case study Four SeaSoN Farm, harborSide, cape roSier, maiNe www.fourseasonfarm.com At a latitude of 44 degrees north, some 140 miles farther north than Northampton but in a similar plant hardiness zone, the Four Season Farm is an experimental market garden on the central Maine coastline that has become a model of how to commercially grow organic food year-round in a difficult New England climate. Owners Eliot Coleman (author of The New Organic Grower and The Four Season Harvest) and Barbara Damrosch (author of Theme Gardens and The Garden Primer) grow a diversity of vegetables through the spring, summer, and fall, and greens and root vegetables throughout the winter. They are able to grow food year-round because they have learned what cold-hardy plants to grow, how to successionally schedule planting and harvesting, and how to protect crops with simple, inexpensive materials. They began year-round production for the market in 1995. “Our goal,” says Coleman in the introduction to his The Winter Harvest Handbook (2009), “was to find the lowest tech and most economical way to extend fresh-vegetable harvest through the winter months.” They began with glass cold-frames and moved on to 30-by-96-foot mobile greenhouses, with light, self-ventilating fabric to cover the row crops inside the greenhouses. The unheated greenhouses are simple and low-cost. “We followed our minimalist preferences and avoided any space-age materials, complicated technologies, or whizzing machinery with which we are not comfortable” (Coleman 2009, 3). There are no pumps, fans, insulation, or water or stone heat storage systems. They use no supplemental lighting; they discovered that while crops do take longer to grow in the short winter days, they can compensate for this by planting successionally across a wide range of dates. They begin planting for their winter harvest in August and continue through the autumn, so
greens and root vegetables can grow large enough before the December slow-down and short winter days arrive. Some of the greenhouses sit on tracks and can be moved by hand over adjoining fields; others can be pulled over the fields by a tractor. Moveable greenhouses allow Coleman and Damrosch to take best advantage of available light, rain, and sun. They can start some plants in the ground in late summer and then protect them as the temperatures drop. Crops that love the heat can be grown in the greenhouses in the summer as others grow in the full sun and rain. Temporary shelters of galvanized metal and plastic sheeting protect outdoor crops when needed, and fields not in use can be planted with nitrogen-fixing cover crops. Twenty vegetable crops are harvested in winter, including spinach, carrots, turnips, chard, sorrel, scallions, kale, mache, tatsoi, arugula, minutina, and claytonia. The densely planted winter greenhouse beds are draped with gauzy cloth over wickets, creating an extra layer of protection for very cold days. The inexpensive plastic sheeting of the greenhouses and the row covers together create conditions like those three zones to the south. “I realized that under this thin piece of plastic,” says Coleman, “I could create a climate that was 500 miles to the south of Mine. Then I put very light spunbonded polyester fabric 12 inches off the ground, and under that is another 500 miles to the south—now we’re talking about a climate that’s down somewhere around Georgia” (Bodwell 2007, 64). The greenhouses and fields take up less than three acres and all produce is sold (to five to ten restaurants, depending on the season, two markets, and a farmstand) within thirty miles of the farm (Bodwell). Coleman reports that field crops and greenhouse crops together return a gross income of $80,000 per acre annually (Coleman 174). Coleman and Damrosch have kept two-thirds of their 45-acre property in wild woodlots, swamps, and other wildlife habitat. An abundance of foxes, coyotes, owls, hawks, and other predators help keep down the rodent population. In the remaining 15 acres, hay fields are mowed for compost. They hope eventually to plant wheat and wine grapes, and to raise ducks.
Feed NorthamptoN disTricTs
49