Two large tracts of wild blueberry land in the midcoast that have been the focus of local conservation efforts since 2025 will soon go to new owners as of this week.
The Wild Blueberry Collective, a grassroots nonprofit, announced Thursday it had purchased a 138-acre barren parcel in Searsport. Coastal Mountains Land Trust separately said Friday that it’s under contract to buy Blueberry Hill, a 248-property in Belfast.
Both were once commercial fields owned by Allen’s Blueberry Freezer, an Ellsworth-based company that sold its facility and most of its midcoast and Hancock County land to Milbridge grower and processor Wyman’s in 2021.
The Milbridge company is now selling off hundreds of acres of less productive land to help fund investment for responding to increasingly unpredictable weather that’s challenging the industry, a spokesperson said this summer.
That decision has drawn alarm in several communities when scenic fields with histories of public access go up for possible development, presenting a change to a historical part of the landscape in coastal Maine.
Wild blueberry land can be relatively expensive to purchase and requires regular maintenance to keep it from reverting to forest, making it more challenging for land trusts to take on. Larger-scale efforts haven’t emerged to preserve the land in the area, but this week’s developments suggest efforts to preserve individual properties are gaining traction.
Blueberry Hill stayed under ownership of a member of the Allen family, the BDN previously reported, while the Searsport land was sold by Wyman’s.
“We’ve heard from so many community members who care deeply about the future of this property, and we’re excited about the opportunity to permanently protect Blueberry Hill and keep community access open,” Camden-based Coastal Mountains Land Trust said in a Friday post on Facebook announcing it was under contract for Blueberry Hill.
It described the property as holding a special place in the community, with panoramic views of Penobscot Bay from the highest point in the city.
When the property went up for sale last August, residents worried a developer would bar public access from the property, the BDN reported at the time.
Ian Steward, the trust’s executive director, said this summer that “blueberries are second only to lobsters” when it comes to emblems of local culture, but it was hard to react to so much blueberry land going on the market at once. The land trust already manages large blueberry barrens at its Beech Hill Preserve in Rockport and hears frequently from people worried about such land being lost to development, according to Steward.
The Wild Blueberry Collective, meanwhile, purchased its land with a loan and needs to raise another $310,000 toward the $650,000 purchase cost, the group posted on Facebook Friday.
“138 acres of wild blueberry land, forests and wetland will be a protected space for our community [that’s you!]” the group said on social media last week.
Another grassroots effort to purchase wild blueberry land out of fear of development met with success in Blue Hill last year. Residents in Northport pushed back this summer on a proposal for an RV resort on another hill of wild blueberry land and in June passed a moratorium on new RV parks in response.
