This time of year, the Flying Pig Farm in Manitou Springs doesn’t look like much. Garden plots are tucked in with straw for the winter. A few friendly goats mill around, looking for prime clumps of hay. A blanket of icy snow covers more than a dozen projects in progress.

Executive Director Barak Ben-Amots has a bigger perspective. The school teacher by training sees potential everywhere on the 3-acre urban farm.

In 2017, he helped Flying Pig expand its programming beyond just farming to a host of all-season programs. The idea was to endear the farm to the community.

“What if instead of selling vegetables, we just got so many people to fall in love with this place that it would never, ever be under threat of becoming anything else?” he said.

Now, Flying Pig has classes on things like crafting, cooking, composting, seed saving and canning. Over a thousand school children visited last year on field trips and summer camps, while all ages gather for miniconcerts in the on-site yurt once a month.

Ben-Amots says he now wants to solidify the farm’s presence in Manitou Springs with more than just goodwill. In cooperation with the Palmer Land Conservancy and the land’s owner, the nonprofit that runs Flying Pig is seeking to put the farm into a conservation easement, a voluntary legal agreement that limits the future use of a property.

Getting a conservation easement granted is not an easy process. Ben-Amots estimates the full requirements — application, land appraisals, legal fees and ongoing reports to monitor the land for intended use — will cost about $100,000.

It’s also a unique ask of the state, since most conservation easements are granted to larger legacy farms and ranches. Ally O’Neill, a project associate at the Palmer Land Conservancy, said she wasn’t aware of the organization managing any similar applications.

“We need to work out the details on what that would look like,” she said.

Doug Edmundson, the owner of the land where Flying Pig Farm sits, says the conservation easement makes sense not just for protecting the future community use of the farm but the property’s history for the Pikes Peak region.

Edmundson is the fourth generation to own the Keithley Pines log cabin property, which along with the farm makes up one of Manitou Springs’ historic districts for its rustic cabins. His great-grandfather Everard Spencer Keithley was the supervisor of Pike National Forest during America’s first major push for conservation and restoration on public lands.

Keithley oversaw the planting of millions of trees on Pikes Peak, which had become deforested by the 20th century. He also saw to the building of Rampart Range and Gold Camp roads during the era of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.

The Flying Pig Farm was his private tree farm, supplying the first stock of evergreens for places like Garden of the Gods.

“He just spent his every waking hour, particularly in his retirement, nurturing this land,” said Edmundson.

While Edmundson said he’s fielded some generous offers for a rare plot of undeveloped land in the crowded mountain town of Manitou Springs, his family has a “larger mission” for the use of the property tied to the community farm.

“Sometimes in your life, you have the opportunity to do something different,” he said.

As the conservation process progresses, the farm nonprofit is also raising funds to buy the land from Edmundson. The whole transition, including land purchase, the conservation easement and capital improvements like a permanent bathroom, will cost about $1 million.

While the farm has a long road to go, Ben-Amots said starting the process was a relief.

“I get to release a huge amount of fear of this land ever getting developed,” he said.

While the rules that will govern the conservation easement still need to be worked out, Ben-Amots said he’d like the land reserved for farming and open to the public. Edmundson said if the farm ever fails, he wants to make sure the land will revert to open space.

As things stand on the state level, the farm may have a short window in which it can take advantage of the tax credits that go along with designating a conservation easement. Since the Colorado Department of Revenue is limited in the amount of credits it can approve in a year, the wait is until 2029 for an open spot.

As of now, the program is also sunsetting in 2031, with no authorized funding for tax credits approved past that year, according to the Colorado Division of Conservation.

O’Neill said the fate of the program was a major point of discussion among land conservancies.

“This is definitely a big topic at the moment,” she said.

Edmundson and Ben-Amots both said they want to go ahead with the easement as soon as possible.

“The conservancy is the line that’s going to hold this land,” said Ben-Amots.

For more information on Flying Pig Farms and its fundraising efforts, visit https://flyingpigmanitou.org/.