When I visited Blue Skys Flower Farm, I got lost, quelle surprise, because the sign said Urban Edge Farm. Hesitantly, I pulled into the driveway and parked. I saw a few unfamiliar faces and asked if they knew where I could find Christina. I had met Christina the previous Thursday at the ungodly hour of 7:30am in Pawtucket, RI because we were both helping put together CSA boxes for local restaurants (more about this in another post). Anyway, none of these women were Christina, so I was confused why they were on her farm. Turns out, it’s not just Blue Skys Flower Farm but seven farms sharing fifty acres owned by the Southside Community Land Trust. During my visit to Blue Skys Flower Farm, I began to learn about the positive benefits of working on a government subsidized farm, how a farm like this works, and how difficult it is to start a farm without the aid of an organization like Southside Community Land Trust.
How Christina started farming as an adult occurred through a series connections surrounding Southside Community Land Trust. The land originally belonged to a farmer named Arthur Ringrose. In his will, he donated it to the Department of the Environment. Eventually, the land then ended up in the hands of Southside Community Land Trust. Southside Community Land Trust allows farmers to rent a few acres of land for a low price through government subsidies. Blue Skys Flower Farm is part of Urban Edge Farm. Seven farmers and two farm stewards share all of the facilities for cost effectiveness. This program allows new farmers to enter the field without facing the financial challenges of building a farm from scratch. Although all of the farmers operate separate farms, they happily work together and support each other. Before farming, Christina was already the Director of Operations for SSCLT, so knew about the Urban Edge Farm, and eventually decided to participate in it. However, this is not the first time Christina has dabbled in farming. At one point, she studied in France. During her time there, she spent a summer on a farm. She fell in love with the taste of freshly picked produce. So, it made sense for her to pursue fresh food with her own farm when the opportunity arose.
Christina believes that without SSCLT, she would not have been able to start the farm, and she is grateful for the government subsidies. When asked if she felt like she had the government’s support, she said that she and the other farmers are just starting to feel it. Recently, she and a few other farmers at Urban Edge each received a grant to build their own greenhouses so that they can expand their operation. She said that the government is beginning to realize how healthy and productive smaller farmers can be, so only recently are farmers participating in this type of farming being rewarded or encouraged by the government. There are some definite pros to working on a government-subsidized farm. Hopefully, these benefits will continue to increase, thus making small-sized farming more appealing and accessible.
As we continued to talk, it became clear how difficult and expensive it is to start a farm without government subsidies. Christina told me that for thirty-seven acres land in RI, it would cost about $600,000. For the specific property she was referring to, the estate came with a barn, but it was not ready for crops. In order to prepare the soil, which consists of removing all of the overgrown plants and weeds, aerating the soil, etc, it could cost over a million dollars. That does not include setting up an irrigation system, about $6,000, land taxes, and building everything else necessary to run a farm. Unless a new farmer inherited the land or had a substantial inheritance, it is nearly impossible to start a farm from the ground up. It seems like the equivalent of a young person fresh out of graduate school trying to buy a worn-down house in San Francisco, CA - in other words, very difficult, impractical, inefficient, and risky.
Even though a dependency on the government develops with this model of farming, its financial and stabilizing benefits seem to outweigh this risk. Programs like Urban Edge Farm allow for people to start farming, and isn’t that what we want-to support and encourage local and sustainable farming? John Kenny, another farmer at Urban Edge and owner of Big Train Farm, expressed positive feelings about this business model and described it as “the most practical way to get a farmer on land with equipment and a reputation.” This program encourages the growth of small farms.
Christina almost solely operates Blue Skys Flowers Farm. Even though Christina has a separate full-time job, she farms for six hours a day! She says that she is constantly planting, seeding, and weeding. She plants about three hundred sunflower seeds a week, and that’s just one species out of twenty that she grows. Generally speaking, she grows a variety of flowers, vegetables, and herbs. In addition to working both in an office and in the fields, she also participates in the Four Friends CSA, sells at farmers’ markets, and works with local restaurants. She can be found on Thursday mornings at the Farm Fresh warehouse dropping of produce for restaurants through the Market Mobile.You can support her farm at the following markets: Pawtuxet Village, Providence Downtown, and Providence RIC.
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