Winning farmer plants seeds closer to home

[ Originally published on: Tuesday, December 01, 2009 ]

MONTAGUE -- Can Ryan Voiland bring Red Fire to Blue Meadow?

That's the plan, as the former Montague farmer returns to town with the purchase of a 109-acre Meadow Road farm this summer and hopes of adding the 13-acre Blue Meadow Farm property this winter.

Voiland, whose Red Fire Farm in Granby has won state awards year after year for tomatoes and has nearly 1,000 members in its ''community supported agriculture'' (CSA) farm-share program, has hopes of eventually bringing most of the organic vegetable and fruit production back to town.

With three-quarters of the Granby farm's vegetable acreage on rented land, Voiland said he has been looking around for good farmland for the last couple of years and found the former Stanley and Helen Tuvek farm listed on a site maintained by the New England Small Farm Institute.

''It seemed important to get long-time land security,'' said Voiland. ''It's very risky to be pouring all your effort into land where the base could be pulled out from under us with one year's notice. We would be in trouble.''

About 40 acres of the Tuvek farm is available for crops, he said, including good bottom land across Meadow Road near the confluence of the Sawmill and Connecticut rivers.

''It's a beautiful spot, a unique place,'' said Voiland.

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