PORTSMOUTH, R.I. — The Aquidneck Island Land Trust has conserved a 13-acre portion of Greenvale Vineyards off Wapping Road, in partnership with the Rhode Island Agricultural Land Preservation Commission and landowners Bill and Nancy Wilson.

The land is now under a conservation easement that will ensure it remains protected open space forever in the future. The USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service also contributed a significant grant to help fund the easement.

The land has been working farmland for generations. While Greenvale Vineyards stretches all the way to the Sakonnet River, the conserved portion is along Wapping Road. The land is also connected to other conservation properties, adding onto the protected corridor of lands on the eastern side of Aquidneck Island, known as the Sakonnet Greenway.

“We are so pleased to have established this portion of our farm to be forever farmed and remain open space. Open space and farming are critical to the Island’s future and an important component of our mission at Greenvale,” said Nancy and Bill Wilson, owners of Greenvale Vineyards. “After we purchased the land in 2003 to keep it a farm, we learned that the land was used by Aaron Lopez as a vineyard in the 1760s. It is amazing to think that we are growing grapes on the same land 255 years later.”

“We have some of the best farming soils in the state here on Aquidneck Island, yet our farms are under tremendous development pressure. The state has lost 80% of its farmland since the 1940s,” said Terry Sullivan, executive director of the Aquidneck Island Land Trust. “Our island’s working farms are essential to our economy and community.”

The Aquidneck Island Land Trust is the oldest accredited land trust in Rhode Island. Since 1990, it has conserved 102 properties totaling 2,854 acres of land on Aquidneck Island, or 12% of the island’s total acreage.