The New Brook Farm saga has taken another step forward, as last week the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) approved a “conceptual plan” for the property’s use as a farm.

But what exactly does that mean?

New Brook Farm advocates Paul Horn and Bill Tuttle have been trying to create an educational and historical farm at the site for the better part of two decades now, and the pair were pretty excited that the state has approved at least the concept of a plan.

“It’s a staged process; a rather long and bureaucratic process, but this is a major breakthrough,” Horn said. “Finally, we have a conceptual plan, a general agreement on what the uses will be and notably, this use as a professional farm.”

The pair said it started with a Community Preservation Act (CPA) grant for an archaeological survey of the site a few years ago to assess the site, which then eventually evolved into a planning process to create a resource management plan.

“Which they’re required to do for all of their parks,” Tuttle said.

Readers may recall The Bulletin’s coverage of that process earlier this year – https://gvimes.link/brkfrmbul – and after that resource management plan process worked itself out, this conceptual plan is the next step. But both Tuttle and Horn said the process has a long way to go before they can even fundraise for the farm, let alone put a shovel in the ground.

“It’s still a long way from anything getting funded,” Horn said.

The plan is for one acre in the northeast corner. The site has archaeological significance, and is bereft of the endangered species that live on the DCR Property. The farming plan is to put down landscape fabric and completely new soil for farming. Tuttle said they won’t really need to bring in heavy equipment after the initial construction, probably just a manually-pulled plow.

The farming would be light and for educational purposes. The pair said any produce they might, well, produce would go to the local food pantries in the Parkway.

Horn and Tuttle said there is no funding schedule at this point, but that it will take an act of the Massachusetts State Legislature to get the ball rolling for that kind of legal infrastructure.

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“Now we’re at a point, for anything to get done there, the legislature has to appropriate funds,” Horn said.

Tuttle said DCR “is very cautious” about promising funding, and that this is the target plan, not the implementation.

“What we have been led to believe by the Commissioner herself is that there will be a competitive disposition process for the right to create that little New Brook Farm,” he said. “Essentially it follows the model we had. And that’s not because we’re geniuses, but rather because there is only so much you can do with it.”

The endangered species aside, the site is the only other cleared and not wetlands land on the park site itself, so, like Tuttle said, not much can be done there besides the current passive recreation use.

The pair is hopeful that disposition process will start this fall, and, if selected, Horn and Tuttle said they will be on the hook for fundraising for the farm.

“It is not funded by DCR,” Tuttle said. “They may do some things to support it, like cut back invasives, which they do now with staff and programming – that’s a big issue for the farm out there because the Japanese knotweed is encroaching more and more every year,” he said.

The biggest thing they will spend the funding on will be paying for a professional farmer, as both said they have only backyard gardening experience. The history of Brook Farm denotes that it’s a notoriously difficult place to farm – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brook_Farm – and so the pair want it done right.

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