Local foods, farming (Boston, Worcester, Dracut: leases, how much, homes)

[New Heritage Farmers]

Hello,
We are a small family of gardeners and farmers that are currently located in the Boston area. We have plans to secure a piece of land and begin a self-sufficient farm along with a CSA. We want our farm to eventually supply 50 families with not just chemical free vegetables, but pasture raised eggs and meat, and grass fed milk and butter.
We feel like this is very much needed in New England, since a lot of our food comes from CA, or other countries.
We want to take care of the land and soil, creating healthy food for generations.
Does this interest anyone out there? I was hoping to get a discussion going about local food and growing methods. We are trying to get people interested in our idea and become members of our mailing list....being updated on our progress and the first to know when CSA opportunities are available.

What do you think??

[brightdoglover]

I know there are farms and CSAs established out my way (NW on Rt. 2- Littleton, Dracut. How much land do you think this would call for, and how expensive?

[missionhill]

Talk to Brian Donohue, who teaches at Brandeis, and who got the Land's Sake community farm going in Weston. His book Reclaiming the Commons is a great read and source of information. An organic farming guru whom I've met is Eliot Coleman who has a wonderful farm on Cape Rosier in Brooksville, Me. He has some good how-to books on the subject. You might contact the Mass Dept of Agriculture and Markets which has worked to connect farmers up with markets. There are some progressive operations in western Worcester County, including a farm in Hardwick that sells grass-fed beef and one in Petersham (I think) that does raw milk--but that just scratches the surface; there are people doing this all over New England and New York, with Vermont being maybe the mecca of sustainable agriculture. Closer to Boston brings greater ease of reaching markets but higher land costs--not sure what the tradeoff is. Portland has a public retail market; maybe that's a good place to visit to learn more about who's doing what and with what success.

[DreamworksSKG]

I would highly recommend having your farm be open to the public. A lot of farms get good business over the spring-summer and fall. especially if you have pumpkins in the fall. there are several farmers' markets you can go to in various towns and sell your goods and wares, as well
Hay-rides would be popular too for kids, as well as keeping your land open as trails, horse-back riding, and cross country skiing in the winter would be cool.

Just some thoughts

A all natural ice cream stand from Cows would be great too -
Great Brook Farm does that for instance
in Carlisle

[New Heritage Farmers]

Originally Posted by DreamworksSKG

I would highly recommend having your farm be open to the public. A lot of farms get good business over the spring-summer and fall. especially if you have pumpkins in the fall. there are several farmers' markets you can go to in various towns and sell your goods and wares, as well
Hay-rides would be popular too for kids, as well as keeping your land open as trails, horse-back riding, and cross country skiing in the winter would be cool.

Great suggestions! We are real interested in being open to the public, and hope to even have a few spots on the farm for people (possibly CSA members) to camp/stay eventually. Community will be the main focus of our homestead and farm. We want to know the people was are feeding and we want them to know where their food is coming from. We plan to have work shops and weekend activities for family's. What kid wouldn't love going out to collect eggs from the chickens and picking vegetables?

We read Elliot Coleman books, and will implement a lot of his techniques. For the past 3 years we have been researching organic and sustainable agriculture. We have had internships on farms and feel confident that we can create a farm that supports the surrounding community. Using farming methods that replenish the soil will be key in our operation. Animals are supposed to be outside, on the land, eating a natural diet and spreading manure. It just makes sense!

There are a lot of great farms in the area and we have visited a few of them, and try to support them as much as possible. (they sell Hardwick Beef at a few local foods markets in my town).

It is great to know there are people interested in this. We are currently working on a business plan to make it a reality and are open to a few different areas of New England. Im just not sure where it is most needed and possible. I know cost of land in NE is high, and we are looking into agricultural land leases through programs like Land Link and Farm Link. Has anyone had any experience with anything like that?
There are a lot of opportunity's out there for this sort of thing. We just need the plan and some funding! We are looking into new farmer grants, and about 20 acres.

[anouk_pantoufle]

CSA's are becoming quite popular - do a search on the Boston Chowhound site for CSA's.

In order to get funding, you're going to need to show that you know what you're getting into - my suggestion is to try to get an apprenticeship:

NOFA Massachusetts: Programs: Apprentices

Good luck!

[clevedark]

I have PMed you, New Heritage.

Cleve

[New Heritage Farmers]

Originally Posted by anouk_pantoufle

CSA's are becoming quite popular - do a search on the Boston Chowhound site for CSA's.

In order to get funding, you're going to need to show that you know what you're getting into - my suggestion is to try to get an apprenticeship:

NOFA Massachusetts: Programs: Apprentices

Good luck!

Thanks for the advice. We have actually interned and apprenticed at many farms, some in WA. We are currently working with a few land owners to try and grow what we can on some land. An apprenticeship is hard for us right now because we have a 14 month old son and a dog, and havent had much luck getting farms interested in taking our whole family on. We are actively involved in small scale farming, and are writing this into our business plan. We hope to get some projects going to show all we have learned and that we are ready for a farm of our own. Community is very important to us and working with people in the area is going to be very rewarding!

-Hollie

[brightdoglover]

This week's Littleton Independent (the Littleton piece of Community News Group) had a front-page article about women farmers, spotlighting a young woman who is the fourth generation of farmers at Springdell Farm on Rt. 119.
Also pointed out that more women than men make a move to farming in mid-life, certainly on smaller plots and maybe specialty crops.

[DreamworksSKG]

make sure you look into maple syrup trees , and also Apple trees, so you can do maple syrup sugaring and apple picking as well
Maybe you could have some kind of haunted hayride type thing for people to come to around halloween and get their pumpkins gourds and such :-)