Ben Jones Photography
Robert Pierce is a longtime fresh food activist and farmer.
There’s a blanket of snow covering the vacant fields south of Madison along County MM but the heavy equipment stands at the ready. A dozen yellow earth movers are lined up, waiting for spring when work will continue on a major housing development in the city of Fitchburg that will eventually bring thousands of new residents to the former farmlands where deer and turkey still roam.
But across from the development site, on Goodland Park Road, a local conservation group is teaming with long-time organic food advocate Robert Pierce on a unique project that will combine natural resources protection and public trail access with the rehabilitation of ex-offenders.
Pierce, perhaps best known as the manager of the South Madison Farmers’ Market, will use a portion of the 36 acres recently acquired by Groundswell Conservancy for a program called Farming After Incarceration Release, or FAIR. The idea is to engage recently-released felons in urban agriculture to create economic opportunity for them and their families.
“Growing food can change the perception of how people see themselves,” says Pierce, 67, executive director of the nonprofit Neighborhood Food Solutions. “We try to get them to shift their perspective from survival thinking to giving back to society.”
Pierce, a Madison native, recalls picking berries as a kid in his grandmother’s backyard garden on Koster Street, behind the Alliant Energy Center, and selling to neighbors. He started farming in the mid-1980s. Since then he’s won awards and gained recognition as a leading voice for the local food movement.
Still, one problem has persisted over 30 years of tilling, planting and weeding: finding available land close to the south side. For a time, Pierce leased property behind the old Bowman Dairy on Fish Hatchery Road in Fitchburg. More recently he had access to a small area near the Madison Metropolitan Sewerage plant off Moorland Road that served another program aimed at teaching kids about the food business.
“We’ve had to move around a lot,” Pierce laments. “I’ve gained land, lost land, but never had any of my own.”
That’s where Groundswell Conservancy (formerly the Natural Heritage Land Trust) comes into the picture. The group’s executive director, Jim Welsh, had met Pierce at an Earth Day celebration several years ago. When the land on Goodland Park Road became available, he contacted Pierce to see if they could forge a partnership.
“What we can offer Robert is land security,” says Welsh. In December, Groundswell closed on the 36 acres, which was made available at a 20 percent discount by landowner Brian Pasley. Money for the purchase was provided by a combination of the Dane County Conservation Fund, Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program, the estate of Marie Fraser, two anonymous donors and Groundswell.
A fourth-generation landowner, Pasley says he was determined to permanently protect the last remaining part of his family’s property, which sits upstream from the high-quality Waubesa Wetlands in the town of Dunn. The rapid development in the city of Fitchburg only hastened his decision to sell to Groundswell, which has named the parcel Pasley’s Swan Creek Farm.
“I’m super proud how all of this has worked out and to have the family name on it just makes it even more special,” says Pasley, 51, who plans to continue visiting the property as a public user.
Ben Jones Photography
Brian Pasley.
The land has been in the family since 1913 and has featured pear, apple and plum trees in addition to productive raspberry patches. Most recently, some of the Pasley land was rented to Hmong farmers.
Ex-offenders in the FAIR program won’t be the only new users working at Pasley’s Swan Creek Farm. Pierce will also use a portion for his Program for Entrepreneurial Agricultural Training, or PEAT.
Launched as a partnership between Dane County Planning and Development and the South Madison Farmers’ Market, PEAT aims to get a younger generation involved in the urban farming movement. It includes a summer employment program that provides an opportunity for low-income or at-risk teens to learn new skills.
Both FAIR and PEAT employ a mentoring system; those who’ve been through the program pass their knowledge along to new entrants. In addition to earning a competitive wage for their work, participants also spend time in the classroom learning business skills like budgeting, marketing and sales techniques.
And while having bulldozers rumbling away on a high-density housing development might offer some temporary disruption to the serenity of farming work, Groundswell’s Welsh is optimistic about the long-term prospects.
“You have two goals accomplished here,” he says. “You’re protecting an important natural area and making sure farmers, in this case farmers of color, have access to land. Plus, you’re going to have a built-in audience living right across the street.”
