The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Living with the land
Couple offering CSA shares at organic vegetable, flower farm
MIDDLEFIELD — Dominick Grant and Mary Farnsworth are hoping to offer the bounty of their small-scale organic farm with people who share their back-to-the-earth sensibility.
For nearly two years, the couple has lived in a circa 1741 farmhouse and former hayfield — Old River Farm — on Miller Road with their two young children.
Together 13 years and married for eight, Grant and Farnsworth have roots in the area: Grant, 39, grew up in Portland and is the former managing director of Oddfellows Playhouse in Middletown, and Farnsworth, 37, worked at the Middletown community Health Center and managed Vinnie’s Jump & Jive.
The two have created what’s called a market garden — and are now offering community supported agriculture plots for the season.
“We’re using agricultural techniques, but we’re doing it on a small scale,” Grant explained. “It’s not acres and acres, but we’re trying to be really intensive and maximize every square foot.
“We do a lot of close, intensive spacing of plants, but for that to work, you need to have really good soil structure so the roots can go down instead of spreading to the side,” said Grant, who works full time for a worldwide investment company that works in forest conservation.
His flexible scheduling allows him some time
“I think it’s important to see beauty on a daily basis.”
Mary Farnsworth, who is in charge of flowers at the farm
home during the week to work on the farm. His wife helps nights and weekends.
“You just want to give the plants a little advantage. We’re not going in with chemicals to destroy all the competition,” said Grant, as he worked a trapezoidal hoe slowly and methodically along the raised beds of onions, cutting weeds by hand.
Farnsworth is director of strategy at the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood in Hartford.
The two have taken the farmer’s pledge through the Northeast Organic Farming Association, an organization committed to farming, marketing and farm management employing sound ecological and economic principles, according to NOFA.
“We try to do everything organic, but I think it’s more about what you do once the plant is in the ground,” said Grant, who has planted carrots, beets, garlic, onions, Swiss chard, lettuce and many other crops in their backyard that also has a hammock slung among the crab apple trees.
He also has a small beekeeping hive set up on the property and maple sugar trees — which produce sweet honey and syrup.
Grant’s specialty is vegetables, while Farnsworth loves flowers.
“I think it’s important to see beauty on a daily basis,” Farnsworth said. “What I love about flowers in particular are really romantic perennials. I just adore peonies, hydrangeas and dahlias — soft, voluptuous flowers — and a lot of the cheerful standbys like daisies, where you can count on them as old friends coming back year after year,” she said. Farnsworth chose sturdy growers for her backyard flower fields.
The garden is comprised of permanent raised beds, 30 inches wide.
“The idea is, once we make the bed and we improve it with cover crop and compost, we want to minimize the amount of disturbance to the soil,” said Grant, who operates a walkbehind tractor, something a lot of small-scale farmers and organic growers use.
“It has all the things you expect in larger tractor, but you can hook it up to smaller implements like a seeder.”
Everything is sized for their bed system. The tractor’s tires roll on either side of the vegetable and flower beds and the handlebars can be adjusted. “You never walk where plants are growing,” Grant said.
“What makes the land productive is all the microorganisms — the earthworms, all the complex structure inside there, and every time you drive a tractor over it or step on it, it compacts,” he added.
At the back of the property is a charming movable chicken coop on wheels that Farnsworth built by hand.
The family raises 30 White Leghorn, Barred Rocks, Rhode Island Red and Americana chickens for eggs.
In the future, Grant said, he’d like to raise some goats, sheep and small cows on the land.
They have a total of 30 full CSA shares whose crops will be available over a 20week time frame — from mid-June to the end of October. Those full shares sold quickly, Grant said. What remains are a few of the later season shares, which go from mid- to late August through the end of the season.
Each week, customers will receive a bouquet of cut flowers, which will change throughout the growing season; vegetables, a halfdozen eggs, maple syrup or honey. The cost weekly for a half share is $30 and the couple will offer home delivery or farm pickup.
Items in the box can be tailored to each specific customer as well.
Farnsworth said she learned a lot about gardening from her grandmother, who was a member of the Garden Club of America and leader of her local garden club chapter.
She recalls one time when she was about 12 growing up in New Canaan. Her grandmother pointed out a particularly fertile area of the yard where a tree had died 30 years before. She had planted two tomato seeds under a big bush nearby. “They grew up so high, we had to climb a ladder to pick cherry tomatoes. I just remember thinking, ‘Wow. Oh, my gosh.’ ”
Farnsworth enjoys the respite of a bucolic setting after working all day.
“I knew I was going to have a career outside the home, and wanted to come home and have something beautiful to look at. I want to be around flowers, and I want the kids to grow up in the mud and dirt and animals. That’s my vision for the farm and what I’m most excited about.”
The couple’s 5-year-old daughter collects eggs from the chickens.
“You can see her getting this confidence, picking up worms,” Farnsworth said. “She’ll play for hours in a puddle. That kind of experimentation, and learning, and sort of peacefulness, looking up and seeing a hawk, is so valuable for your mental health, your creativity.”
Already a number of people who have signed up for CSA plots are asking if they can bring their children by for a visit, something that goes along with the couple’s philosophy of living.
“I think people are thirsty for that kind of dirty, kidfriendly experience. We’re happy to give people access to that,” Farnsworth said.
Deliveries will begin in June and areas served include the Middletown and New Haven areas.
For information or to purchase a CSA share, visit oldriverfarmct.com or email oldriverfarmct@gmail.com.