By Great Blue, back to the farm
By Will Kilburn, Globe Correspondent | August 17, 2006

CANTON -- The revival of a long-dormant farm just below Great Blue Hill got off to a soggy start this year, thanks to heavy spring rains that delayed some of the early planting. But on a recent sunny morning, an experimental 1-acre plot on what's now known as Brookwood Community Farm has clearly made up for lost time.

``Our goal is to prove that we can do it -- have a productive market garden for this year, on this land that once was a working farm," says farm manager Judy Lieberman , as monarch butterflies darted among plants that seemed to be growing by the minute. ``In my mind, it's just making sure it looks good, is productive, and works."

The story of Brookwood begins with its previous tenant, Henry Saltonstall Howe , an insurance executive who bought what was then a 70-acre property on the Milton-Canton line in the 1940s and used it as a ``gentleman's farm," raising sheep and leasing out some of the land to local farmers. Howe willed the land to the state in 1976, with provisions that he be allowed to live there until his death, and that the land be preserved, or, possibly, to have the home he built on the site of an old hunting lodge used as an official governor's residence.

The state took control of the property when Howe passed away in 1994, but other than some work done to stabilize the farm's 300-year-old barn, and a short-lived proposal to explore the governor's mansion idea, things had been quiet there until Lieberman came along. She'd been looking for a place to create a community-supported organic farm, and found there was support both locally and at the state level to try to get things going again. A board was formed last year, and after reviewing its plans, the Department of Conservation and Recreation gave the panel a one-year permit to start a new kind of farm on a grassy portion of the land that had been fallow in recent years.

``The concept is an agriculture and ecology project that would be producing food and also doing educational programming and environmental research," says Lieberman, who farmed for 10 years in Vermont and most recently ran an urban farming project at ReVision House, a Mattapan women's shelter. In that same spirit, a quarter of the farm's output is donated to local food pantries, both in the suburbs and the city. That gift is subsidized by sales at a Milton farmer's market, to the Ashmont Grill and Icarus restaurants in Boston, and at a web-based ``virtual farm stand." The importance of having such a combination is explained by board member Mark Smith , one of the farm's early backers.

``We want to demonstrate to the broader community, the surrounding neighborhoods, the positive role local agriculture can play," says Smith, who works as the campaign director for Somerville-based Farm Aid , but helped Lieberman start Brookwood independent of his Farm Aid duties. The donation , he says, is to give those who can't afford to shop at stores like Whole Foods access to organic, locally-grown food -- which he says can play a role in fighting childhood obesity -- and also help people appreciate some of the other benefits of keeping local farmsteads from being turned into subdivisions.

``What we hope to do is show communities how you can maintain open space, and put that land back into productive use," he says.

As in the old days, that production comes about through good old-fashioned hard work. Led by Lieberman, who supervises a hard-working crew of three recent college graduates, including her 22-year-old niece, Elise Kesseli, and a number of volunteers. Mechanized help is limited: A plow and a tractor were used to turn the soil in the spring, while a solar-powered electric fence charges during the day to keep deer and other nighttime intruders out. Drip irrigation lines run along the rows planted with, as Lieberman puts it, everything they could think of -- onions, leeks, six kinds of potatoes, heirloom cherry and full-size tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, eggplants, carrots, beets, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, cucumbers, beans, squash, pumpkins, sunflowers, peas, and more.

Locally, the project has met with the approval of several neighbors who knew Howe and say the former owner would approve of the place's newest incarnation.

``That development on the property is exciting -- that it's actively being used for agriculture," said Peter Pineo , a landscaper whose family has been in the area for more than 300 years. ``I think Henry, quite frankly, would get a kick out of that."

Pineo says that he'd like to see Howe recognized formally for his gift, which, he asserts, was worth millions even three decades ago. Another supporter agrees that the donation was a sign not only of Howe's generosity, but also of his deep appreciation of the greater value of the land, and that the gentleman farmer would enjoy what's happening down on the farm today.

``I think he would very much enjoy that. He was a very interesting man," says farm board member Marita Manning Cronin , a lifelong Milton resident who worked on the land years ago when her family leased it to grow feed corn for the 250 cows of their dairy business, Thatcher Farms . ``He was just very involved in growing, and loved the aura of that particular piece of property, so much so that he preserved it."

For more information, go to www.brookwoodcommunityfarm.org