Down on the farm
Rep. Trahan tours businesses hit by pandemic
Three farms in Massachusetts’ 3rd Congressional District got some face time with U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan on Tuesday to express the troubles the businesses face during the coronavirus pandemic.
Trahan visited Idyllvale Farm in Littleton, Honey Pot Hill Orchards in Stow and Hollis Hills Farm in Fitchburg Tuesday afternoon. The congresswoman was accompanied by other state officials at her three stops: Sen. Jamie Eldridge in Littleton and Massachusetts Farm Bureau Deputy Executive Director Brad Mitchell in Fitchburg.
Trahan and others walked among cows and grasslands to hear how farmers have been impacted by the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic and what she could do to help craft a new relief package that addresses the needs of the farmers.
“When you’re crafting these relief packages, you really have to have an industry under
standing of how COVID has uniquely hit all sectors of our economy,” Trahan said at Hollis Hills Farm. “Last year I did my very first farm tour and got to know different aspects of the majority family-owned farms. This is one of the few that aren’t, but 97% of the 842 farms in my district are family-owned and they don’t have a lot of wiggle room in terms of their cost structure and their levers to make up for lost revenue.”
Idyllvale Farm is one of those family-owned farms, owned and overseen by Will Pickard with help from his wife, Sarah, and his father, Jim. Located on just over 90 acres of land on Bruce Street in Littleton, Idyllvale is a dairy farm focused exclusively on producing raw milk from 60 full-grown cows twice a day and then providing it to processing facilities.
Pickard said he and his family had been dealing with problems even before the coronavirus hit, including feeding issues last year related to wet weather and micro-toxin poisoning. With the coronavirus pandemic impacting numerous aspects of business, Pickard said his farm has been required to cut milk production by 6%, which has caused a loss in revenue over the last four months.
“It’s a little bit of a trick just trying to keep animals going and healthy and to keep the farm moving along,” he added.
“If there’s a 3% oversupply of milk on a national basis, we will experience a roughly 30% decrease in our pay price,” Pickhard said. “That’s a pretty extreme circumstance to have to adjust to on the fly.”
Pickard said that the farm is currently enrolled in the Paycheck Protection Program and has also received COVID-related funding relief due to the price change of the milk his farm produces. Pickard’s hope is for milk prices to stabilize and for the dairy farm income tax credit to keep Idyllvalle open.
“I think that anytime you can make that real, physical connection with someone over agriculture, I think it strengthens the understanding and perhaps a resolve to keep us in their minds as they’re making a legislation,” he concluded.
Over at Hollis Hills in Fitchburg, owner Jim Lattanzi showed Trahan, Mayor Stephen DiNatale and others around the indoor restaurant and outdoor bar on Marshall Road where ice cream, maple syrup and other food is typically sold Tuesday through Sunday. Lattanzi said that the farm’s dining services have been open for three weeks of the current summer season and while he’s been “happy” with business “on the whole,” he noticed a loss in market opportunity after missing the two best weeks of maple season to produce syrup and a drop in customer turnout.
“It seems like the customer climate is still lukewarm,” he added. “Everyone’s still nervous.”
Lattanzi added that he also enrolled in the Paycheck Protection Program and was able to acquire state grants to keep things afloat.
The farm recently completed work on a new kitchen and was ready to showoff that kitchen’s cooking capabilities for outdoor dining by May, but the pandemic hindered that. While Lattanzi said the farm is able to do takeout orders, he wants the farm to “sell an experience” of great outdoor dining with live music. With the vast space in front of the outdoor bar, Lattanzi said the farm is able to handle 600 to 700 people “safely.”
“Financially, there’s always hurdles,” he added. “You just be optimistic and keep working.”
While she admitted that there’s still plenty of work to do in ironing out specifics, Trahan said she’s hopeful that more details on another financial relief packages for small businesses and others will be ready by the end of the first week of August. She added that the Senate and the House are going back to the negotiation table next week to discuss another package and that more talks are needed to address the needs of small businesses and its workers that could lose access to health care.
“I heard today that there are some things that we need to tweak so that when economies open up and workers can safely go back to work, we’re sending them to do that,” Trahan said. “We just have to be very careful. Sometimes when you brush things with a broad stroke, you miss and there are gaps that are created. This is why this was helpful, so I can hear about some of the things that we can do proactively to help diversification for that scrappy family farmer who just wants to make it to the other side.”