Out With The New, In With The Old – Farming Falmouth Breathes Life Into Traditional Sustainability

By JOHN H. HOUGH

Farming Falmouth fuses ancient agricultural practices with modern day food security needs using an assembly of volunteers, eager to educate their neighbors on how to farm well even without farmland. 

Some volunteers with Farming Falmouth today have a background in agriculture in one form or another, although members carry the mantra that gardening is for anyone, regardless of background or even land ownership. Board of Directors President Ellie Costa said she comes from a family with gardening connections and grew up as a seasonal gardener before volunteering at Pariah Dog Farm when she moved to Cape Cod in 2018. She recalled the exact moment that gardening became more than a seasonal chore. 

“You’re pulling potatoes out of the ground and you’re saying, ‘oh my God, this is treasure,’ ” Ms. Costa said. Ms. Costa referred to herself as a born-again farmer. 

A working group formed to save the 36-acre Tony Andrews Farm in 2017 from development, petitioning the town to purchase it and save it as farmland forever. Some of those same group members would later form the board for Farming Falmouth, working to educate the community on sustainable food practices and to preserve whatever farmland they could in the community. Core ideals of bringing food closer to the people, fostering healthy, thriving soils and implementing the best practices to ensure good food continues growing well into the future unite its members. 

Farming Falmouth volunteers manage community gardens across town and they also manage an apple orchard. They help local farmers during harvest season in exchange for permission to glean any excess produce the farmers will not be able to use or sell for community benefit. During the summer, most volunteers are in the fields early in the morning to escape the heat and some bring their families to help. Often this food gathered by volunteers from local farms is donated to the Falmouth Service Center, where it is handed out for free. Some volunteers manage farmers markets, connecting local agriculturists to reliable revenue even during the winter seasons. Throughout the year, Farming Falmouth hosts community events, instructing locals on how they can begin farming as well, even on tiny plots of land.

Volunteers said sharing some of those best practices can create waves as they essentially turn the last 100 years of Western farming on its head. 

“It was under the Nixon regime that said ‘Get big or get out’,” Patricia Gadsby said, referring to the industrialization of agriculture and the widespread fertilizers during the 20th century. Ms. Gadsby, director of media outreach with Farming Falmouth, helped start the Falmouth Farmers market and Farming Falmouth’s Share Your Bounty food donation program in 2020. 

“The trend is now going in the other direction,” Ms. Costa said. “The trend now is to recognize that we’ve lost a lot of farmland, that we have decentralized our food system and that that’s not healthy for people. It’s not healthy for the climate.” 

Volunteers pointed out that big farming leads to communities getting their food supply from halfway around the world. Problems arose during the COVID-19 pandemic with the disruption of global supply chains, they said. The alternative is what they called “suburban farming,” which does not require large amounts of land. Several volunteers have their own small plots that they garden out of in their backyards. But this concept is not a new one. 

“It is a case of what is new is what is old,” Kurt Achin said. Mr. Achin is a videographer and communications projects director with Farming Falmouth, with 20 years of experience in Asia as a CNN producer and multimedia correspondent across several platforms. 

“A lot of this sort of intensive, regenerative, human scale agriculture comes from indigenous traditions,” Mr. Achin said. “African traditions and these sort of, Parisian market gardeners of the 19th century.” 

Mr. Achin said traditional farming around the world invested in “teeny tiny” spaces, without help from a tractor or mechanics of any kind. These farmers made greenhouses and managed an entire organic food supply by understanding how to nurture soil, care for their plants and harvest with the next seasons in mind. Some implemented vertical trellises to minimize their use of land and maximize space. 

“You can feed a city based on these little nooks and crannies,” Mr. Achin said. 

The most sustainable farming practices imitate nature, volunteers said, and do not even need fertilizer. Volunteers pointed out that the earth has been fertile for hundreds of millions of years in its own natural cycle.

“What we just did as a human species in the last 100 or 200 years is so weird,” Andy Buckingham said. Mr. Buckingham is the director of land acquisition with Farming Falmouth. “We strip mined it.” 

Fertilization happens naturally. Mr. Buckingham pointed out that herds of cows fertilize their own pastures, leaving cow patties rife with mycelium that becomes the seed for a healthy soil, restoring grassland. 

Natural restoration and regenerative, traditional practices borrowed not only from cultures around the world but from Indigenous people in the United States are core inspirations for many of Farming Falmouth’s educational outreach strategies and agricultural practices applied to projects around town. Jeny Christian, a farm manager with Farming Falmouth, said those two efforts often combine. Farming Falmouth’s community orchard is essentially a living classroom under her direction. 

‘Farmland is being lost at a remarkable rate,” Ms. Christian said. “It’s so expensive. It’s hard to farm. So, getting other people educated in growing their own was our beginning.” 

Ms. Christian set up rows of trees planted in different styles; some are tightly planted together on trellises and other rows are spaced out. Some trees bear apples seen in a typical store, like macintosh apples, while other rows have patterns of different fruits with apples, peaches, pears and plums growing together. 

Anyone interested in learning how to farm an orchard can observe the varieties of plants growing in real time and learn how to look out for diseases or how to prune the trees. Volunteers practice protecting the soil from drought years with sustainable irrigation. Ms. Christian hopes that the “classroom” of trees will lead to more people in Falmouth being able to grow their own orchards in their backyards, bringing their food supplies closer to home. 

A nearby project, the Farming Falmouth service garden on Tony Andrews Farm, is only a few hundred feet away from the orchard but is a totally new plot. 

“It’s really kind of like a set it and forget it,” Ms. Christian said. “It’s very crock-pott-y.” 

Farmers nurture naturally occurring nutrients, fungi and bacteria work together in their own ecosystem in the soil by letting it rest during key seasons underneath protective covers which keep out even noxious weeds. 

“It’s about creating a soil where life can live,” Ms. Costa said. 

Volunteers stressed that despite the “new” practices that they hope to spread in their community on Cape Cod, they have a lot of respect for farmers whose practices have become tradition over the last century. But rather than viewing the earth as scaffolding, filling in what isn’t there with fertilizer, Farming Falmouth volunteers say they see the first key element to grow in a garden is the soil. The plants can come after and thrive in a healthy earth. 

“This group is nothing if they’re not just passionate and creative and full of ideas,” Ms. Costa said. 

Volunteers are the backbone of the non-profit and Ms. Christian said the organization has been growing. Mr. Achin pointed out that the pandemic sparked interest in gardening and creating a localized produce supply chain. As it grows in members, so it grows in opportunities. Farming Falmouth has more than 170 community garden beds and is on the verge of building 30 more since the existing community garden beds have waiting lists. Volunteers will gather to build the new beds. 

Ms. Christian said Farming Falmouth hopes to build a community garden in every village to facilitate access for those who are not able to travel to get to a garden. Volunteers noted the “astronomical” high prices of land, making it difficult for an average person to farm on a budget. Farming Falmouth already has two East Falmouth gardens, one on Tony Andrews Farm and another near the Emerald House off of Davisville Road, and another on Peterson Farm in Woods Hole. Volunteers said since housing is a problem, they hope to construct homes for farmers on land they acquire. This year volunteers said they will add a full-size greenhouse to their repertoire and they estimate overall their cultivating space will quadruple thanks to grant funds they have received. 

Farming Falmouth also has an educational series coming up called “Growing Together” in the spring to help instruct and encourage local farmers in sustainable practices. They often host experts and master gardeners to answer questions and present on all topics agricultural. 

“We want to be a hub for education,” Ms. Costa said. “We want to be able to lease some land to growers so that they have access to land.” 

Ms. Christian noted that as Farming Falmouth has expanded, it has been able to hire administrative staff and launch a capital campaign. Fundraising is in full swing, particularly during the winter, and the nonprofit already has a calendar year filled with events. After several years of gaining strength and streamlining its process, with “everything always on fire,” Ms. Christian said volunteers and farmers are approaching this coming growing year with more experience and confidence. Despite chilling air and soil and cloudy skies, Farming Falmouth volunteers work is constant year-round and perennial. 

“We’re coming of age,” Mr. Buckingham said. “We are getting our act together. Not that the first four years weren’t together.” 

“We’ve kind of just gotten our driver’s license,” Mr. Achin said.