LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Siena Farms Supports Preservation of Pantry Brook Farm

As a Sudbury native and farmer/owner of Siena Farms, a 50-acre vegetable farm here in North Sudbury, I am writing to passionately encourage every voting town resident to come to Town Meeting next week to raise their hand in support of the permanent preservation of Pantry Brook Farm (Article 30). 

Preserving farmland preserves – and creates – farming. Indeed, there would be no Siena Farms if not for the devoted work of the Sudbury community over the last half-century in preserving some of its most productive farmland, as the majority of our annual cropping occurs on protected farmland here in Sudbury.  As a result, we are able to grow fresh organic food to serve a 500-member CSA community, as well as area farmers’ markets and restaurants, including my wife Ana Sortun’s Cambridge eateries Oleana and Sofra.

The fertile loam soils and exquisite agricultural landscape of Pantry Brook Farm arguably comprise the single most valuable farm property anywhere in the greater Sudbury River Valley – and certainly in our town of Sudbury. At a point in history when every opportunity for farmland preservation should be vigorously pursued from a global perspective, the fields of Pantry Brook Farm, once preserved, will enable farmers to grow food here in Sudbury long after all of us are gone – indeed, for generations of generations. The townsfolk who have brought this opportunity to vote this spring deserve our deepest gratitude – and now it’s our turn to bring it home at Town Meeting. See you there!

Chris Kurth,

4 Puffer Lane