Farming Through a Crisis to Feed the Commonwealth
Photo by Michael Piazza
Spring is in bloom outside—perhaps you’ve seen it from your windows!
Nature is revitalizing itself as it does each spring, in vivid hues signifying its resilience. It is perhaps more invigorating to us now than it ever has been before.
One of the most evident proofs of the season can be seen on our local farms; after another New England winter (albeit a mild one) they’re beginning to bear the fruit of their farmers’ labor.
Small farms have always been there, feeding and nourishing this region, but it’s taken a moment like this (during the outbreak of Covid-19) for more people to truly appreciate what it means to access fresh, local food. For some this is new; for others, “supporting local” has been a regular consideration. Whatever your relationship to Massachusetts farms has been before, rest assured that they have risen to the challenges this crisis has presented to them and they’re continuing to find new and innovative ways to feed us.
Like everyone else, farmers have been forced to reimagine their work and find creative ways to adapt to this new, shared reality. They are setting up websites to allow people to order local products straight from the farms. They are delivering produce directly to people at a volume hitherto unknown to them. Farm shares and CSA boxes have become increasingly popular as we, the masses, are warned to limit our trips to the grocery store.
And yet—as Chris Kurth of Siena Farms puts it— “How lucky we feel to be farming right now, and to be a member of a strong local food system in the greater Boston area.”
Siena Farms’ CSA membership has increased nearly tenfold since the stay-at-home orders were put in place in Massachusetts and the sales at their South End farmstand/store have tripled. That is the rose. The thorn is that the wholesale side of their business, mostly to restaurants, has flattened almost completely. Their outpost at the Boston Public Market is selling only via the market’s delivery service as the retail floor is currently closed. Their CSA pick-up locations (shops, cafés, restaurants and office parks) are almost all inaccessible as well—so that uptick in CSAs? Mostly done via delivery now. They have had to be nimble, but for Kurth and his crew the essence of their work remains the same: “It’s always been a very meaningful experience to be a farmer and to grow food for people, but those meanings have taken on new life here on the farm.”
Right now it’s not just about growing the food, but also getting it to people.
In Westhampton, the team behind mushroom grower Mycoterra Farm created a website pretty much overnight to sell the goods from area farms when they learned their farmers market would have to close. The new venture, called Mass Food Delivery, started with about 80 orders their first week, jumped to 600 the next and is still growing. They deliver in western and central Massachusetts, as well as the Boston metro area, with farmers and producers across the Commonwealth reaching out to sell products through the site.
Their website allows people to customize their own farm box with local goodies. You can get things like honey, pasta, milk, cheese and grains in addition to a variety of produce—and of course, mushrooms. Julia Argon, one of the founders of Mass Food Delivery, says that while they are proud to be feeding people, they are also happy to be helping their community of producers, mostly from the Pioneer Valley. “We particularly have sought out vendors who are affected by the current conditions.”
They hope that what they are building now—out of necessity—will endure beyond the current moment. “[Farmers] markets aren’t going to be able to serve the numbers of people they used to, so Mass Food Delivery is going to continue to be a way to get the most people food in the safest way,” Argon says.
The desire to have groceries delivered to your door has been a growing trend for some time, but the accelerated demand for it that came along with Covid-19 is undeniable. Marie Hills, owner of Kimball Fruit Farm in Pepperell, had for a long time avoided delivery, relying instead on well established market sales and restaurant relationships—until she couldn’t anymore. While she is still hoping to sell through farmers markets, even if they will look and feel different now, she, too, began delivering to her local community as a way to bolster the farm’s revenues after losing her typical sales avenues.
It’s not a simple thing for farms to reinvent their processes when the work is already so demanding, but so many are rising to this challenge. “It’s quite a job to take your business and turn it on its head,” Hills says. “I want to believe that the efforts in the end are going to be worth it…and we reach more people and new people and different people.”
Hills also noted that in spite of everything, they are still planning to plant as much as they normally would have. “What if we can’t sell everything? Well, there’s a lot of people hurting out there that need food. Even if it doesn’t help our bottom line, it’s going to help people that need good food.”
A common theme among these farmers was their optimism that when this all this ends, the community’s increased awareness, support and appreciation for local food and farms will persevere. And we owe that to them.
It is not surprising that farmers have had the fortitude to reimagine the ways they work and feed us; they have always been made of strong stock. The surprising thing is that it took a crisis for us to place more value on what they have been providing all along—wonderful foods cultivated, grown and produced right in our own collective backyard.
Let’s show our appreciation—not just now, but next year when we order our CSAs and then again the year after that. Because they will still be there, taking care of the land and growing us food. We should be there too, still supporting them, even if we can leave the house.
