I’ve been working with Sarah Kelley of The Island Foundation and Karen Schwalbe of SEMAP to start a new fibershed as part of Rebecca Burgess’ Fibershed network. Our Fibershed, comprised of both Massachusetts and Rhode Island, is called the Southeastern New England Fibershed and our focus moving forward will be on connecting farmers to both production and resources to make their farms maybe more diversified or more viable than they thought they could be.
From farmer to processor, from financing to cut and sew, we are connecting the dots of the supply chain to bring production back to reinvigorate a once-thriving New England textile industry, basing our geographic radius on the historical textile processing centers of New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Providence, Rhode Island, both of which have extensive remaining infrastructure, and cover both states with an approximately 100-mile radius.
I love getting together with Sarah and Karen because they always are so in the know when it comes to the most interesting things happening regionally with farming.
The three of us were sitting fairly recently at a local farm store over coffee to discuss the potential of the fibershed when Karen mentioned The Great American Farm Tour. YouTube sensation Justin Rhodes and his family of six are currently traveling all over America in their converted school bus “discovering the greatest sustainable yards, homesteads and farms.”
These guys are the real deal. Last summer they wrapped up their biggest project to date, “100 days of Growing Food”, in which they grew 75% of their food in just 100 days. But the bus tour? This is pretty epic and when people like this are nearby you, you just sort of have to go meet them because what they are doing flies in the face of all logic and when that happens? Well you’ll find me front and center with a big grin on my face. I love these kinds of people.
t sounded ridiculous. So ridiculous good that I planned on meeting Karen when she went to meet the family later in the day at yet another farm I’d never heard of here on Cape Cod, The Pariah Dog Farm.
Later Karen texted she was there but leaving but that I should still totally go. A family in a revamped school bus putting a spotlight on farms? Some weird push out the door that only Fridays can do to you (or when you see a picture of a friend like Karen on Instagram laughing with the wayward tour family), happened and I threw on my jacket and was on the move.
The Pariah Dog Farm is, according to Edible Cape Cod, an unusual name for a farm on Cape Cod. But for owner/farmers Matt Churchill and Jeny Christian, these Pariah dogs—which survive off of waste from human settlements—”symbolize a vital ecological niche that inspires their farming philosophy.”
