ICE HOUSE HILL FARM. Richmond, MA There are properties with views in the Berkshires. Then there is Ice House Hill Farm 270 degrees of sweeping, layered vistas, and exceptional distant views--guaranteed forever by 130 acres of land that can never be developed.

Stand at the crest of the hill, where the old ice house stands and you understand immediately: this is not a place someone designed. It is a place that has always been exactly this. Open fields rolling down to wooded folds, ridgelines lifting in waves to the west, the Taconics stacked blue in the distance. You are at 1,350 feet, in the center of 143 acres, and there is nothing between you and the horizon but land that cannot be touched.

That is the irreplaceable fact of Ice House Hill Farm. The 108 acres that create this view (the meadows in the foreground, the forests in the middle distance, the ridges that frame the sky) are held in permanent conservation by the Berkshire Natural Resources Council. They will never be subdivided. No one will ever build a house on them. The viewshed is as fixed as the geology.

You are buying the view and the guarantee that it will never change.

THE LAND
The farm unfolds across 143 acres in Richmond's East Road corridor, a designated Scenic Road since 1973 and one of the most intact agricultural landscapes left in Berkshire County. The property commands nearly a mile of frontage along East Road: 4,890 feet of continuous presence on one of Richmond's most celebrated scenic corridors. Of that, 559 feet serves the 12.96-acre buildable parcel, providing direct access to both the farm complex and the hilltop site. Fifty-two acres are classified as Prime Agricultural Soils, the rarest and most productive farmland designation in Massachusetts. Another eighteen acres are Soils of Statewide Importance. The rest is mixed hardwood forest, wetland edges, and the kind of open pasture that has been mowed and hayed for more than a century. The property is bordered to the north by the 163-acre Fairfield Brook Wildlife Management Area, owned and managed by the state. You are not just protected by your own conservation buffer. You are surrounded by permanence.

THE 12.96 ACRE BUILDING ENVELOPE
The portion of the property not subject to the conservation restriction (12.96 acres) encompasses both the historic farm complex at the lower, western edge and the commanding hilltop site to the east. This is not a constraint. It is clarity. You have two building opportunities within a single, unified holding. The farmhouse and barn complex sit along East Road at a comfortable elevation, sheltered by mature trees and accessible via the existing farm drive. The 1890 farmhouse is a classic New England center-chimney structure: 2,108 square feet, four bedrooms, one and a half baths, good bones, and proportions that speak to care and longevity. It needs restoration. Someone with patience and taste will strip it back, modernize the systems, and bring it forward as a guest house, farm manager's residence, or family annex. The structure is sound. The character is intact.

The barn complex is substantial: a gambrel-roofed dairy barn built in 1922, a hay shed, a vintage silo, and a working garage. Assessed by the Town of Richmond at $232,800, these buildings are functional and flexible. They can support agriculture, house a workshop or car collection, or simply stand as the photogenic anchors of the farm's identity. The long cow barn, built for function rather than show, could be reimagined as workshop space, vehicle storage, or studio. The infrastructure is there. What you do with it is yours to decide.

The hilltop building site sits at roughly 1,350 feet elevation, open and gently graded, with 270° views that stretch from the protected farmland at your feet to the Taconic ridges in the far distance. This is where you build your primary residence, reached via the farm drive that threads through the lower complex and climbs to the crest.

The site, according to the town of Richmond maps, sits outside Richmond's Scenic Mountain Act jurisdiction and is ready for permitting. The views from here are not 100-mile panoramas. They are better. They have composition. Foreground: the farm's open fields, stone walls, the ridgeline of your own forest. Middle ground: the protected ridges and valleys of the conservation land. Background: the Taconic Range, lifting and falling in long, soft folds.

It is the kind of view that changes with the light (blue in the morning, gold in late afternoon, purple at dusk) and never flattens. It has depth. It has scale. It has the thing that makes a view worth protecting.

THE FARM
The land has been farmed since at least 1858, when Truman Andrews worked these fields. Later it passed to the family of William A.A. Brown, a Brooklyn brewer, and then to the McDonalds, who built the large barn in 1922. For decades in the mid-20th century, it was the Malnati dairy operation: eighty head milked daily for Borden, a working farm in the truest sense.

If you want to farm (hay, rotational grazing, market vegetables, a small beef herd) the land is ready. The 52 acres of Prime Agricultural Soils and 18 acres of Soils of Statewide Importance are among the most productive in Massachusetts. The infrastructure is in place: barn, hay storage, fencing, water. If you do not want to farm commercially, the fields can be leased to a local farmer or simply mowed and maintained as the open space they have always been.

The conservation restriction also permits agri-tourism: farm-based education and entertainment that support the land's agricultural identity. Workshops on sustainable farming, soil health, or regenerative agriculture. Harvest festivals. Farm-to-table dinners that celebrate what the land produces. Educational programs on nutrition, ecology, or conservation. This is not a general events venue. The framework is narrow and purposeful. But for someone who wants to share the farm's story or build a community around its work, the door is open.

The conservation restriction permits sustainable agriculture (under a Farm Conservation Plan approved by BNRC), forestry (under a state-approved Forest Stewardship Plan), trails, and limited temporary agricultural structures. It does not permit residential development, subdivision of the protected acreage, or commercial uses unrelated to agriculture. What this means practically: you can work the land, cut firewood, graze livestock, maintain trails, and live in the center of a permanently protected landscape. What you cannot do is turn it into something it is not.

WHAT CANNOT BE BOUGHT ELSEWHERE
Most land in the Berkshires is constrained by neighbors, road noise, or the anxiety that someone will eventually build next door. Ice House Hill Farm is the opposite. The constraint here is permanence. The conservation restriction ensures that 108 acres will remain open or forested forever. No subdivision. No development. No negotiation.

You are not buying privacy that depends on luck or the goodwill of future owners. You are buying guaranteed open space, locked in by legal covenant and held by one of the most credible land trusts in New England.

This is also one of the few remaining large tracts in Richmond with Prime Agricultural Soils, Priority Habitat designation (Massachusetts Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program), and Core Habitat recognition under BioMap2, the state's biodiversity conservation framework. If you care about land health, soil quality, or ecological integrity, the credentials here are unmatched.

And the location: Richmond is five minutes to Tanglewood, ten minutes to downtown Lenox, fifteen to Great Barrington. You are in the heart of the Berkshires culturally, but utterly removed from the noise.

WHO IS THIS FOR
This is not a speculative land play. It is a generational landholding for someone who understands that the rarest luxury in the Berkshires is not square footage or amenities. It is permanence.

It is for someone building a legacy farmstead on a hilltop that will never be compromised by a neighbor's subdivision or a future owner's development scheme. Restore the farmhouse. Build thoughtfully at the top. Farm the land or let it be farmed. Walk your own trails through your own forest. Live at the center of 143 acres that will look the same in a hundred years.

It is for a conservation-minded buyer who wants their holding to contribute something: to land health, to open space, to the ecological integrity of the region.

It is for someone who values the irreplaceable: soils that will grow food for centuries, forests that will mature undisturbed, and views that will never be sold off in pieces.

Ice House Hill Farm is not the end of a story. It is the beginning of the next chapter, one written by a steward who knows that the best farmsteads are not built quickly. They are inherited, protected, and passed forward.

1130 East Rd, Richmond, MA

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