Members of the Westport Select Board last week unanimously approved a conservation restriction for Berry Hill Farm, a move that clears the way for the Westport Land Conservation Trust to purchase the well-known blueberry farm and re-sell it as a protected working farm.

Trust officials began talking to the farm's owners and the Community Preservation Committee last year about how to preserve the property, and voters at May's Town Meeting approved a $350,000 expenditure through the Westport Community Preservation Act Fund, to pay for the restriction.

With that restriction secured, Ross Moran, the trust's executive director, said last week that the trust has completed its fund-raising efforts to buy the 42-acre farm, and hopes to close on the sale by mid-November. Once that's done, the trust will put out an RFP and eventually re-sell it to a working farmer.

"The goal is to keep it in its current production," Moran said. "That property is an institution, as well as the family that has farmed it for some time."

Though there is a home on the property, it will remain under the ownership of the Pierce family, which has farmed the property for more than 50 years. The trust "will put an allowable building envelope on the property in a different location," so the future owner will be able to build a home, Moran said.