 Good afternoon, it is Wednesday, and this is a meeting of the Conservation Commission subcommittee on conservation land policies, rules. We have present commissioners Michelle Lobb, Bruce Steadman, and a special guest, Stephanie Circarillo, and Wetlands administrator, Aaron Jock, and I forgot to say that Stephanie is director of sustainability for the town of Amherst. So today we're going to talk about community gardens, and if there are any members of the public, I would ask that they make themselves known, so that we'll have time for public comment. So we're going to begin with an overview and a little background from Aaron, and then I think Stephanie is going to talk to us about the models that are in use, a little bit about history, and see where we go from there. Okay. So Stephanie, Angela, Dave Zomek, and I met last week, and we basically took a look at the draft community garden rules and regulations that Alex had given us in draft form, I believe in early December. And we basically went through that relative to the existing policy documents we had on Amethyst Brook and also on Port River Farm. And so there was a couple just very minor changes. The first being that they've mostly designated that the sort of registration fee for community gardens, they would rather refer to it as a donation. So that's a very simple change to the language in the rules and regulations. The other sort of changes were that as we talk about the the names and locations of the conservation areas, that it's important for us to understand that the Amethyst Brook community gardens and the Fort River community gardens are very different and anybody who's been out to either of those two sites knows that. But the Amethyst Brook conservation area community gardens are very sort of independent, shall we say, independent functioning and that the Fort River community garden set up is an organized collaborative that has come together to set up their own sort of rules and regulations, community based rules and regulations for use of the garden. So I don't want to get too much into detail of that, but that's kind of the distinction between the two gardens and how we want to break that out in terms of providing links to applications for each of the gardens is probably going to be the distinction between the two, whether somebody applies to be in Amethyst Brook or to be in the Fort River community garden. So with that, I'll let Stephanie kind of talk more about the collaborative and how that was formed and any thoughts she thinks are pertinent to share relative to that so the commission can kind of understand how it functions. Yeah, thanks so much, Erin. And I can give a little more background about the differences in the applications as well. Dave's going to be joining us briefly shortly. So I will say that from the beginning, so I want to actually first say that I've been with the conservation department for about 27 years now. So I've only been in this department and I've worked with various, you know, a various evolution of the gardens over time. I've seen when I first started, we used to have several for various reasons because of staff management constraints. We ended up greatly reducing the number of gardens we had and we're sort of, if you sort of want to look at this way, we're kind of starting again. And so when we were looking at purchasing the Fort River Farm parcel, there are, as you are all well aware, there are a lot of resource areas on that site. So we were seeing this as an agricultural demonstration project where we could demonstrate having community gardens in a space adjacent to resource areas where it was done in a, you know, sort of respectful of the resource areas if you will. And had, you know, certain constraints upon it based on its location. So for instance, using only organics and not going beyond the fence limit of the actual garden area. And sort of those are the more sort of general constraints of what were imposed on that site. But the idea was that it was an agricultural demonstration project that was going to be located near residential housing so that we were near housing complexes. So in this case, you know, we have a housing complex that's pretty much just right down the street from this particular garden. And so Colonial Village, I'm sorry, is the complex. So we wanted to make sure that we had something that was on a bus route that was accessible. And we partnered with the Collaborative for Educational Services to help us get community engagement and get people to get more actively engaged in gardening. I will say historically, our gardens were often accessed by people with vehicles. So this is probably the first time that I've been with the town that I've actually seen people walk to come to garden at the gardens. Sometimes they bike, you know, they'll use their bicycle, but most of our gardens in the past were only accessible by vehicle. So the idea of this was really to make it something that was more accessible. And the guidance was that in working with a collaborative that we did have to have it be a more sort of equitable, equitable access to gardening and that we catered to BIPOC populations that historically are underrepresented in these situations. So that was that's the funding that they had in order to partner with us. So some of that was a little bit imposed on our collaboration with Healthy Hampshire getting involved in helping to set up the gardens. So it's a very distinct different model than anything else we've ever done in the town. And the idea was to empower community members to come in and have oversight over management of the garden itself. So that doesn't necessarily mean anything that happens there, but in terms of how people garden, where people garden within the garden space. And we allowed them to have the ability to develop some of their rules that were under the guidance of our kind of general format. So we knew that we wouldn't be, you know, people would not be allowed to use pesticides, for instance, that were not organic, or any kind of. You know, introduce other structures or things that didn't consent weren't consistent with what the conservation commission had identified in their land use policy. So they had the ability to sort of be more focused on just the management of the people in the garden and how they operate. When they operate. And how they set up like they have work days and they have things like that that they they've established as a group. So there's a very core group of people that work and I am part of that group to maintain consistency with ensuring that what they do is within the larger frame of what the conservation commission has identified in their land use policies. That's kind of the, the general about the Fort River farm community garden. And with this book pretty much operates the way it's historically managed our gardens have historically been managed, which is, you know, they're very independent. People come and go and they have some staff. And the connection with, in this case, Angela Mills is the one who, you know, sets out the timeline with the gardeners and collects the donations and has contact and collaboration and is liaison for the, for the town for that garden. So, again, Fort River farm is a very distinctly different model than anything that we've ever done before. And that's the historic background. Any questions questioners show. I don't think Stephanie that's really interesting. I don't have a question specifically about what Stephanie said, but I have a question for Stephanie about community gardens in general. So we can address that later, but just, I don't want to move on. So we've been talking about places that may be suitable for community gardens or agriculture. And I was just interested in your long term perspective about like areas that have been historically used as community gardens or agriculture or we have now that you think would be a good fit. Like that you have your eye on or would work. I like that the walking and biking accessibility that seems to be really great. And we were talking about podic, but that's definitely like a car access only kind of thing. Yeah, I was just wondering if you had any like sites and in in your site that looked like they would be a good fit for community gardens and or agriculture. Well, agriculture, I'm going to take that out of the equation because that's like a whole other set of restraints and but me specifically know I mean we do these things as a department. And certainly in collaboration with the concom. So in terms of looking at sites, the only real next kind of potential site that we've identified is at Hickory Ridge. So mostly it's, you know, I really think, although some of them are accessible by vehicle, and others are accessible by public transportation, I think that's good. You know, I think we want to have a variety that suits different people's needs. I think, you know, it's a lot of it is proximity people, you know, people who can get to some of the gardens by vehicle. That might be closer to where they live and that's more accessible to them so that's what they prefer others, you know, if it's accessible by public transportation then people are certainly welcome to come to those as well. But I don't think it's a priority in a, not necessarily I shouldn't say not a priority but not a defining characteristic of whether we choose a site or not. I mean, mostly I think we choose sites that are, you know, that there's potential to be able to have gardens, preferably not so directly adjacent to resource areas so I think we're we try to be more careful about those that we offer. And again, that's not it's certainly not me personally having my eye I think again this is, this is a department we work as a department so I think that's something that that that we've developed and really that's more in Dave's Bailiwick than mine. So Dave, I'll come back to that. But Bruce has his end up. When are fine grain questions. Let's continue. Stephanie, would you elaborate on where you see a community garden at Hickory Ridge. We didn't exactly identify a specific spot. You know, we've, we've been looking we have some potential areas that look like they're more upland, we're trying to find accessibility to there's a very large set of complexes. And I'm sure you all are aware I'm sure behind Hickory Ridge. So, you know, it's all a matter of being able to have access, whether access is allowed across properties. I mean there's a lot of, a lot of unknowns and things that we have to look into. I would say it's, it's going to be identified through what what is an upland resource area that would be available. And what is its proximity to the complexes. And again Dave has been doing more of the work on Hickory Ridge so I would defer to him. Dave. Thanks Alex can you hear me. Yes, I'm sorry I was a few minutes late had a budget meeting go over time. Yeah, so on in terms of Hickory. We've identified, you know, a couple of places there's actually not as much room as you'd think out there given resource areas, given solar and all the other layers of plans for that property so definitely north of the river. And as close to Mill Valley and the Brook and the other apartment complexes to the north as possible. There's, once you, once you apply those layers, estimated and priority habitat floodplain wetlands, spurnal pools, etc. There's, there's not that many dry upland areas so to the north closest to Mill Valley walkable, bikeable from the apartment complexes there but there's a lot of just a lot of complexity. You know if you put them there. Does Mill Valley really want people from the other apartment complexes even coming through their property so we're having conversations with those apartment complexes now about these things. So, Dave it's my understanding, which comes from Chris Baskam I think that that conversation with the complex on where access would be, and it would be a gated access. But it's my understanding that the issue of the flow of traffic through their property is not yet settled. If we, you gotta solve the fire truck access to the solar project and maybe the community garden will come after that but so it sounds like the possibility of a community garden at Hickory Ridge is a good idea, which hasn't found legs yet. Yeah, we've got a lot going a Hickory the bottom line is in time the gardens, I have no doubt we can find a space we can deal with the access your shoes. Yeah, it's just, it's not on the top of the priority list right now but it will it will come in time. Yeah, so one is a policy concern I guess I have that if you say that it's a donation and not a fee that indicates that people don't have to pay it. They can just go to the garden when they in pay a dollar or pay nothing because it's a donation. So that would be a minor concern and that's your call you know the people in the site all that. The other one is something when I went to Fort River with Alex he pointed out the water access for piped water, and how it's all in one corner and then it's a very long ways over to some of the plots that are pretty far away and just whether the town could do that help the gardeners by getting more piped water access. Those are the thoughts I get. Sure, so I can speak to that a little bit so as far as the standpoint system that's there which is the well that is located there because that's where we had access to the water table. That's where we were able to bring up the water so it's, it's a kind of funny site, you know, even write adjacent to it. Because they tried to put in a second. Well, and they had sort of mild success. So the location of the water table and where we can access the water table is one of the defining factors of where the well went so, and we understand and we certainly recognize that that is a challenge. I will also say that putting in piping and all of that is not inexpensive. And it, you know, so where's the funding going to come from. So again, you know, I mean, I think these are things that we always have to think about when we're doing all of this work. We have a limited budget for community gardens, but it's not a lot. And when you start talking about piping water, because you know there's potentially access to a fire hydrant but it's all the way towards the street and we'd have to go down the driveway and it's a lot. I mean, we've, we've, and we're examining alternatives, maybe some kind of a cistern holding system for, for water out at that point at that garden. In addition to the well, so it might be like a backup, but these are, and these are the kind of conversations that we are having within the garden circle, the garden group. And then they may make a decision of what they'd like to see, but in terms of the actual implementation of what's allowed and what we can do is partly on the town I agree, but again, it's a pretty fine grain question and it's not really relevant to our policy document. Well, I want to go back to the rules for a minute, and I appreciate the comments. You have, there were no rules on the website when I sent the draft, which basically no, no substantive changes were made in the rules that you had posted previously. You just reorganized them as though somebody, a future gardener was looking at them. And now you posted rules on the web. While that was all going on, you posted rules on the web. And I would suggest that rather than trying to, they're very, I mean, they're almost the same. And I would suggest that the concom, this committee adopt what you now have on the web as our own and take a look at what you have up there. And rather than trying to shuffle the deck, yours is, says essentially the same thing. It's arranged a little differently, but it's where you are now. It would be confusing at this point to come up with another draft document and repost it on the web. So I would suggest, as I said, that we consider this, this subcommittee consider adopting what are up on the web now. And it may take us to our next meeting to take a look at those rules and talk about it. So, any comments on that idea? Aaron. Yeah, so we talked about this in our collective meeting was that the rules that you drafted Alex, everybody would felt pretty comfortable that those would be sort of the overarching rules and regulations for the community gardens. The rules that are posted right now, those are specific to amethyst brook, and we did look through those page by page and they are exactly the same as the ones you've drafted. The only distinction is they all, they are specific to amethyst and the donation issue. And just to circle back to that for one second, Bruce brought this up. And the reason that they made it a donation was because some people weren't able to pay it. And so they wanted to make it sort of like less of a requirement and more of an option if people can afford to do it they can do it if they can't then it's, you know, not required for them to have a plot. So like sort of my thinking was if the commission approved the overarching rules and regulations, they're already pretty much exactly what is posted for amethyst. And then the, you know, we reviewed it also with in relation to the Fort River community gardens. And again, they don't, there's no nothing conflicting about them that they're just the Fort River collaborative group is a little more granular in terms of, you know, the issues that Stephanie was was mentioning you know their days that they do cleanups and, you know, the things that they allow relative to like, you know, certain species of mushrooms and stuff like that. Thank you. I want to just come back to the fee real quick before I get to Stephanie. That may be a policy issue for the for the commission on, because it is possible to have a fee with a sliding scale. And I know Northampton has a $25 fee with the idea that costs get reimbursed by the users. So the town just put up a deer fence for thousands of dollars. And there is a Northampton has a sliding scale where people who are actually not able to come up with $25 don't even have to make a donation. And the feedback I get is people are very honest about that. But they're able to raise enough money to pay for a shed, for example, which is going to get built. So I think I want to talk to this committee about what policy issues beyond the rules. We want to consider in our role on concom land. So I appreciate the donation, but I think there's an alternative that we might want to talk about. Stephanie. I just want to get back to the posted regulations, because as Aaron said, those are specifically for Amethyst Brook, although they are. We did review them and we do agree that even the Fort River Farm rules and regs actually fall under the rubric of those. And I think that's what I said earlier. But there will be a separate set of rules that will be posted for Fort River Farm Community Garden. They're not going to change a lot. I think they're just going to update a few things. Pretty minor. But once that gets finished, they're going to, that will be posted on the town website. I didn't actually post Amethyst Brook. All of that. Amethyst Brook is Angela Mills is overseeing that particular garden space. I'm only working with the Fort River Farm Community Garden group. And again, because they operate differently, the regulations, I just want you to be aware that they'll look different. But essentially they're the same. They're just arranged a little different and they might have some details that aren't covered in Amethyst Brook because they're very specific to Fort River Farm. So I just wanted, just in case you go back to the site and you see this, I don't want you to be alarmed. They're pretty much the same. They're just organized differently. And probably it's going to look more like what you originally saw that you redrafted your document from. Yeah, so that's, thank you for that. And Angela. Angela's, I know, well known in the garden community is somebody to contact. And maybe there's people that go in on Friday just so they can get a chocolate chip cookie. I don't know. Any other, any other things that we want to cover here. I have perhaps a couple, but let's see Erin's got her hand up. I wanted to say Angela's been handling the payments for the plots for the historic registration fees. And it's been problematic for her to, for example, if people don't pay chasing them down following up with them it's you know she's got a lot of other duties than this. And so when we consider registration fees first donation, just ask that you consider that we don't have like a staff person dedicated to this to, you know, chase people down if they don't pay, etc. So that's been a challenge for staff. Pretty easy to withdraw their permission to have a garden plot. Dave. Yeah, I would just echo what Aaron says we got to we got to keep these things simple. The simpler the better sliding scale certainly may be possible kind of sliding scale with with with trust right with with but not we don't have time to verify we're not going to be verifying incomes we're not going to be verifying eligibility we just don't have any time for that. I also Alex you mentioned something about in, you know, income and kind of expenses. So just in mind, you know, there's different, there's different models in Northampton, including ones that that have grow food Northampton in the mix. This is any revenue that we see from the gardens goes into the general fund the department will never see that the the the the the trivial amount of money that is collected for gardens will make absolutely no difference in our budget discussions. It's, it's a, it just goes into the big black hole if you will, of the general fund so so so translating what comes in for community gardens into covering any expenses for a shed or staff time it. It's immaterial really, but I do think we need to just keep it as simple as possible. So Stephanie moving forward I missed the beginning of her presentation or discussion of gardens I'm sure was fine but you know she has so many townwide project she is working on I said to Alex the other day when I spoke to him briefly. I mean this is a very small fraction of Stephanie's time, and it really in all likelihood will not grow over time with more garden so we just need to, you know, stay stay cognizant of the fact that gardens are great but we have to think practically about how much staff time we can spend on them. So, anyway, if we don't have the staff time maybe we shouldn't have them. Yeah, we just need to think about the models and and and all of that. Yeah. So, um, Stephanie. I just wanted to say something about that the models. So, the reason why we're doing things the way that we are at Fort River Farm is to create a model where it is community led so that it doesn't require a lot of staff time. And it is requiring a lot of time maybe upfront because we're establishing this, but I the more and more. This group follows a sort of protocol that was designed by healthy Hampshire. So their meetings are very, there's a very specific sociocratic method for their meetings, which means everybody has a chance to speak. They have a very distinct formula of how they do their agenda. Once they're more fully entrenched in that system. There will be less of my time that will be needed. In fact, I've already pulled back significantly the very I will tell you the very first season that I was out there on weekends and during the workday helping them like put down paths and put down plastic and establish the beds. So I was very, very engaged just that first season, but I've done less and less each season. So I think the idea is that we want to create a model where, you know, eventually we could have people run the gardens and that maybe this group of people at Fort River Farm could help to instruct future gardens of people and help other people to recognize to do a similar effort. So there might be some staff time involved, but it will never be I think at the level that we had with Fort River Farm. I just wanted to assure you with that. So, we're, we're working on a general agriculture policy. Bruce has been very good at putting that together. And one of the stipulations in the policy is that any licenses issued is to an Amherst resident. All organizations were not, which are not in Amherst. They're outside of Amherst. And so that sort of goes contrary to the agricultural policy that we're writing. And the concom, I'm not sure the concom wants to give up its role as a custodian for the property. We've never met with these people. We don't get reports on concom on community gardens. It wasn't included in its updates during the concom meetings. So it's, it's out of sight, out of mind in terms of the commission. And now we're starting again to interact with you. But this is the first time I've ever met you. And I'm happy to do that. There is a, there is a different slice of the pie for in the models for community gardens that we're talking about for agriculture generally. And there may not be a problem with that. We'll just have to reckon with it. Bruce. Dave was first Dave. Yeah. And I think I mentioned this the other day and maybe it's not the right kind of analogy, but I think to some degree we're coming in, you know, with this, this policy work, which, which is fantastic. It's hard work. We've all rolled up our sleeves. But we're, you know, we have to accept the fact that there are historic relationships that already exist out there on conservation land. We are having to consider those in the context of the policy work we're doing. So I said the other day, it's kind of like tinkering with the plane while you're flying it the plane has been flying. I mean, Amherst conservation land has been in an existence since 1960 something. So there are relationships there are friends groups there through the years there's been licenses leases community gardens of different kinds and different, different flavors if you will. And right now we have to that where we luckily the slate is pretty clean actually I mean there's not a lot of these relationships and I've been. I would say some farmers and people who have wanted to get on conservation land I'm sure would say, man, Dave is too tight of a gatekeeper. He, and one of the reasons I haven't encouraged more of these relationships is the complexity that comes with them. But the one relationship we have these two different models it's almost like having in my mind licenses if we if we had different licenses out there for different plots of land. They might have different flavors because one was over here in North Amherst and one was over here in South Amherst one had a well one didn't one use the irrigation one didn't. As Stephanie said, the model we have it for river is the model that we have. And the model we have at Amethus brook is a little bit different it's, it's doesn't have as much structure to it if you will. Well, I'm not done yet Alex but thank you. I want to mention you said something about non amherst or based or something at Fort River Farm. Nothing could be more from the truth. All of the gardeners who garden at Fort River Farm are from Amherst. We have a partnership with the Hampshire collaborative, which is encouraging community gardens in in communities all over the valley so we are still, you know, the we haven't lost any control over the conservation land at Amherst. We've just brought more resources to the table through the Hampshire collaborative. So I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you. Yeah, Bruce. Thank you for the time Dave. Yep. So very quickly. I think we're still in the agricultural policy we're still a little bit uncertain as to whether it's Amherst residents only or strong preference for Amherst residents so that's still a debating question. We'll come back to that in our further discussions. But I do wonder about are there are there community gardens on Amherst property that's not conservation land, and therefore that would be an additional wrinkle. Could there be. I'll jump in there. To my knowledge there's no other comes. There's no other community gardens on Amherst town of Amherst. And there are community gardens at apartment complexes throughout town. I was just imagining the possibility that you'd have a community garden on town land that wasn't conservation land. We've been approached at places like growth park and we've kind of said no. Okay. So, appreciate Dave the past relationships. I don't think the commission still has its responsibility for costs to be a custodian. And it has every opportunity to review those relationships and and say what it wants to about them. I don't know of any. I don't I was going to ask where's the documentation of the commission and the gardens. It goes back years. I'm sure maybe there isn't any record. And I don't even know if Aaron could locate it. Maybe Stephanie could, but there's I know there's a long history. And unfortunately, every new generation sets its own baseline. And that's the standard way of doing things. So, as we, as we think about these relationships, and they start to take possession of the property as though it's their own. I don't think the commission wants to relinquish its responsibilities. Anybody would disagree with you, Alex. And what I'm pushing back on is, is framing these relationships in what I would characterize as a negative or detrimental way that we should be celebrating the Fort River farm. We should be celebrating the Fort River farm gardens. We should be celebrating the relationship that Stephanie has forged with all those gardeners and with healthy Hampshire. We should be cultivating that group and that relationship to fit in with the policy that you are drafting for the future. I think all I was trying to do is point out that the policy that was has been drafting does speak to whether or not somebody is an Amherst resident. We have talked about it. And this model for Amethyst Brook and for Fort River anyways differs a little bit from that and all I want to do is blend them, but be conscious of the fact that there is a difference. And we'll have to figure out how to deal with it. This, this, this, I never thought the community gardens would take so long, frankly. I thought it was fairly easy, but nothing's easy. Yeah, sometimes I want to make it as easy as possible. Bruce. No, I'm fine. Thank you. Yeah. So I have 1242 and I wanted to save time at the end to talk about our field trips. And next subject for our meetings, we can go a bit longer. But I just want to make sure that we have a hard stop to take care of our business before we depart on promptly at one o'clock. I don't know who went up for Stephanie. I was just going to say, if you're moving on from community gardens, I may leave if that's okay. I don't think you have anything else. All of it for my presence here. So I would leave it to Dave and Aaron. But I just want to make sure you don't have any other questions before I go. As you hold on, we'll see what Bruce has to say. Sure. It's fine. Thank you. Yep. Thank you, Stephanie. Okay. Thank you so much. And thank you all for all the work you're doing for every garden is great. Thanks for that. Thanks to sure. Thank you very much, Stephanie. Appreciate it's time. Okay. Thank you. Bye. So before we leave community gardens, I'd like to settle on what we do with regard to the rules. The simplest thing for me is to just adopt what they've posted for Amethyst Brook, I mean for a poor river farm. And when Stephanie said they will write up something for Amethyst Brook, I'm not quite sure who the they is. But what she didn't say is when I write up the rules for Amethyst Brook, there's a they out there. And I thought she was referring to Angela or somebody else. Dave, can you clarify that? We can ask her about that, Stephanie sits 10 feet away from me. But I think, I think what she was referring to is the garden circle. Annually revisits their, their operating, you know, principles and rules and regulations for that space within the, within the fence. And I think that's what she was referring to do it did others hear the same thing. And she she said, keep in mind the rules that are posted are only for poor river farm. We will be posting rules for Amethyst Brook when they write them. Aaron you got clarification. Yes. So, so the Alex I think there's the draft that you've put together with a few very minor changes is is is what I would be in favor of the commission adopting and incorporating into the land use policy or the, you know, yeah, our land use policy. The stuff that Angela posted for Amethyst Brook is a mirror image, it's just in a different order. So I think with time once we adopt it, she'll just take it out of our policy and use it for Amethyst. As we've noted, the, the policy at Fort River Farm is different, but their policies fall within the requirements that the commission sets. So they're not going to set policies, for example, they're not going to say, oh, you can plant invasive species in your pot. They're not going to do anything that deviates from our umbrella policy, but they may have specific policies within the garden footprint, which are more restrictive than what our policy states. Thank you. Thanks, Bruce. I think this is analogous to when we get to the point in a conservation meeting and it's time to do the order of conditions. And there's some minor things and we say Aaron don't take care of those minor things. And so I think we should just do what Alex suggested. Seems like he's here, of course, Michelle, how you feel about soft thumbs up. That sounds great to me. I'm comfortable with that plan. Okay. You can either take a look at what's on the website for yourself. I can copy it and send it to you. But either way, I think it would be a good thing for you to see what they have posted. And it should be easy to find. At one time I had the tall Angela and give me give me a link to get there. I couldn't find it. So it's now 1247. But we talk. I'm sure there's other community garden things to talk about but could we now switch over to our field trips and get an update on that. We've got dates. We got save the date and a number of or number of dates in my calendar. And Aaron, I'm sort of expecting Aaron to tell us where we're going. At some point, maybe not now. Go ahead. So the Friday site visit that was scheduled, we have to cancel because Dave can't make it. So just a note that the March 8th site visit Dave wants to cancel, but we're still on for the 14th of March and the 21st of March. I thought for the 14th would be to visit Amethyst and Fort River Farm. So that we can do a walk and talk in those locations and look at the look at the areas. Hold on. Oh, you're suggesting the 14th for one of the community gardens and the 21st for the, for the other. Well, so I mean, this, I wasn't thinking about this being directly related to community gardens. It was more so looking at them site wide, but we can certainly see view the community gardens when we're there. So that's our agricultural policy and land use in general, of course. So when we go, when we go to a for river farm, there's more to that area than, than the community garden as you know, there's the walnut grove and there's a whole bunch of land in back of that. So we would be looking at the whole site, but I did ask if Stephanie might be able to join us when we actually go to look at one of the community gardens and she didn't seem to object to that. Yeah, it sounds like if we want to look at all of Fort River Farm conservation area. We should probably that would probably be one hour. Yeah, do that. Yeah. And what time is that on the 14th there and 12 to one. Okay. So we'll reserve the 14th for Fort River Farm, I guess, and then the 21st for Amethyst Brook. And could Stephanie join us on that one too. I don't, I would not have Stephanie join us at Amethyst Brook. I see no reason for her to join us at Amethyst Brook. She's had virtually no involvement there. She's had for Fort River Farm if she can make it on the. So does this Angela do Fort River. I mean, Amethyst Brook. She does and I may invite her along to join us on that one. That would be super be nice to have the staff person there who actually handles it. Is that 12 to one as well on the 21st. 30 to 930 on the 21st. Gotcha. There is your placeholder. Gotcha. Bruce, I think your hand was up first. If it wasn't, I'm sorry. Quickly. At the last meeting we, I raised the question as to whether these meetings can be an hour and a half to get more done. And the idea was we need to wait for Dave to decide that we can do that. Yeah. An hour is really tight. I think. Yeah. It's tough to move things along. Sometimes things get repeated two and three times. I think we could. Have good ears and just pick up on things the first time they're said. Michelle. An hour and a half would be challenging for me, but I don't have to go. I just, in regards to doing the site visits to community gardens, I felt like we were moving in on some kind of decision and consensus with the rules and stuff. So what would be our objectives specifically for viewing the community gardens, just to be mindful of the other issues to look at on a site versus, you know, we could talk a lot about the community gardens. So. Like, what is a pending. Pending objective for those in the site visit. One objective is to physically see it. It helps to talk about it to see it. See the lay of the land. There's some administrative issues at Amos this broke, which I talked to Dave about. There's a PVC pipe that comes from another building that spills water onto the gravel parking lot. The parking lot is sloped so that everything drains into the garden. The fence doesn't hit the ground. But what you really need to see is, is just the, the, the spick and span layout. Of, of Fort River Farm. It's, it's, it's, it looks great. And it actually had a plot there last year. And I'm familiar with both sites. So yeah, I guess I just want to, yeah, I'm seeing Dave. I would say, you know, if we have an hour. I would say 15 minutes on the gardens and then we walk and talk looking at the context of the conservation area we're in. I will get you the. The background materials on Fort River Farm, Stephanie, I know gave you a background on the acquisition of Fort River Farm. That was specifically purchased for what we're talking about agricultural use. So we need to look at the whole property. You know, on the site visit, and then we can also talk about Amethyst and talk about policy related to drawing water from the Amethyst Brook. Do we allow larger plots at Amethyst Brook or are we just going to keep it more of a community garden. So that's what I would do, like 15 minutes on the gardens and the remainder on the context and what else might happen there. Great. Yeah, I definitely want to spend time on the agricultural question at both of those two. Yes. I was also thinking of inviting the guy that you bought it from to talk to us about the Walnut Grove because he has won over by Soviet Conti that he runs fire. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I think in an hour Alex, you know, I just think the Walnut Grove we can talk about in the in the hour long visit but you know we can get Bob Saul to talk with us about black walnuts. You know, I just, I think that's such a small part of what we're talking about right now in terms of policy. I can tell you definitely want to get down to the end of the road past those two sections because there's so much more and I never got there and yeah we have a whole loop trail there that we we should talk about and and whether we're going to allow more or encourage more agriculture to happen there. I can tell you what our rough plan is for the black walnuts. I'm in touch with Bob Saul, who's the black walnut experts in the in the region but I don't want to take Bob is a very knowledgeable but also very. Yeah, he will take the entire hour to talk to us about black walnuts. The question is the term. Aaron. I don't want to hijack your discussion so I just have something I need to tell you guys I can't make the next meeting, which is on the 19th due to my children's scheduled physicals annual physicals so the 19th I can't attend the regularly scheduled meeting. So who will start the zoom. I think Michelle and I will fight for it. Sure, I mean, we're going to arm wrestle. I guess. Am I I think you might have to I don't know Dave like I can start to zoom that's not a problem I mean your meetings are not that yeah we'll figure it out. I'm more I'm more concerned that we prep you as you know even more than you can do with Aaron just because she's not going to be able to be there. Are we talking about the land use of community years. Okay, you're talking about land use okay the land use meeting okay. Oh, okay yeah. Okay that's no problem we can do that that's easier. I thought you were talking about. I was just jumping from calendar calendar here you're not talking about the next concom meeting. No, on the 13th. Okay, gotcha. So yeah we can we can do this meeting no problem. Okay, so Dave's going to start on the 19th or next, then the next meeting of this subcommittee. And so in the four minutes remaining. We need to talk about what it is we're going to talk about on the 19th. I hope would be that I would have moved draft eight of the air nine sorry it's just the one you have is eight. There are several research projects that are noted in the notes on the right hand side of the document. Dave has one of them I have the rest. And Dave yours yours is exploring issues with the town attorney about this preference or restriction of cameras residents. Most of them are either discussions or things where I need to come up with more information to inform the discussion, more to draft something. So I'll keep working on it. I had some comments. Should I just save them for the meeting or so I can move forward ahead of you know, based on what you what you tell me. Yeah. I mean I'll just, I just got three minutes but it out. Okay. Let's see. Well, the first one was the town, the Amherst preference one so I would advocate that, whether or not we have a Amherst resident have a license that there'd be some like community connection and I talked about this before and I've talked to some small farmers about potential issues that could happen and they also refer to that North Hampton program but like even just any way to get the food to the community so that like I know that sometimes farms like have like give their vegetables to like green field or like somewhere outside of the community have like some connection whether it be a CSA or like even a farm stand or donation to survival center or the schools or like, you know, after they harvest and the leftover stuff is there that that could be picked something like that. I'll work on them. And then, oh, just to comment on the signs and then. Oh, we mentioned something about requiring the cover crops. I'm not farmer but is there like a short list of ones that we want like winter rye or something like that. Some that are, you know, I don't know some control over that that's just like laid out very clearly so they can pick from it. I think there was a error in the river mean annual flow number we I think we changed it from 30 to 10, but the 30% is still there so it says 10 and then as 30 and parentheses which I'll have to find it but I will find it. Let's come back to that you're talking about the minimum flow. We discussed it but something is off in the sentence. It says below 10% and then the 30 is still there. Yeah, 30. Yeah, I think it was being changed from 10 to 30. Okay, so we need to end there Michelle in order to keep within your time. Okay, well I only have two more things so is it okay if I just tell me it's an email and I'll do it. Totally up to you please do it now. I'll just do it now. Okay. And the last page, the use of fertilizers and pesticides so it says agricultural producer she'll indicate the management plan whether pesticides for allies herbicides that ever fall outside they know so requirements and I propose that in the management plan they just list what they intend to use and then if there's something that falls outside of no so that's specifically addressed. And then last one is the last one is maintenance and the license farmers responsible for edge mowing and maintaining farm roads fencing signs and access. So I could see some miscommunications and things happening here with edge mowing and like what they perceive as edge and what we perceive as a wetland buffer. So maybe like site marking or mapping that shows like where our expectation is that they be maintaining so that doesn't become an unfortunate situation. And same way like access like if they need better access to the side of the farm and they end up mowing through some PVD that would be unfortunate so just some way to sort of preventively manage that in the management plan. So why not just say no activity within the buffer zone period. I mean sometimes it could be like bird nesting habitat sometimes it might be more than it just might be that the town is managing this section of the area for something. And I think this is totally site specific I just, you know, I think a site visit and sort of understanding like where the edge is where their access lane is could, you know, prevent like some nice pollinator have tap from getting cloud over. Okay, I was just thinking, why not just forbid work inside the buffer zone. Can we, can we just, I mean, I think a simple solution to this Michelle would be, we'd have a project area we'd have a, we'd have a farming area they can't operate outside this area without additional permission so we do a GIS map we'd, we'd, you know, we carefully do that, because farmers farmers most farmers if you say bvw they really don't even know what bvw is so they might look at it as, oh that's just the edge of the field so I think a project area. This is where you can work, you can't work beyond that without permission this is your access you can create a new access. Yeah, I'll work on it I'll work on the language. And then but also work sometimes work and like access routes are considered differently so I just want to make sure that everything. I'll give you some language to work to two on. That's all I got. Thanks for listening. When you talk to them about using acronyms. Our acronym is pretty close to bvd. You might get a chuckle. All right, I think we're over time. All right, thanks everyone. Thank you all. Thank you. And thanks for having Stephanie David was very good. Sure. I'm glad it was helpful. Bye bye.