Red Fire Farm, located in Granby and Montague, Massachusetts, is among the small farms suing the Trump administration for , for agricultural conservation, renewable energy projects for rural communities and farmers, forestry restoration and fuel reduction.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office that put a freeze . The lawsuit, filed by Earthjustice, seeks a court order requiring the Trump administration to release the funds.
Ryan and Sarah Voiland, owners of Red Fire Farm, were initially awarded $125,000 through the , to build a new array of solar panels.
"We have some solar panels on our farm properties currently," said Ryan Voiland.
The farm grows produce — and vegetables need to stay cool, summer and winter. They need more sources of renewable energy said Voiland, rather than buying electricity from the grid.
"We have many large coolers and storage chambers that are designed to hold the vegetables at just the right temperature and humidity and those take a lot of energy to maintain," said Voiland.
Now, that second solar array is on hold.
"The Trump administration is trying to just renege on those agreements and cancel them," Voiland said.
After Trump took office in January, Voiland said they started hearing about agriculture and conservation grants being frozen. Then, they learned their grant had been impacted.
"It took a long time to even figure out what was happening there, because there was no communication, no response to emails I sent to the staff for quite a few weeks," Voiland said.
The new solar array was initially designed to be built atop their store, but in February 2024, it burned down. The farm had to reconfigure its federal grant proposal and get it reapproved.
Shortly before Trump became president, Voiland said, the news came that Red Fire Farm would receive the $125,000 award.
Because of the delay Voiland said they haven't actually started construction, when they would have spent tens of thousands of dollars on contractors — and funding from this type of grant award comes through as reimbursements Voiland said.
"So there are farmers out there that have actually spent a lot of money building things, and now they're being told that they're not going to be reimbursed," Voiland said.
