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September 14, 2007: Brookwood Community
Farm rests on the perpetually-changing landscape and uncertain
future of coastal Massachusetts. A hint of icy Atlantic air
can be felt in the drizzly mist that blankets the woods and
fields of the Blue Hills Reservation, on which rests this
small parcel of cultivated conservation land. Although it
is mid-June, some of the warm-loving crops—such as tender
tomato seedlings—are in the ground fighting for survival.
The reservation straddles Milton and Canton territory, two
South Shore towns just off Route 128, Boston’s primary
beltway. As the state of Massachussetts fights to preserve
this precious slice of undeveloped land for a wildlife refuge,
Mark Smith and Judy Lieberman work tirelessly to use the same
land to preserve another endangered species—small-scale
New England farmers and the litany of values, knowledge and
community that trails after them. Their goal is to keep the
competing challenges of economic, social and environmental
sustainability at the forefront of their efforts.
“We can show that organic production can work side
by side with habitat preservation,” insists Lieberman,
the farm’s manager and one of its co-founders. Part
of Brookwood’s mission is to get half the land into
agricultural production and to keep half as a wildlife refuge.
So far, Smith and Lieberman are still in the arduous process
of proving to the state Department of Conservation and Recreation
(DCR) that their farm can be a viable enterprise and that
it is worthy of having basic facilities—such as greenhouses,
barns and production fields—all within easy access.
Last year, they juggled these amenities at several different
sites including another property also owned by The Trustees
of Reservations (www.thetrustees.org).
Two years ago, their vision was to build a nonprofit community
farm, and 2006 was a trial period allotted to them by the
DCR. They managed to gross $21,000 on one acre by incorporating
diverse markets into their business strategy, including a
12-member CSA and three farmers’ markets, and their
success has won them a modest greenhouse and an expansion
this year from 1 acre to 4 acres.
Land use has always been a polarizing issue in New England.
From the time colonists first set foot on Plymouth Rock, there
has been an exploitative and extractive thread running through
people’s attitudes toward and treatment of land (and
against traditional Native American philosophies), which proved
to be especially devastating to the thin, rocky and densely
forested topsoil of New England. Clearing the land often exacerbates
the effects of the region’s notorious weather extremes,
allowing the soil to heat up more quickly in the summer, freeze
more readily and permanently in winter and retain less moisture
year round, making it susceptible to steady depletion through
surface runoff. Colonial agriculture simply established a
continuation of traditional European practices, which emphasized
monocropping and largely ignored soil-improvement measures.
It is perhaps this trend, its clash with indigenous practices
and its adverse environmental consequences that have spawned
such vehement reactions and a dynamic movement toward sustainable
and organic agriculture in the Northeast. Massachusetts now
practically explodes with demand for a return to fresh, local
and sustainably produced food.
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“The fact that we—a small farm in one corner
of Metro Boston—can’t meet the growing demand
for local food provides opportunities for local growers to
alter their growing and marketing to meet local demand. This
is the antithesis of the global food system,” says Smith,
whose day job is to serve as campaign director for the family-farm-support
organization Farm Aid. The irony is that in a landscape of
such overwhelming demand, development is either so dense or
so sprawling that there is little productive land left to
meet it. What’s left is so sacred, that, as in the case
of Blue Hills, the government’s impulse is to render
it untouchable, to sever it almost completely from human impact
and limit it to spectacle. The mounting dilemma is whether
to preserve pristine land or to try and feed an unsustainably
expanding population in a more sustainable fashion.
Rural areas where land is cheaper and more plentiful, on
the other hand, tend to have stagnant or declining economies
where there is little demand for organic food. “It would
be almost impossible for young people to buy the land and
finance the land” in a place like Massachusetts, comments
Lieberman, whose main concern is recruiting the next generation
of farmers, especially as America now loses about 300 farmers
a week and the average age of the farming population continues
to rise. Lieberman also sees opportunities to put large estates
into conservation easements—land like the Blue Hills
Reservation that has been willed to the state by previous
owners—so that it may never be developed, and then convert
it into productive farmland. Essentially, the challenge is
to gather young potential farmers, seek out land and agricultural
opportunities and connect the dots.
Last year, Brookwood hosted a young couple just out of college
in what was almost a “sharecropping” arrangement,
says Lieberman with a laugh, but it ended up being a fruitful
learning experience, and they now have their own successful
farm. Somewhat by accident, Brookwood became an incubator
farm for this young, idealistic couple—a sheltered environment
in which to learn the basics of agriculture with all the resources
at hand so that they could then transfer this knowledge to
an independent setting of their own.
Education and outreach are critical elements of Brookwood’s
mission. There is intense enthusiasm and demand for involvement
in local agriculture in the Boston area, and recognizing and
engaging the myriad players has been one of Smith and Lieberman’s
biggest accomplishments. Just as biodiversity and crop diversity
are crucial insurance for the organic farmer, so, too, is
market diversity, particularly the social diversity within
those markets. Smith and Lieberman’s vision is to serve
all economic levels. They make sure to spread their markets
evenly across the socioeconomic spectrum, and what better
place to do this than in their unique setting, wedged between
Milton, an upper-middle-class suburb, and Mattapan, a low-income
urban area. They reach a wide range of people who might reap
very different benefits from renewed access to local and sustainable
agriculture.
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Much of Mattapan is what is commonly referred to as a “food
desert”—a place where, aside from the occasional
convenience store, it’s almost impossible to find actual
food (let alone whole, unprocessed, healthy food). Smith and
Lieberman aim to remedy this situation by setting up a farmers'
market in Mattapan Square. They are currently seeking the
obligatory minimum of two vendors certified to accept coupons
from seniors and low-income recipients of WIC (Women, Infants,
and Children, a USDA-supported supplemental nutrition program).
Such farmers’ market coupons would be distributed at
Dorchester House, a nearby public health and wellness center,
and could be redeemed only for whole, unprocessed foods sold
at the farmers’ market. It’s been a challenge
to get vendors on board for the market, says Lieberman, who
plans to hire several teens from Mattapan for a youth advisory
committee focused on the effort. She now works with middle-school
kids, whom she intends to recruit for these farmers' market
apprenticeships.
Donations to shelters account for about 20 percent of Brookwood’s
crop, which their status as a nonprofit and the support they
receive from grants allow them to do.
Meanwhile, Milton and similar nearby communities are the
source of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) members, shareholders
in the farm’s production who pay an initial fee and
receive fresh produce from the farm each week throughout the
growing season. These are the customers who typically are
already educated about obscure types of produce, who are savvy,
knowledgeable, and who value freshness and seasonality. They
are the customers for whom outreach and marketing are less
necessary—they are a readymade market that simply needs
to be served. Maintaining these extremes demands a diverse
marketing strategy and the willingness to cater to varying
income levels and tastes, from the basics to specialty crops.
Smith comments that Brookwood could easily feed into the
“locavore” movements—a loose organization
of people striving to have all elements of their diet come
from within a 100-mile radius—because here in the Boston
area even a 5-mile radius doesn’t seem absurd. Surrounded
by such diverse and high-demand communities practically within
a stone’s throw, Brookwood has the potential to have
a sizable impact on strengthening the local food system and
building a more cohesive community in the process, one linked
across socioeconomic divides by concerns about food access,
quality and a healthy local economy.
Does the Brookwood endeavor bear echoes of The Food Project,
one of its suburban farm neighbors? “I remember when
they were just starting, and I had a lot of the same ideas
they did," says Leiberman, who sees the parallels between
the two groups' social visions and efforts to draw a cross
section of the community into agriculture. The Food Project,
located in Lincoln and Dorchester, Mass., recruits teenage
workers—especially for leadership roles—and other
volunteers, both from the inner city and from affluent suburbs,
and donates much of its product to Boston food pantries and
homeless shelters. (Read more about The Food Project in Cultivating
soil, cultivating youth.) Leiberman wants to distinguish
Brookwood from The Food Project, yet hopes that their goals
can dovetail, too.
At the time of the Food Project’s inception, Leiberman,
who had come from a dairy farm in Vermont, was working at
reVision House, a women’s shelter in inner-city Boston.
Wanting to see more productive use of the abandoned lots she
noticed around her, she and one of the residents decided to
take over one of those lots and turn it into a garden. She
had been inspired by a trend she noticed sprouting in the
most unexpected, crowded corners of the city—especially
in Chinatown, where there was no shortage of Asian gardeners.
“I was amazed by the diversity of culture that I didn’t
really find in Vermont,” she says, a diversity which
began to express itself best in the garden. Finding and cultivating
that small patch of land could be as important in the depths
of the modern city—a place where many cultures collide—as
anywhere, as a means of both cultural expression and self-sufficiency.
ReVision House now weaves its urban farm into its mission
as a shelter, providing cultural enrichment, job training
and education for residents, and a source of fresh, wholesome
food for those who do not normally have access to it.
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When Lieberman landed at Brookwood, her enthusiasm, agricultural
experience, and social conscience were able to take root in
the rich soil of the reservation. She was thankful that the
land had been preserved in a natural, second-growth state,
protected and enriched by wild grasses. Soil tests revealed
9.2 percent to 9.4 percent organic matter. Pests have not
been much of an issue either, thanks to the diversity of wild
native plants and an abundance of ladybugs. The one drawback
of such rich, undisturbed soil is that it yields large chunks
of sod when plowed under, making it much harder to produce
a fine seedbed. Working within the unpredictable New England
weather patterns can sometimes be a challenge as well, especially
when trying to time fall crops so that winter cover crops
can get established before the mercury drops.
Lieberman strives to preserve the natural wealth of this
land and convince the DCR of the merits of organic production,
so she keeps diversity in her rotation, builds organic matter
with cover crops and mulches with compost and plastic to keep
the weeds back. She relies on a handful of sources of temporary
labor, including CSA work shares, summer workers and the “community
workday” volunteer labor force listserv (which has 250
recipients). During one community workday, the pulled-together
farm crew was able to transplant 1,500 tomato plants. Enthusiasm
and desire for involvement is rampant, especially among CSA
families who want to make the farm a family experience. One
member built a pole-bean teepee, knowing it would be an exciting
place for kids to play once it was filled out by tendrils
and foliage.
Brookwood blossoms as a hub of community life, providing
what many people crave in many ways—a celebration of
the productive and recreational capacities of their environment,
a sense of identity and history despite the growing sameness
of metropolitan areas, and an idea of how food production
and individuals fit into their micro-ecosystem. Brookwood’s
mission statement relays the hope of becoming a place where
“the visiting public can enjoy nature alongside an organic
farm and see the symbiotic relationship between the two.”
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