A few new faces have cropped up in Conway: one with a beak, one with horns and one that moos. The chicken, goat and cow are three of six illustrated characters featured on new signs celebrating the town’s “Right to Farm” status.
In 2017, the town adopted a “Right to Farm” bylaw designed to “[encourage] the pursuit of agriculture, [promote] agriculture-based economic opportunities, and [protect] farmlands within the town of Conway by allowing agricultural uses and related activities to function with clear protocol for conflict resolution with abutters and local agencies,” as the bylaw reads.
To showcase the new bylaw, the Agricultural Commission decided to install road signs spreading the word. In late April — about a year after the commission disbanded — former member Susan Schroder helped see the project through to completion. The community effort relied on collaboration between the Selectboard, the Highway Department, Godfrey Sign LLC, private landowners and the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.
“The signs will bring visibility to our town’s support for our vibrant farming community,” Schroder said.
Now, illustrations inspired by the animals roaming local farms, like “Happy Dolly” the goat, “Bessie” the cow and “Rosie” the chicken, greet visitors driving into town, signaling the Conway’s identity as a community of farmers.
For resident Aimee Anderson, who painted the Conway characters for the signs, the project was a personal one. “Mildred in the Sky with Diamonds,” the star in another sign, reminds her of “Ginger,” one cow in a trio with “Cookie” and “Brownie” who grazed on her childhood farm in Conway.
“They all had their own personalities,” Anderson said of the cows, calves, horses, barn cats and other critters she played with in her family’s open fields.
When painting the six stars of the Right to Farm signs, Anderson said the animals’ personalities emerged too as her mind drifted into “some kind of happy zone.”
“When I draw or paint, I am in a zone where I let the fire go out, I ignore the phone,” Anderson said. “You don’t know what’s going to happen, and then all of a sudden something pops out — you’ve done something somehow.”
Describing Bessie the cow, Anderson said, “She arrived on her own somehow.”
When the artist set her brush down and took in the end product of hours of painting, the expressions of the animals “surprised” her, from Rosie and Dolly’s grins to Bessie’s searing stare.
Before animals, Anderson started drawing buildings about a decade ago.
“I wasn’t great at that, the straight lines are not a natural thing, so then I started drawing trees and stems and flowers, and those things don’t require any straight lines,” Anderson remembered.
Instead of precise lines, in nature, “Perfection lies in its overall form,” she said. “Whether it’s straight or perfect or symmetrical, it’s not important. I mean, if we look at a tree, nothing about it is symmetrical — it leans, it bends, it has bumps. All of that is beautiful.”
Now, Anderson’s drawings and paintings distill scenes in nature, her “happy place” since childhood.
Much like her family’s farm, the surrounding forest backlit many of Anderson’s early memories. Instead of the couch, she often read in the woods; instead of angrily slamming her bedroom door in frustration, she retreated to the sanctuary of the trees.
“My memories are sunshine and flowers and trees and being in the woods … There was always some kind of bloom,” Anderson recalled. “Nature is my happy place — it’s where I feel best. It’s what I love looking at.”
After moving away to live in cities like Detroit, Anderson returned to the farms, fields and forests of Conway.
“This is where I feel most tranquil,” Anderson said. “I like the wide open spaces. I think if I couldn’t live here, I’d live in Montana, where it’s just space and big sky.”
She sees the Right to Farm signs as a way to honor the nature that helped draw her back to town.
“This is traditionally a farming town — farms that have been around for a century or more — and it’s important that they remain and that have its proper attention, its proper place in the town,” she said. “As things get more and more urbanized, we want to hold onto those beautiful open spaces, and the farms on them. It’s our sustaining force.”
