Future farm: Bringing a historic farm back to life as a classroom

A nearly 200-year-old dormantfarm in Fredericton will be brought back to life this summer as a training ground for futurefarmers.

ThehistoricHayes farm in the community of Devon will be the site of theHayes Urban TeachingFarm, aprojectdedicatedto teaching new farmers how to make a living off small harvests.

"Essentially the goal is to create a full-season, full-time farmer training program," said Claire May, theoutreach coordinator for the project.

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Although currently covered insnow, thepropertywill be used to teachabout a dozen students how tocultivate soil,grow vegetablesand harvestcrops.

"We'll be using about an acre and a quarter of the cleared fields to grow annual vegetables and use the wooded areas and the other nooks and crannies on site to check out permaculture techniques and things like mushroom growing and fruit-trees really maximize the space that we have here,"said May.

Nestled between suburbs and busy streets, thesurrounding tree cover isolates the property from the bustleof the city that has grown up around it.

Woodenfences separate the farm from residentialbackyards. Threefields surround theHayes farmhouse that wasbuilt inthe 1840s. It standsnext to an emptydairy barn and weathered, leaning,hay barn.

More than 170yearsago, the Hayesfarmoccupiedmuch of what is now the community ofDevon. The property was around 500 acres, accordingto theNewBrunswickprovincialarchives and living familymembers.

Over time, the propertyhasbeen whittled down tojust eightacresafter land was sold ordonatedfor development.

The centralized location, the country in the city,makes the landattractive for urban farming.

"We have two gardens right now on the northside that are flourishinganda lot ofpeoplewere commenting on how much they enjoy their time when they are gardening,"saidEdeeKlee,the co-chair of the volunteer non-profit NB Community Harvest Gardens."And it's very peaceful. There's so many benefits to it. And they lament that they can't make a living doing this. This is something they want.

"So,we checked it out and found that there are a number of teaching schools across Canada that are doing something like this and we thought why not just bring it here to Fredericton."

While family farmsmake up most of New Brunswick'sfarming operations, Klee says many of themare no longer handed down from generation to generation.Instead,she believes the farmer of the future is very different.

"There was a survey done about twoyears ago by the National New Farmers Coalition and they discovered that the new farmers today are coming from an urban setting," said Klee. "The majority of them are female. So, we thought why not set it up, like bring the school to them and find these folks and make it easy for them to transition to a more rural setting."

In the fall of 2017, volunteers for the projectstarted to till and prepare the soil for thisyear'supcoming harvest.Since then they have worked with local farmers to build theircurriculum, and recruited about a dozen studentsto begintheir farm training once the ground thaws.

The group is will use the upcoming summer as a pilot project for the teaching facility as it looks for a formal educational institution to partner with. The hope is to eventuallyoffer formal educational credits or a degree.

A family wish

Bringing the farm back to life is something the Hayesfamilywantedmore than the cash that would come from selling theland for development, accordingto the estate holder of the property.

"We had fresh, unpasteurized, Jersey cow milk from the herd that my grandparents raised and it was primarily a dairy farm,"said Ian Robertson, who grew up visitinghisgrandparentsonthefarm when he was a child.

"Askids we would build forts out in the woods.There was no development outthere.Therewas a gully that flowed through the property and it would flood in the winter time. And it enabled us to learn how to skate and play hockey out there. So, you really couldn'tofasked for a better location."

Robertson now lives across the street from the Hayes farm.He can see the farm house and thefrozen fields from his living-room window. After two years of consulting and talking with the urban farming project he's given the grouppermissionto use the farmland for farming and teaching.

"There's so much potential for New Brunswick to be moreself-sufficientin its foodstuffs," saidRobertson. "And if something like the urban teaching farm can help produce more farmers, more people that are interested in perhaps an alternate lifestyle, then that sounds like a positive thing."