Bramble Hill Farm

 
Bramble Hill Farm provides living and working spaces for a range of people and projects that test innovative ways to build a sustainable, healthy, and creative farm centered community that benefits the broader population.

The 120 acre farm is located in Amherst, MA and is supported by the Open Field Foundation.

Find us here.

The Open Field Foundation

The Open Field Foundation is a nonprofit private operating  foundation. It was created in 1996 by Gordon Thorne and Anne Woodhull to legally hold the assets of Bramble Hill Farm. The Foundation, by intent, absorbed the major capital costs of purchasing and rebuilding the Farm, and continues to provide administrative and financial operating support.

The Open Field Foundation was created to protect and sustain the unique and diverse ecologies associated with open land, and to explore alternative uses for productive agricultural acreage.

Mission Statement
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The founders acknowledge that economic forces make traditional agricultural enterprises less viable than they once were, and The Foundation does not seek to battle with forces it cannot change. Instead it seeks to help in the development of new models for the small farm, which will allow a land based way of life and the ecology of the open field to sustain themselves indefinitely.

The Founders believe that the encouragement and support of our connection to the productive capacity of open land is essential to any learning process. The Founders also believe that Open Land has an inherent value independent of its usefulness to human kind.  Therefore, land-based education, in the broadest sense, defines the organization’s underlying mission.

The founders recognize that new land uses that emerge will be diverse and organic in nature, changing and adapting to the skills and interests of those who contribute their efforts to the endeavor. Nevertheless, OFF will require that every proposed use of its land, and every project which  seeks its support, meet some or all of the following criteria:

• To generate educational opportunities, which will encourage the public to gain a greater understanding of the increasingly unique value of open space, as well as the importance of agricultural endeavor.

• To protect and encourage the natural diversity of fertile soil.

• To not allow  the productive use of open land to be shaped primarily by business, economics or human need.

• To create structures and programs which strive to be economically self sufficient, aesthetically adventurous, and environmentally sustainable.
• To always encourage patience and stimulate curiosity.