name –? That organization had a name, right? That early one.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:02:01] Oh, it was the Windham Citizens for Sensible Development.

 

Galen Koch: [00:02:07] I like that name a lot. Yeah, that’s great. So, you got a Land for Maine’s Future grant that you then used to pay that.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:02:15] Yes, we used to pay that off. Once we bought the property, then, at some point, we became a land trust so we could administer the property.

 

Galen Koch: [00:02:26] That was really your first experience doing that kind of conservation work?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:02:31] Absolutely. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I’d never done anything like that.

 

Galen Koch: [00:02:36] What was the inspiration to get involved?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:02:42] Good question. We’d probably been living there two or three years at the time, and I knew a couple of the neighbors who were closest to me. But I think Bill Diamond sent out a letter to all the neighbors who abutted that property, and we started to meet. For me, that was wonderful because I met so many people, many of whom had lived in Windham all their lives, and we really became a community, which was one of the pluses for me. That spurred me to join the planning committee, a comprehensive planning committee for the town, which was like a three-year thing. [laughter]

 

Galen Koch: [00:03:30] Very important, though. Very important municipal –

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:03:33] It is. But then, of course, we made a great plan, and then they put it on the shelf like all the other ones and all the other ones that came after, and they’re still talking about the same things.

 

Galen Koch: [00:03:44] Yeah. Hard to implement.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:03:47] Apparently so. [laughter]

 

Galen Koch: [00:03:47] I read a little bio thing that you wrote, which was really sweet. You got involved because of the development, but it seems like you had had a relationship with the environment before that as a kid.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:04:11] Well, yeah. I’ve always liked to garden. My mom did flowers, and when I grew up and became an adult, I really liked to do vegetables and flowers, and I still do that. I’m not much of a hiker, although having Black Brook there was nice because you could just go for a walk, but living in the country, you can walk anywhere. So, I’m not much of a hiker or a camper or things like that in that way of conservation, but I just feel it’s really important to keep land open. Windham was one of the fastest-growing communities for quite a while, and they were just building houses everywhere. And it used to be a farming community.

 

Galen Koch: [00:04:54] So, you could see the change happening kind of before your eyes?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:04:58] Oh, yeah, definitely.

 

Galen Koch: [00:05:01] So what were those first years as Windham Land Trust? What was that like?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:05:08] Well, we were a very small group, small board, and we really didn’t know much about how to administer a land trust. The neighbors, the group that started the whole thing, would be the ones to do trail work and volunteer because we were just so small. But people were committed, and we got a couple of pieces donated to us. But because we were just all volunteers, it was hard for us to raise money to do anything big or to buy anything; it’s just people that donated to us. Also, we didn’t really have enough money to act as stewards or do anything on the property. It had to be all volunteer. At some point, we just became really discouraged also because there was a person in the community – there was a five-hundred-acre farm that the owners wanted to sell to us at a really good price, but there was someone in the community who was a developer, not the same one, who fought us and really, it was nasty. The town was going to do a bond, and we lost, and he was really, really nasty. I think we got so discouraged after that because, in a way, we had a bad reputation in the town. I don’t know why, but because of that. So, we just kind of laid low for a while until one of our board members, Priscilla Payne, made connections with, I think, Mike Parker, actually. They were also small, and they were looking to meld with somebody else, and so that’s what we did: we merged.

 

Galen Koch: [00:07:06] That was with Presumpscot Regional Land Trust?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:07:08] Yes. When they were just – I think they were maybe – were they Gorham Trails? They were something else before, I think.

 

Galen Koch: [00:07:19] There was PRLT [Presumpscot Regional Land Trust]. Gorham Trails and Windham Land Trust, and then the two, Gorham and Windham, merged.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:07:24] Right.

 

Galen Koch: [00:07:26] In that interim period between starting the Land Trust and merging, you were on the board the whole time.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:07:35] I was on the board the entire time, and I was the secretary for the entire time.

 

Galen Koch: [00:07:41] That’s a long commitment.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:07:42] Yeah, it was. We probably met once a month, and we didn’t have a lot going on, so it wasn’t a huge commitment like it would be today when you have a lot of details.

 

Galen Koch: [00:07:56] Do you remember when that merging happened? What was the year? I probably have it in my notes.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:08:04] I believe I do because I think I asked Rachelle. Let me think. We started in 2000 at the Windham Land Trust. Oh, I thought I did, but I don’t see it. I don’t remember. I know Rachelle knows that.

 

Galen Koch: [00:08:29] 2016 or ’17?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:08:30] About that, yeah. I retired in 2018, and so I think at that point, I got off the board because I was on a lot of boards as a working person, and I just had to get off some.

 

Galen Koch: [00:08:47] That’s a lot of commitment.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:08:49] Yeah, especially this is a big commitment. What I used to do is come and help Rachelle file and stuff like that just because I wanted to keep involved, but I wasn’t on the board after that.

 

Galen Koch: [00:09:01] What was your motivation over the almost two decades, right?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:09:07] Yeah.

 

Galen Koch: [00:09:09] What was your motivation to stay involved with those land trusts?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:09:15] Well, I don’t know. I think part of it was probably the community that had built and definitely PRLT. I was, and I still am, so impressed with Rachelle and how she made us all into a real land trust and got funding. She’s really good at getting grants to preserve land, really. I asked her – when we started, we had fifteen hundred acres, and now we have thirty thousand or some ridiculous number. I think that’s because of her, and I really appreciate how hard she worked. It motivated me to just stay on because, wow, look at all the land that we’ve preserved.

 

Galen Koch: [00:10:00] Yeah, that’s incredible.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:10:01] Yeah, it really is.

 

Galen Koch: [00:10:03] Thirty thousand.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:10:05] And some big parcels.

 

Galen Koch: [00:10:07] That’s amazing.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:10:07] Yeah.

 

Galen Koch: [00:10:08] Do you have some highlights from the time that you were in a position of leadership on the board [of] Windham Land Trust or even –?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:10:21] Well, Windham Land Trust –

 

Galen Koch: [00:10:21] Was really the board you were on.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:10:23] Yeah, that was the board. I think the highlight for me was burning our mortgage, which we did. We went right up to the property, and we burned it. I remember that vividly.

 

Galen Koch: [00:10:34] Tell me more, what happened?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:10:38] The board and whoever other members wanted to come, and we just lit it on fire. [laughter]

 

Galen Koch: [00:10:46] That’s incredible.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:10:47] Yeah, it was good. Then, not being in a leadership position on PRLT, but last year or the year before, a neighbor of mine who’s in her nineties now and her husband had the farm next to ours. Ours was a farm, too, way back. I used to help them on the weekends picking vegetables. Florence is a Pride, and she’s from Westbrook. She had property that she had inherited from her parents or from her family, and she kept it for decades. She didn’t want to sell it. People asked her all the time. What year was that that she did it? I can’t remember. But it was about two or three years ago she decided she was going to donate it to the Land Trust. It was 188 acres, and, for me, that was just such a wonderful thing to see because we had a big opening on the property, and she just loved the land so much. She was an inspiration for me, really, because she just loved the land. Even at ninety-whatever, she would walk all over the place and feed the hawks. [laughter] She used to either get roadkill that she found or else she’d bring hamburger meat. As soon as she walked out of her house, you could see them flying because they knew she was going to feed them. She was really a lover of land and animals, and they were both, she and her husband, inspirations for me in that way because they kept farming, which was not easy to do.

 

Galen Koch: [00:12:31] So, that land that was part of their farm is now –? Or it was just land that she owned?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:12:37] No, their farm was right next to me in Windham, but that was land that she owned for decades. She just didn’t want to sell it. I think she just decided, well, it’s time to donate it to the Land Trust.

 

Galen Koch: [00:12:51] That’s amazing.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:12:52] Yeah, that was really cool.

 

Galen Koch: [00:12:54] You said that during that time when there was maybe a lawsuit – I don’t know if it was a lawsuit.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:13:03] Oh, yeah. What was that? Oh, gosh. Margaret Pinchbeck, she testified. What was that? I honestly don’t remember.

 

Galen Koch: [00:13:20] It’s different than – with Windham Land Trust, you had the moment with the five hundred acres you wanted to buy, but that didn’t end up in a lawsuit.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:13:31] No, that just kind of flopped. What was that? I know we had a lawyer. I don’t remember.

 

Galen Koch: [00:13:43] I’ll look into it.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:13:44] It actually was a case that is historical in some way, and I just don’t – wow, I completely forgot about that. We went to court; a bunch of us went. I think Margaret was the only one who testified. What was it? I can’t remember.

 

Galen Koch: [00:14:02] I think that was one of the reasons the merger happened because it was expensive or something?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:14:09] Oh, well, yes, it was expensive. Basically, all the money that we raised, we had to pay the lawyer, and she was very patient with us.

 

Galen Koch: [00:14:17] Yeah.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:14:20] I honestly don’t remember what it was.

 

Galen Koch: [00:14:22] Interesting.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:14:24] I don’t know if Priscilla would remember.

 

Galen Koch: [00:14:25] Yeah, I’ll ask.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:14:28] Have you interviewed Priscilla?

 

Galen Koch: [00:14:29] No, but I will at 3:30.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:14:32] She actually was a friend of Margaret Pinchbeck’s, and that’s how she came onto the Land Trust. She’s fairly recent, so she might remember. Wow. Honestly, I don’t remember what it was. Sorry.

 

Galen Koch: [00:14:46] No, that’s okay. Well, my question was more about how you’ve seen the public perception change. Has the community’s position on the land trust changed over time?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:15:03] Well, Windham Land Trust, we were so small, and we weren’t good at publicizing ourselves; it was hard for people who weren’t involved, and the membership was pretty small, but there was a membership. When we had an annual meeting, we might get six people. But for PRLT, what I’ve seen is that Rachelle is a master also at cultivating relationships with the town and different community groups, and that helps so much. There’s so many things that are of interest to certain groups. So, there’s a lot of different groups that are interested in what the Land Trust does now.

 

Galen Koch: [00:15:52] Yeah. And that seems different.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:15:56] Oh yeah, definitely. Oh, there’s just so much going on.

 

Galen Koch: [00:16:00] It’s amazing to think about that time when there were just six of you meeting and what was driving that.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:16:11] We had three properties, so we had to take care of them. Because the board really was invested in preserving land – most of the board were people who had grown up in Windham and who lived in farmhouses that had been their parents, and their parents had farmed. I think they were – I can’t say this for sure – but I think people were concerned about all the houses going up everywhere, without regard to what everyone calls the “rural character.”

 

Galen Koch: [00:16:55] And the open space.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:16:57] Yeah, and the open space. Because when we bought the Black Brook Preserve, we used to say it’s going to be the Central Park of Windham because we didn’t have any big place.

 

Galen Koch: [00:17:12] How many acres was that?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:17:13] I think it’s 180. It’s pretty big. It belonged to – the farmhouse was still there. Don and Norma Rogers were on the board; his parents had farmed that. As a boy, he used to run in those woods. But then I think his mother died, and then his father remarried, and that wife left it to her kids, who really didn’t care about it. It was just sitting there empty and not being used, and they decided to sell it. It wasn’t his. He didn’t have any say in that, so that’s kind of how it started.

 

Galen Koch: [00:17:55] Wow. This question not everyone has an answer to – how did the Land Trust, during your time in leadership, which was the whole time of the Windham Land Trust, was the value to the community that it brought?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:18:18] Well, I think just preserving land and having it open. We tried to do things – before we were even with PRLT, we did a mushroom walk. One of our properties is very small, and we built an overlook; it’s just a wetland, very small. We used to get telescopes and do stargazing. So, trying to get people out on the properties for different reasons. But just having land like that is a value. In the last – I don’t know how many – maybe twenty years, maybe more, more and more families are moving to Windham because it’s affordable. We had one teacher in elementary school; she used to take her kids – every year, she’d take her class to the Land Trust, to the Black Brook Preserve. We used to do fairy houses when those were popular, stuff like that. Trying to get the kids interested, but we didn’t have a really organized way of doing any of that. There’s a lot of value, but it maybe wasn’t that evident at the time.

 

Galen Koch: [00:19:38] It seems like it’s both that PRLT engages more, and it seems like also people engage more in that.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:19:47] Yeah, definitely

 

Galen Koch: [00:19:48] But it’s important to have those – even then, I’m sure it was important for people.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:19:55] It was, yeah. People came to those things. We were just so small. We just didn’t know how to make ourselves bigger. Being an all-volunteer, it’s hard. You really need to pay someone, and we could never afford that.

 

Galen Koch: [00:20:18] What did the stewardship look like? Were you doing work on the preserves?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:20:29] Two of the men who were on the board, they basically were in charge of whatever – making trails, building trails. One year, we had a group of young people from maybe the Conservation Corps. They travel around in the summer. They came for two weeks, and they built a lot of the trails and bridges in Black Brook. But other than that, we just get a few people, whoever wanted to volunteer, to do stuff like that. One guy used to mow the field with his tractor because he lived across the street, and he would just do that whenever it needed it. It was that kind of thing, very low budget, a few dedicated people.

 

Galen Koch: [00:21:13] I hear now it seems like there’s big things happening in Windham.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:21:19] Oh, yeah. Thanks to Rachelle. [laughter] That’s the largest – between us and Falmouth and maybe the Lowell preserve – between the three properties, that’s probably the biggest piece in Southern Maine.

 

Galen Koch: [00:21:36] Wow, that’s amazing because there’s huge land conservation in Southern Maine.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:21:43] Yeah, but not all together.

 

Galen Koch: [00:21:46]

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:21:47] It’s a really big one.

 

Galen Koch: [00:21:50] Could you have imagined that kind of project happening?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:21:56] No. Even now, I’m stunned that that’s happening.

 

Galen Koch: [00:22:02] Just the size, yeah.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:22:03] It’s a testament to the fact that PRLT is out there doing all kinds of public awareness things, and Rachelle has been really able to work with the towns. We have really small properties; I don’t even know exactly where they are, but in Gorham and Westbrook, they’re right near town or just outside of town, which is great because everybody can go there. It’s easy.

 

Galen Koch: [00:22:35] Yeah. So the merger – was that a seamless thing?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:22:45] No. We voted. We had a membership meeting, and there weren’t a lot of people there, but there were maybe twenty or thirty, and we voted to do that. A lot of people were against it at the time, I think. I don’t know why. I don’t know whether they thought we were going to get swallowed up, but we weren’t very good on our own. [laughter] So, it was a little contentious. It wasn’t terrible, but enough people voted to merge.

 

Galen Koch: [00:23:22] What was your role after that? Did you stay on PRLT?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:23:31] I stayed on the board for a couple of years. But, honestly, I felt like the board had become – there were like three or four of us who stayed on, but I felt like the board had become mostly people who worked in conservation or were really familiar with things. I felt like I couldn’t really contribute because they were so knowledgeable, and I just felt – that’s one reason why I got off the board – but I also just continued to be active in whatever way I could be helpful. I just felt like, not that they were all professionals, but seemed like they had more experience in that.

 

Galen Koch: [00:24:17] Are you on the Advisory Board?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:24:20] Oh yes. Everybody’s on the Advisory Board. [laughter] Everybody, whoever was on the board, is an advisor.

 

Galen Koch: [00:24:32] That’s great. In that role now, what are some of the ways that you still engage?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:24:42] Well, I think whenever something’s happening, we always get an email first about what’s going to happen before it becomes public, and she might solicit some advice or comments. I always help with the appeal mailings and the envelopes and all that. That’s pretty much it now. I always go to the annual meeting, which I think is wonderful; it’s just a lot of people, and it’s really nice to see. Every year there are new people, which I think is wonderful.

 

Galen Koch: [00:25:19] It was such a big difference from your six-person annual meetings.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:25:22] Exactly.

 

Galen Koch: [00:25:27] Wow. That is a huge change.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:25:30] Yeah, it was pretty sad. [laughter] It wasn’t so much that we had business to take care of but that you have to have an annual meeting.

 

Galen Koch: [00:25:42] That’s funny. Do you have any other, in your notes or things, stories from your time or other notes about the history that you wanted to –?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:26:00] No, I don’t think so. I’m sorry, I can’t remember about the lawsuit. Oh, I’m sure it’ll come to me later.

 

Galen Koch: [00:26:14] You can send me an email.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:26:16] But Priscilla may remember. If not, I’ll ask Margaret because she knows.

 

Galen Koch: [00:26:22] Yeah, because I think that’s kind of what the –

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:26:26] Did somebody say that that was what precipitated us?

 

Galen Koch: [00:26:31] Yeah. Well, that you had legal fees, and it just was too much. Maine Coast Heritage Trust was kind of helping PRLT. Gorham was going to not be around anymore, and then the Windham Land Trust was struggling.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:26:51] Yes.

 

Galen Koch: [00:26:51] It made sense to try to merge, strength in numbers kind of thing.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:26:58] Yeah, definitely. Gosh, I can’t remember what it was. I don’t think it had to do with Black Brook, but it was so long ago.

 

Galen Koch: [00:27:16] Because at that time, you had Black Brook and a couple of other preserves?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:27:21] Yeah, we had Black Brook, and then two things were donated to us. One was this little, tiny – I think it’s called Pringle Preserve because the Pringles donated it, and it’s just a tiny corner property on Windham Center and River Road. Then the other one, actually, we still own it. I mean, “we” as PRLT. I forget what it was called, but it was so wild, and we tried to make trails, but then one year, there was a microburst and a whole bunch of trees fell down, and we just couldn’t keep it up. Then I don’t think PRLT is really – we own it, but they’re not doing anything there because it’s out of the way, and it just hasn’t been real attractive.

 

Galen Koch: [00:28:15] It’s the true wild.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:28:22] Yeah. I don’t remember the name of it, but I think that’s all that Windham owned.

 

Galen Koch: [00:28:35] Were there properties that were lost before that you know about?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:28:40] Oh, before we were a land trust?

 

Galen Koch: [00:28:43] Yeah.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:28:42] I don’t.

 

Galen Koch: [00:28:45] Hard to quantify that. I’m just curious if people felt the –

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:28:52] Well, when we first became – I think we were a land trust – one of our board members wanted to do a – I can’t remember what it was called, but we got some people from Maine Farmland Trust and other places, and it was like if you have property and you don’t know what to do with it kind of thing. That’s how we got that third property that I can’t remember the name of because that gentleman was there, and he said he’d like to donate his property. But it was educating landowners about what the possibilities were, and that was really great because we got a piece of property from that. Where was I going? Sorry, I missed the –

 

Galen Koch: [00:29:32] Oh, I’m just thinking about if there were properties that didn’t get preserved.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:29:36] I think there were, but we weren’t aware because I think there are some farmers who sold their – I know there are some on the Pope Road because there’s the Moses Little Farm, which is a development of houses, and it used to be the Moses Little Farm. So, places like that.

 

Galen Koch: [00:30:01] There are still issues that are happening today.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:30:02] Oh, yeah.

 

Galen Koch: [00:30:03] It’s fascinating to hear about people coming together and doing this.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:30:11] And there wasn’t anything like that in Windham at the time and probably wouldn’t have been except that this happened to be close to some people who really didn’t want it for good reason.

 

Galen Koch: [00:30:22] So was it close –? Was Bill Diamond living?

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:30:25] He lived across the street. Yeah, he did. So, our whole street – and I lived like five or six houses down from him, which is a pretty long stretch in Windham. The whole street was involved. We fought it for so long. We went to every single town council meeting for three years. We did hundred-year flood maps. We had somebody who was good with the computer in those days, and she would show what it would look like if we had a hundred-year flood, which there had been like two in the past ten years. Imagine now. If they built houses there, it would be a mess. I believe that that’s true. It would have been very bad.

 

Galen Koch: [00:31:20] Yeah. Well, we’re seeing that now.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:31:24] Right.

 

Galen Koch: [00:31:26] That’s very real. If there’s no more stories from that time. I don’t know. The mortgage burning story is –

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:31:36] Yeah, I love that. [laughter]

 

Galen Koch: [00:31:38] – really good.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:31:40] Well, I might even have a picture of it somewhere.

 

Galen Koch: [00:31:42] Oh, my gosh, that would be great. That’s the picture we can put with your interview.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:31:52] [laughter] See if I can find it.

 

Galen Koch: [00:31:54] That’s wonderful. Well, thank you so much for talking about this.

 

Valerie DeVuyst: [00:31:56] Thank you.