The old Brook Farm, located just in front of the Gardens at Gethsemane Cemetery in West Roxbury, has a storied history.

The farm was the site of a Transcendentalist experiment back in the 1800s, a working dairy farm before that, an orphanage and the site of Massachusett tribes before colonization.

These days, it’s a National Historic Landmark, sitting alongside Yellowstone and the Bunker Hill Monument – https://tinyurl.com/ysne67cb

But now, local residents at the New Brook Farm organization are looking to plant some new ideas in the old soil (metaphorically speaking). The organization is looking to start farming the site as an agricultural, historic and sustainable model for educating residents and students of the site in West Roxbury.

Residents Paul Horn and Bill Tuttle said they are pushing the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), which oversees the site, to allow for farming to take place on the northeastern side of the property, just west of Baker Street.

The idea is not new, as Horn and Tuttle said they first started toying with it all the way back in 2012. But DCR has been putting together a Resource Management Plan (RMP) to analyze and inventory the site, and through that process the organization has been able to make some headway.

“It does not have an implementation plan, it’s just the first step in figuring out what to do,” Tuttle said.

There are several problems around farming a historic site, which Tuttle and Horn detailed and intimated they have figured out, at least to a point. The first big hurdle is DCR’s rules and regulations. The site has been sounded and dug for historic artifacts several times, but the state requires those areas to remain accessible. He said the farming material will be about 14 inches of compost and loam layers, followed by materials to help future archaeological digs, for a total of 18 inches above the current soil layer.

“We would do a final fine mowing of the field, so that whatever vegetation is there is cut very low, cover it with a layer of geotextile so that water can percolate through, but it contains weed growth – same sort of stuff you use in your garden, two inches of clean sand for two reasons,” Tuttle said. “One, to encourage drainage for what’s above, but also so that if someone wants to come and do archaeological work, they dig through the 18 inches of what we want to add, when they hit that geotextile, it is a very clear marker that above this is New Brook Farm, and below is what was here when we started.”

The farming itself will be designed so as to not disturb below that layer, and the crops will reflect that. Tuttle said for example they won’t be planting potatoes, as they require full tilling of the soil.

“This will be all organic, with no-till or low-till, which means there will be no churning of the soil,” he said. “We will be just scratching the surface, literally. This will be professionally farmed. This is not meant to be community garden beds with a bunch people with pitchforks out there. It will be professionally controlled with a lot of volunteer labor with school trips and community groups helping out as volunteers.”

He added they will have to set up an organization to fundraise for the professional farmer, as they will not be making money from the produce.

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The next big issue from DCR is that of a designation of priority habitat for two endangered species, one of which is an amphibious animal and one is an aquatic plant – which DCR won’t name so as to help protect the species – that lives around Brook Farm and the Gardens Cemetery. Tuttle and Horn said that won’t be a problem, as they’ve sited the potential farm well outside the designated habitat that DCR has set up.

“The reason it’s not included is it’s an upland dry fields, and this particular amphibian does not live in dry fields, it lives in leaf litter in the woods after it breeds in vernal pools,” Tuttle said. “It is not part of priority habitat and would not prevent farms here. We’re also outside the flood zone and the wetlands boundary.”

Tuttle and Horn said the plan right now is to grow organic vegetables, which would be distributed to the community through the Rose’s Bounty Food Pantry out of the Stratford Street Church – https://tinyurl.com/puryj9cn – to help supplement the growing need the pantry is currently facing.

“Rose’s Bounty distributes food to homebound seniors, veterans, school families at the Chittick School and a whole host of folks in need for free,” he said. “So in addition to the contributions from local supermarkets and the Greater Boston Food Bank, we want to supplement that with locally-grown, really good vegetables.”

The plan also deals with invasive species on the site, two of which have become a big problem. One is Japanese knotweed, which is notoriously difficult to get rid of, and the other is an invasive tree species, known as the Tree of Heaven, which comes from China. Tuttle said they would also prevent an invasive species management control plan for the site if they get approval for the farm.

To leave a comment for DCR on the plan, which can be made until April 4, go to https://tinyurl.com/mryjte9w

For more information on the New Brook Farm project, go to https://newbrookfarm.org

For more information on the history of Brook Farm, go to https://tinyurl.com/3fus8syf