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What’s happening with NACF for the 2025 growing season?
NACF and farm lessee Simple Gifts Farm (SGF) have jointly decided to sublease 11 acres (about half the total tillable acreage of the farm) to Wally Czajkowski, owner of Plainville Farm in Hadley, for the 2025 growing season. Starting in March and ending in November, Wally will be using the sub-leased portion of our farm to grow squash organically. Wally is a local farmer of long standing and he is familiar with our farm. In the years before NACF purchased the farm from the Dziekanowski family, he farmed the land for some years growing corn and squash in annual rotation.
Wally has agreed to abide by some specific constraints that Dave and Jeremy have set out that will preserve drainage swales, farm roads, grassy strips that slow the flow of water — farmland features that SGF have established over their tenure. Public access will be maintained exactly as it has been.
Wally will be paying a lease fee which will be used to cover the continuation of the comprehensive farm insurance policy that was SGF’s obligation to pay but which now has lapsed. Wally’s lease payments will be put to insuring against loss and damage to the farmhouse and farm buildings. Wally Czajkowski (at left) with Dave Tepfer on the farm as Dave and he review the terms of the sub-lease. Off from Wally’s shoulder (in the distance) you can see some of the composted goat manure that he will be spreading to accelerate the growth of his squash crop.Wally’s presence means that there will be productive activity on the land. That will be good for our morale, and it will also prevent the maturing and seeding of weed plants that would otherwise thrive in the fields. Wally has agreed to plant a winter cover crop before he leaves.
In addition to Wally using the farm fields for squash, the Kitchen Garden farm has leased four of the greenhouses and will be growing produce in those over the spring, summer, and fall.
We hope that, before the 2026 growing season, we will have a successor lessee. More on that soon we hope.
We appreciate that this email probably prompts more questions than it answers. So please contact us below with any specific queries or suggestions that you have.PLEASE CONTACT Bruce Coldham at bcoldham155@comcast.net or call 413-348-6706
Wally Czajkowski (at left) with Dave Tepfer on the farm as Dave and he review the terms of the sub-lease. Off from Wally’s shoulder (in the distance) you can see some of the composted goat manure that he will be spreading to accelerate the growth of his squash crop.Wally’s presence means that there will be productive activity on the land. That will be good for our morale, and it will also prevent the maturing and seeding of weed plants that would otherwise thrive in the fields. Wally has agreed to plant a winter cover crop before he leaves.
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