Tulmeadow Farm and Woodlot

ACREAGE: 260 • YEARS ACQUIRED: 2005, 2008, 2009

Location

Use the Tulmeadow Farm store entrance off Old Farms Road. Continue to the rear of the store parking lot and park. The trail begins at the SLT kiosk and follows the existing farm road.

Distance

Almost 1 mile to the border with Town property. The trail on Town property continues an additional 0.4 miles to Town Forest Road. This is not a loop trail. Round trip to Town Forest Road and back is less than 3 miles.

Terrain

Level to undulating hills.

Features

Tulmeadow Farm is a historic working farm whose agricultural character is permanently protected by a Simsbury Land Trust conservation easement. Since 1768, Tulmeadow Farm, Simsbury’s oldest continuously operated small business, has been owned and farmed by generations of the Tuller family. The farm road trail takes you through the middle of 60 acres of uninterrupted fields of corn and hay, affording a view of surrounding hills and a view of Heublein Tower on Talcott Mountain. Informational signs along this portion of the trail explain the surrounding geology and the importance of this farmland.

Leaving the open fields, the trail continues in a gently undulating course through the center of Tulmeadow’s 73-acre woodlot. Along this trail you may see evidence of the woodlot’s management. In consultation with a professional forester and a long-term forest management plan, the farm harvests mature timber every 10 to 15 years to make space for new growth that replaces it. Such management is necessary to ensure the diversity of both young and old trees necessary to a healthy forest.

Approximately 0.4 miles along the woodlot trail a kiosk marks the border of the Tulmeadow Woodlot and Town property. The trail continues through the Town property for another 0.4 miles to Town Forest Road.

Note that portions of the trail are subject to closure at times to accommodate farm operations.