When I arrive at Sippican River Farm, a small alpaca farm located in the beautiful town of Rochester, Massachusetts, I am greeted by rolling green fields of fescue and orchard grass on both sides of the long driveway, one side now covered in a new layer of compost. The farm’s idea to spread their alpaca’s manure from last year as compost on the field is partly inspired from our alpaca carbon farming cohort, a project funded by a generous Fibershed grant.
Owned and operated for the past 20 years by Bronie and Cheryl Rozenas, Sippican River farm is snuggled into a large piece of property that the Sippican River trails alongside from the north at Leonard’s Pond until it dumps out a few miles away into Hathaway pond to the south. Across the street, in land located along the Sippican River and its tributary Hales Brook, is a 246-acre parcel owned by the Town of Marion and a 75-acre parcel owned by the Town of Rochester. Both parcels were acquired and preserved between 2003 and 2005 as part of a landscape-scale conservation effort to protect nearly 800 acres of East Over Farm and other significant lands along the Sippican River.
This is where we all take an “alpaca trek,” something the farm now offers, with two of their alpacas and talk while we walk.
This is my first time alone with Cheryl and Bronie as we are usually jam packed into a conference room at the New England Alpaca Fiber Pool in Fall River where we meet for structured meetings with 5 other alpaca farmers and talk “regenerative farming.”
Regeneration International defines this type of agriculture as “farming and grazing practices that, among other benefits, reverse climate change by rebuilding soil organic matter and restoring degraded soil biodiversity – resulting in both carbon drawdown and improving the water cycle.”
Who wouldn’t be for that?
We have worked over the past 6 months with Sippican River Farm to help them begin developing ideas and link them to grants for a carbon farming plan for their pasture but it’s turned into more than that. We are learning as much from them as they from us. There are terms and politics alive and thriving in this that take us time to get through. And while our goal for this project is to “strengthen the local fiber farming community and encourage expansion in regeneratively-managed fiber animal grazing land” in Massachusetts by following Fibershed’s Climate Beneficial work, we are now learning how to bridge the gap in how we speak about “carbon drawdown,” “carbon farming,” and “global warming” into much more simple and digestible terms like “good soil” and “good farming.”
Bronie is upfront about why they joined the cohort when he says “We were unsure, but thought it would be good for our marketing.”
Fair enough. It’s hard to have 20 alpacas and make any money off all the time and investment put in financially not to mention physically taking care of a herd. Farmers also need to see new ways to talk about and promote what they do. This is also part of the project. Communicating out in new ways how one is a fiber farmer and why one would want to have a pair of mittens, socks or a hat from a local farmer…
