Date/Time
Date(s) - Jun 14th, 2022
5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
Join Hilltown Land Trust for a tour of Two Mamas Farm, an organic maple farm and teaching farmstead in Cummington, MA, followed by an optional hike to a scenic waterfall on the farm. This event is created by and for members of the LGBTQ+ community.
From 5:30 to 6:15, Sarah Fournier-Scanlon will lead a tour of the farmstead that she has tended with her wife and family since 2009. Meet the cows, learn about sample organic maple syrup, and tour the wheelchair-accessible maple barn! (More access details included below.)
From 6:15 to 7:00, Sarah and HLT’s Community Engagement Coordinator Sarah Welch will lead an optional slow, flattish 1-mile roundtrip hike through the maple sugarbush to a scenic waterfall.
Adults and supervised children are welcome at both parts of the program. We ask that you leave non-service dogs at home for this event.
About Two Mamas Farm
Our farm is queer in the nature of LGBTQIA; also queer as in we pursue and produce challenging and unique things. Our family (two mamas and three kiddos!) ticks many of the “otherness” boxes, and we embrace that. We are a rainbow encompassing, permaculture-oriented, disabled, gender expansive, and neurodivergent crew. We bring these perspectives to our products and community.
About the Event Leaders
Sarah Fournier-Scanlon
Sarah (she/her) loves nurturing life in all kinds of ways- and farming is a dream come true since childhood. Sarah purchased and has lived on this land since 2009, adapting permaculture experiments, running a raw milk CSA for five years, teaching folks, and raising a family. Initially warned off maple as a commercial farm enterprise due to dire climate change predictions, Sarah has watched as the sugar woods here have continued to thrive and decided to take the maple plunge! She appreciates the perennial cropping and symbiotic nature of harvesting sap, and creating maple products that bring joy to so many during a time when things often seem grim. Sarah loves to talk nature, farming, and these days, especially about maple- so reach out any time.
Sarah Welch
As Hilltown Land Trust’s 2021-2022 TerraCorps Community Engagement Coordinator, Sarah (she/her) supports HLT’s outreach, engagement, and programming efforts. Sarah is a naturalist who specializes in leading nature-based youth programs, and has worked with nature centers and families in western Massachusetts to foster children’s connections with the outdoor world. Sarah lives in the Hilltowns, where she hikes, writes, and searches for mushrooms and red efts in forests and hillsides across the region.
Access Notes
Farm Tour
There is a 30-foot ramp leading up to the maple barn. The ramp is ADA accessible, but does not yet have handrails. There is a grass slope leading up to it. Sarah Fournier-Scanlon had the following to say about the terrain around the farmstead, which is regularly accessed by a wheelchair user:
“Someone in a manual chair could make it up the ramp possibly with a little push assistance. We could also zip folks up in a vehicle and unload on the ramp. The farm terrain is uneven, so a regular power chair may have trouble in some areas of the farmyard.”
Hike
This hike is an optional offering for those who would like to stick around and explore the woodlands together after the farm tour. During the hike, we will be walking about one mile together round-trip. We’ll be sticking together, and moving as slowly as the slowest person in the group. We’ll be walking on rolling terrain with around 50 feet of elevation gain, over a dirt woodland trail with some ruts, roots, rocks, and several small unbridged stream crossings.
Hilltown Land Trust is happy to discuss your access needs for this event. If there’s something we didn’t cover here, please reach out to sarah@hilltownlandtrust.org or call (413) 628-4485 ext. 6.
Cost
The program has a sliding scale fee structure of $0-25. Your donation supports Two Mamas Farm’s bird-friendly maple farming efforts, as well as future programs like this at HLT.
To become a member of Hilltown Land Trust for the year, make a gift in any amount to support our efforts to conserve and care for ecologically valuable land in the Hilltowns.
