When Jeff Luedtke, a city kid, spent summers with his grandparents, he told them that someday he'd live on their 80-acre spread on the Rum River.
When he and his wife, Hope, married, they moved into the old farmhouse. They raised three daughters, who roamed the woods and meadows on horseback and camped on the riverbank.
This past week, the Luedtkes finalized an agreement with the city of Andover to preserve 38 acres of the property through the city's first purchase under the open space bond proposal voters approved in 2006. The idea, floated in the midst of the housing boom, was to make sure that some of the city's open land would remain in its natural state, for all to enjoy.
"Hope and I figured the window of opportunity wasn't going to stay here forever," Luedtke said. "We prayed a lot about it. What would Grandpa wish? He'd want to keep it the same as he knew it. It wouldn't be OK if we sold 70 acres two years later to put blacktop roads and houses in here."
The city and the Luedtkes hope to close on the $930,000 purchase by the end of the year. That would be a little less than half of the $2 million that Andover has set aside under the program to buy land and preserve it from development.
The city's Open Space Commission has worked over the years to educate the public about the program, identify willing property owners and assess parcels for their preservation value.
The most promising properties have the least ecological disruption and are connected to other open spaces.
"We can try to restore an area, but it's not the same as preserving an area that's in good condition already," said Deric Deuschle, Open Space Commission chairman. "That would cost far more than the investment in preservation."