Before the spread of COVID-19 began to slow progress, Simpson visited sites around the counties. He surveyed a family farm in Amherst County where the property owner was worried the acreage would be “carved up and overdeveloped” after he and his wife were gone.

The sprawling property had an old abandoned Civil War-era railroad bed and tobacco drying barns. Driving around it, Simpson said, was like being in the middle of history.

“It’s beautiful to be able to see a place and know this is where something happened,” Simpson said. “What could we in the modern time need to build there that would be more important than what it is now?”

Kendrick voiced a similar sentiment about her own farm. Put under easement in 2003, she said she is comforted it always will be a 40-acre farm. No matter what happens to her, all future owners will be bound by certain restrictions.

In the merger, the CVLC board of directors became an advisory board to the Blue Ridge Land Conservancy’s board of directors.

David Perry, executive director of the Blue Ridge Land Conservancy, said the idea to merge almost began as a joke. But after the two boards sat down for a working lunch at a conserved property about halfway between Roanoke and Lynchburg, they realized they could make it work.