It's the shed where local residents pick up their Community Supported Agriculture fruits and vegetables. This season, the couple plan to grow enough organic vegetables to hand out to their 75 CSA shareholders and also have some to sell at a farmers' market the two helped start. They're also hoping to cultivate a neighborhood feel, where CSA members can walk or bike to pickups, which will distinguish them from the Pioneer Valley's many other rural farms.
"The single thing I want to see is more people getting their food from within a quarter mile of where they live," James says. "The vast majority of people in this town still get their food from California and Argentina and wherever. The idea is that food is right here and it doesn't need to be transported."
Coy checks on her goats as her husband and farming partner rides his bike home from a quick trip into town. In the dirt driveway to their farm, the couple meets up with another farmer, David Fisher, who came down from Conway to drop off the first of the season's wild leeks.
"Things are looking awesome," Fisher says. "Keep it up. If you guys ever need a hand with projects, just let me know."
"Same here," James says.
Town Farm uses two pieces of land on either side of an earthen dike protecting the city from floods on the meandering Connecticut River. On one side of the dike is noisy traffic from I-91 and the Great Meadows, a fertile floodplain once farmed communally by early settlers and now planted with hundreds of acres of conventionally grown corn. The other side is a dense suburban neighborhood, where cats skulking along the hedges are as common a sight as soccer balls.
"This is sort of what our farm is about - being in this funny, liminal zone between highway and town and dike," Coy says.
As such, James and Coy cultivate a middle ground. One of their neighbors, Montview Neighborhood Farm, offers CSA shares all grown by hand without a tractor. Over the dike, larger, conventional farmers plant corn with mechanical seed planters and commercial fertilizers.
