Sitting at a large table in the front hall of her well-preserved Victorian home in Northampton, Lilly Lombard faces a sea of pamphlets, maps and illustrations. They all depict an empty stretch of floodplain land across town that is fertile with possibility. Lombard is the president of Grow Food Northampton, an aspiring nonprofit organization dedicated to “promoting food security by advancing sustainable agriculture.”
Though she is relaxed and cordial in person, her focused, rapid-fire responses betray a determined and energized organizer. In less than a year, she and her colleagues have turned a hope and a dream into an almost tangible reality.
If she and her colleagues have their way—and their intense fundraising campaign is successful—they will lay claim to two former family farms. They have already raised enough for the smaller of the two, 37 acres, but they hope to buy and preserve contiguous land, which would create a 117-acre farm. The farm would not just be for their group’s use, but it would be operated as a community farm.
Many farmers buy or lease land, and much of the revenue they make from what they grow goes toward paying the mortgage or the rent. Instead of a bank or a landlord owning the land, community farms are owned by local nonprofit organizations. In some cases, the owners themselves farm the land; in others, the organizations work out affordable lease terms for tenant farmers. While raising quality produce and turning a profit is important to a community farm’s mission, the farm also is meant to serve other local needs. It may offer educational programs, seasonal festivities and apprenticeships. It may make regular food donations to local schools, shelters and food programs.
Interviewed at her home last month, Lombard was between weekend events supporting her group’s farm-buying initiative, as well as serving in her role as an elected member of the Community Preservation Committee (CPC). According to the Northampton City website, the committee is to be “responsible for making recommendations for how Community Preservation Act funds should be spent in the four CPA program areas: Community Housing, Historic Preservation, Open Space and Recreation.” These funds come from a fee added to local property taxes, and Lombard was instrumental in getting the act passed that created both the fund and the committee.
The previous weekend she’d held a celebration launching the kickoff for public fundraising, an event that allowed the community to ask questions about the effort to create a community farm. The following Sunday she would spend on another stretch of pasture in the meadows closer to her home. The Bleiman field was recently donated to the city by former city councilor Rita Bleiman. Though it’s still not certain how the property will be used by the city, Lombard organized a group of neighbors to join in the 10/10/10 Global Work Party for climate solutions by seeding the field with winter rye.
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During our interview, Lombard’s phone kept ringing, sending her back and forth between the kitchen and the phone across the hall. As she served coffee, she cut to the chase and explained the rationale behind her group’s founding and its mission to preserve the acreage in Florence as community farm land.
“I’ve been a student around the issues around sustainability, energy, and resource depletion for a long time,” she said. “Myself and other members of the core citizens who started Grow Food Northampton have a very strong suspicion that our future is going to be very different from what we currently enjoy. Our globalized and industrialized food system is not going to be able to sustain us and feed us into the future.” While she notes there are many good and reasons for eating local, organically raised produce, her main concern is the instability of a food economy that depends on ingredients processed thousands of miles away: “We believe relocalization is going to be the key to riding out the future waves, and we need to get started soon.”
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It all started when, through her work with the Community Preservation Committee, Lilly Lombard caught wind that the city might be interested in purchasing the Bean Farm in Florence. Some sports enthusiasts in Northampton had been lobbying hard for the city to find and buy more land for use as athletic fields, arguing that existing fields in the city were overextended.
Concerned that the city would be losing some of its already dwindling agricultural land, she began “talking with other local food advocates. I felt that [before the city decided how to use this land] there was another perspective that would have to come to the table: the eaters. We started organizing the eaters so that when it came down to a political tug of war, we’d have a voice at the table. We started a list-serve that we called ‘Grow Food in Northampton,’ and by the time the city announced they had a purchase option on the Bean farm, we already had 120 people on our list.”
Members of the list-serve did some quick research and documented that “the land was prime soil for agricultural use, it had historic significance [in the 1840s it had been owned by the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, an abolitionist community that counted Sojourner Truth and David Ruggles as members], and it had been used for farming since Native American times.”
They took this information to the newly formed city agriculture commission, chaired by John Omasta, owner of Hickory Dell Farm in Northampton. According to Lombard, the committee was “shocked and dismayed that they hadn’t been in the loop about the future of this prime farm land. They’re a relatively new commission in the city; it’s just kind of getting their roots in the ground.
“What ensued for a period of time was a big political tug of war,” Lombard said. At times it “was exciting and exasperating and very draining, but we called in everyone we could think of for support, and that was the roots of us creating so many partnerships. CISA [Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture] was at the table from the beginning, as was the American Farmland Trust, and then there was the Trust for Public Land.
“We found that other local land preservation organizations weren’t really in a position to take the lead. Kestrel Trust works on the other side of the river, Valley Land Fund is undergoing transition, but the Trust for Public Land was ready to step in,” Lombard said, adding that she put the Trust in touch with Northampton’s city planner, Wayne Feiden.
“I’m pretty sure the idea was on the city’s radar,” Lombard said, “so I don’t want to take undue credit, but we certainly brought to people’s attention that we could more easily put an Agricultural Preservation Restriction (APR) on the Bean Farm if we preserved the adjacent Allard Family farm at the same time. So the Trust for Public Land approached the Allards to see if they would be interested in selling their farm as well.
“They were interested, and so what was a 37-acre tug of war became a 180-acre preservation project big enough to meet everyone’s needs. Conservation, recreation, agriculture, central location—it was great.” The city would claim a swath by Meadow Street in Florence for recreational fields, and would also seek environmental protections for the wooded wetlands that run along the Mill River.
That left 117 acres of prime Northampton farm land protected for agricultural purposes, but still available for sale to any farmer interested.
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In cities and towns throughout New England—such as Burlington, Natick, Amherst and Waltham—communities have partnered with farmers to share the cost, responsibilities and fruits of local farming. Selling shares to the community as a CSA (Community Sponsored Agriculture) farm is one way private farms can involve local support, but a full-fledged community farm is owned, governed and paid for by a citizen board through continuous fundraising efforts.
Lombard and her colleagues began wondering: “Where’s Northampton in this effort to support a local agricultural movement? We pride ourselves on being a beacon of progressivism.”
They approached every land trust and agricultural group they thought could possibly buy the land for them, and were politely rejected. Everyone loved the idea of a community farm, but no one was equipped to front the funds or mount a campaign.
“On a cold night in February in the community room of Town Farm, 40 of us crammed into the space had this soul-searching meeting,” Lombard said. “What we realized was that this was our baby, we’d brought it this far, and now all we had to do was raise the money and incorporate. It’s been warp speed ever since,” she said with a laugh.
The price tag for the entire 117 acres is $670,500. But before the group could begin to raise the funds, the Trust for Public Land, now the owners of the property, had to be convinced Grow Food Northampton could succeed. “They really put us through our paces,” Lombard said.
The Trust for Public Land formed a limited partnership with the would-be farming organization; instead of funding, they offered “targeted expert advice and analysis.” The Trust evaluated the group’s donor prospects to see if they could realistically meet the challenges of raising nearly three-quarters of a million dollars in less than a year, and would not allow it to do any fundraising until its financial goals seemed attainable.
And even if Grow Food Northampton could raise the cash, they needed to prove they could cultivate crops on the land. Though the resume of the board of directors is full of credentials such as “community organizer,” “nonprofit manager,” “activist,” “grant writer” and “fundraiser,” none of the members list “farmer” as a past accomplishment.
There was some expertise in agricultural and land preservation issues. The treasurer, Rebecca Fletcher, works with the Equity Trust in Turners Falls, a national nonprofit specializing in preserving farmland through community partnerships. Vice president Adele Franks was the former co-chair of the Nonotuck Land Fund. Lilly Lombard grows most of her family’s own vegetables in a backyard garden that is more lavish and meticulously tended than her own home.
But no one on the board would claim to be a farmer, and before they could hope to buy the land protected for agricultural use, they needed to find someone who could turn the 37-acre patch into a viable growing concern.
Working with an advisory board made up of local farmers, Grow Food Northampton put out a request for proposals in June, seeking farmers who were interested in leasing the Bean Farm. By August, Jen Smith and Nate Frigard had been selected to be the anchor CSA farmers. They will operate under the name Crimson and Clover Farm at the Northampton Community Farm, and they plan on having 2011 shares available on a soon-to-be-launched website [see “Crimson and Clover“].
By the time Grow Food Northampton began the public phase of its fundraising in September, it was able to announce that it had already raised $210,000. By mid-October, it had enough to ensure that the Bean Farm would be purchased, and as of October 25, it was 40 percent of the way to its goal of buying all the available land. January 31, 2011 is the deadline for raising the total amount, but by December 27 (extended from November 15), the group hopes to have funds needed to put 20 percent down on purchasing the remaining land from the Trust for Public Land.
“The reason we want to own the entire property is to ensure that that land raises crops sustainably and feeds our local community,” Lombard said. “If it were sold to just one farmer, which was the Trust’s initial thought, it would most likely only be affordable to an established, conventional farmer. And they’d probably farm it the same way it was farmed.” (For years, the land often only grew a single crop that was then exported.) “Say we’re not able to buy all the land. Well, maybe we’d get lucky and an organic farmer would buy what remained. Or maybe not. Or maybe after 10 years they’d sell their farm and we’re back wondering how the land will be used. If it’s held in trust by a nonprofit, we’re legally bound to make certain the land is farmed in the way people in the community have bought into.”
Other than using organic and sustainable farming practices, Grow Food Northampton has no firm plans for the land beyond the original Bean Farm, but there are many ideas: an orchard, berry bushes, space for pilot farms, community gardens, municipal composting. Down the road, once Crimson and Clover is established, Lombard hopes her organization will be able to put out a second request for proposals to farmers interested in establishing a second CSA, one that would offer a selection of produce to supplement and complement what Crimson and Clover are offering.
Whatever direction they go in, the organization and its farmers share a commitment to having the farm host ongoing educational programs. Once the farm is operating as a business, Grow Food Northampton will begin using its organizing and fundraising muscle to fund the educational component. There will be an apprentice program for aspiring farmers as well as seasonal festivals and educational programming for all ages, to foster a better understanding of farming and the importance of food security.
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Of course, Grow Food Northampton is not the first to champion these causes, and Lombard says her group has no illusions that its farm could sustain the city all by itself. Her group and the farmers are building on ideas pioneered by others. More than simply adopting a business model, they are advocating a radical return to greater reliance on local agriculture. It’s a movement, and success is measured by how many people adopt this new, neighborly relationship with their food and those that raise it.
Since 1993, Communities Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA), based in South Deerfield, has been actively supporting farms, working as a regional coordinator around farming issues and increasing public awareness. Asked whether Grow Food Northampton’s intense fundraising efforts in these lean economic times had affected CISA’s own efforts, CISA’s executive director Philip Korman said, “Basically we see this as a win-win situation for everyone. It’s natural to get nervous when there’s a new fish eating in the same pond, but if you look around, you’ll see there’s plenty of food for everyone, and so much more work to be done.
“We welcome the Northampton Community Farm as the 205th Local Hero farm in the Valley,” said Korman. He noted that 30 of those farms operate as CSAs, and since CISA started, it has helped farms offer 6,000 farm shares that feed over 25,000 people. “The bottom line to everything we do is that farmers need to be able to make a living in this Valley,” he said. “Setting up a community farm is another tool we have for getting the community to invest in farming.”
North Amherst established a community farm in 2006 [see “Pioneered in Amherst“], and, operating under the name Simple Gifts, farmers, apprentices and community volunteers have transformed a narrow 37-acre strip of land not only into a successful CSA, but a beautiful one to boot.
“We’re excited and proud that the North Amherst Community Farm has been a model and an inspiration for the Grow Food Northampton farm project. Their fantastic public awareness campaign has become an inspiration to us,” said Ted White, one of Simple Gifts’ directors. “We wish them the best of luck, and we expect to keep encouraging each other in the future.”
Town Farm, the only other CSA in Northampton, also eagerly anticipates having the new farm as an across-town neighbor and colleague. Oona Coy and Ben James have been farming their 12 acres near downtown Northampton for only a few years; they just started selling 150 shares, up from 125 sold last year. Asked whether they feared competition for shares, Ben James flatly rejected the notion.
“We’ve always seen part of our mission as to increase the customer base for what we offer, not simply rely on the existing one,” James said. “The Northampton Community Farm will change the landscape some, but probably for the better.” He pointed out that many local CSAs have waiting lists, and the hope is that the demand will just keep growing.
Asked whether there was a downside to Grow Food Northampton’s vision, James laughed, saying that farming was all about downsides.
“The economic side is really dismal,” he said. “You just have to face that for the intensity of the labor and how all-encompassing the work is, you’ll never get a commensurate financial return. You’ll be paying yourself a small salary and you’ll never be able to pay the kind of wages your hired help is worth. Without a huge amount of idealism, I wouldn’t be doing this work.”
Thanks to its members’ abilities as organizers and fundraisers, Grow Food Northampton seems to have found a way to make that idealism a renewable and lucrative resource.
