GRANBY — When a fire burned down Red Fire Farm’s century-old barn in February 2024, farm owners Sarah and Ryan Voiland felt the devastation on the landscape, their business and their hearts.
But with time and perseverance, the Granby farm is finally seeing the first sprouts of its efforts in the form of a new barn at 34 Carver St., just down the street from the old one. People can pick up their farm shares at the new structure, purchase a snack from the new kitchen and look out into the fields sewn with local crops.
While the bones of the structure are up, most of the interior remains unfinished and funds are running scarce: Red Fire Farm, which also has property in Montague, is short $400,000 for the $1.2 million project. With that gap in mind, the Voilands recently invited project stakeholders, politicians and agriculture advocates to celebrate the progress on the barn, and launched a GoFundMe to rally support.
“We wouldn’t be here today without our community,” Sarah Voiland said at last week’s gathering. “After the fire, we had so much outreach that helped us get over the sadness of losing the barn. We did not know if we could keep farming, but people came forward and really, with so much help, got us to just keep going and get through the season that we had. And we wouldn’t be here today without that [support].”
Building the barn
Red Fire Farm sustained more than $1 million in damage as a result of the fire. In addition to the structure itself, the farm lost $170,000 worth of tools, potting soil, irrigation equipment, boxes and pallets, deer fencing, display coolers and other materials.
“We did find the following season [that] our sales were lower than in the past, so not having a good facility really did make an impact on our ability to sell produce,” Ryan Voiland said.
Red Fire Farm managed to set up a produce stand to hand out its community-supported agriculture (CSA) shares this season. Donations soon came flooding in to replace the barn, which served as seed money for the current project.
The barn design includes a CSA-pickup space, a small kitchen, bathrooms, a checkout area, a greenhouse for flowers and small plants, a deck and coolers for produce. Instead of using steel plates, metal fasteners and gussets, Timberpoint Building Co. out of Williamsburg assembled the barn with old-fashioned mortise and tenon joinery held in place by 48-inch braces with wood pegs.
“It’s more labor intensive, but it’s less cost of materials,” Timberpoint carpenter Jeff Morin said. “I just think it’s a more beautiful barn, and it’s just as strong.”
While the structure will provide a place to deliver fresh produce to residents and customers, it will not provide tool and tractor storage space like the previous barn. Plans to build a solar-powered tractor barn were stifled when the U.S. Department of Agriculture canceled a grant from the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP), Ryan Voiland said.
“We’re here today because the executive branch or the federal government wantonly, capriciously and unlawfully clawed back the money they promised to Red Fire Farm,” Granby Selectboard Chair Mark Bail said at last week’s event. “Grants or contracts with legally binding promises. Promises, and all of us here know, are not meant to be broken. We’re here, in part, to redeem that promise.”
Giving goes both ways
In the spirit of the Voilands’ mission of local agriculture, the barn project props up other companies based in the Pioneer Valley. South Hadley-based architecture firm Ko-LAB Architecture designed the project, with Mount Holyoke College professor Naomi Darling and University of Massachusetts Amherst professor Ray Kinoshita Mann leading the team. Carpenters and project managers from Timberpoint Building Co. spent hours measuring, cutting and assembling the wood structure. The wood itself is white pine and cherry from Shelburne Falls.
“It’s part of the reason why we all feel good sitting in this space,” Darling said.
As Sarah and Ryan Voiland thanked the many state legislators, CSA members and local donors who helped fund the project, many attendees of the private event pointed out that the community support is a testament to Red Fire Farm’s work.
“It’s really because of who you are and what you want to bring to the community that the community wants to be there for you,” state Rep. Mindy Domb told the Voilands.
Margaret Christie, special projects director at Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA), said that Red Fire Farm not only uses sustainable practices that benefit the land, but it accepts Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Massachusetts Healthy Incentives Program (HIP) payments to increase access to fresh produce for low-income households.
“Besides just providing freshly ripe, nutrient-dense food,” CSA member Susan Knightly said, “Red Fire Farm keeps our waterways clean. It enhances our soil. It sequesters our carbon footprint. All of the things that they do here create biodiversity with pollinators, and they just help us with positive experiences.”
Farming plays a key roll in Granby’s community. State Rep. Omar Gomez noted that his family from Puerto Rico learned sustainable farming practices while visiting farms in town, and they brought that knowledge back to the island, while state Sen. Jake Oliveira recalled beginning every school year by picking apples and ending the school year by picking strawberries at Dickinson Farm.
“We want Granby to be farm heaven, and it truly has been farm heaven,” Oliveira said.
