For Franklin County farmers, $434K in grants allows for a ‘big leap forward’ in increasing capacity
Published: 01-22-2025 2:43 PM |
With help from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR), businesses across Franklin County will use grant money to increase their capacity and expand the local food supply chain.
The money, approximately $434,000 in total coming to Franklin County, will fund the purchase of business infrastructure, such as freezers, or farm infrastructure that will help the businesses expand their capacity to distribute products throughout the state. The funding is part of a total $2.9 million being awarded for 23 projects statewide through MDAR’s Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure Program, which aims to expand the capacity, processing and manufacturing abilities of businesses supporting locally grown produce.
“In partnering with USDA and providing nearly $3 million in grant funding, farmers, businesses and agricultural organizations are able to build resilience in their processing, aggregation and distribution systems,” MDAR Commissioner Ashley Randle said in a statement. “Projects and initiatives funded through this grant program will develop and continue work to impact the long-term viability and sustainability of our local food systems infrastructure in Massachusetts.”
In Sunderland, Big River Chestnuts received $74,542 to buy eight pieces of equipment, such as a wash/float tank, a mill for chestnut flour and a bag-filling machine to expand the chestnut processing capacity at the farm, which will then be offered out to other chestnut farms in the area, according to Jono Neiger, who runs the farm on River Road.
“The grant will pay for a scale-up of the processing equipment. … It’s a pretty big leap forward, we’re super excited about it,” Neiger said. “The idea is that we’re really the ones that are furthest ahead, but there are at least 10 other farms in the area that have got chestnuts, so the goal, over time, is the equipment would be usable by other farms.”
Big River Chestnuts is one of the oldest chestnut farms in the area — its oldest trees are seven years old — and the harvesting of nuts is going to explode in the next few years as the trees continue to mature. Neiger said the chestnut industry in western Massachusetts is rapidly expanding and anyone interested in getting on his farm’s mailing list, especially other chestnut farmers, should email bigriverchestnuts@gmail.com, as the farm determines how it will share its equipment.
“They could sort of pay for use or we might move toward a farmer-owned aggregation hub model,” he said. “A lot of that is to be figured out.”
Across the Connecticut River in Whately, Whistling Meadow Farm on Long Plain Road received $47,925 to invest in washing and grading equipment for its produce. Owner Charles Tenanes said the grant will help the farm, which produces several crops with a primary focus on collard and kale greens, upgrade a lot of its old equipment.
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“It’s not just for volume, it’s for food safety. … [The equipment] is all steel, it’s hard to sanitize and MDAR’s been really good to us, so I like to comply as best as I can,” he said. “It was time to upgrade.”
Whistling Meadow Farm’s upgrades will also ensure products are quickly processed so they can be distribute to Big Y and other supermarkets across the state.
In Leyden, Bree-Z-Knoll Farm, a 120-cow dairy farm that bottles milk for the Our Family Farms cooperative, received $98,787 to expand its product lines, which will allow it to sell products to schools, colleges and other institutions. The grant will also expand the farm’s ability to move large amounts of milk to distributors, according to MDAR.
Finally, the Franklin County Community Development Corp. received $212,813 to fund the purchase of a blast freezer for food processing, as well as an industrial dishwasher replacement and floor renovations at the Western Massachusetts Food Processing Center in Greenfield. The Franklin County CDC previously announced the grant in December, as it supplemented an $89,423 MDAR Food Ventures program grant.
“This will put us on good footing for a while,” Franklin County CDC Executive Director John Waite said in December. “[The grant money] is going to help us add some of this equipment and fix up some things that have deteriorated over the last 23 years.”
This most recent round of funding comes on the heels of $3.6 million that was awarded through several MDAR grant programs in December, including the Agricultural Food Safety Improvement Program, the Agricultural Composting Improvement Program, the Cranberry Bog Renovation Grant Program and the Climate Smart Agriculture Program. According to MDAR, Franklin County recipients of those grants include: Deerfield’s Atlas Farm, which will use its $48,134 to buy new plastic bins to replace wooden bins; Whately’s Quonquont Farm, which received $2,781 for new plastic macro-bins; Diemand Farm of Wendell, which was awarded $32,053 for a compost screener; Reed Farm of Sunderland, which will put its $56,208 toward a compost bagger; Gill’s Upinngil Farm, which received $11,044 for a compost pad and chipper; and Warwick’s Chase Hill Farm, which was awarded $23,300 for a ripsower, penetrometer and laser level that will reduce soil compaction, “allowing for increased availability of nutrients and maximizing infiltration of water.”
Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com.