We started the Farm Values project two years ago with a grant from Mass Humanities, and this month we’re proud to present a locally-published book based on the research and photography that were generated by the project.
Entitled A Quabbin Farm Album, it contains slightly-edited versions of the blog posts from this site, along with many of the photos taken by Oliver Scott Snure in 2015 and some follow-up photo shoots with area farmers in 2016. There’s also some additional new material, including a foreword by Leigh Youngblood, executive director of Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust, with whom we partnered for this project.
The book is available at Quabbin Harvest Coop in Orange and at other area stores, including at Haley’s, the publisher. Or you can buy it online here (look for the “Buy” option in the sidebar).
You can also buy it through that online retailer that just got bought by Whole Foods, but if you’re interested in the book, you may already know why buying through a more local seller is better for our area economy. Some of the proceeds from each sale–especially those made locally–will go to support Quabbin Harvest’s work, including its efforts to make good local food available to everyone in our community.
We’ll be launching the book with a special event at the coop on Saturday, June 24 from 1-4 pm (here’s the Facebook event page for that, and here’s the poster). Join us for author and photographer talks between 1 and 2, then a book-signing and visits with farmers from 2-4 pm, and a chance to see Oliver’s new farmer portraits. Plus everything in the store will be discounted 10% as part of this special celebration of our area farms and farmers!
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This isn’t an official part of the Farm Values project, but I’ve posted a new piece here that relates very closely to the kinds of questions about scale, methods, economic survival, and civic debate in north-central Massachusetts that Farm Values was designed to explore.
Read about the “The factory farm that wasn’t: How a Wendell egg producer ended up on the wrong side of the ballot” and please pass the link along to others if you feel inspired!
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We’ve been quiet for a while, but with the start of the new summer farm season (and the end of Cathy’s academic year) there’s some action again on our long-delayed videos.
We shot the footage for these last summer, and are currently editing the final four.
The first two, which we premiered at our December 10, 2015 capstone event in Athol, can be found here.
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Welcome to the website for “Farm Values: Civic Agriculture at the Crossroads,” a project of Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust with humanities scholar Cathy Stanton.
The project, which will take place primarily in summer and fall of 2015, will develop histories of selected farm sites in a mini-region in north-central Massachusetts comprised of the towns of Warwick, Orange, Athol, Petersham, Barre, and Hardwick. These materials will serve as starting-points for both informal conversations and more focused discussion about the challenges faced by small-scale farmers in the area over a very long time span.
The project has several overlapping goals:
- to develop new historical knowledge about key sites within Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust’s extensive farmland protection efforts in its 23-town service region
- to engage new publics with farmland use and protection issues
- to add historical depth to ongoing civic and public efforts to strengthen the region’s agricultural economy.
Farm Values is funded by Mass Humanities, which receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and is an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Image: Detail from Walling & Gray’s 1871 Railway & Township Map of Massachusetts
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