“The National Park Service owns 80.7 million acres of parks, monuments, historic sites, cemeteries, recreation areas, trails and even battlefields across the country. Now the federal agency also owns about 200 acres of dairy farm in the middle of Whidbey Island. And park officials still aren’t sure what they’re going to do with it.Around Christmas the Park Service, armed with nearly $3 million dollars,wrapped up a deal that protected more than 400 acres of Ebey’s Prairie farmland from possible development.The complex deal allowed local farmers Len and Bob Engle to get out from under bankruptcy and still retain ownership of a little more than 100 acres to continue farming. The agreement also snapped up development rights on about 100 additional acres and made the Park Service owners of 191 acres of farmland, including a dairy barn and dairy equipment.Our plan was never to own so much of this, said Rob Harbour, manager of the National Park Service’s Ebey’s Landing National Historical Reserve. We weren’t dying to become farm owners. But if we wanted to protect it, this is what we had to do.Now, Harbour said, they have to figure out what to do next. So far only one thing’s for sure.We’re going to be very cautious, he said. We don’t want to compete.That means the Park Service is not likely to start operating a dairy farm which might take business away from other local dairies. At the same time, though, Harbour said the agency doesn’t want to take the land out of production. After all, the idea behind the purchase was to preserve historicfarmland, not just protect open space.One suggestion has been to turn the dairy property into a demonstration farm where tourists could see agriculture in action. Harbour said the idea has some merit, considering the 700,000 visitors Ebey’s Prairie gets each year.But he said there is a danger in setting up an archetypal dairy using >standards that would be difficult for other local farmers to match. Instead, he said, the agency might consider setting up a creamery or dairy processingOther ideas include leasing the land to other farmers, leasing it to >an organization or selling it after development rights have been secured.Who knows? said Harbour. Agriculture is in real transition. Who knows what agriculture will be like in 10 years, let alone a hundred. “