Waltham Fields Community Farm Topic Of Thursday Input Session

WALTHAM, MA — Waltham Fields Community Farm will continue to do what they do best: Grow food that the community can purchase to eat local produce.

However, a public input session on Thursday, hosted by three members of the City Council, hopes to bring the public into the conversation about what to do with over 10 acres of land on the property.

To get up to speed, in December, the city said that cleanup and decontamination must be done on a small section of the farm.

The city voted unanimously to limit access to the farm, which includes "many acres of nutrient rich soil, all of WFCF’s greenhouses and equipment storage sheds, their chicken coop, Learning Garden and program spaces for children’s programs, to close two of the three entrances to the 240 Beaver Street site to facilitate environmental remediation at the furthest southern point of the site," the farm said in a December news release.

Waltham, as a city, owns the land after they purchased it from the University of Massachusetts in March 2022. However, the community farm has been operating on the land for over two decades.

The city hosted a meeting in December around the Christmas holiday to share news of their plan for some acreage on the property, but residents and even some city officials balked at the timing and lack of information.

Between December and now, the farm said they would continue to offer CSA subscriptions so residents can get fresh produce, but noted that the development could limit some offerings.

In a recent letter to the community, however, the farm shared that things would be altered in a much bigger way than anticipated:

"The City has shared that WFCF must remove the contents of WFCF owned greenhouses by May 19, 2023, that they will be demolished sometime after May 15, and that we may not host programs in our Learning Garden. Thus, we must entirely re-envision our programs and operations in Area 1 without infrastructure."

The farm continued:

"WFCF has been told that we may not receive a building permit for a long-planned and UMASS-approved expansion to our farm stand. We’ve been informed WFCF may not be permitted until we have a lease."

This could have even bigger impacts on the farm than the loss of space, as it puts a $111,461 Food Security Infrastructure Grant awarded to the farm in jeopardy, officials said.

Read the full letter here.

Fast forward to Thursday.

In a statement and event announcement, Ward 9 Councilor Jonathan Paz, At-Large Councilor Colleen Bradley-MacArthur and Ward 3 Councilor George Darcy said they would host a public input session that they called "a concerted effort to uplift the voices of the public."

"Next week, the Council will deliberate three different RFP’s (Request For Proposals) proposed by Mayor McCarthy. These are highly consequential proposals for the future of the farm. Since its purchase a year ago, the public has not been invited to provide serious input," the councilors said.

In referencing a survey offered to the public regarding the development on the farm, the councilors said it was "not a serious way to engage with the public about community-supported agriculture, land stewardship and food security."

With the session, they hope to offer what they feel is a truer version of community engagement.

The public input session is scheduled for 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at First Parish in Waltham, 50 Church St.