“The cows get really hot,” said Michael Gallagher, co-owner of Square Roots Farm. “They don’t like it anything above really like 75.” Gallagher hopes that solar panels will provide shade to his animals.
This is one of two fields at Square Roots Farm that is slated for a solar array. The chickens are in portable coops as part of the farm’s rotational grazing.
Michael Gallagher, who co-owns Square Roots Farm with his wife, Ashley Amsden, hopes plans for a solar array on his property will be approved by the Lanesborough Planning Board.
Chickens will still be able to forage in this field at Square Roots Farm once a solar array is on it.
Community Voices Editor
“The cows get really hot,” said Michael Gallagher, co-owner of Square Roots Farm. “They don’t like it anything above really like 75.” Gallagher hopes that solar panels will provide shade to his animals.
LANESBOROUGH — How will 6,020 solar panels at Square Roots Farm look from Old Cheshire Road?
That was one of the pointed questions Planning Board member Audra Ladd posed to Boston developer BlueWave at a Planning Board pre-application meeting last week.
On a map, the tiles — 7.5 feet long and 4.25 feet wide — appear as a dense pattern of bright red dashes spread across portions of two fields on the 33-acre property.
But the map doesn’t show what the array will actually look like from the road. The panels will lie flat at night, then begin rotating with the sunrise, tracking the sun from east to west throughout the day.
A landscape architect at Weston & Sampson will draw a rendering to answer that question.
This is one of two fields at Square Roots Farm that is slated for a solar array. The chickens are in portable coops as part of the farm’s rotational grazing.
The 3,973-kilowatt direct-current array is expected to generate enough electricity to offset the annual consumption of an estimated 650 to 750 homes, according to BlueWave. All the power will go to the grid through a new, three-phase connection that will run a mile from Summer Street via infrastructure owned by Eversource.
BlueWave expects to start construction in spring 2027 and finish in four to six months.
There were other questions from the Planning Board, but the one about visual impact prompted The Eagle to request a tour of the site with farmer Michael Gallagher, who attended the meeting with his wife, Ashley Amsden, and their two children, Maggie and Everett.
Michael Gallagher, who co-owns Square Roots Farm with his wife, Ashley Amsden, hopes plans for a solar array on his property will be approved by the Lanesborough Planning Board.
During that tour of the grassy hillside, which took place on a Kawasaki Mule side-by-side, Gallagher noted that the eastern field is cradled by a line of maple trees, which largely blocks the field from view.
“The only sort of vantage point into this field is through the gate we come in through,” he said. “That’s the only way people are really going to see this field.”
The more heavily sloped western field will contain tiles as well as an equipment pad with battery storage.
Gallagher acknowledged that the western field will be more visible from Old Cheshire Road because of its steeper slope.
Looking down and south from that field onto Lakeview Orchard and across the hills, Gallagher made some observations.
“Something you can really see from up here is that we’re already farming in a landscape that’s really impacted by energy infrastructure,” he said. “The orchard across the street, they’ve got trees and berries under the high tension lines. … We’ve got a gas line across the street running through our property.”
Gallagher said he took a walk with his son last week and they saw a doe and fawn munching on new growth under the high tension lines. That new growth came as a result of a trimming project that Eversource recently did.
Energy infrastructure is already a visible part of the local landscape, he said.
“Here’s a big power line cut in the mountain across the road,” Gallagher said. “It’s here. We’re used to all these things.”
At the Planning Board meeting, Gallagher spoke of his interest in creating shade for his cows, chickens and forage. The array — with 20 feet between the edges of panels — will allow him to rotationally graze his animals, noting that because the panels are 10 feet off the ground animals can seek shade under them.
Because the panels will be mounted on I-beams, Gallagher said, he isn’t worried about the cows damaging them.
“Clearly, it’s going to hold up to anything the cows are going to do to it,” he said. “So if the cows want to rub and scratch on them, they can do that all day long.”
Chickens will still be able to forage in this field at Square Roots Farm once a solar array is on it.
The arrays will be bounded by fences of woven wire. A separate fence will surround the equipment pad. Gates will be threaded through the site, said Andrew Hamel at Weston & Sampson.
“We work with Mike to make sure those are in the right spot so he can get where he needs to with his equipment and turn everything around and not have an issue,” he said.
Next steps for the town and the developer will be to consult with their lawyers to clarify certain points prior to BlueWave filing its formal application to the Planning Board.
Back at Square Roots Farm, Amsden was weeding the kitchen garden next to the house, which stands between the two fields in question.
She offered her perspective on the view of the solar array.
“So much of how we interpret the beauty of things has to do with the story that we’re telling ourselves about it,” she said. “And this is a story about clean energy production, which we desperately need, coexisting with sustainable farming on the same land, and that’s a beautiful powerful story.”
Amsden will be looking at this array on a daily basis.
“This is our back yard,” she said. “Looking at it is going to make me feel really good because I know these two things we desperately need are happening together.”
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Jane Kaufman is a News Reporter at The Berkshire Eagle. She can be reached at jkaufman@berkshireeagle.com or 413-496-6125.
Community Voices Editor
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