Farming on Sand
18. Jan, 2010 
2 Comments 
This is part 4 of a 4-part series on tourism’s impact on Cape Cod. Read about death & carnage in the shell shop, find out about the eco-friendly food scene, look at the pretty pretty sunset, or continue on…
David DeWitt doesn’t look like a farmer. With his long hair, scruffy beard and t-shirt, he’d fit in more at a Phish show than behind a plow. But appearances are deceiving, and David’s comfy mien belies a passion that is influencing the culture of northern Cape Cod.
To wit: in 2009, David helped launch the Truro Ag Fair—an event that exceeded all expectations and brought huge crowds to local farmers’ booths. He runs the Rock Spray nursery, a Certified Natural provider of evergreens and ornamentals. And he manages the First Light Organic Farm, a lush green spot in a hollow of North Truro. Here, David and his partner Arthur Teubner work year-round growing heirloom and hardy fruits and veggies to sell at market.
David’s a dedicated and inspired agrarian, whose passion for farming keeps him optimistic. But farming on the Outer Cape is the sort of Sisyphian challenge that can wear anybody out.
The hard truth:
The soil of North Truro is not strong enough to support agriculture. Without fertilization, it deteriorates shockingly fast.
David points out a patch of sand with a thin strip of fertile loam along the edge. Last season it was a fertile veggie bed—but it was left un-fertilized as an experiment.
“This is what happens,” David says. “You have to keep feeding it organic material, or it turns back into sand.“
This plot was a test run, left untended for a single season. Last year’s rich loam is now useless sand.
It’s always been this way in North Truro. The Outer Cape is really just a spit of sand—but still, farmers lived here for generations. How?
Salt marsh hay.
There used to be a local tradition in this area: at each spring tide, the local community would head out to the bogs and marshes to harvest the grasses. This was called “salt marsh haying”.
Bringing in the marsh hay, circa 1900
Salt marsh hay has no weed seeds, and it doesn’t compact as heavily as other types of hay. This makes it an excellent and bountiful source of compost, and it was used for generations as a soil enricher. But haying had to happen regularly, says David:
“There’s so much oxygen in this soil, any added compost gets burned up in six weeks. All the nutrients get depleted.”
That means soil left for two months without fresh compost will become—you guessed it—sand.
The only way to keep things going here is to keep a steady flow of compost coming in. That means truckloads of hay, and that means a lot of work. Last year, David and Arthur brought in a semi truck loaded with leaf mulch. It worked—but it cost money, and it disappeared fast into the hungry ground. Not a long-term plan.
In bygone times, the whole town of North Truro would pitch in on haying days; now, David’s on his own. Without that community support, it’s nearly impossible for him to harvest hay often enough to keep the farm green.
Meanwhile, in Tourist Town USA…
The Provincetown farmers market has lovely produce, but little of it was grown on the Cape.
Provincetown’s official population of 3,500 supports a tourism industry that serves millions of visitors each year. City folk marvel at the quaint charms of the Cape, its idyllic beauty and simple pleasures. And then they go out to eat.
Even if tourists were interested in sustainable food (they totally don’t care), they’d be hard pressed to find a locally-sourced meal. Raina Stefani serves David’s produce at her restaurant Terra Luna, but it only makes up a portion of her fares: the rest has to be shipped from the mainland. You can’t squeeze blood from a stone, and you can’t get big vegetable crops from sand dunes. End of story.
Well, not exactly.
David isn’t giving up—in fact, he’s got plans and ideas to refashion North Truro’s farming community. Hence the Ag Fair, and the ongoing experimentation with varieties and soils at First Light. David isn’t alone: he’s got the support (and companionship) of a growing group of gamechangers. If the young farmers and foodies of Truro can organize, they might just be able to get local agriculture back on its feet.
Their main opponent? The tourism and real estate industries, which insist upon turning every arable inch of the Cape into somebody’s backyard. The same population that would consume the food produced here is actively inhibiting its production.
No surprise there. After all, what’s the point of farming on the beach?
Like this post? Pass it on.