Whippoorwill Farm is making a comeback, under a mixture of new and old management. Owner Andrew Woodruff has leased his four and a half acre property on Old County Road in West Tisbury to Rose Willet, owner of North Tisbury Farm.
The farm will keep its name, Ms. Willet said, and Mr. Woodruff is consulting with her on converting its fields to regenerative organic agriculture, a carbon-reducing method of farming he has also overseen at Island Grown Initiative’s Thimble Farm.
“It’s a slow process of working on quadrants of the fields to slowly turn them over to regenerative organic,” Ms. Willet told the Gazette Monday. “Much of it is done by hand.”
Last month, Ms. Willet revived the Whippoorwill farmstand, which is open on the honor system during daylight hours. Currently selling fall produce from North Tisbury Farm, which has its own stand on State Road, the farmstand will soon carry Whippoorwill crops as well, she said.
“We’re working on rehabbing greenhouses,” Ms. Willet said. “We’ll start with doing salad greens and herbs and edible flowers throughout the winter in the greenhouses.”
In spring, Ms. Willet said, the farm will plant its first half-acre while continuing to convert more fields to regenerative agriculture.
“The farm’s been fallow for a number of years. It’s a pretty big project,” she said. “My estimation is it will take us four years to be certified regenerative organic.”
Whippoorwill will also have resident livestock, beginning with a quartet of goats whose milk Ms. Willet hopes to make into yogurt and cheeses. Egg production is slated to begin next year, with the arrival of laying pullets in the spring.
Livestock for meat production is not part of Ms. Willet’s plans, she said, though draft horses may help till the soil. She also wants to offer educational programming at Whippoorwill Farm.
“We will be starting out with elementary age kids and then working up,” Ms. Willet said. “The ultimate goal would be an accredited internship for college students.”
While all of these projects will take years to develop, Ms. Willet said she opened the Whippoorwill farmstand to let Islanders know the farm is coming back to life.
“There’s no immediate gratification, except that I was so excited to see the sign hung and the farmstand open,” she said. “That made me really happy.”
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