The Marin Agricultural Land Trust just bought a $2.2 million conservation easement on a 491-acre cattle ranch near the Marin-Sonoma border. Owners Walt and Arleen Jacobson, nonagenarians who have been married for almost 71 years, have owned the property since 1950. After serving in the Air Force during World War II, Mr. Jacobson grazed beef cattle for over five decades at the Chileno Valley ranch. He started leasing the pasture in 2007 to a neighbor who grazes replacement dairy heifers. “We love our ranch and open space, and we want to keep it this way… always in agriculture,” Ms. Jacobsen said in a press statement. The property is a new link in the chain of 16 continuous properties under MALT easements; in all, MALT says it has easements on 77 farms and ranches totaling 47,000 acres. And since 2013, all new easements not only prohibit development but require active agricultural use. MALT told the county in an application for additional funding that the heirs of the property, grandchildren of the Jacobsons, were thinking about selling the ranch once they inherited it, which would probably have prompted estate development. The cost of the easement was split between MALT and the county’s farmland preservation program.