Julia Rappaport
When Warren Doty first moved the Vineyard in the late 1970s, the Menemsha harborfront was booming.
“Then there were five boats landing 10,000 pounds of sea scallops every three days,” he recalled. “There was a work force of ten shuckers in three different shucking shacks. That’s 30 Islanders working on the docks with about fifteen on boats. The season lasted from October to April every year. There were 45 to 50 jobs in Menemsha for six to eight months during the season.
Driving down the California coastline on a farewell tour of the state she called home, former CBS news producer Susan Gibbs pulled off the highway. She had quit her job; the contents of her Los Angeles home were packed into boxes. She was about to move across the country to New York city, and Ms. Gibbs wanted to say one last goodbye to the Pacific Ocean.
She wandered along the streets of a small waterfront tourist town and ducked into a bookstore. From the shelves she plucked a book, Barnyard in Your Backyard. In that instant, her life changed.
Sparks flew briefly in the Chilmark town hall this week after the zoning board of appeals approved a plan to turn the long-established Inn at Blueberry Hill into a members-only private club.
The zoning board voted unanimously Tuesday to approve the plan by Lifestyle Development Company, a New York-based for-profit organization. The inn must keep its restaurant open to the public and must allow 25 per cent of the inn guests to be from the general public.
With a green light from both the Martha’s Vineyard Commission and the Chilmark planning board, the Middle Line Road affordable housing project has moved two steps closer to breaking ground.
Middle Line, which has been in the works since 2004, will be the first town-sponsored affordable housing project in Chilmark, with six rental units and six resident homesites.
At its meeting last Thursday night the commission voted 8-2 to approve the project, which was under review as a development of regional impact (DRI).
A longtime West Tisbury resident has donated $12,000 to support and encourage female farmers on the Vineyard.
A documentary film on women in agriculture and a panel discussion which followed inspired Kenneth Malcolm Jones, a machinist and founder of the nonprofit organization Up the River Endeavors, to give the money.
The event, entitled Ladies of the Land, was part of the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival which took place in Chilmark last month.
The Island Grown Initiative, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting and promoting locally grown food and its farmers on the Vineyard, has been granted $10,000 to improve and expand its poultry program.
The grant was awarded by Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education from its sustainable community innovation category, which fosters connections between sustainable agriculture and rural communities. Northeast Sustainable is a grants program within the U.S. Department of Agriculture.