Behind the metal fences and curled razor wire surrounding the yard, New Hampshire state prison for women inmate Nicole Belonga gently tended to her leafy pumpkin patch.
On a recent morning when temperatures were already in the 80s by 9:30, Belonga weeded and tended to the beds with fellow inmate Susan McLaughlin. They each lamented the damage from the state’s relative drought and from invading voles – as McLaughlin removed flowers from their mustard green plants, she exclaimed, “Oh my god, it’s awful!”
The women spend three mornings a week preserving their small garden, the last remaining vestige of agriculture within the Department of Corrections after the state’s prison farm closed last year.
To find any other inmates working in vegetable beds – or milking cows for that matter – one has to drive about two hours north to North Haverill. The Grafton County Farm is the last remaining county farm in the state.
“Once they pull the plug, you just don’t get them back anymore,” said Grafton County Farm manager Donnie Kimball. “It’s sad when they leave, you know.”
Tight economics, combined with a decreasing demand for farm skills, has led to the loss of agrarian opportunities for the state’s incarcerated population. But for the few agriculture programs that are still here, inmates and officials said the benefits persist.
Grafton County Commissioner of 19 years Mike Cryans said of the inmates who work at the vegetable farm stand along Route 10, “very few of them come back to jail” after release.
“They collect the money and interact with the general public,” Cryans said. “I think that says a lot about the confidence that’s been entrusted with the inmate.”
In Goffstown, where the gardens are paid for and helped along by retired University of New Hampshire food and agriculture field specialist emeritus Margaret Hagen’s volunteer efforts, McLaughlin counted herself lucky to have that opportunity while serving her sentence.
“We’re blessed,” she said. “That’s all I can say.”
Before June 30, 2015, the state ran its own correctional industries farm along North State Street in Concord. The reason, said DOC public information officer Jeffrey Lyons, was financial.
“Everything’s based on whether there’s a profit or not,” he said, adding that all prison industries are self-funded. “There wasn’t a profit.”
Now the farm is used to cut firewood from logs, which is then sorted and bagged at Shea Farm, a transitional housing unit for women on Iron Works Road in Concord. Passing by the white farmhouse, purple bags with firewood sit in stacks out front, ready to be distributed to the various state parks around New Hampshire.
Lyons said about 30,000 bundles are prepared annually.
Before the end of fiscal year 2015, though, the prison farm offered a lot more than firewood. “They had a lot of vegetables – we did lettuce, peas, beans. . .” Lyons said. “Often it would help offset our food surplus, particularly during harvesting time.”
Herbs and sunflowers were also sold in the past, and going way back to the 1940s and 1950s, Lyons said there were even cattle at the farm.
“We used to have a dozen or so inmates doing different tasks,” Lyons said. “It was a good program to provide the inmates with those agricultural skills.”
Those skills, however, appear to be in less demand than others the prison can offer, such as carpentry, graphic arts, retail and online services.
“Corrections industries are all about building job skills for inmates,” Lyons said. “We’re always trying to assess what the market is calling for these days – agriculture is still very popular in New Hampshire, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily where the jobs are.”
Still, it doesn’t hurt inmates when they get the opportunity. At the women’s prison in Goffstown, UNH Cooperative Extension has provided the resources and technical education for inmates there to grow produce the past four years.
Hagen, who recently retired from the extension, and Anne Krantz, a master gardener, raise between $400 and $600 for the program each year. They visit twice a month.
“I love coming here,” said Hagen.
The feeling is mutual for Belonga, 35, and McLaughlin, 63, who are the most dedicated women to tend to the garden. Belonga has been in the garden since the program began, and she is particularly proud of the pink pumpkins she grows and then sells to raise money for breast cancer research.
“I think we’ve raised over $300,” she said. “Aside from this year – because of the stupid rodents – this is what makes me happy.”
It’s also giving her something to look forward to when she gets out of prison in as little as two years or as many as eight years.
“I actually want to do the master gardening program at UNH when I get out,” Belonga said.
Just down the road from the women’s prison courtyard and vegetable beds, an old barn sits next to an empty paddock. Once the site of the Hillsborough County Farm, before it moved to Wilton in the late 1800s, it is one of the nine county farms that has closed over the years.
“The main problem with farming in New Hampshire . . . is the lack of available land and sustaining it,” said Walpole Democratic state Rep. Tara Sad, who was involved with the Cheshire County Farm closing nearly a decade ago. The jail moved, the farm transitioned to dairy only, and then it caused competition problems for the area dairy farmers.
The county decided to close the farm and lease out the land. The solution, Sad said, was a “win-win” for farmers and taxpayers.
Other county farms have undergone similar transitions, though the one that has stuck it out – Grafton – is robust. When a visitor dropped by the North Haverill county campus Monday, Kimball, the farm manager, drove his truck throughout the 780 acres of hayfields, forest, cornfields and a vegetable garden before stopping back at the barn, where there are 190 cows, chickens as well as a piggery.
“It’s always been a farm, jail and nursing home here,” Kimball said. Across the road from the complex is the farm stand, where inmates in orange jumpsuits tend to customers and are seen weaving through vegetable rows, harvesting their bounty.
Kimball said there are three inmates who work year-round in the dairy barn, and depending on the season, anywhere between two and 15 helping on the rest of the farm. A major result of their hard work is an estimated $60,000 annually in saved food purchases due to the produce provided to the jail and nursing home.
Plus, Kimball added of the inmates, “We’ve had quite a few of them that have gone out of here to do (farm) jobs.”
What makes the business tricky, he said, is low milk prices in years like this one. The Grafton County Farm’s dairy operation is the main source of income for the farm business.
“Right now we’re struggling,” said Kimball.
Cryans, the county commissioner, said,“I think it’s fair to say that the farm loses a little money most years.” But, he added, the county commissioners want to keep the farm there for the unquantifiable, but tangible benefits, it provides.
“It gives an opportunity for people in the jail to work out in the field and milk the cows and do the chores pertinent to the farm,” Cryans said. Referencing the interactions inmates have with the public at the farm stand, he added, “I think that goes a long way to build self esteem.”
With the extra benefit of food sales and the supply for the county complex, Cryans said of Grafton County Farm, “I think it’s wise to keep it going.”