Even on a rainy June day, Kelly MacDonald Weeks, PhD and Executive Director of Soule Homestead is rushing around on the farm teaching, working the land, managing volunteers, arranging upcoming programs, and chatting with the Express Newspaper. MacDonald Weeks is no stranger to multitasking. In addition to being the Executive Director of Soule Homestead, she is a professor at both Bridgewater State University and UMass Boston in American Studies. For more than 25 years, MacDonald Weeks has been tailoring learning and life experiences to students young and old -hoping to teach more than whatever is offered at the surface. Her approach to making Soule an increasingly integral part of the community that honors its past while finding poignance in the future is a testament to that.
“The history of this parcel of land starts long before European colonization with the Nemasket tribe. The land here is very biodiverse with wetlands and vegetation and waterways, so the indigenous people were drawn to settle here,” says MacDonald Weeks. Many projectile points have also been found in the area -indicative of hunting grounds, MacDonald Weeks explains. “One of our community gardeners found her broccoli was being pushed up, and after digging, she found it was being pushed up by a projectile point.”
After the first European settlers arrived in the area, George Soule, an Indentured Servant of the Edward Winslow family and one of the youngest people to sign the Mayflower Compact, joined together with 25 other men in 1662 to buy a large parcel from the Nemasket Indigenous people -a band of the Wampanoag tribe. “Perhaps ‘buy’ isn’t the right word,” says MacDonald Weeks, “It was more of a trade and not a purchase, and George was the equivalent of a bit of a real estate mogul and actually lived in Duxbury and not on this site.”
With one of his sons being a known troublemaker, the parcel of land was eventually left to his son James -the first white colonist to farm the land. “The land also came with cattle inherited from the ‘Cattle Division’ when England broke its indentured contracts and the assets were divided among the colonists,” explains MacDonald Weeks. This variance from communal to privately owned livestock allowed farms and local settlers to create local industry, income, and independence.
33 years after its founding as a non-profit farm and former dairy farm, Soule Homestead has remained an undeveloped, bucolic destination and has become a beloved center for agricultural education and ecological innovation. Upon pledging to the town of Middleborough two things, that a certain percentage of Soule Homestead is leased to local farmers, and that it will continue to be a center to teach the community about agriculture and ecological responsibility, the town leased 120 acres on the Middleborough portion of the land in ten-year contracts to Soule Homestead as a non-profit organization.
“We teach so much more than livestock agriculture,” says MacDonald Weeks, “We teach about gardening, seed saving, composting, biodiversity, beekeeping, environmental stewardship, arts and crafts -I even love to teach kids how to use power tools safely.” Though immensely busy with managing the homestead, MacDonald Weeks gets her hands dirty in the gardens any chance she can. “We grew all our own flowers to harvest the color for a tie-dye project and I try to keep vegetable gardens going all season.”
MacDonald Weeks isn’t the only person working the fertile soils of Soule Homestead. “We have 22 community garden plots,” MacDonald Weeks points out, “There is a waiting list for the option to rent a spot for the season. Some of our community gardeners have been renting out the same plot for years.”
For MacDonald Weeks, the community gardens are also a hub for connection. “It is neat to see the different things everyone is growing as everyone has very different gardening styles and preferences. Community gardeners have shown how generous they are in sharing their seedlings, gardening advice, and harvests. We donate the crops not needed for our families and the farm to local food banks.”
While parcels of Soule Homestead are leased to farmers and these areas are off limits to the public, most of Soule Homestead can be explored freely by visitors. Trails meander through the forested property and a rich population of birds and insects are residents of this protected oasis. “Blake Dinius, the local insect expert, visited and found a rare butterfly here on the property that hadn’t been seen in the area in 100 years.” MacDonald Weeks was recently taken aback when she identified a male and female bald eagle soaring above the woods.
With a vast homestead, gardens, woodland, livestock, educational programs, and year-round events on the farm, you would never guess it is headed by only two full-time employees, a dedicated Board of Directors, and a large body of volunteers. MacDonald explains, “We are kept in motion by our volunteers.” One of the most popular volunteer programs is called “Leaders in Training” -a homestead education and volunteer opportunity for teenagers and young adults. “Most of them are here to earn their community service credits, but they often end up enjoying the hard, engaging work and the way it gets them to talk to each other while learning life skills. Our teens are out there weeding, weed whacking, learning about organic pest and weed control, animal husbandry, and all sorts of things you can’t learn on a screen.”
Soule Homestead offers options for anyone of any age looking for a learning experience. “Right now, we have the Middleborough Public Library displaying a storybook trail along with one of our trails. We also have our children’s summer day programs starting up, and a Firefly Frolic Walk coming up with Blake Dinius because we have an easy time seeing them here due to organic farming methods and little light pollution.” Indoors, Soule Homestead is committed to teaching arts and crafts -particularly disciplines that are nearly forgotten and rarely passed on. MacDonald Weeks explains, “We offer workshops on rug braiding, rug hooking, quilting -anything local experts want to volunteer their time and expertise to teach about. Our workshops help inspire people while preserving the skills our parents and grandparents considered essential.”
In addition to learning, volunteering, working, and exploring at Soule Homestead, there is also opportunity to simply visit and relax while supporting them. “On July 11, we are starting our Concert Series with a favorite musician, Lainey Dionne,” says MacDonald Weeks. Dionne is a GRAMMY®-considered indie pop singer/songwriter from Rhode Island with over 50 nominations and awards for her songwriting including Songwriter of the Year at the New England Music Awards. “Some of her songs were recently featured on ‘Love Is Blind’ and ‘The Kardashians’. We are very excited to have her back at Soule.”
Amidst the exciting line-up of events, workshops, educational programs for children, wildlife, community gardens, working farm plots, nature trails, a mud kitchen for little ones, adorable farm animals, story and craft time for families, and an ever-changing array of learning opportunities, you might forget that Soule Homestead is fueled by community -quite literally, and these incredible offerings can’t exist without public, local support. “Running a historic farm is expensive,” points of MacDonald Weeks, “We do our best to keep costs minimal and to cut back on spending, but as a non-profit we can only secure so much of our finding through grants. We need the community to continue to donate, volunteer, join our membership program, and even if you can’t financially support us, spreading the word is great, too!”
MacDonald Weeks is setting her sights on the future with Soule and planning to find news ways to teach new guests about the true nature of farming -which she sees as an interaction with nature and far more interconnected and intricate than just taking care of animals or plants. “We are always looking to expand our programming. We want to bring back some past programming -especially children’s programs. Schools are undergoing so many cuts in funding and we hope to find a way to support and supplement those cut areas such as assisting in providing field trips for kids to have farm experiences.”
Soule Homestead has seen many seasons as a place of good and plenty as a working farm and resource-rich area -from its first moments serving the Nemasket people with fertile ground and game, to being planted out and used to raise crops and cattle, and now as a community homestead. It would be nearly unthinkable to not add yourself to its historical guest-list -not just as a visitor, patron, or participant, but as a student because as Nemasket Chief, Lance Young said, the land in this area is “a living, breathing resource for the common good.”