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Our farmhouse is now rented; and the”green” barn has a new roof

After two-and-a-half years of uncertainty some light is appearing at the end of our tunnel. NACF has moved successfully to secure the farmhouse initially by lease from Simple Gifts Farm and later (this year or next) we expect, as owner after successful debt settlement negotiations. We have entered a property management contract with Pipeline Properties to manage the rental of the farmhouse for the coming academic year. In the absence of the need to house resident farm families or farm workers, we will be renting to student tenants, and we will be dedicating some of the rental revenue to paying down loans taken out to pay debt settlement amounts. The debts are those of Simple Gifts but, in return for NACF agreeing to pay these settlement amounts, SGF will be returning ownership of the farm buildings (including the farmhouse) to NACF. So, from the end of August onward, expect to see new life in the NACF farmhouse.

Our newly hatched plan to use the farmhouse as a revenue generator goes against the original intention to commit the residence to housing farm families and farm workers — a promise that was the basis for our successful fund raising to fund the extensive renovation work six years ago. However, the greater need is to secure the future of the farm. The immediate need is to fend off a hostile foreclosure and to regain control of the farm buildings presently own by our lessee. Then there is a much longer term need — a need to create a revenue stream that we can rely on to fund continuing maintenance of the farm buildings once we regain ownership. The demise of Simple Gifts demonstrated that a farm lease agreement that obligated our farm lessee to maintaining the farm buildings was unworkable — unworkable and unfair because it obligated the lessee to paying the fair market price for the various trades needed to perform that maintenance work but restricted them from selling the buildings for anything more than their “adjusted market value” (essentially a sort of agricultural value which is much less). Therefore, just as with the original renovation work, maintenance would require an annual fundraising event to raise the money to bridge the gap between maintenance cost and resale value — clearly an unmanageably cumbersome solution.

So, our long-term plans for the farmhouse are shifting. It now seems critically important to use at least part of the farmhouse to generate operating income, Fortunately, the way we set up the renovated building — a front apartment designed to be suitable for three independent residents, a middle apartment designed to house a family, and a rear studio providing a self-contained studio apartment — gives us flexibility. The front apartment makes an ideal student rental. In Amherst (and being close to the University) this is a valuable rental commodity that will always be in demand. We imagine that even after we have paid down the loans we may take out to resolve the SGF debt, we will still be holding some portion of the farmhouse in the student rental market. That, we expect, will provide long-term financial security that will cover continued maintenance and other enduring needs.