Conservation

Conservation

The Jamestown Community Farm is committed to a natural process of rebuilding and maintaining soil health and soil fertility.

Soil Management Program

• No chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides
• Ongoing composting program (leaf mulch, chicken/horse manure, vegetable matter
• Ongoing summer and winter cover cropping program
• Mobile chicken coups regularly relocated throughout 6 acre fenced area
• Annual crop rotation
• NRCS soil restorative and natural weed control programs on 7 acres
• Carbon capture low impact soil cultivation. No bottom plowing
• Regular soil testing by the UMass Agricultural Department

Recycling & Composting

The JCF does not use any commercial fertilizers and so to return nutrient values to the soil we have a major composting program. To provide the raw material for building compost we have agreements with two private businesses in town: McQuade’s Marketplace and Atlantic Lawn & Garden.

McQuade’s Marketplace: Three mornings a week we pick up out-of-date fresh vegetables from McQuade’s Marketplace. This generally involves several large boxes of produce weighing between 50 and 75 pounds each day. The farm picks the boxes up and dumps them in a large composting area at the farm. Lettuce and melons are fed to the chickens.

Atlantic Lawn & Garden: Atlantic Lawn & Garden delivers to the farm primarily, in the fall and early spring, truckloads of leaves raked from their customer’s lawns. These leaves are dumped in a one-acre area at the rear farm and during the following year are made into a beautiful leaf compost by Atlantic. This leaf compost is made available to the farm and the farm mixes it with the McQuade’s Marketplace’s vegetables, the chicken residue, hay and manure from a horse farm and small rabbit farm and over a year’s time creates beautiful mature compost for the farm’s soil. In addition to providing us the composted leaves, Atlantic Lawn & Garden mows weekly the grassed area around the barns and the farm’s orchard.