Brothers donate part of 150-year family farm to conservation agency

ST. THOMAS – A family whose Elgin County farm goes back 150 years has donated part of the land to a conservation authority facing environmental challenges.

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Jim Lyle, 71, and his family have gifted 14 hectares (35 acres) of their farm to the Kettle Creek Conservation Authority. The family’s connection to the land, located a few kilometers west of St. Thomas in Southwold Township, goes back generations to 1874 when Jim Lyle’s great-grandfather, David Lyle, purchased the farm.

“It came together pretty quickly,” Jim Lyle said of the donation. “They’re supposed to be planting thousands of trees back there, so it will eventually probably be somewhere close to what it looked like (in 1874), but the main thing is, it’ll be like that forever.”

Jim Lyle and his brother John Lyle are the latest generation to work the roughly 200 hectares of Stenhousemuir Farm – named after the village in Scotland from which the Lyles’ ancestors emigrated. A large factor in the decision to donate the land was to ensure its long-term protection and restoration.

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Kettle Creek conservation officials manage an hourglass-shaped area that drains 520 square kilometers of land on the north shore of Lake Erie, its website states. Officials said in a statement the area faces “significant environmental challenges” including less forest and wetland coverage than recommended by Environment Canada.

The Lyle land donation was praised by Elizabeth VanHooren, the authority’s general manager. “It’s really immeasurable for them to give a piece of their history to the community and to future generations.”

VanHooren and her colleagues have already started restoration work on the donated land including a new wetland constructed in the fall. Officials say they have plans to plant 10,000 trees on the donated land, which will be named Stanley Lyle Grove in honor of the brothers’ grandfather, in the coming years.

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Operating as a dairy farm for many years, Jim Lyle said for the past 25 years he and his brother have grown wheat, soybeans and corn on the property, adding their father, Robert Lyle, was a big part of the farming operation.

The Lyles’ newly donated property is adjacent to the Deer Ridge conservation area, about 18 hectares (46 acres) of forested property donated to the Kettle Creek authority by the Lyles’ neighbors, Ted and Duggie Gill, in 2022 and 2024, officials said in a statement.

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