Deep Roots, Healthy Harvests

The broad expanse of flat, mineral-rich soil flanking the Connecticut river is some of the best farmland in the world. For centuries, Pocumtuc farmers grew squash, beans, and corn along the river’s loamy banks. With colonists came flax and rye, tobacco and asparagus, each crop thriving in the alluvial floodplain, ever replenished by the water’s steady flow. In the undulating hills just west of the river, soils are rocky and terrain is uneven. Farming is difficult and industrial agriculture is impossible. At Foxtrot Farm in Ashfield’s craggy hills, Abby Ferla is undaunted.

“Being able to grow in hills is part of survival,” says Ferla. “How do we prepare for a world that is changing very quickly, in an economic sense and political sense and ecological sense?” Ferla stewards her land with a pragmatic and clear-eyed idealism, working to balance the material reality of running a farm business with a commitment to increased food security and sovereignty in an increasingly unstable climate and food system.

A CENTURY OF HISTORY

The property where Ferla grows elderberries and botanicals has been in her family since the 1920s. Her great-grandparents, Slavic immigrants fleeing World War I, rented for years before buying the land in the ’40s. The family raised dairy cows and tobacco until the 1960s, when FDA regulations made dairying close to impossible for small farms. The land lay mostly fallow, forest creeping into fields, until Ferla planted her first crop there in 2017. The first harvest came the following year.

Her path to the family farm is “a very millennial story.” Trained as a journalist, Ferla worked at a public policy journal after college and hated it. She considered shifting to a food and farm beat, spent a season on a farm to boost her résumé, and fell in love with the work. She spent years piecing together a living on farms around the country. When the elder generation struggled with what to do with the family farm, she was ready.

Today, the property’s 100 acres are mostly new-growth forest, with 10 acres of hayfield, 4 of elderberry, 3 of row crops and high tunnels, and an experimental food forest plot. Foxtrot Farm’s operations include a sliding-scale pick-your-own botanical herb program (plus a growing selection of vegetables and fruit), wholesale elderberries and dried herbs, and their own product line of syrups and teas.

In the cavernous old dairy barn by the farmhouse, braids of garlic cure overhead. A chalkboard announces the day’s offering— nettles, motherwort, comfrey, thyme. Pick-your-own customers grab harvest bins and climb the hill toward the field, passing the nascent food forest where chestnuts, persimmons, and spicebush will grow. American farm equipment is not designed for the hilly terrain, and Ferla uses an Italian walking tractor to tend the land.

Beyond the food forest, a substantial new deer fence encloses two acres of botanical herbs, garlic, and perennials. In early spring, modest tufts of green are just emerging; in a few weeks the field will burst with color. “I’ve been adding a lot of perennial plantings,” says Ferla “beyond the herbs, like, small, woody perennials. And the deer really like young trees.”

Abby Ferla spent a season on a farm to boost her résumé, and fell in love with the work. She spent years piecing together a living on farms around the country. When the elder generation struggled with what to do with the family farm, she was ready.

ADAPTING TO A CHANGING CLIMATE

In 2023, record rains caused catastrophic flooding on riverbank farms. Elevation did not spare hilltown farmers. Ferla’s field was three or four inches deep in water for two weeks, and a lot of things drowned. She looked at climate projections—more long stretches of drought and severe rain events were on the horizon—and adapted her field, instituting an alley cropping system. Every few rows, depending on how wet the field is, an extra-deep furrow lined with landscape fabric is planted with water-loving perennials, like aronia and elderberry. Water is carried from the field toward a marshy area, where it slows down before reaching the watershed. The system helps create microclimates in the field. Shade-loving botanicals, like lemon balm and peppermint, or in high summer, vegetables like kale or lettuce, are protected by the larger plants.

Ferla is committed to a no-till system. A smattering of black plastic tarps cover sections of the field, helping to terminate existing crops and reduce weed seeds. Placing the tarps, weighing them down, and pulling them off is a three- to five-week process. “Your tradeoff is fossil fuels or time,” says Ferla. Cover crops are selected for what they contribute to the soil. Daikon radish, also called tillage radish, creates long roots that aerate the soil, leaving passageways for new growth. Winter radish protects the topsoil from erosion, and peas and clover add nitrogen.

A few yards past the field, four acres of elderberries stretch to the tree line. As Ferla planned her farm, a grant-funded water analysis showed that the damp back field, where the orchard now grows, was well-suited to elderberries. An enterprise analysis confirmed that the climate-resilient native shrubs were the right choice for the site. This was terrific news.

ALL IN ON ELDERBERRIES

“Elderberries had been my first foray into herbal medicine in my early 20s, and my partner, Kit, and I had always dreamed of an elderberry orchard. They’re just these very cool, goth plants. In European folklore, they were believed to guard the entrance into the Land of the Fae, the underworld. The European elder is a different variety than the natives we have in the orchard, but they’re very similar.”

Her work as a young reporter researching regulatory agencies like the FDA, and often, their failure to regulate, led her to think about herbal medicine, farming, and working with plants. Herbalist friends gave her elderberry syrup when she was sick, and she got curious, diving into research and eventually going to herb school.

“I love modern medicine, too,” says Ferla. “I would never give up antibiotics, ever. I’m really grateful that we have doxycycline for Lyme disease and vaccines for infectious illness, but I do think that herbal medicine can play a really important complementary role with biomedicine, which does a great job of treating acute conditions and not a great job holistically looking at health.”

Last year, the orchard produced 1,300 pounds of elderberries. Each year the crop doubles, so when the plants reach full maturity in a few years, they’ll produce 10 to 12 thousand pounds of fruit annually. The orchard’s growing yields allow Ferla to pursue financially riskier goals for the farm. In the coming years, she hopes to take more land out of hay production and put it into perennial food production. On the lower side of the hill, she envisions nut trees, which could work well with existing plantings and dovetail with their existing harvest schedule. “Ideally that also is going to pay me somehow, but… it’s not my primary goal in that realm. I try to be clear about when I’m prepping for the apocalypse and when I’m trying to participate in our current financial system.”

Heading back down the hill past the perennial field, a small black and white bird flutters overhead. Ferla shifted her haying schedule to accommodate the bobolinks fledging in her hayfield. “They claim that they only fledge in larger, flat fields,” says Ferla. “But here they are.”

Foxtrot Farm
Ashfield
foxtrotherbfarm@gmail.com foxtrotherbfarm.com

Foxtrot Farm produces and sells elderberry products online and at several local retailers. PHOTO: CARA BROSTROM