Since 2021, Londonderry's orchard land has gone three different ways. The town bought part of Moose Hill Orchards and now leases it to a farmer. Mack's Apples is spending money ahead of final approval to build a restaurant inside its farm market. About 125 acres of Elwood family land on Elwood Road and Dan Hill Road, where Elwood Orchards operated for 115 years, is now in a 16-lot subdivision application. How long each farm had been operating didn't decide anything. What decided each outcome was who held the right to build and whether the farm could earn more without selling that right.
For a buyer, an open field next to a house in Londonderry can be one of several very different things. It might be protected land, a working business, or a set of house lots that haven't been carved out yet. The Elwood plan shows how the last kind actually turns into homes.
The Elwood plan puts houses along roads that already exist
Elwood Orchards started in 1910, when Wayland H. Elwood, 12 years old at the time, took over the family farm. His sons Wayne and Wayland Jr. later added the corn maze. The family announced the closing on social media early this year. When the Londonderry Times reported it, no buyer or future use for the Elwood Road orchard had been announced.
That changed by fall. The Planning Board's October 14, 2026 agenda listed a public hearing on a formal application for 16 residential lots in the Agricultural Residential (AR-I) District. The parcels are 35 Elwood Road, 16 Dan Hill Road, 54A Elwood Road and 68 Rear Elwood Road. The Estate of Wayne Elwood is listed as owner and Belize Real Estate Holdings, LLC as applicant. An application on an agenda is not an approval and doesn't mean a sale has closed. The town posts hearing results in its agenda center.
The details are in the subdivision plan:
- The four existing parcels total about 125 acres: 47.696, 2.704, 58.453 and 16.346 acres.
- Two parcels become eleven house lots. Ten have frontage on Elwood Road and one has frontage on Dan Hill Road. The other two parcels become five house lots.
- The plan notes that the houses are expected to have 4 bedrooms.
- Thirteen of the sixteen lots range from about 1.3 to 7.6 acres. The other three are about 11.8, 17.1 and 62.3 acres.
Taken together, those lot sizes tell you a lot. Three of the sixteen lots hold roughly 91 of the 125 acres. Most of the new building sites line roads that are already paved. The layout is a row of frontage lots with very large lots behind them. All sixteen are drawn as house lots, and the plan sheets don't say how the acreage beyond each house site will be used.
The town's Heritage/Historic District Commission held an advisory review on January 22, 2026. No applicant appeared. Commissioners talked about saving a barn, stone walls and apple trees, and they made no recommendation to the Planning Board.
Why frontage lots come first
New Hampshire's tax rules help explain the pattern. Farmland enrolled in current use is assessed on what it produces, not on what it would sell for. The NH Department of Revenue Administration's current schedule values farmland at $90 to $523 per acre for April 1, 2026 through March 31, 2027.
Taking land out of that program costs money. Under RSA 79-A:7, the land use change tax is 10 percent of the land's "full and true value," on top of the regular property tax. Usually only the acres that are physically changed get taxed. Roads or utilities built under an approved development plan can expand which lots count as changed. The statute treats physical earth work, like building roads or utilities for planned buildings, as the start of the change.
So the tax applies to land that is actually built on, not to the whole farm. A plan that puts houses along existing roads touches fewer acres than one that cuts a new street through the middle. The records here don't show whether the Elwood parcels are enrolled in current use. The point is how the statute works in general, not what anyone owes. A field that's still open in the middle of a large lot hasn't been preserved. It just hasn't been built on yet.
This post is general information, not tax or legal advice. If a property you own or are buying is enrolled in current use, ask your attorney or tax professional how these rules apply to it.
Mack's Apples is trying to earn more from the land it already has
The second path keeps the land in farming by adding income. New Hampshire law lists agritourism as a form of farm marketing and defines it as attracting visitors to a farm for activities that are accessory to the main farm operation. Under RSA 21:34-a, meals are one of the named examples.
Mack's Apples is relying on that definition. A town staff memo dated April 8, 2026 describes converting about 3,998 square feet inside the existing farm-market building into an accessory restaurant that supports agritourism, without making the building's footprint any bigger. The Londonderry Times reported that owner Kyle Christensen proposed a 99-seat restaurant.
Getting it permitted has been slow. According to the Londonderry Times' August account, a restaurant normally wouldn't be allowed on agriculturally zoned land. Well and septic permitting kept the applicant from meeting its conditions of approval by the August 6, 2026 deadline. On August 5, the Planning Board approved a one-year extension. It also granted a waiver allowing work on the building's interior and exterior before final sign-off, with no site work. Attorney Laura Gandia said the exterior work would be a new roof, new windows on the side and back, paint and new siding.
Board member Tony DeFrancesco summed up the interior work as "a commercial kitchen the hoods, the fire suppression systems, all of those things a couple hundred thousand dollars of stuff," the Times reported. Gandia acknowledged the applicant would be spending heavily before permitting was finished. The final plan still has to go back to the board for signature. No opening date has been announced.
That spending only makes sense if the restaurant brings in enough for the orchard to keep beating the per-acre value of house lots. It's a bet on staying a farm, and it depends on a septic permit.
The town has paid to put some of these decisions in public hands
The third path puts the decision in public hands, and how firmly depends on the parcel. In June 2021, Londonderry acquired a Moose Hill Orchards parcel made up of five front acres held by the Town Council without conservation or open-space restrictions and 21 rear acres managed by the Conservation Commission under RSA 36-A. The money came from the commission's Land Acquisition Fund and the Drinking and Groundwater Trust. On April 24, 2023, the Town Council voted to lease the front five acres to Sunnycrest Farms for five years, with an option to renew.
The Elwood family has also sold land to the town. In 2022, Londonderry paid $1.5 million for 54 acres off Nashua Road, which the family had owned since 1949. The town bought it for conservation, agriculture and recreation, and it remains protected open space. So one family's land is now on both paths, depending on the parcel.
Londonderry has been doing this for decades. A 2011 Open Space Task Force report counted $15,266,694 spent to acquire or protect open space between the first Musquash purchase in 1978 and 2010. That figure is a historical baseline, not a current total.
| Parcel | Path | Status as of October 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Moose Hill Orchards | Town acquired, 2021 | Front 5 acres leased to Sunnycrest Farms since 2023 |
| Elwood land off Nashua Road | Town bought 54 acres for $1.5M, 2022 | Protected open space |
| Mack's Apples | Agritourism restaurant | Extension granted Aug 5; no opening date |
| Elwood Road orchard | 16-lot subdivision application | Public hearing on Oct 14 agenda |
What this means when you're looking at a house beside a field
Your view of a farm doesn't come with the house unless something legal keeps the farm in place. A conservation easement or a protected town parcel does that. Town ownership alone is a different thing, as the unrestricted front acres at Moose Hill show, and so is a lease with a fixed term. A family's decades of farming, a corn maze people love, or apple trees that have stood there a long time do not. The Elwood plan shows that conversion can be gradual and mostly along the road. A buyer could look at that orchard after approval and still see mostly open ground, with lots of 11.8, 17.1 and 62.3 acres behind the new frontage homes.
Before you pay extra for a home because of the farmland next to it, find out which path that land is on. Planning Board agendas and plan documents are posted in the town's AgendaCenter. Conservation Commission minutes show which parcels the town owns or manages, and under what restrictions.
A Short FAQ
Does the Elwood subdivision mean the orchard has been sold? No. The October 14 agenda lists the Estate of Wayne Elwood as owner and Belize Real Estate Holdings, LLC as applicant. An application doesn't mean a sale has closed or that the board has approved anything.
Can any Londonderry farm open a restaurant? State law counts meals as agritourism when they're accessory to the main farm operation. The Mack's application shows that the town's site plan review, conditions of approval, and state well and septic permits still apply.
Is town-owned farmland still farmed? Sometimes, yes. Sunnycrest Farms has leased the front five acres of the town's Moose Hill parcel since 2023 under a five-year lease with an option to renew.
If you're weighing a Londonderry home next to orchard land, or you own farmland and want to understand your options before you sell, Granite State Realty Group can help you pull the planning records and talk through what's next door. Request a free local market consultation to get started.
