Chilmark selectmen will hire an engineering consultant to review two wind turbine projects planned for working farms on South Road.
The town selectmen voted to hire the consultant at their meeting Tuesday night after discussion about an appeal by neighbors of building permits issued recently for the Allen Farm and Grey Barn to put up wind turbines.
The Chilmark zoning board of appeals will hold a public hearing on the appeal on Jan. 19.
Less agriculturally-minded folk than Mitchell Posin might mistake the sign on South Road advertising compost tea for a joke, something dreamt up by kids searching for the world’s least appealing beverage to flog by the side of the road.
In fact it is there to promote the result of three years’ trial and error by Mr. Posin, the co-owner Allen Farm sheep and wool company: an organic fertilizer solution for the bespoke ecology of Martha’s Vineyard.
For Mitchell Posin, who runs the Allen Sheep and Wool Company with his wife Clarissa Allen, the most exciting thing on the farm right now is compost.
“This compost tea has really got my juices flowing,” said the farmer, a stone-hard hand resting on the 50-gallon plastic drum he uses in his barn to brew the solution. One barrel is enough to fertilize an acre of land.
“In the space of a single period at the end of a sentence, there are 500,000 bacteria in this. You’re talking little critters,” Mr. Posin enthused.
Clarissa Allen and Mitchell Posin of the Allen Farm Sheep and Wool Company of Chilmark have been named by the Permanent Endowment Fund of Martha’s Vineyard as the 2008 recipients of the Creative Living Award.
The fund will present the Creative Living Award on August 5 at the Grange Hall in West Tisbury beginning at 5:30 p.m.
