There was excitement in Jeremy Barker-Plotkin’s voice when I spoke with him about his western Massachusetts organic farm. They had just been putting seeds in the ground that day at Simple Gifts, the farm in Amherst he co-owns with Dave Tepfer. Jeremy and Dave have been farming in Amherst together since 2006, but plans to farm together had been in the works for awhile after the pair met at The Land Institute in Kansas.
Jeremy had been farming about 5 acres in nearby Belchertown, on land managed by The New England Small Farm Institute (NESFI). The 100 or so acre parcel, as Jeremy estimates, serves an an incubator for small start-up farms in western Massachusetts. The tillable acrage was split between several farms when Simple Gifts lived there, and is now part of The Pioneer Valley Grain CSA.
Simple Gifts had an eye looking for a new place to farm, when Jeremy and his wife Audrey were driving down Pine Street in North Amherst and saw Don Gallager pounding in a sign that read “Save this farm.”
Don was then co-President of the North Amherst Community Farm (NACF) initiative. NACF was then a group of citizens who had come together to raise the $1.2 million needed to buy the Dziekanowski farm, one of the last working farms in North Amherst.
The roughly 35-acre plot is situated just a mile from The University of Massachusetts down heavily trafficked North Pleasant Street. It is surrounded mostly by student housing complexes. Without NACF efforts, the land almost surely would have been sold and developed to match its surroundings. “We never would have been able to afford the land on our own,” says Jeremy.
Even NACF wasn’t able to come up with the full amount. NACF took advantage of the Massachusetts Agricultural Preservation Restriction Program (APR), a program designed to encourage land-owners to preserve farmland by offering a $10,000/ acre sum. This sum is exchanged for an easement agreement that keeps the land permanently safe from development. They were also benefited by the state-funded, but town operated Community Preservation Act. Another large chunk of money came from selling small parcels of the property.
Even so, the collaborative was only able to come up with about half of the $1.2 million mark. They took out a mortgage on the remainder.
Still, it was enough to get Simple Gifts on the land in 2006. “They closed in July, and we started farming in April,” laughs Jeremy. “I guess we didn’t really know if it was going to work out, but it turned out okay.”
That first year they grew about 9 acres of vegetables, enough for a market and a 100 member CSA. “We kind of colonized a small part of the land, with an abandoned farm all around us.”
Once NACF had officially procured the land, there was still a lease agreement to be worked out between the trust now responsible for the farm’s mortgage, and the farmers, newly responsible for the land’s production.
The lease agreement was set up as a kind of series of phases, Jeremy explains. “What we’re working towards is a 99 year lease, where we own all the buildings, but not the land itself.”
The interim lease agreement started with phase one: a renewable 5 year lease where the land trust (NACF) owns all the buildings. The initial agreement was that Simple Gifts’ lease payments would continue to pay the mortgage, leaving the farmers with a hefty $2300/ month rent. Presently, through the help of non-profit group Equity Trust, the monthly rent is now $900. The farm owns any buildings or improvements they make to the property.
The plan is that this payment will do down once the 99 year lease is put into action. “The idea is that in phase two, our phase one lease payments will go retroactively towards buying the existing buildings,” explained Jeremy.
The original buildings include four barns, in various states of functionality and the main farmhouse. Jeremy and Dave each have a house on the far end of the property, where they live with their families. These buildings are not part of the lease agreement, and are fully owned by their respective families.
Today, Simple Gifts has a little over 15 acres in vegetable production, as well as an expanding livestock operation, including chickens, sheep, pigs, a herd of beef cattle and a pair of oxen. They have Dave oversees the livestock and plans cover crop rotations while Jeremy runs the veggie side of the business.
Brooke Werley is a farmer and writer living in Northern Vermont. Her blog is thisgrowingup.wordpress.com. She also writes farm profiles for Agrarian Trust, a new initiative working with the issues faced by next generation farmers and new agrarians
