By Danielle Ray
\nLandmark correspondent<\/p>\n
STERLING \u2014 Mike Pineo comes from a multigenerational line of farmers and has been farming the 127-acre tract of beautiful country land on Tuttle Road for decades. It’s a family legacy he is working hard to continue.<\/p>\n
His grandparents bought their first farm, Schenk Farm down the road, in 1954. They bought his current farm, known as the Coyne Farm, in 1962.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has a lot of history to it \u2014 goes back to the Burpee seed family in the 1800s,\u201d Pineo said of what has been called the Pineo Family Farm since 2007.<\/p>\n
Mike grew up on the property after short stints in houses on Meetinghouse Hill and Beaman roads in the house his parents built in 1975. Pineo started farming when he was 10 years old, after buying his first Jersey cow to start a dairy herd. But he was \u201cout of commission\u201d for nearly a year when he broke his back at 17 when he fell through a trap door while helping to remodel a carriage shed at the Murray farm on Upper North Row Road, where he worked from age 12 to 19.<\/p>\n
\u201cI fell through it 12 feet and landed on my feet,\u201d Pineo recalled. \u201cI couldn\u2019t do anything, so I sold off all my livestock, cows, and beef animals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once he recovered, he started farming again. He married Amy, who helps a lot around the farm, and they moved to the Tuttle Road property in 1992 and built a house there three years later.<\/p>\n
In 2007, Pineo started doing small gardens, \u201cwhat gave birth to what is now Pineo Family Farm, and we took off from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
What started off as a modest effort grew over time. They started with mini greenhouses and \u201cexpanded to bigger, homemade\u201d ones, and in 2012, they did \u201ca big land clearing\u201d of 6 acres. They now have 9 acres on which they grow all kinds of vegetables including tomatoes, squashes, greens, cucumbers, peppers, apples, and more, which can be purchased at their farm and farmstand and through CSA shares\/ They also offer firewood in season.<\/p>\n
Forty acres of the 127 total could be cultivated, he said. They have room to expand, he said, and when asked if that was the plan for the future, he noted, \u201cOh yeah, the future is sitting right here on the floor,\u201d pointing to his toddler grandson, who loves helping him around the farm.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe knows every tractor and everything about it,\u201d Pineo said of the young boy and quipped, \u201cI get tired awful quick.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two years ago, they built a high tunnel greenhouse that enables them to grow produce year-round, a project that was funded with a NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant through the U.S. Department of Agriculture that was \u201cjust shy\u201d of $10,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of all the fun with climate shift, we used to start growing in April. Now we are lucky to grow by June, and we are now still picking tomatoes in September,\u201d Pineo said, explaining how the changing weather has affected farming. \u201cThe growing season has shifted 45 days to the fall.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 30-by-100-foot greenhouse has increased their tomato production by 60%. Pineo said he did the majority of the greenhouse build himself, but had some help from his two brothers and some friends.<\/p>\n
This winter they built a 20-by-32-foot propagation house that is used to start plants; they can also grow in it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will start winter crops beginning of August, then change over the crops in the high tunnel from tomatoes and cucumbers to salad greens and stuff,\u201d Pineo said, adding that they now have the ability to offer \u201cyear-round spinach.\u201d<\/p>\n
Funding for that came from the Community Foundation of North Central Massachusetts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was an interesting grant,\u201d Pineo said of the money. \u201cIt required me to increase production by 51% for low-income communities. I surpassed that and did 92%.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pineo works with and provides produce to Growing Places, a Leominster-based nonprofit focused on providing fresh food for low-income communities. Growing Places does CSA pickup or delivery, senior center and pop-up farmers markets, and serves the elderly and the food-insecure, among other things.<\/p>\n
\u201cThrough them we have created the local Food Works, a new North Worcester County food hub that is a farmers-first program,\u201d Pineo explained. \u201cIt provides work for farmers so they can have a sustainable program, and then they provide for the community. The subsidies are not for the farmers, they are for the farmers in need.\u201d<\/p>\n
He went on to say that the program is focused on addressing \u201cthe people in need.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe use the staircase mentality. You lift people up from the bottom to the top and then there\u2019s only one way and that\u2019s up. We hear so many aspersions (cast) on the low-income community. We are all up in arms and talking about race; we need to talk about people. I don’t care what color you are or what bedroom you sleep in, we need to help people. And we need to help people by bringing people up.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the newish idea that food is medicine has always been around in the farming community, and he is happy to be involved with programs that help people have access to fresh, quality food.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are put here and the food here is supposed to be what we have,\u201d Pineo said. \u201cWe lean on out West (for food crops) for some reason, but it all started here. All the things they grow out West we can grow here relative to the local climate. If we go back to the mentality of the early 1900s, foods like citrus fruits were treated as a special treat. They are meant to be special, and we need to go back to that. Once you can have it all the time, it’s not special anymore. The everyday staples, we have them and that’s what we are supposed to eat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pineo Family Farm has received other grants that have enabled him to purchase farm equipment, funding Pineo said he is very grateful for, as farming in modern times can be fiscally challenging.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo many grants, I can\u2019t keep track of the amounts. It\u2019s huge, I don\u2019t have to take a loan to pay for this equipment,\u201d he shared.<\/p>\n
Another tricky factor Pineo and other farmers are constantly dealing with is the weather, which is notoriously fickle in New England. He said he heard that because of the extreme low temps in February, peach farmers in the region are facing $1 million in revenue loss.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a huge loss,\u201d Pineo said. \u201cWe do fruit with the Philbins. They have a lot of peaches and nectarines. Stone fruit will be nonexistent for this year. The same thing happened seven years ago. The (fruit) will come back next year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hardworking farmer is involved in many organizations that focus on farming and agriculture. He is vice president of the Worcester County Farm Bureau, vice president of the Massachsuetts Association of Agricultural Commissions, treasurer of the Hardwick Farmers Co-op Exchange, and is part of the Montachusett Agricultural Alliance, which does \u201croundtable discussion, education, and promotion\u201d around farming.<\/p>\n
He is also involved with Central Mass Grown, \u201cquasi-involved\u201d with the Freight Farm effort at Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical School in Fitchburg, and runs the Sterling Farmer\u2019s Market, which launched June 9 for the season that runs downtown on Fridays from 3 to 6:30 p.m. through October.<\/p>\n
Pineo Family Farm is one of the market’s vendors, along with other area farms and businesses, and Pineo brings his farm fresh produce weekly. He said he now has a Haitian immigrant \u201cboth farming for myself and me, kind of like a crop share,\u201d a man who joined them last fall and got started prepping land to use.<\/p>\n
Pineo is working on a building a storage shed for the man who also works at a research farm in Shrewsbury to use, which will also double as a break room.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe brings his family along every once in a while,\u201d Pineo said of the man, who provides \u201cin-kind labor.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked what he enjoys about farming, after joking that he doesn\u2019t have to ask anyone for vacation days \u201cbecause I don\u2019t get them,\u201d being his own boss is clearly what Pineo appreciates the most.<\/p>\n
\u201cI get to pick and choose what I do. I don\u2019t have anyone harping on me, and I don\u2019t have to adhere to anyone\u2019s schedule. Farming is freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Danielle Ray Landmark correspondent STERLING \u2014 Mike Pineo comes from a multigenerational line of farmers and has been farming the 127-acre tract of beautiful country land on Tuttle Road for decades. It’s a family legacy he is working hard to continue. His grandparents bought their first farm, Schenk Farm down the road, in 1954. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44589,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_gspb_post_css":"","_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}