Need some creative ideas

[sapphire]

Gentlemen, I could use your creative ideas for an issue that I will be dealing with later next week.

In our little town, there is a 70 acre parcel of land that is up for sale through bankruptcy proceedings. It is a farm. I wish to make sure that the land remains as either open space or agricultural land and would like to propose that the land be purchased by the town and used as a sustainability center including organic agriculture, renewable energy, food preservation, homesteading skills, nutrition and its centrality to human health.

What are your ideas for workshops, events that can be carried out on this farm? I envision the large 38 parcel be used for farming activities in a hands on learning enterprise and the front of the property with a residence and three barns be used for indoor worshops with the largest barn used for recreational events. The front of the property could also be used for a garden swap and/or farmer's market.

There is a watershed restriction on about20 acres surrounding a stream. There could be ecological/natural history workshops held on a very limited basis. The state will have the final say on that idea.

What do you think of this, as yet, sketchy idea? Comments? Additional events/workshops/ideas?

IF we decide to move forward, much work will be required to obtain funding. I think some may be available from state programs and other through various programs.

Thanks!
Diana

[DALederle]

Diana:
What kind of schools does your local community have. This sounds like the kind of idea that local schools could get behind with your help. We have a farm here in Carpentersville, Illinois, owned by the locl park district. And it is open for public accesss all year but is used by the local school district. Especially with the lower grades coming on field trips, to look at the various farm animals, etc.
Downtown Chicago, in the Lincoln Park zoo also has a farm that I visited on class trips as a boy, 50 years ago.
So if you get the interest of the schools and park district behind you that might help make it happen. They would probably have a lot of ideas they could share with you.
Also contact the local or area wide newspaper. Editors love to send out reporters to cover local interest pieces, especially for the weekend stuff (I now because I used to to that myself). If you can get pictures to go with any story it would really make a difference.
Good Luck! We need as much open space, etc. preserved as we can manage.
Remember, concrete kills! I wrote a story about that, acres of concrete = people dooing bad things to each other. Boy did some people get upset with that story.


Dennis A. Lederle
Live Long and Perspire!

[Kirbstone]

Ah Yes, The Green Party Dreamworks. If I were a benign philanthropist I'd be pouring money into that project right now.
However, I am not. When I lived in N. Germany in the late 'eighties/early 'nineties there were big posters showing a fish head with attached skeleton and the title: 'Elbewasser macht schlank!'....Elbe water makes you slim!

It referred to the enormous quantities of heavy metal pollutants coming down that river from the Commiecon countries along its upper reaches. On a motoring trip to Czeckoslovakia in April 1991 shortly after the 'Fall of the Wall', we drove from Prague West to Bayreut in Bavaria (Germany). En Route we stopped and gazed down into a totally dead valley, site of an open-cast metal mine left abandoned by the Soviets, and now a serious headache for the brand new Czeck administration.

That valley drained into the Moldau, which becomes the Elbe where it crosses into Germany on its way NW. through Hamburg to the North Sea. In the past dozen years they've done a serious clean up costing Zillions of D-Marks & Euros.
That was only possible after the removal of the Iron Curtain. Witness what the Soviets did to the Aral Sea, further East....A headache now for modern Russia.

A 70-acre site with a convenient stream running through it sounds like a perfect site for my Grey-Brown Party Unobtainium mine and smelting works, with a nice exit for the toxic waste products. We'd be hiring some people to deal with the local Erin Brockovitchs, of course. It would do wonders for the local property values, too.

The 'Concrete kills' concept is extremely well illustrated in J.B.Keane's famous play & film 'THE FIELD' where the central character Bull McCabe has a very green three-acre field in the West of Ireland coveted by an American who wanted to concrete it over. To find out what happened, hire the DVD.

Tom K.

[straightfairy]

Gentlemen, I could use your creative ideas for an issue that I will be dealing with later next week.

In our little town, there is a 70 acre parcel of land that is up for sale through bankruptcy proceedings. It is a farm. I wish to make sure that the land remains as either open space or agricultural land and would like to propose that the land be purchased by the town and used as a sustainability center including organic agriculture, renewable energy, food preservation, homesteading skills, nutrition and its centrality to human health.

What are your ideas for workshops, events that can be carried out on this farm? I envision the large 38 parcel be used for farming activities in a hands on learning enterprise and the front of the property with a residence and three barns be used for indoor worshops with the largest barn used for recreational events. The front of the property could also be used for a garden swap and/or farmer's market.

There is a watershed restriction on about20 acres surrounding a stream. There could be ecological/natural history workshops held on a very limited basis. The state will have the final say on that idea.

What do you think of this, as yet, sketchy idea? Comments? Additional events/workshops/ideas?

IF we decide to move forward, much work will be required to obtain funding. I think some may be available from state programs and other through various programs.

Thanks!
Diana

All sounds good to me!
Food could be grown to provide the poor/elderly in the town?
Perhaps an orchard?
classes to help teach people to make/prepare their own food and related crafts?

I would suggest actively seeking ideas from your local population as then they will be much more likely to accept them.

[sapphire]

The parcel has been a farm for about 120 years. There has never been industry on it. The stream is clear and unpolluted and is part of the water supply for both the town and for Boston. The stream flows into the Wachusett Reservoir which supplies Boston. Various state agencies vigorously protect the watershed.

Getting the school to buy in would be fairly easy once the financials have been worked out. The school currently operates a small garden which could be expanded on either the school property or on this parcel.

In planning for this idea, I'm looking initially to create a task force which will include the Open Space Committee, Agricultural Commission, Sustainability Committee and our Police Chief who has recently purchased a 150 acres farm parcel that he intends to opeate as a family farm.

Based on what that task force decides and assuming that they decide to move forward, the schools and the Municipal Lighting Plant Manager would be brought in. The 10 acres atop a hill and virtually inacessible directly from the lower acreage could potentially be used for either solar or wind. Currently the town employs hydropower, solar and wind technology as well as power purchased from the grid. If the task force wants to include alternate/renewable energy, then the possibiity exists for a resource center and workshops/internships to learn about these options.

As for the farming aspects of this parcel, I see demonstration areas for vegetable production, bee keeping, and chickens. Perhaps a small herd of dairy goats, although the Chief currently plans to have a herd of dairy goats. A small orchard is a possibility. Orchards aboud in this area. The purpose of the orchard would be to teach folks how to manage, prune and harvest fruit if they plan to include a fruit tree, grapes (which are rampant in this area) or blueberries.

At a community level. this could be a place for local gardens to meet, discuss approaches for their gardens, swap/barter, excess production. The site could also be used for a farmer's market.

These are just some ideas that I had initially, now incorporating some of your ideas.

With this framwork in mind, what are your ideas for tweaking this and expanding upon it?

As always, thank you for your input.
Diana

ps. Some background. The original farm was approx 250+ acres, but divided into a number of discontiguous parcels. As mentioned, 150+ has already been sold and will be used as a farm. The parcel currently under discussion is for sale. There is another 30 acres contiguous with the 150 acre parcel that may or may not be sold. There is a 25 acre parcel that probably will be sold and a .29 acre parcel that is at risk of sale. Not included in the lands under bankrutpcy, but part of the original farmlands are a 3 acre parcel that is currently zones as three house lots and a five acre parcel that is being operated as a small farm.

My overall goal is to preserve everything but the .29 acre parcel as open/agricultural space. I need idea so that I can put together proposals for the 70 acre, 30 acre and 25 acre parcels should they become available. From there, I'd put together a group to develop business plans and to research agricultural grants, barn restoration grants, etc
D

[floatingmetal]

For some of the workshop space, maybe broaden the idea out from "just" the agricultural and include facilities for courses/workshops/"doing space" on designing / making / repairing a broader range of things, from knitting to metalwork (OK, they could make ploughs and scythes but jewelery making could count too), electronic appliance repair to jam making (comes under food preservation I suppose). Depends what you were thinking under "homesteading skills" but I'm sure you see where I'm going with this.

Well, it's what I'd love to do if I had the resources...

Graham.

[sapphire]

Graham,
Neat ideas. Thanks.
There is another parcel that might go up for sale that would be more condusive to some of the types of workshops that you mention. I'd like to see the town acquire that parcel as well. However, there is a splendid facility nearby that offers courses/workshops in jewlery making, metal and wood working, glass and pottery. That facility has been in operation for over 100 years and I don't think that we could compete with them, unless we found a "twist" to diffentiate from what they do. That facility is now part of a local university.
Diana

[floatingmetal]

However, there is a splendid facility nearby that offers courses/workshops in jewlery making, metal and wood working, glass and pottery.

Ah! That sounds good. I suppose the thing then would be to just see what they didn't already cover, and/or offer them use of the additional space to run more courses/subjects/any other stuff the University doesn't want to run itself. There's clearly a demand for that type of facility, it would need a bit of market research to see if there was anything people wanted to do but felt they couldn't (either because it wasn't available, or not at a convenient time) and see if anything arising was something that could be supplied and crucially, funded through enrollment fees, grants or other means.

Good luck with it all!