A Fallow Year

A Fallow Year documents a pivotal moment for The Farm School in Athol, Massachusetts — founded in 1989 around connecting people to land. When COVID shuttered their programming and the country's racial reckoning demanded reflection, they did something radical: they stopped. What emerged was a fundamental reorientation — giving produce to underserved communities, and initiating a relationship with the Nipmuc people, on whose ancestral land the school sits, toward the possible return of that land to their stewardship.

DIRECTOR’S NOTES:

I know this land. My connection to the Farm School runs deep and personal, which is why I understood immediately that this story couldn't be told in conventional documentary terms. What the moment called for was something lyrical — a film that made space for silence, for transformation, for the weight of what was being released and what was being reclaimed. We invited musician Suz Slezak into the process as a true collaborator, composing and recording the soundtrack live alongside our filming. What she captured — tones drawn from barns and wooden structures, cabbage fields and open wind — became as much the film's voice as anything spoken on camera.