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Date: 8/2/2022
AMHERST – Prior to owning Foxcroft Farm, and previous to his long career as a builder before that, Jim Hoerle remembers walking up the ramp to Reminder Publishing’s East Longmeadow office, spending $10 on an advertisement for his mowing and snow blowing business around 1970.
Hoerle said he has always been a project-oriented person and saw purchasing what’s now known as Foxcroft Farm for nearly $1 million in 2012 as his next big project. His 92 acres were formerly owned by Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, who previously used the land as a dairy farm.
Standing between his grand, light yellow 4,000-square-foot recently completed 18th-century style post and beam barn and renovated house with a garage he annexed to it, looking out at sprinklers tending to his green lawn and the vibrant yellow fields of hay with the Pelham Hills in the backdrop, Hoerle remembers how much has changed since he bought the property. He points to a section behind his house now featuring a vegetable garden, saying there were two barns there before that were caving in and that he had to tear down. He remembered abandoned tractors being swallowed by rampant weeds but knew that there was plenty of room to work with and restore the land.
When he was negotiating the purchase of Thompson Farm with Mrs. Thompson, the town also had interest in purchasing the land.
“I think [Mrs. Thompson] liked my vision, I think the town was going to probably do something a little bit differently and not as nice for sure,” Hoerle said. “They just wanted to protect the land and to some degree when I say they support farming, they do and they don’t. The Head of Conservation, Dave Ziomek, likes to have land go back to succession which I don’t necessarily agree with, but that’s what he likes. He likes to buy up land, protect it and then just not touch it, which is fine. It just grows up into woods and brush and things of that nature. I’m a little bit more like let’s keep farming, let’s keep the fields nice and things like that. I think Mrs. Thompson wanted my vision of continuing it as a nice farm.”
Hoerle planned on entering a majority of the land into the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources’ (MDAR) Agricultural Preservation Restriction (APR) program after buying it, a process he was originally told would take around a year. The APR program pays farmers a price close to what they paid for the land in exchange for control over what crops to grow and other regulations. After buying the run-down farm, Hoerle didn’t want to dump another $1 million into repairing it and wanted to join the program to offset that cost. However, Hoerle said the federal government got involved around the same time that he wanted to join which extended the time it took to join to around four years. Hoerle said he has invested over $1 million into the farm by razing the old buildings, building the new barn and other projects since the purchase.
“I think Massachusetts does a lot to help the farmers with all kinds of grants and another federal agency called NRCS [Natural Resources Conservation Services], they also provide a lot of funding,” Hoerle said. “The grant process is a little arduous. You apply, you get turned down. You apply to a different one, you get turned down. But I think they do a relatively good job; I think the regulations are so tough. My buddy Andy from Andrew’s Greenhouse, he owns maybe 160 acres. He probably is the last farm on this street that has not been protected, but he doesn’t want to do it because of all the regulation. It would take years and years to do it, and he says it’s just not worth it. If I came in here and had more money, I would’ve not done it. I would’ve just done what I wanted to do and farm and do the exact same thing. I’m under their control. They visit me every year and say, ‘You’ve got to do this and do that,’ and that’s okay, I live with it. They certainly set the rules down in the beginning.”
Still, Hoerle said more and more farms are failing and that there is always a need for more funding in such a vital but non-lucrative industry. He referenced his plank bridge that crosses Hop Brook and leads to the back fields of his property which could cost $100,000 to repair. Hoerle said workers will not go across it with a tractor and said he’s already spent thousands to shore it up after being denied last year for a grant. He said he might be approved this year, but that it would still probably only cover about 40 percent of the cost.
“So I’ve got to apply for another one because for me to go up and tell my wife, ‘I’ve got to get $60,000 to do the bridge down there,’ that’s going to be a hard sell,” Hoerle said. “But again, I’m not producing hundreds of thousands of dollars in vegetables to farmers’ markets and to Whole Foods or something like that, so I can understand how maybe they don’t want to give me as much money as they would to other farmers.”
Hoerle said typical government regulations and bureaucracy can make things take longer than preferred, but was clear that overall, he has enjoyed his collaboration with MDAR and is grateful for things like the $40,000 grant he recently received to help cover the cost of a new storage and equipment shed.
The Rail Trail runs along the back perimeter of Hoerle’s farm, and mile marker 9.5 on the trail features a bridge that overlooks his back fields and property where he said he commonly sees people enjoying the view. Hoerle said the town owns all the land on the other side of the Rail Trail besides 20 acres of his that he plans to keep in his possession.
“It is mostly wet, but still very pretty and a nice piece of land as well. I own land on both sides of the Rail Trail which is really uncommon because the town of Amherst owns everything on the other side of the trail except for a nice 20-acre chunk that I have. They’ve wanted to buy it for quite a long time, but I don’t think I want to sell it. They haven’t made me a good enough offer,” Hoerle said with a laugh.
He said most of the work is done by himself and his wife, Peg Riley. Peg is a professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) and spends time tending to the chickens, vegetables, bees and is currently working on her second book about microbiomes. Hoerle said he used to do lots of traveling across the globe with Peg, who was invited to speak at various universities. Hoerle keeps miles of path along his edges “meticulously maintained” which allows the grass to grow fully and is perfect for riding horses, walking or driving throughout the fields.
“By and large, Peg and I love our work,” Hoerle said. “If it’s fun time, it’s jumping on the horse and going for a ride. It might be going to the Blue Heron for dinner which we used to more often before COVID[-19] or going to Amherst Cinema and watching a nice movie or something like that. We have friends over, we like to socialize, I’m in a wine group which isn’t too active anymore since COVID[-19].”
Hoerle was visibly excited at the sight of wildlife, something he clarified is incredibly common around his farm. He said they have thousands of birds there including red-tailed hawks, blue herons and bluebirds. Hoerle noticed a fox walking through some recently cut sections of the farm, saying that its common to see coyotes but rare to see a fox hunting for voles, mice and other rodents after a harvest.
“You’re getting a full nature tour here, not bad,” Hoerle said. “Those red-tailed hawks are so majestic and since we don’t use any chemicals or anything on the farm at all, there’s tons of bugs for barn swallows, there’s tons of voles and mice for red-tailed hawks and fox and coyotes, tons of rabbits all the time and coyotes love them of course. […] We have tons of birds here. We hold an annual birding event with Kestrel Trust, we’re very good friends with Kestrel. We come in and we cater breakfast and everything and we start at like 5:30 [a.m.] in the morning. My wife’s a birder and she gets a birding expert to come and everyone goes out, we usually have about 15 to 20 people.”
Hoerle said it’s easy to appreciate the view of a maintained property and the work that he and his wife have invested into repairing and restoring the farm. While driving around the property, Hoerle would still stop and take in the Pelham Hills and Mt. Holyoke Mountain Range.
“Isn’t that pretty? You can see why I fell in love with it,” Hoerle said. “It’s very fulfilling [to be done]. I was very much project-oriented all my life, I was a homebuilder in East Longmeadow and Longmeadow and Wilbraham and Hampden most of my life and built a lot of homes out there. I’m very much geared for getting into a project and getting it done. A little bit longer on this one than I thought, but it’s just been a labor of love, it’s been a labor of love. It’s not like we’re on two acres, we’re on 90 acres here so we have really a great paradise that we can enjoy.”