A conservation easement has been granted to the Virginia Outdoors Foundation by the Over Jordan Farm LLC in order to protect the 197-acre property.

This is the first recorded easement for 2008 and a major one in Bean Hollow.

Recorded on July 18, the easement was signed by several members of the Bill and Linda Dietel family. It merges three existing tax parcels into a single parcel that may never be divided into more than two pieces.

Citing the farm's visibility from Shenandoah National Park, source of water supplies for Fredericksburg and Stafford County, and 0.4-mile frontage on the Jordan River, the easement also restricts the numbers and sizes of future buildings, and establishes a no-grazing riparian buffer along the Jordan.
Conservation easements now protect 26,394 acres in Rappahannock County - which is 19.4 percent of all private land.