Simon and Robyn Athearn, owners of Morning Glory Farm, are looking to build a new production barn as well as five new cabins on Pond View Farm Road in West Tisbury, which they plan to use as employee housing.
Since Simon Athearn bought the property from his family in 2011, he says, Morning Glory has grown to produce hundreds of thousands of plants, and it requires new facilities to support its output. Adding housing will help bring in skilled employees.
“We can get a good amount of 10- to 12-week summer kids, but we also need some higher-quality skilled farmers,” says Athearn.
Athearn presented plans to the West Tisbury planning board on Monday for the project, which the board endorsed. Morning Glory will go before the town zoning board of appeals in order to address setback and height relief for the project.
According to project documents posted ahead of the board meeting, the project’s barn will be a storage loft in the farm’s agricultural building area, and the employee housing will include a small storage loft and small porch. The detached employee bedrooms are “desired to look small and camplike,” according to documents filed with the board.
The production barn will be used to service the vegetables and cut flowers grown at Morning Glory.
“It’s been about three years of planning,” Athearn said at the board meeting. “Since I bought the property, I’ve been dreaming of building a barn, and now this is my one chance.”
The detached employee bedrooms will serve as dormitory housing, and their residents will use the bathrooms and kitchen space in the farm-use building. Though Morning Glory’s staff demand is mainly during warm months, all the planned bedrooms are naturally insulated, and Morning Glory also has year-round accommodations at its home farm in Edgartown.
One larger, manager’s cabin — which Athearn said is critical to addressing hiring struggles — will have a bathroom. The other bedrooms “[w]ill not contain cooking equipment, bathroom or running water, [and] have very limited downcast exterior lighting, and a bicycle rack,” according to project documents.
Athearn has given consideration to light pollution: “I actually want to put only lights inches above the ground, because I really don’t like how lights shine across the night sky. So we’re going to really try to minimize that as low as the town will let us.”
The planning board was receptive to the project.
“I think it’s a great concept,” said the board’s Matthew Merry. “And obviously we know how hard it is to find housing, and employees are hard to come by — we know that.”
Also planned for the project are roof solar panels, new parking spaces next to the buildings and to their north and east, and an attached shed roof for tractor parking.
I have no affiliation with Morning Glory but I have noticed a vast improvement in their services and quality of products they offer the Island in the past ten years. Whatever any permit board can do to assist this organization is only helping Island residents.
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