CLEVELAND, Ohio — Providing one doesn’t mind spending a little time and a lot of effort, there is a great opportunity to live and farm inside a national park in Ohio – and best of all, it’s free.
The only requirement to work this free farm is to be committed to sustainable agriculture and work hard with park partners to be good land stewards. Currently there are 10 farms in Cuyahoga Valley National Park (CVNP) that are part of a special program called the Countryside Initiative. Three more are to be released (or need tended) in 2015.
This innovative program began in 1999 as a way to preserve and protect the rural landscape in the CVNP. Since the National Park Service created the boundaries of this National Recreation Area in the 1970s, there was a struggle to stop the loss of rural character and cultural resources in the Cuyahoga Valley.
The farms and Countryside bring more than 100,000 people into the park each year and have an economic impact of millions of dollars.
Daniel Greenfield (from Greenfield Berry Farm, one of the 10 existing farms in the park) enjoys being a destination farm.
"I think we have a certain advantage here in that we’re in a great location. We’re in a national park, so we can be destination farms," Greenfield said. "We’re halfway between Cleveland and Akron, so we’re very accessible to large communities, and there’s a lot of promise there.
"On its face, sustainable as an ecological form of farming, I think all of these farms that are going on now have very high expectations of them, and it’s expected of them to grow using practices that are environmentally sound. We submit proposals every year to the National Park Service so they will know what we’re doing.
"There’s other aspects of sustainable we could be talking about," he pointed out. "Are these farms going to be economically sustainable? Will we be able to make enough money to stay in business for years? I think that’s the one with the biggest question mark. It’s hard to be a small-scale farmer and make money."
"It’s been some adventures with the National Park," said Alan Halko of Spring Hill Farm & Market.
"For example, I had to have an archeological study before I could put fence posts in the ground. Archeologists are traveling archeologists who go from national park to national park.
"I found buried concrete. There were greenhouses on the property at one time, and they tore down all these greenhouses. And the contract with the park paid them to haul all the concrete away, and they buried all the concrete. So when I got here and put a plow in the ground, I just started hitting concrete. It’s been an adventure."
The farmer is competitively awarded a long-term lease of a proposed site only after powerfully articulating his or her plan to manage and farm that site through the entire term of the lease. These farms are expected to be managed with only sustainable farming practices, and the farmers are required to positively interact with CVNP visitors. The participation and stewardship of these special farmers is the key to the success of this program.
Existing farms produce everything from fruits and vegetables to sheep, goats and heritage turkeys to herbs, honey and hickory bark syrup.
Farms currently in the Countryside Initiative include Brunty Farms, Canal Corners Farm & Market, Goatfeathers Point Farm, Greenfield Berry Farm, Neitenbach Farm, Sarah’s Vineyard, Spice Acres, Spring Hill Farm & Market, The Spicy Lamb Farm and The Trapp Family Farm.
While farming in a national park is an unconventional idea in America, that is not the case elsewhere in the world. In Great Britain, for example, more than 90 percent of national park land is privately owned. Not only is it considered natural and normal to live within the park boundaries, farming is considered the only practical way to maintain the openness, beauty and diversity of the countryside.
