Nantucket Official Guide | Page 18

Sustaining a Healthy Nantucket
Growing Food & Community
on the Faraway Island

©Jordi Cabré

By Chelsea Andreozzi, Development Coordinator,
Sustainable Nantucket

Did you know that in 1875 there were over
100 farms on the Faraway Island?
At Nantucket’s agricultural height, 4,000
people lived in seven farming villages
situated throughout the island. The largest
farming village was located along the stretch
from Polpis valley through Wauwinet, where
at least 44 farms were in operation during
the 1850s [1].
In 1950, thirty farms still continued to
operate on the island, the majority of which
were dairy farms. As Nantucket grew from a
little-known vacation getaway to a high-end
resort destination, most of the remaining
farmland has become lost to development.
When Sustainable Nantucket established
the Farmers & Artisans Market in 2007,

16 • 2016 Official Guide to Nantucket

only three commercial growers remained in
operation: Bartlett’s Farm, Moors End Farm,
and the Cranberry Bogs.
That trend is reversing. At least fourteen
farm businesses are now producing on
island. Some of these are pocket farms
on family or leased land, and four were
launched by community members in 2015
through Sustainable Nantucket’s Community
Farm Institute, a farmer training program
with a two-acre incubator farm site.
Local food movements have gained
traction across the country, but for a
community thirty miles out to sea, a strong
local food system is especially important.
Supermarket produce shipped in from
remote parts of the country – and farther –