Brief thoughts on some of the events making news from around Franklin County and the North Quabbin area:
A recent statewide survey found that 85 percent of Massachusetts residents believe that doctors and their patients should talk about end-of-life care, but only 15 percent have actually had such conversations. And half the population has not discussed their wishes for serious illness care with others and more than half have not named a health care agent to make such decisions for them if necessary.
Mass. Home Care, a nonprofit that coordinates care for the elderly, hopes to change those statistics by spreading the word about the value of end-of-life care discussions before it’s too late.
Greenfield resident Al Norman, Mass. Home Care’s executive director, said this effort is to ensure that “people’s heath care, at all stages, is compatible with their desires and preferences.”
We should all heed the advice Home Care is offering.
Laurels to the Pioneer Valley Regional School Band for winning an excellence award for its performance at the Heritage Music Festival in Ontario recently.
Although the main purpose of the trip was to strengthen the camaraderie of the musicians and to get feedback from the judges, the students got to explore a bit of our nearest neighbor. And taking home a prize doesn’t hurt, either.
If we have to pay state taxes, it nice to see some of it come back to enhance Franklin County’s cultural offerings. This week we got word that the 102-year-old Arms Library in Shelburne Falls won a $266,000 matching grant from the Mass. Cultural Council to complete extensive renovations begun in recent years with exterior repairs. This money will help with interior work at the beautiful little library.
At the same time, the eclectic Double Edge Theatre in Ashfield received $120,000 to transform several unused farm buildings into workshops, a design studio, storage and training and rehearsal spaces. The theater is located on a former dairy farm on Route 116 and has attracted international attention — another part of the county’s hidden, creative economy.
Leave it to Franklin County’s farmers.
After more than seven years, the Bar-Way Farm in Deerfield is installing a system to turn the 25 tons of manure its 500 Holsteins produce daily into electricity, heat and fertilizer.
The $4 million digester will produce methane gas from manure and commercial food waste. The gas can be burned to heat farm buildings or power a generator. What’s left after the digester’s microbes are done eating can be safely used as fertilizer on the farm.
Once operational, the digester will save the farm thousands of dollars in operating costs. Contributing to the financing was aid from state and federal governments eager to promote such sustainability tactics on farms. About $400,000 came from the Mass. Clean Energy Center and another $335,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“This is going to make us so much more sustainable for the next century, so we won’t have to rely on just the milk check,” noted Peter Melnick, a partner in the diary farm, which like so many others in the Northeast struggles with the seesawing market price for milk.