Far Land Provisions receives Swim for Life Volunteer Award

The Red Rooster at Far Land Provisions is delightfully crowing this summer. Now in its twelfth year, with a second location at Herring Cove Beach, Far Land proprietors Jim Farley and Tom Boland have reached their goal of creating a nexus of the year round community. Witness the phenomenal response to their free Sunset Music on the Beach series at the bathhouse which attract 3-400 people per show. Their “more than a corner grocery store“ has been supporting the Swim for Life all those years, catering the free, post-Swim Mermaid Brunch at the Boatslip, open to the community, for 700+ swimmers, volunteers, kayakers and a crowd welcoming swimmers on shore. Not to mention that Jim has swum across the 1.4-mile distance 14 times since 1991.Far Land Provisions has been selected to receive the Swim for Life David Asher Volunteer Award, given to individuals, groups or businesses that have contributed to the Swim for Life and to the vitality of the community. It will be presented on September 12 at the awards ceremony following the Mermaid Brunch. Past recipients include: Boatslip Beach Club, Susan Roderick, Jim Rann, Steve Roderick, Donna Flax, Brian Cabral, Wayne Ryerson, George Libone, Jan Kelly, Joy McNulty, Ann Maguire, Madeline Miller, Raymond Johnson, Patrick Finn and the Provincetown Rescue Squad.Tom and Jim met in the Berkshires in the mid 1980s, and by the early 1990s they were partners and committed to living in Provincetown. Tom put his Masters in Historical Preservation to good use, collaborating with Ginny Binder at Binder Boland Associates, whose design work included the rebuilding of Whaler’s Wharf, and projects at Brass Key Guest House, Schoolhouse Center and Truro Town Hall. Jim worked with the Visiting Nurse Association as a Registered Nurse in the early 1990s and then went on to earn a Masters in Nursing to become a Nurse Practitioner, working at Outer Cape Health Services for five years. But they wanted bigger challenges and decided to open Far Land to support year round jobs and enhance the sense of community. They have sixteen year round employees, bumping up to forty plus in the summer.Besides being a longtime business sponsor of the Swim for Life, they also support the Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, and Tom sits on the Provincetown Theater board and Jim on the Lower Cape Ambulance board. An example of their community spirit and compassion is the critical help they provided for a longtime employee from Kosovo who had life-threatening kidney failure. They facilitated his visits to the emergency room and a Boston hospital for surgery. They have set up a fund with YouCaring for his care.