Remy Tumin
Andrew Woodruff kicked at the dirt at Whippoorwill Farm on a recent afternoon. The soil felt familiar, but he stomped on it a few times to make sure it was good and grounded, twisting himself into place.
“Today is a beautiful day and spring is around the corner,” Mr. Woodruff, 50, said squinting into the sun. “It’s definitely a fresh start to a new beginning for Whippoorwill Farm.”
It’s out with the white linen table cloths and in with the repurposed wood as the farm-to-table movement anchors itself in Chilmark this summer.
Farmer and chef Chris Fischer will take the helm of the restaurant at the Beach Plum Inn in Menemsha, the inn announced this week. Mr. Fischer will source directly from his family’s farm, Beetlebung Farm, just over a mile down the road.
The pastoral sheep pastures and hayfields at Flat Point Farm will be placed into conservation after the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank announced plans to purchase a large piece of the West Tisbury farm.
The land bank is set to purchase 12.9 acres of land and an agricultural preservation restriction on an additional 25 acres of abutting pastures for $3.45 million from the Fischer family, who has owned the property since 1939, land bank director James Lengyel said this week.
Cable television customers on the Vineyard are guaranteed Comcast service for the next 10 years as a contract between the giant cable company and the six Island towns is now complete.
After two years of negotiations, the towns of West Tisbury, Oak Bluffs and Chilmark signed new franchise agreements with Comcast at their board of selectmen meetings this week. Edgartown, Tisbury and Aquinnah are expected to sign off early next week.
After successfully incorporating Island-grown produce into the salad bars and prepared meals in Vineyard schools, high school cafeteria director Bernadette Ms. Cormie turned her attention to local meat.
“I wanted to get meat, somehow, but I wasn’t sure how to do it,” she said.
Last fall Ms. Cormie began her job working for Chartwells, the food service provider at the high school, and bringing local meat into the school “was one of the top ten things I wanted to have happen.”
Phil Swift is waiting for the forsythia to bloom. The yellow harbingers of spring mark when the first loads of fertilizer can go down, when the final pruning should be attended to and when home gardeners re-emerge from the winter thaw.
“My forsythia have been trying to bloom all winter, especially on the nice days,” he said on a cool March morning at Jardin Mahoney in Edgartown “I always refer to the forsythia.