Story and photo credits: Bevan Linsley
One particularly glorious late August morning, the kind that makes us thankful to live in New England, I took a welcome break from screen-related tasks to make a field visit to one of ACT’s programs, Island Community Farm in Middletown, where an exciting new farm is taking shape.
Hawk & Handsaw Farm is the glorious lovechild born of the energy, vision, and labor of Kidder Gowen, Horus Khuit, and Kelsey Gowen, who together lease a parcel of land from ACT on a farm retired from development and held in trust by the Aquidneck Land Trust.
Opened in early 2018, the Hawk & Handsaw team have turned their acre of rich earth into a lush and increasingly productive corner of the farm where they grow medicinal and specialty culinary herbs using the organic, no-till methods of the expanding regenerative agricultural movement to build soil health, biodiversity and the future of our ecosystem.
The intriguing source of the farm’s name was just one of the many the delights of my visit. There was also a taste of the Toothache Plant, Spilanthes (Acmella oleracea), named for its mouth-numbing properties; the children’s playhouse built by Kidder and Kelsey from pollarded Linden whips repurposed from a landscaping job; the first-in-my-lifetime sighting of a live Woad plant, Isatis tinctoria, used for dye and herbal medicine, and the broom corn that will be turned into – can you guess – brooms!
Hawk & Handsaw’s CSA program (Community Supported Agriculture) offers farm shares of a selection of veggies including salad greens, a range of brassicas and root crops, and their unique selection of fresh herbs.
While not busy building the H & H farm and business, the team has designed, and provided many of the hands that created a new pollinator garden at the entrance to Island Community Farm this spring, made possible by a People’s Garden Grant from the Eastern RI Conservation District. The new bed has thrived with top dressings of seaweed, and farm-grown and farm-made fertilizers such as comfrey "tea".
Horus and Kidder also delight in taking visitors on tours of the farm, and the almost completed Food Forest, and although the farm is closed for the season, we plan to offer tours again in the spring, so stay tuned for details about tour openings.
I close this story with this favorite photo of Horus and Kidder in the new pollinator garden, particularly fun because the blur on the screen by Kidder's knees is a bee buzzing by…
If you are interested in purchasing a Hawk & Handsaw farm share, please fill out the form on their website: https://www.hawkandhandsawfarm.com/csa-1
