Jim & Sonya Norton of Norton Farm

Jim Norton and his wife Sonya have owned and operated Norton Farm since 1973. The farm straddles the line between Tisbury and Oakbluffs, and its farm stand, on Edgartown/Vineyard Haven road, is a convenient place for down-islanders to buy fresh local produce.

In addition to being a farmer, Jim is a historian and academic, and he has written books on India and the architectural history of Vineyard Haven: Walking in Vineyard Haven.

He recently offered these historical perspectives on local industry and enterprise — a compact historical time-line — to Jim Athern in a letter he shared with The Voice:

I recently chanced upon an MVTV presentation of a discussion at the Commission on future planning for the Vineyard. It stirred some thoughts on ideas that I have had on occasion about where the Island is going. It is presumptuous, but I thought I might share some of them with you, as we share in a sense of heritage and of perspective that I know, at the least, will reach you as the good listener that you are.

Not necessarily in order, here is a beginning:

1. The Island appears to have always had a single industry economy: In pre-Revolutionary times it was subsistence farming and fishing; in the post Revolution-Industrial era, to the Civil War, it was marine: both maritime, predominant in Holmes Hole, and whaling, mostly in Edgartown (where Holmes Hole had more pilots and Edgartown more whaling captains). With the introduction of railroads and petroleum in the mid 19th century, the Island¹s economic base shifted to tourism. There have been continuing attempts to diversify the economy since the beginning of European settlement (as there has also been a consistent pattern of off migration from the Island: mostly of youth marrying or seeking opportunities elsewhere, the big spike coming in the 1790¹s, when close to 15% of the total population departed.) In 1806, four successful mariners in Holmes Hole formed a partnership to manufacture salt, as an alternative source of economic activity and income. [See my article on saltworks in The Dukes County
Intelligencer, Vol. 25, No 1, August, 1983.] It didn't survive the War of 1812. Other attempts to diversify the economy identified the isolation from substantial markets (farming and wool), limited local resources (the brickworks and insufficient forest for ship building), and the lack of vertical integration (no salt consuming industry). What did succeed was dependent upon the single economic base. Dr. Fisher's candle factory was a good example of derivative manufacture. It disappeared as soon as whaling declined. The figure I was given in the 1970¹s (the early days of the Commission) was that the Island economy was 95% dependent on tourism. You and I both illustrate this dependence, if not to that degree, by the difference in our daily receipts from August into September every year. The dependence of our construction activity on second home and summer rental markets also identifies this essential derivative character of our economic base from a single industry. Its nurture is therefore essential to our standard of living. If it collapses, we all go down. That is a kind of economic given of Island life which it appears to me we at least have to be aware of, if not plan around.

Some ancillary thoughts:

a. Tourism has an added derivative component: it is highly dependent on economic activity which goes on elsewhere. Look at the summer rental market when the stock market goes down. As a result, we have very little control over our economic destiny: Our best efforts at improving the Island as a resort will be for naught if other people do not gain enough assets elsewhere to support us. Such is true of the global economy in general, but a tourist economy is especially vulnerable to outside economic forces.
b. I have had a continuing concern since the inception of the Commission about its lack of vital involvement in this economic reality. I understood it to have a two-fold mandate: (1) to bring some order (restraint) to land development on the Island—the impetus for the Kennedy Bill; and (2), if not to generate, at least support, sufficient economic activity to underwrite the cost in economic terms of the land development restraints that the Commission considered necessary. I am not aware of any direct commitment to this second mandate in any other than the very general terms that we have to preserve the rural ambiance of the Island in order to keep it attractive to those with enough money (earned elsewhere) to sustain our standard of living. The issue of affordable housing is in some important ways a result of this kind of thinking and lack of micro economic planning. But that is another issue
c. One important contemporary attempt to diversify our economic base met with dismal failure. During the 1990¹s I participated in an effort to develop a technology infrastructure for the entire Island. Through our public schools¹ technology collaborative, we actually applied for a $5 M federal grant to set up a system hub which could support the technology integration not only among our schools, but with the hospital, town governments, especially the police departments and emergency services, even the Historical Society, the Boys and Girls Club, and the Conservation Society. Such an infrastructure would have provided a base for the development of an entire technology industry. We have had minor activities, such as font creation and video conferencing between our hospital and medical services in Boston. Our project envisioned a whole spectrum which included extensive telecommunication facilities, software development, systems management, and even outsourcing, all of which could happen right here on the Island with a minimal environmental impact and an immense economic potential. Given the quality of our schools (3 Blue Ribbon Schools), our less challenging (though no less experimental) social, particularly youth, environment, and our unique natural environment, we felt we had the resources to attract, develop locally, and sustain a very creative and productive technologically proficient community which could serve as a substantial and independent economic base for the entire Island. Sad to say, we could not find sufficient support for this initiative to move it forward when we had the resources within the school system to bring it off. What we encountered locally appeared to be a nostalgia for an Island paradise, village harmony, and vacation affluence projected by our tourist image, which, if it ever really existed, was part of the problem we were trying to address. This sentiment was held with sufficient tenacity to seem very threatened by what appeared to be an incomprehensible, star wars kind of invasion on our life here. It was sad for me to see it collapse. (It was also sad to discover that the Selectmen of the Town of Tisbury, for example, saw no need for establishing a communication network among town offices—“why would we want to talk to them?”—let alone any advantage to sharing management programs on a common platform: “It¹s none of their business.” More on this later.)

2. My second observation has to do with another aspect of our heritage, one that the two of us share even more directly. For me it has to do specifically with my leaving what some at least thought was a promising academic career “to reactivate the family farm, commit my concern for
education to the Island public schools, and delve into the distinctive history of the Island's past.” To reactivate the farm (fallow for 70 years) was to reclaim not only land on which, on a academic salary, we could not afford to retain, but also to discover a heritage in which to raise our children and to affirm a commitment to preserve our fragile natural environment in a responsible, self subsisting way. As we have run our farm in a modest way, (so modest, we do not seem to appear on Commission maps as farming land), we have also been long committed to affordable housing in a number of ways: our bunkhouse, our providing lots to low income residents, and even those whom Sonya brought out of living in their cars to share in our home.
More general is a concern for our architectural heritage, not just in preserving our own 18th century houses, but also in creating the William Street Historic District in 1975, the first on the Island, (following my brother, who helped to establish the first Zoning Bylaws in Tisbury in the 1950s). The Town of Tisbury retains 17 pre-Revolutionary houses, which affirm the conditions and the values which shaped our early heritage, and which continue with admirable tenacity without public support to define our character in this place today.
That the Island has since its earliest settlement welcomed people from all over the world, and reached out with our maritime heritage to its farthest limits is another vitally important part of this heritage, by which we have continuously been enriched.
These are all qualities which I affirm in my life on our Island, and which I would dearly like to see affirmed in the years ahead. Some of the issues involved here, like the tension between the uniqueness of this place and middle American values are identified in the epilogue of my Walking in Vineyard Haven. It is important to me, as one who has made a deliberate commitment to be part of and contribute to our Island heritage, to have these things be part of the dialogue about who we are and where we might be going.

3. Another look at our Island heritage identifies yet another substantial issue in planning for the future of the Island: regionalization, or more specifically, the lack of it.
I begin with a brief history to identify some of the extent of the divisions which we all recognize, taken from the opening paragraphs of my book on Vineyard Haven:
Many who visit the Island of Martha's Vineyard for the first time assume that Islanders live in a single community, bound together by the ocean waters which surround us. It does not take long to discover that the Island is clearly divided into six separate towns, each with its own history and each fiercely jealous of its own traditions and prerogatives. In this way, the Island is more like a tiny continent divided by artificial boundaries into many nations, rather than a single people.
The history of the Island has long contributed to this separation. Long before any English settlement, the Native American population lived in four distinct tribal areas, Chappaquiddick, Nunepaug, Takkemy, and Aquinnah. [The tribal boundary between Nunepaug and Takkemy still demarks “down” from “up” Island.] The first English settlers arrived from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1642. Under the leadership of Governor Thomas Mayhew, the Island was divided in several other ways. First there were two distinct townships [in both origin and development]. Great Harbour (now Edgartown), was first settled on land on the eastern side of the Island purchased as Common Land by Governor Mayhew from the Sachem of Nunepaug. Tisbury (now West Tisbury), in the center of the Island, was purchased from the Sachem of Takkemy in 1670 by a partnership of four men who came from the Plymouth Colony. A year later, Governor Mayhew, with the help of Governor Lovelace of the New York Colony, also established the only feudal manor estate in New England, calling it Tisbury Manor (now Chilmark). And finally, he set aside several portions of land to be reserved Indian lands, intended to be off limits for purchase and settlement by colonists. These included the island of Chappaquiddick, across the harbor from Edgartown, lands in Oak Bluffs east of the Lagoon called Webataquay, Nobnocket (now Vineyard Haven). Christiantown in North Tisbury, and, at the western end of the Island, Gay Head (now again called Aquinnah).
In 1880, the Township of Edgartown was divided into two towns. The northern half of the old town then became Cottage City, which changed its name to Oak Bluffs in 1907. The expanded Township of Tisbury (to include Nobnocket in 1667) was divided in 1892 into Tisbury (the old east parish of Tisbury, est. in 1796) and West Tisbury. The struggle and ill will generated by these divisions only strengthened the sense of separateness among these towns, both old and more recently established.

The immediacy of this separateness is recounted by Norm Friedman in Linsey Lee¹s More Vineyard Voices (p.192):

When I started working with the Commission, I got a whole new view of the Vineyard. Don¹t forget: I was in one place, in the store. Here I got more into the political end of it and I saw exactly how unregionalized the Island was. This is the big thing. Each town has a different culture. Each town is so different. The people are different. The way they do things is different. They think differently. So we're living on an Island with six different countries. Once you go across a border, everything changes. I don't know how you can change it.

Because the Norton farm falls almost equally between two towns, I can recount a long list of evidence of what Norm is talking about, especially in our interaction with two town governments. But also extensive has been my experience with one of the five regional entities which have major impact on our lives: the Commission, the hospital, Community Services, the Steamship Authority, and the high school and Superintendency Union. My relationship to the high school goes back to the mid 1950¹s, when my father granted to the Regional School District some of the land upon which the high school stands, and my brother served as Clerk of the Works for its construction. I also served for 21 years on the Superintendency Union Committee, and 14 on the High School Committee. During this time I was involved in a number of regional initiatives, many of which confronted directly Norm¹s description of how unregionalized we are. Some were successful, such, as getting all of the Island schools onto a single chart of accounts, with an Island-wide financial officer, setting up a technology architecture for Internet access into every classroom on the Island, a single Island-wide Affirmative Action Policy, and a base for the Ice Arena and Community Services. Others were imposed, as the Labor Relations Board recognition of only one management entity for the entire Island in contract negotiations, and MCAS testing. Still others met with failure, as the initiative to amend the Regional High School Agreement to have its committee members elected Island-wide, rather than appointed by the locally elected school committees. (It passed in five of the six Island towns in the mid 1990¹s.) All of these experiences illustrated in their own way how individual town identity and allegiance are an Island reality that planning for the future must consider.
Some things may be out of our control. For example, fire departments and EMT services, already feeling the pinch in recruiting, may find themselves forced into a single service, stationed at the airport, forced on us by future demographics. Other infrastructure components may be considered regionally as part of future planning, but ought to be considered in a way that is sensitive to the character of our Island.
I was opposed, for example, to the creation of an Island Middle School when that was a hot topic in 1990, mostly because it does not make any sense educationally and socially for young teen age students as an alternative to K-8 schools (as subsequent studies across the country have affirmed). Nor would it have saved us any money. But also important, our local schools have a vital community-building role, not just for students, but for all of us which cannot be easily recreated or sustained by other institutions. Looking for alternatives for this role was not part of the thinking about a Middle School then.
My concern here is not that we change who we are, (which stymied Norm, and is probably unrealistic, if not counterproductive), but that we build upon what we have as positively and inclusively as we can. The distinctive quality of each of our towns, as of each of our schools, is important, and a valuable resource of who we are. My experience suggests that neighborhood community building should be part of creative thinking now as we think about where we might regionally be going in future.

4. I am troubled by approaches that deal with some of our most challenging issues in an either/or context. A specific example is the juxtaposition of land conservation values with affordable housing. I think it is clear that property on the Island is going to become increasingly valuable as it becomes scarcer. This direction is going to make it more difficult to afford both conservation and affordable housing to achieve both a protected natural environment and a wide spectrum of human resources. Even so, one should not be sought to the exclusion of the other. The solution is to see these concerns as a single issue: to develop all available land in such a way as to achieve both objectives: improving and building first of all in an environmentally sensitive way to include both conservation and affordable components.

The school employee housing project on Manter Tisbury Public School Fund land is a case in point. Those working on this project have been concerned from the beginning to develop its 7 acre parcel in Oak Bluffs not only to meet a growing need for low cost housing to attract and keep good teachers. It also intends to develop such housing so as to preserve a maximum segment of the property—over 70%—as undeveloped and to place it with minimal impact on ground water. It also intends to maintain the maximum value of the bequest of Ellis Manter to achieve through this property the “maximum benefit for the schools of Tisbury,” as stated in his will. It would have the potential of netting over $120,000 of income per year for the Town of Tisbury through the Manter Fund. Such would benefit, not only the school, but the Town taxpayers as well. This school employee-housing plan has considered all of these aspects in consort to achieve perhaps not the maximum ideal for each, but the greatest possible benefit for all.

In summary, there appear to be here, on review, four recommendations suggested for consideration in planning for our future:
1. Establishing an economic cost for whatever plan is proposed and developing an economic base to cover such cost.
2. To identify and give focus to those resources and attributes of our heritage which continue to contribute to our distinctive identity as an Island.
3. To pursue regional objectives and efficiencies with a view to enhancing a vital sense of community and preserving the distinctive character of each of our Island towns.
4. To support conservation of natural and human resources and environments concurrently, even in the use and development of individual properties and assets.

This is somewhat of a smattering, largely free-associated. I share it only in the hope that this may be in some ways helpful.