 Yeah, I'm just starting recording and getting, getting going. This is the subcommittee on land use of the conservation committee. Conservation Commission. The time is 1206, and we have President Alex Horr, myself, Michelle Lobb, Bruce Steadman, Aaron Schock, and we are going to talk about community gardens now, and then we'll go on to other matters on the agenda. We have reversed the agenda so that we'll talk about the priorities that Dave Zomac has given to us, and we'll save that for discussion in the last part of this hour. I got to put on my glasses. So all I did with this text was make it more readable in my mind. I didn't change a thing. Other people have written this, and when I talked with Angela Mills, I asked her where it came from. She said she inherited it from her predecessor, and she ran it by people in the office and they said it was fine. So I didn't monkey with it. What I did do is look at it from the perspective of a citizen in town wanting to know how I can be part of the gardens, what I need to do to do that, and what the rules are. In the process of working on this, I learned a lot about the gardens, which I'll go into later. But the rules are posted on the Amherst website under Community Gardens. They look a little bit different than this because they are not structured like this, but they say the same thing. So I started with where are the gardens? Then I'm just going to go down through the headings. Can you move us up? Yeah. Then who can have a plot in a community garden? That's an Amherst citizen, and how to reserve a plot. So I took everything that was written up in various places and put it all in one place in the order in which a citizen would need it. The second paragraph under how to reserve says there's a $25 registration. That's not in place. It's something for us to talk about because on the website, it says a $10 donation would be appreciated. Where this $25 came from, I didn't go back and try and figure out where in the review by the Conservation Commission the $25 came from. So I'll just highlight that as something for us to talk about, and whether to go back to a donation or go forward with the $25. Then I organized this so we go through the rules from the start and end of the gardening season because there's a whole bunch of rules on what you have to do by the beginning and by the end of the season. Then there are rules about gardeners' responsibilities and transfer of registration for one person to another, and the rules governing them. In the rules as they exist now, these were all mixed up and in no particular order like you'd shuffle the deck of cards. All I did is put them in some assemblance of order so that somebody like me, reading them wouldn't get terribly frustrated and give up. I don't think there's a need to go through the rules if you have read them and just open it up to questions by the commissioners present. Did you notice that the comments, I merged this in. I had submitted this as a separate file, and I merged it in as I said at the top, which should all come out. But all the comments that were previously made came with the changes that I made. Michelle made a comment which I addressed, and it's down below, and if you can get us down below. Michelle had asked a question, and I just didn't know how to address it, Michelle. Yeah. Can I make a comment, Alex? Yeah. In regard to that, when you say don't use chemical herbicides, probably do we mean synthetic chemical herbicides? Because some people might use like soaps, which are something maybe natural that would control some kind of outbreak, and that might actually be beneficial to the other gardeners not to let something get out of control. So I just maybe, you know, are people treating like, you know, aphids or anything in any way on the gardens currently, and what are they using? And are we just saying you can't treat pests at all? Or are we allowing some kind of, you know, I wouldn't know like what the words are, but you know, natural treatments that could sort of prevent a larger garden outbreak onto everybody else's plant. So chemical herbicides, pesticides, obviously, rodenticide shouldn't be used. But if we're allowing anything, maybe we could provide an example of what is allowable, like soapy water or, I don't know what else, maybe Bruce knows, but. Natural, would the word natural fit? Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure I'm the one to know that. I feel natural and chemical are kind of weird words, but it's better, you know, it gets to the point in my opinion. I'm open to suggestions. Bruce, you got any ideas? Well, maybe I want to ask around to the master gardeners that I know and see what they think, but I'm willing to do that. Okay, I will tell you that at this garden, you'll see some pictures in a minute. There's a fence around it, but no gate. And woodchocks don't seem to be a problem right now. Deer are a problem, or have been, are a problem. They jump the fence. And so there are other things bothering the garden besides small things. And okay, so we can leave this if Bruce is going to come back to us or Michelle. Yeah, we'll come back. Okay, good. And then there's a comment up above that. Do provide storage for accessories. And was that Cameron or is that, yeah, I think that's Cameron's comment. And I just added language. Actually, there's somebody added language. Well, so the way that reads to me is that individual gardeners are supposed to bring storage for their own accessories and that might get overwhelming to the garden if that's like a directive. Well, there's no storage. So there's a kiosk and people lean their tools up against the kiosk, but storage is an issue. And we should probably straighten out the storage, how to handle this and either cross it all out because there's no storage on either garden or figure out who's responsibility it is to provide the storage. It would be messy if each gardener had to do it. So are we raising hands in this small group or? Yeah, so. Really, do we need to raise hands? I just find it very in a small group like this. So jarring, but it seems like we can have a conversation without raising hands. Yeah, so I just wanted to say the conversations that I've had with Dave and Stephanie have been sort of that within the confines of the fence line that sort of gardeners make their own rules. And I agree that these overarching things, like for example, organics or use of soaps and stuff are good things for us to talk about. I'm just like, I guess, and maybe this is a question for Dave, like how to integrate Stephanie into these conversations because I know a lot of these things are things that the garden circle has like a system of deciding who can do what and how. Let's wait till, Erin, let's wait till after the little slideshow we got off on all of that last time and it really ate up a lot of time. Okay, well, I just, one other thing I just wanna say because we were talking about storage is that they're in the process of getting a shed at the Fort River location. So there, that is something that I think that Stephanie is working on having, they're purchasing it and having it installed. That's great. Can I just make a general comment on it? I mean, I just, I'm fine with everything you did, Alex. My, I guess the only lingering thing is maybe provide some like positive directions for what could be used for pest control, like, be your bottles and slugs, but one, just to hop from Erin's discussion about what is really, you know, of interest or in our jurisdiction outside the fence is like the bigger question. I think that Dave wanted to discuss is where else do we wanna allow community gardens and like houses, yeah. I got that. Our purposes have changed as we go on. This whole document, as you recall, circulated amongst everybody for a year. And lately, Dave has said, I define policy issues as do we need more and particularly he named the garden. So I've tried to address that a little bit in the PowerPoint, but these rules when there's no place in these rules to talk about do we need more or who's in charge and all those kinds of things. So what we were given was a set of rules to go through and that's what I did, but to address Dave's request, I have a next step. Okay, well, this looks good to me. I don't really have any more questions, comments on the conversation. So what's below this you'll see is community gardens with a strikeout. That is the document that I worked from and it was in this document prior to me merging my edits. I left it with the cross-out so anybody can see that the comments did come forward when I merged it in. That's the only reason it's there. And once everybody's happy, it gets deleted. I'm happy to delete it. Me too. Okay, so we'll do that. Yeah, no, I didn't have a chance to look at that section thoroughly. I'm pretty happy with the direction we're going here. I do want to just be cognizant of what Erin mentioned about the community gardeners at Fort River Farm Garden. So I just want to- Give me a chance. Yeah. Okay, so Erin, can I share the screen and bring up my PowerPoint? Yes. So I had intended this to include both gardens since I'm working from a hard drive, which I had in Canada and my own computer here at home. And I got apparently mixed up on where I was saving things. So what you're going to see is what I saw at Fort River when I visited it on 916. So can everybody see my screen? I cannot. So how do I- Help me out here. How do I- If you go to the bottom of the screen, there should be a share screen button in green. And then you select the screen you want to share and then click share. I can't see my PowerPoint. So I have my PowerPoint up. And then I have to minimize it in order to go back to the screen where all of you are. And I did say share screen, but I don't see my PowerPoint. How do I- Help me out, Erin. Do you have more than one screen, Alex? No. Okay, so if you just do share screen and then we'll probably be looking at each other for a second. And then if you just click on your PowerPoint, we should be able to see it. There you go. Bingo. What did you say, Bruce? Bingo. Oh, okay. Okay, so slide show. Okay, so I visited the gardens. I found it very difficult to understand them. And so on the 16th of September, I visited them and took pictures. So when Dave Zomac specifically asked the land management subcommittee to address the question, the policy question of whether or not there should be more or fewer gardens, that was difficult to do without seeing them. So what I present here to you is what I saw. And there are two community gardens, Fort River Community Garden and Amethyst Brook Community Garden, Amethyst Brook Conservation Area. The goal for both is to provide access to locations where individuals, families and groups can grow healthy, on-grown foods, reasonably close to their residents. I didn't make that up. I got that, I think, from the Amherst website. Both are located on conservation land managed by Amherst Conservation District. So here's a scene from Fort River Community Garden, which is located on Beltertown Road, kind of across the street from Cumberland Farms Gas Station. And you can see the kiosk and you can see everybody leaning their stuff up against it to get a little bit of a roof. But that's the only thing that comes close to a shelter and you can see the fence that's all around it. You can see that it's mowed. You can see that people have gardens. You can see somebody in the background and to the right you can see the opening and the pathway. There are pathways all around and you can see, if you know what you're looking for, I don't know if you can see my pointer, but there's a little wagon, gray wagon in sort of the upper center left, which is what they used to haul water with. There's a spigot in the back corner. There's only one spigot. And they've taken good care of the garden in terms of trimming it and there's not a lot of weeds. There are raised beds and there are gardens just in the ground. And this lady here is the resident who manages the garden on a day-to-day basis and she looks after the rules to make sure everybody's following them. She was very nice when I went there. And she did a good job of explaining to me everything. And after we visited, she wrote me a nice email putting and writing what she told me because I wasn't prepared to take notes. So here she is again and on the left, they're using plastic to kill the weeds and that's where they wanna plant sweet potatoes next year. So I'm gonna not pronounce her name correctly but on Pong Lim, a resident of Amherst is the community coordinator. This comes from what she wrote me. And I put it in here because it explains how this garden is managed. And I think frankly, it does a very good job but it is, and I can't see it all because of our faces. I'd have to minimize all of them. There we go. So you can read down through this and see that the Hampshire County Food Policy group or whatever that word is. No, I gotta go back. It's a grassroots organization that focuses on food equity and sustainability and healthy Hampshire is involved and Cooley Dickinson and there's quite an organization that is behind the Fort River Community Garden and they have their own governing system and they say it's a non-hierarchical governing method called sociococracy and dynamic governance which sets up circles and to self-organize projects such as community gardens, Fort River Community Circle which is what they call their governing body includes Hongping Lin who has several plots. You've seen her in the pictures and she oversees day-to-day use. Ruth Hazard who I happen to know as coordinator and then Stephanie as director of sustainability for County of Amherst. So on that kiosk, they have posted where the plots are and who has them and each person has to apply with the town of Amherst and they're assigned a plot and so you can go to the kiosk and figure out whose plot is which. And since I'm not gonna show you pictures of Amethyst Brook, this does not exist at Amethyst Brook. What you get at Amethyst Brook is perhaps a tag with magic marker written on it on who has the plot but it's not uniform. And on the kiosk is a map of how the garden is laid out with raised beds and in-ground gardens and this nice little write-up about how it's all put together and this is what it says. It's a very nice informative piece. This does not exist at Amethyst. So my take on the Fort Brewer Community Garden is that it appears neat and clean, well used and productive. And when I talked to the lady who was in the picture I asked her, how much food do you get? She said for a family of three, it's about 15% of their vegetative diet. Now, no rules are posted on site. She is, she enforces them. Everybody knows each other on a first name basis and I think this kind of gardening structure governance is working and that's only based on my first visit. I haven't talked to anybody else but and I thought we should consider more of this type. It seems to work and they're growing food. They're following the rules. It's neat and clean and that's very much opposed to what I saw there with this brook which is water seems to be a problem, weeds all over the place. It looks like people came in not knowing what it takes to garden. I saw two plots that were well managed. The rest are overgrown with weeds. They look no different than the surrounding. Some have fences that don't do much. There appears to have been an irrigation system set up but there's no. Alex, I have a question. Yeah, so I'm gonna give up my screen here unless you wanna go back, go ahead. It's just given what you've described. I think for me the policy question is how much does this organization, does the conservation commission interject itself into the management inside the fence? And maybe it's some, maybe it's none, I don't know but to me that's the policy question that this description raises. I can tell you that I don't know what role Stephanie takes because I haven't talked to her but I can tell you that when I asked who Angela Mills was, the lady that I was talking to had to really think hard. And they seem to self-govern very well. I don't think I could be wrong in what the role Stephanie plays but I think it's pretty much a hands-off. Yeah, let me just jump in. Dave, I'm sorry, I just wanna interject one thing since we only have a half an hour. There are two participants here and I don't know to which parts of our agenda they came to be here but we may wanna double check with them about but when they get to speak if they want to. I can't see the screen, I have mine up. So I can exit. So maybe while you're doing that Alex I could just give a really quick background. So I think Bruce, fundamentally you ask a good question which is what level of detail does the commission want to get involved with what actually happens if you will within the fence or on particular plots? I would recommend that the commission not get into that level of detail because I think it will consume the commission. I think as I've outlined in some of my earlier emails I'm more interested in the commission focusing in on policy, how much gardening do we, how much growing do we want to have does the commission want to have on Amherst Conservation Land and then what kind of models do we want to support? These are two very different models and I won't go into a lot of history but Amethyst Brook up until very recently Amethyst Brook was licensed out to one farmer who grew for the Many Hands Farm which is a CSA on Pellum Road in Amherst. It's only in the last year or so that we converted that to really plots of individual gardening. In terms of Fort River Farm I think there are many elements I agree with you Alex, there are many elements of Fort River Farm that are really working extremely well. It has been a very time consuming process for Stephanie Ciccarello. It is quite labor intensive. So I do have some concerns about whether we can replicate this in other places. I think some of the model makes sense but I don't think we have the bandwidth to have five of these around town or I'm just plucking five out of my head. But there are elements of Fort River that are simply have come together kind of organically if you will, unintended that through the garden circle and through a healthy Hampshire that have provided more resources to bring to the table. For instance, the fence around the gardens. They're adding deer fencing to keep the deer out. There will be a gate that'll be placed there. Aaron mentioned storage for equipment and rakes and things of that sort. So they're kind of two different models. It's not to say people are not growing, growing food over at Amethyst Brook. It's just a, I would call it a less supported model because the department really does not have funds to provide fencing and all the things that are at Fort River Farm that are not at Amethyst. The other thing is that if we look back in the history of the purchase of the land at Fort River Farm, that was specifically purposed. We went before town meeting and we specifically purchased it for the purpose of growing food for people whereas Amethyst Brook was not purchased with that purpose in mind. It is fine to do it there but these two purchases, these two acquisitions had different goals in mind. But anyway, so I agree. I think it's a good model. It is labor intensive. Hopefully more of that labor and more of that support can be done by the folks who are out there gardening. And I think our focus, I hope the commission's focus should be outside of the fence. There are other places at Fort River Farm that could be farmed. Is the commission interested in pursuing that in that location and perhaps in other locations that Aaron and I have identified? So that's the quick, very quick background. So I can say that I'd like to come back and show the group pictures of Amethyst which in my mind is failing. It is, it looks like a place where most people arrive with a romantic view of growing their own food. Don't particularly know how much work it is. Water may become an issue and they go away. Yeah, there's no question. It's, we have had people do that. There's a wonderful crop of garlic right there and we've had a good relationship with the neighboring farmer who's provided water in the cistern there. So there's been no shortage of water. It's just, there isn't as much collaboration among and between the gardeners for that kind of supportive model that you see at Fort River. Yeah, I didn't run into any individuals while I was there but you have a hand pump which has lost its prime. I don't know if on that hand pump which is next to the cistern, a plastic water container if it needs, if it is self-framing but my, there's no water. Yeah, those are called sand point pumps and they do if the water table lowers it does, yeah. But anyway. Go ahead Bruce. I'm just going back to the question of when do the participants who are in our meeting, when do we learn what their interest is if they want to speak or not and just so we don't run out of time? We have been pressing the hand button and that helps to keep order. Okay. Would any of them like to speak? I mean, I don't see their hands raised. Just checking. Anybody have any comments? What I was going to say, we'll probably get to the agricultural use policy next time but I followed some of Alex's reorganization approach and then I checked in with an expert and got a couple of additional thoughts on the question and there is a little bit of overlap with some of the stuff we're talking, particularly in the context of what does it mean to do organic farming? And so we can take a look at it for the next time that'll be helpful, seeing what we actually add to by reorganizing and adding some questions. We've also got Michelle's work which we're probably not going to do justice to today. How about if we don't have assignments for the next meeting and we pause a little bit so we can get caught up and review the assignments that have already been done rather than having people get confused on what Erin's sending out. I don't care. I just don't want to get mixed up on what draft we're looking at. And one of the things that got sent out today is a draft that I provided in July, late July, which somehow got left beside the road and my comments got lost. I don't know how to recover from that. And Bruce was editing and Erin was doing things and I don't want to waste people's time and have their comments lost. I've asked Erin to give me some ideas on how we can integrate the changes I made in that document that so far haven't been made. Maybe I have to go back and hand pick everyone which to me is a large pain in the neck. I already did it once. I don't want to do it twice. So I'm proposing that we, we're going to talk about Dave's priorities a little bit if that's okay with folks and we'll move the other things. I mean, I did timber management and we probably won't have time to talk about that if we spend 15 minutes on Dave's priorities. So are we in agreement or do people want to go through, try and go through what they did for the day? I think I'd like to hear Dave's priorities just so I can better inform our discussions about these sections when we get to them. Yeah, okay. Bruce, you okay with that? Yeah, I would be willing to take on the task of working with Aaron to get a document that is as clean as we can make it that it can go back to some of these older versions and make sure we've covered everything if people are willing for me to do that. Well, it's my comments. I got lost. I can't remember where the comments were in there. All of them. And that document got lost around the time that I've forgotten what was happening. It doesn't really matter. I'll wait for Aaron to talk to me on the side about how best to go back. I was trying to think of if there was something else besides the policy. So I printed out the policy so that I could look at it. And Dave, the only request I have is in the future. If you use some color that reproduces well when you're printed the light color that you used, my printer, I can hardly see it. That's just. So with that, if, and I don't know if we're finished with the garden because I would like to come back and show you pictures of Amethyst Brook so that Michelle and Bruce are informed and maybe they can find time to swing by there themselves. As to being inside the fence that works, that works at Fort River. There is no fence at Amethyst Brook but I get the gist of what Dave's talking about which creates a kind of a difficult situation for us that we're gonna talk about should we have more or less of anything. That decision and even the discussion has to be grounded on what is it that's happening? Is it working? And so digging into what's going on inside the fence a little bit, I think is almost essential unless you just want to talk about hypothetics. I think those are good points, Alex and it's good context to see how things are going and I guess I'm envisioning taking your investigation and then maybe hearing from Dave like what the top maybe candidate sites are that have water, that have the space that don't have conservation values that would be infringed on or recreation values that would be in conflict but it's good information to consider with a big picture. Okay, thank you. I'm happy to drive by and take a look. Yeah, yeah, I'm happy to explore that more and actually talk specifics about, eventually I want to talk about models. There are a number of different models of growing food on conservation land. We, they are more or less intense, intensive. Some are individual focused, family focused, some are focused on a community, for instance, you may get kind of a group of Latinx residents who want to grow as a group and they want to grow vegetables that are culturally significant to them. These models are happening, they're happening all over the valley, we're not reinventing the wheel here, they're happening in Northampton, they're happening in Holyoke, they're happening in Hadley. So we can look at all of those. I think it's fine to go look at Amethyst Brook. You know, whether they're successful or not, you know, I kind of shrugged my shoulders a little bit. If we, if by selection, if we had five experienced gardeners who picked Amethyst Brook, they might be more successful than the five that are there. So it's to some degree neither here nor there for me whether how successful they are or not, it's, you know, you know, somebody's growing garlic there and they have a bumper crop of garlic. They're successful. This new gardener who's maybe new to, new to, new to growing their own food might not be successful this year, but in three years when they learn more, they might be. So anyway, but where do we want to go from here, Alex? You, I'm staring at the email I sent, I think about priority. If Aaron would take that, put that up on the screen and we've got, it's 1247 and out of courtesy, we will end at one. I can't hear you, Aaron. Aaron. Sorry. The email that I forwarded to you from Dave or that he, I didn't, I don't have it like up and ready to go, so I'm going to have to track it through my email. If anybody else has it, feel free to do it. I can bring it up. I, I changed, I just changed the color. Stop so I could print it, but I can, I can probably go get it or I can just read it to get us. Yeah, I mean, we've only got eight minutes here. So we can, you know. Okay, so do we, do we want to, I mean, I can outline some of these areas. Yeah, Dave says, generally, I think a discussion of land use policy in practice relative to climate change would be helpful. We already talked about that last time and Michelle took that under her wing. Anything we are doing now may propose to do when the future has implications for climate. Climate will impact the natural resources we are managing to think preface pond as a cooling center for future generations in town. So when I, when I read that, that's Dave talking, but not necessarily laying out specific policy issues. Then I asked him to accept climate change. Then I asked him to list specific topics when he did in no particular issue, rules and regulations. Are we in agreement with what we already have? Dogs, camping, mountain bikes, motorized vehicles on land and water, hunting drones, ag use policy. Look closely at current document. Does it need to be updated input from farmers, land trusts, ag advocates? And then he's got a subtopic which is leases and licenses. Do we want more use of conservation land for growing food? If so, how to achieve that goal? Community gardens or other community based growing models which he just talked about. And then it's forced an early succession habitat management. And Dave has commented about that in the past that we're not doing a very good job. He said of managing early succession. Habitat. And I think that had to do with mowing. And then with regard to things being time sensitive, he said, nothing jumps out at me as extremely time sensitive, but he did say something about agricultural use that's a long term horizon. So the sooner we get to that, the better. And Bruce looked at it and we'll talk about it next time. So that's what Bruce, I mean, that's what Dave wrote to all of us. But then under each of those sections, I did pose some questions about dogs, camping, mountain bikes, motorized vehicles. Well, down below, there's some more specificity of hunting drones. Oh yeah, I'm sorry. Yes, I missed, I forgot to flip the page. Under each one of those, he did specifically mention certain things for us to look at. So. Can I ask a question? Yeah. So I'm just gonna start with the agricultural use policies because it's sort of on the forefront of both the land use document and we've been talking about it. And is there sort of like a clearinghouse of information about this kind of stuff because it's not really my area of expertise? So when I think about, do we wanna see more growing? Like things like what kind of growing, what scale of growing? What are the pros and cons? What is the interest? What is your experience, Dave? Like having overseen in many leases or many different kinds of growing in the past? Just like, is there a way to sort of get some information from you about each of these components that would sort of help not leader discussion but also, you know, things to consider because in some ways, I feel a little in the dark about, like I just have no history. I've no, you have the institutional knowledge around this that we don't have. Yeah, that's all. Sort of context around each of those points. Well, there is no clearinghouse. Every community does this differently. Every community in the Commonwealth does this differently. Those that have conservation land have, as I said, a number of different models from, I call, you know, I call kind of community gardens, you know, that 15 by 20 foot plot or 10 by 10 foot plot, that's kind of the traditional model. You pay 10 bucks or 20 bucks, whatever it might be, and you get a plot. And that's kind of the traditional model. I think we've put our own little spin on it with the garden circle, you know, democratic decision-making. But every community is different, Michelle. I mean, you know, Northampton has hundreds of community gardens. They have medium-sized plots that, you know, might be a quarter of an acre that a new farmer could try out for a year or two and see how they like it. Orlean's has the traditional gardens and then they do different size plots, a couple hundred square feet to as much as an acre. And people can try those out and see how they're growing goes. Some people fail, some people succeed. Some people might have a tractor, some people not. And there's everything in between. So I almost think we need not to look at ourselves but look at other communities and do a little research and talk to Northampton, talk to some of these other communities that have Weston. For instance, Weston has a CSA on conservation land. Weston and Lincoln, Lincoln mass and Concord, all three of those communities lease out extensive portions of their conservation land for farming. So I think we have to look externally to see if we're interested in any of those models. And didn't Amherst do that with many hands? Wasn't that a CSA on conservation land or is that different? The actual CSA was not on our land. They grew vegetables on Amethyst Brook and took them back to the CSA which was in the neighboring, the abutting farm. So what this says to me and this may be too much work but what it suggests is that each of us who takes on a different section of this basic document could do some of the research that you that Dave just described. Maybe Aaron and Dave could do some too. But so let's take the agricultural use policy beyond just reorganizing it and asking a couple of questions. Perhaps what I should do is do something a little more like what Alex did with gardens except out away from the town and say, okay, here are three different approaches that three other communities have used as conceptual ideas on where we might go in the future as a policy. I don't know how much time I would have to do that but some, you know, conceptually. And so if each of us had there are four of us and if each of us had or three of us and we each of us took the different sections of the policy and did that outward look just a couple of hours of Googling and talking to people and writing something up that was a page saying, here are the models, here's more or less with how they were, here's who's doing it. That might help the discussion down the road. I think that's spot on Bruce, yeah. You can find a lot online Northampton, for instance. Kestrel is now leasing out some of their land to immigrant farmers. There's a model there. Ol' Yoke, as I mentioned, Concord Lincoln, Weston all have community gardening going on at some level in different models. And it might take a conversation but you can learn a lot from the websites as well. Another aspect too, is the community gardens fit in with agriculture? Well, there is a section that refers to community gardens and what I did is just say see below, you know, to send it to the community garden section. So there was a crossing point but it was very limited. Yeah, so just thinking community garden part of agriculture, as opposed to larger scale. A friend of mine has a garden in Northampton, in Northampton, up by the state hospital or what used to be the state hospital. I used to work right next to those gardens so I'm pretty familiar with them. Yeah. Better get air in it here because we got three minutes left. I was just gonna say that in other communities that I've worked for, we have done leases to farmers or rental agreements with farmers for haylands, which, you know, in areas where we're doing early successional habitat management, if there are appropriate places, previously like had, you know, multi-year contracts with people to do, you know, hay production and also as a compliment to that applied for grants through USDA for the WIP program for early successional habitat and invasive species treatments. So they were doing their, you know, hayland management and then portions of the land were grant funded for other management activities for early successional. So they can compliment one another if, you know, a portion of the land is rented and a portion of the land is, you know, managed. Those can be successful too. Yeah, thanks Bruce for reminding me that I had minimized the pictures of everybody so I wasn't seeing people's hands up. Thanks. With regard to agriculture, I would not only look at the models but I would look at our juxtaposition with Hadley. Hadley grows a lot of food. There are lots of CSAs in Hadley. I belong to one. There are CSAs in Amherst that grow a lot of food. What do we provide in terms of growing food? That's different than hay and other things but in terms of growing food, what are we providing that's not well provided in the valley? And that's one question. And also, is there a psychological value that we're serving? For some people, having their garden is a restful, healthy, stress management activity that has less to do with food than it does finding a quiet space where they can concentrate on their garden. It's a healing and I got talked to about this with my friend who has a garden in Northampton that a lot of the people there are there for psychological reasons. Yeah, my quick response, Alex, I think you're spot on there. My quick response is with all this growing that happens in the region, why bother, what's our rationale? To me, it comes down to access. So most 99% of the land we're talking about here is privately owned. CSAs, I belong to Brookfield for 20 years. The CSAs are wonderful. They're not accessible to a lot of people. Frankly, they're too expensive for a lot of people. So what we're providing for people is a very low bar, a very low threshold access to a 20 by 20 foot plot or whatever so they can grow their own food. And like you said, there's community. We're providing, at least in one of these models, more community that they may not have. So that respite and that community is achieved down at Fort River Farm. People love the place. It's diverse, a high level of diversity among the gardeners and a very low bar. If you can't afford a plot there, we're not gonna exclude you because you don't have $10 or $20. Yeah, and we're over our time now. It's gonna wanna be cognizant of that, but access is not only money, it's time. And as the lady there said, it takes a lot of time to manage the garden. And anyways, we'll end there. And we're, unless there's just something that must be said, we're over to our time and a courtesy should end the meeting. Are we all gonna do a little research though on models? Is that the idea? I like that idea. I don't know, can we, do we have a couple of minutes to divvy them out? Well, let's just take one each first. I'll do the agricultural one, because I got started. And if you want to spend more time, Michelle, you're the one that we're being courtesy, extending the courtesy. I have five minutes. I mean, are we talking about Dave's bullets under the ag policy section? That's what I was thinking about, sort of the components of that, like licenses. That's what I would take as a second point. Does someone have that to throw back up on the screen? No, I was just saying, if I'm gonna do that as an example, I can do it and use it as a model or people can take some other section. Oh, you're saying you would do all of those bullet points? No, I said I would do agricultural policy as a model for doing research out away from Amherst. Okay, I guess I'm looking more specifically at each of those bullet points, like, okay. I would go to this document. I'd pick out the parts that had to do an agricultural policy and use it as my starting point for doing a little research. Okay, you're talking about the overall land use policy. I was just looking at Dave's management topics. Okay. And one of them is the definition, what is agriculture? That's an example of what I go look at. Well, if Bruce is offering to take all of that on. That's a lot. But there's six different things under the policies is that with the little arrow bullets? Is that what you mean? That's what I was talking about, yeah. I'm fine to take on what is the definition of agriculture and if I run into anything else, I could take another one. Well, how about if Michelle's interested, how about if you take the first three and Bruce take the second three? Or vice versa? I don't know if I can take three, but I'd be interested in the spaces because I'm just interested in sort of getting a handle on all of our available, like I need to know like what are the lands that we even have? Like I need a better handle on that. So I'd be happy to sort of like- Yeah, we can work with you on that, Michelle. All right, that'd be great. And I'm willing to like start that database just so we can talk about things more specifically. Well, all the rest of them are agricultural. So I'll take the rest as a group. Okay, Dave, I think we'd all benefit from knowing where our agland is. And you mentioned peaches and apples in the past. I assume if they still exist, that they're part of it. Peaches and apples? I don't know. We don't currently have any peaches and apples. There may be old apple trees at Sweet Alice Conservation Area, but we don't know. There was a permaculture garden that was started at, Larch Hill by John Root. And there was like some plantings put in there. I don't know what planted specifically. It's kind of... There's not much, Aaron. I don't know if that might be a good thing. Michelle, what specifically are you interested in looking at over those six things? So I would be interested in identifying appropriate spaces for these activities. And I would be interested in sort of starting a bigger list sort of database of what we have so that we'll also inform like our next discussions about early successional management. So I would build upon that, but yeah, just getting a list of the properties and maybe appropriate land uses available to them. Okay, I have a question for Dave. Is part of wanting agriculture to maintain the look of Amherst? Do you mean agriculture on conservation land? Yeah, or generally? I don't know if I can singularly answer that question. I think people, because we historically were an agricultural community as were many in Massachusetts, I think people value the aesthetic of agriculture, but really the agricultural land in Amherst is really preserved through APRs, through agricultural preservation restrictions, not really through town land per se. Most of the large vistas off of Southeast Street and Northeast Street are not conservation land, they're agricultural preservation restrictions. So what those farmers do on their land is up to them as long as they are staying in line with the APR regulations. I think most Amherst residents enjoy those views aesthetically, but that's never, you know, it's never been a driving force I think for the department. Again, I think people enjoy those views Mount Pollux. People love to look at the open fields from Mount Pollux and the Mount Hoyok Range. So sure, I mean, vistas are important. People love to see them. And it's healthy to live in a community where tractors use the roads as well as cars. Sure, absolutely, absolutely. Can I ask one question related to that? So when we talk about Amherst conservation lands, are we talking about the lands owned in Fee? Are we also talking about APRs? And I guess I asked because some of the easements or the restrictions I've read like specifically do mention views like scenic views as part of the values. But in this context, we are not talking about APRs or CRs. We're just talking about Amherst lands. We are talking primarily about Fee owned lands. OK, got it. Because we, you know, we're not if we have a CR on somebody's property, we're not putting a community garden on it. We're not allowing dogs on their private property, all of those things. So I think the CR defines what our role is with a piece of land that we might have a CR on. But we don't have much of a role in the, you know, if somebody is misusing their APR, it's incumbent upon the state to enforce that APR. And we are a co-holder, so we might join the state and say, hey, you can't put a rocket ship on your APR off of Southeast Street or, you know, Hella Port. But it's does that answer your question? Yeah. And are there any CRs held on town owned lands? Yes. So some of our town owned land, actually most of our town on land has CRs held by either the state. There are two holders. One is DCR and two is Kestrel Trust. OK. And in those CRs, scenic views might be mentioned as a purpose of the land. OK. Thanks. But scenic, yeah, I mean, we can debate what scenic really is, right? I mean, scenic can be trees that are 30 feet high or an open field that is mowed once a year. But not in this meeting. All right. Cool. I moved to adjourn. All right. Thank you. Bye, everyone. Bye. Have a great day. Enjoy the weather. It is now hold the recording. It's now one 10 and this meeting has been come to an end. Thank you.