A permanent conservation easement was placed by brothers Tom and Jim Irwin on their 158-acre family farm in Grass Lake, Michigan, in April 2021, which restricts the property from future development and keeps it together as farmland, forest, and wetlands, and fulfills a wish that their late father, Richard “Dick” Irwin, had already acted on during his lifetime. The farm had been in the Irwin family for more than 150 years, with Tom and Jim inheriting it in 2017. Their father had previously worked with Legacy Land Conservancy to protect another portion of the property through conservation easements between 2004 and 2008, and the brothers completed the new agreement with the Ann Arbor-based nonprofit on Earth Day in 2021, according to Legacy Land Conservancy’s announcement on April 26, 2021 .
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