This Fund Helped Generate a Regenerative Farm
How The Conservation Fund's Working Farms Fund boosts sustainability and access
Growing Garlic and Soil Health in Woodstock
Silvia Abel-Caines’ Garlic eScape farm in Woodstock, Illinois is one of two in the Chicago region that benefit from financial support provided by The Conservation Fund, a national non-profit.
A passionate believer in regenerative agriculture, Silvia started the garlic farm on a small patch of land, then applied to participate in the organization’s Working Farms Fund. This resulted in The Conservation Fund purchasing surrounding land to create a 30-acre farmstead, renovating a farmhouse on the property that will become the new home for Silvia and her family, and making other property improvements.
The arrangement makes Silvia a tenant of The Conservation Fund, but under a lease-to-buy plan aimed at enabling her to buy the land within five years or less (the parties are aiming for a three-year transition).
Silvia’s road to becoming a garlic farmer has been a long one, though she has dedicated her professional life to agriculture that is better for people, the planet and animals.
She decided early on that she wanted to be a veterinarian, but looking after the welfare of large animals, not house pets. After obtaining an undergraduate degree in veterinary medicine in her native Dominican Republic, she came to the U.S. and achieved a master’s degree in animal science at University of Tennessee in Knoxville and a Ph.D. in ruminant nutrition at University of Nebraska in Lincoln.
As a suburban Chicago resident, Silvia has spent the past dozen years utilizing her expertise as a full-time ruminant nutritionist for Organic Valley, the Wisconsin-based farmer co-op and marketer of dairy products with more than $1 billion in annual sales. Along the way she started gardening with a passion for growing garlic.
This led to her determination to start an organic garlic farm, and introduced her to the biggest challenge facing beginning farmers: the high cost of arable land, especially in and around major urban areas.
Her first step was to attend an online presentation during the pandemic staged by Illinois Farm Link, a non-profit program that connects willing sellers to buyers seeking land on which to farm. (Farm Link, formerly based at Liberty Prairie Foundation in Grayslake, is now part of The Land Connection organization based in Champaign). After making it clear that she planned to farm using regenerative practices, she sign up to participate in Farm Link.
Silvia had checked out several farms without finding the one. But she said that when she visited the property on Kishwaukee Valley Rd. outside the small city of Woodstock in north-central Illinois, “My heart started beating fast. When I got here I knew that this was the place.”
Yet the land she initially purchased was a tiny space, limiting how much garlic she could produce, and also didn’t allow for the rotational growing that is a big part of regenerative agriculture. She subsequently learned about The Conservation Fund, applied to participate and was accepted into the Working Farms Fund.
Silvia’s garlic plot takes up a small portion of the overall 30 acres. To generate additional income, she produces hay on another part of the property. The big increase in the farm’s size enables her to grow more garlic and institute her crop rotation strategy.
How the Working Farms Fund Works
Silvia’s lead contacts with the organization are Emy Brawley, The Conservation Fund’s Great Lakes Regional Director for Conservation Acquisition, and Kelly Larsen, who joined as Chicago Metro Working Farms Fund Specialist after 15 years as operations director for the Chicago Botanic Garden’s Windy City Harvest urban agriculture program. (Kelly, a longtime acquaintance, joined me on my visit to Garlic eScape Farm on July 28.)
Emy explained the genesis of the program during an Aug. 9 webinar that focused on the fund’s other Chicago-area acquisition, a 20-acre farm in Chicago Heights, a south suburb of Chicago. This farm is run by Deshawn Willingham, founder of Chicago Urban Farm Solutions.
Emy described the five-year-old Working Farms Fund as follows:
It is a program to address farmland access and next generation business support for new, young diverse farmers. We are creating a patient path to affordable land ownership, so this program is specifically geared towards farmers that want to own their own land. We are permanently conserving farmland that is at risk of being lost to development. That's farms that are close to metro areas. We’re helping to accelerate the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices and then supporting the increasing supply of healthy fresh, locally grown food for our metro regions.
She said that during the application process, “We ask farmers to have a business plan that shows how they would expand production if they were able to get access to more farmland through the program. Once a farmer is admitted, we work with them to identify a farm that's going to meet their long-term business needs.”
She continued, “Once we buy the farm, the farmer gets immediate access to the land under a flexible lease, and the lease includes an exclusive option to buy the farm from us on a three-to-five-year timeframe… We work really closely to support that farmer as they grow their business and scale production. We can co-invest or invest in infrastructure like wells and hoop houses, we can coordinate and bring to the table resources from USDA to support implementation of conservation practices like cover crops, things like micro-irrigation. And then we also have built partnerships with a lot of market outlets in order to enable those farmers to access markets that are going to help them derisk increasing production.”
To view the full webinar, which includes a presentation and Q&A featuring farmer Deshawn Williamson, click the button below.
Into the Woods… With Sheep
Not surprisingly, given her long experience as a veterinarian, Silvia is planning to introduce animals into her farm equation, starting with a small herd of about a dozen sheep.
Silvia is a true believer that farm animals play a major role in regenerative agriculture, improving soil health through rotational grazing practices. “There is no regeneration if animals are not integrated,” she said. “In fact, the only way that permanent pasture or a prairie can sustain us is in the presence of ruminants.”
Silvia also plans to deploy the sheep to eat their way through the non-native or dead underbrush in a woodlot in the property. “I want to actually do a demonstration of how we can use small ruminants for biological control,” she said. “That way people can get encouraged to detach themselves from some chemicals. These are chemicals that are not mild, they are very strong. And so if they're planning to eat from that forest, you need to remediate situations like that. The last thing you want to do is use herbicides.”
One final thing to note is that Silvia is not growing garlic to sell as bulbs on the retail market. Her focus is on creating value-added products with garlic as a main ingredient. Her current products include fire cider, a spicy tonic with medicinal properties; beet kvass, a tonic that provides immune system support; pickled garlic; and a garlic salve. Click below to visit Garlic eScape’s e-commerce site.
Thank you for the story about Silvia Abel-Caine’s use of Illinois FarmLink to find land near Woodstock, IL & the Working Farms Fund to purchase additional acres for her Garlic eScape regenerative farm. It‘s exciting to read about the healthy value-added products like beet kvass, fire cider, & pickled garlic she makes & about her use of sheep to eat the underbrush in her woodlot. Her farm illustrates how humanely-raised farm animals play a vital role in land management & soil restoration.