Page 28 - BusinessWest February 3, 2021

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Phoenix Fruit Farm’s country store has been growing in popularity since its opening in July 2019.
“You keep seeing more and more small farms going out of business as they succumb to the pressures of trying to compete with large agribusi- nesses that are the worst offenders in terms of environmental damage and pollinator collapse and workers’-rights violations.
“But I think that local food is a model for an alternative to that,” she went on. “Producing food and feeding people doesn’t like to look like this. It does not have to be actively harming the environment; it does not have to be actively exploiting workers and excluding low-income families from being able to afford healthy food. Small farms don’t have to struggle to compete in a wholesale marketplace when they can deliver directly to their community.”
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Vaughan became interested in farming as a career while in college, and she worked on various organic vegetable farms for about a decade before becoming the orchard manager for Phoenix, which was then
“Small farms are disappearing all the time in this country — it’s been a perennial struggle for the last 30 or 40 years. You keep seeing more and more small farms going out of business as they succumb to the pressures of trying to compete with large agribusinesses that are the worst offenders in terms of environmental damage and pollinator collapse and workers’-rights violations.”
owned and operated by Amherst-based Atkins Farms.
When Atkins decided to sell the Belchertown property, Vaughan
bought it, and renovated the 1935 horse barn on the property as her residence.
“When I first bought it, it was apples and peaches — and those are still my largest crops,” she said. “But I have replanted and started diversifying.”
New crops include more varieties of apples, as well as table grapes, strawberries, and other fruits. In 2018, she planted new blocks of peach, nectarine, and pear trees, and she’ll see the first harvest of peaches and nectarines from those trees this spring, with the pears coming along in subsequent years. She’s also begun planting more veg- etables, including asparagus, tomatoes, kale, onions, and basil. “I want to ramp all that up, now that I have a store and an outlet for a diverse market garden.”
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The nearby store on Route 181 was a dilapidated garage with no foundation, plumbing, or ... well, much else, actually,
Farm
Continued on page 44
28 FEBRUARY 3, 2021
HAMPSHIRE COUNTY
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