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On a recent summer day, Berkshire Grown hosted its annual farm tour for the Massachusetts Agriculture Commissioner Ashley Randle and staff from the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources, as well as local and state government officials. During their visit to three Berkshire farms, the group saw firsthand how statewide agricultural challenges play out on the ground.
The day began at Gaetano’s Organic Farm in Becket, where over the chatter of hens behind her, Natalia Chihai described how her late husband Guy McKay “retired” to the Berkshires. A long-time farmer in the eastern part of the state, McKay had planned to continue his certified organic vegetable farm on a much smaller scale. After McKay's death in 2022, Chihai has continued to renew the organic certification each year, despite the challenges it creates. “One of the problems with organic farming is weeds,” Chihai said. “You have a beautiful seedling, you work one month for the seedling to grow, and after you transplant it in the first two weeks, it’s doing great. Then the weeds start. It’s crazy the amount of work that you put in just to weed. After we started using plastic mulch technology, we started to be more efficient.”
Today, Chihai and farming partner Sergei Kim have expanded the farm to six acres in cultivation and six high tunnels. Kim holds a degree in Agronomy from St. Petersburg State University, and his training, combined with his careful use of machinery, have established efficient farming practices that enable them to run the entire production with just two people.
Tour participants marveled at the level of organization on display. Gaetano’s produces vegetables, eggs, chicken and rabbit meat, selling directly through its farm stand and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares, as well as at the Stockbridge Farmers Market. As they walked through the fields, visitors couldn’t resist tasting blueberries directly from the farm’s bushes, many of which were heavy with fruit. Kim was thrilled with this year’s blueberry harvest. “It’s been seven years since we planted these bushes, and this is our best year,” Kim said. “We’ve just been picking and picking.”
From Becket, the tour moved south to Woven Roots Farm in Tyringham, a very different operation built around a deliberately small-scale, hands-on approach. Jen and Pete Salinetti farm 2.5 acres of a 10-acre property in permanent beds, growing more than 70 different crops throughout the year. But describing Woven Roots simply as a vegetable farm misses much of what makes it distinctive. The farm offers a CSA, centered on a philosophy rooted in the relationship between land, food, culture, care and community.
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