May News from Waltham Fields Community Farm

Waltham Fields CSA <farmmanager@communityfarms.org>
Tues, May 22, 2007 at 9:16 AM
Reply-To: farmmanager@communityfarms.org
To: Shareholders
May 22, 2007
Waltham Fields Community Farm
CSA Newsletter
In This Issue
SPROUT a success!
Introducing Kate and Martin
Seeds, cookbooks, & gardening books
Crop Updates
Save the Dates!

CSA pickups begin
June 12. Pickups are
Tuesdays, Thursdays
and Sundays from 3
PM to 7:30 PM at the farm.
For more information...
Quick Links
CSA Overview
Newsletter Archive
FAQs
Tips for Share Pickup
Harvest Schedule
Produce Info and Recipes
Looking for...
Long-time CSA shareholders missed out on the signup and would love to split a share. If you are interested, please email Amanda the farm manager and she will get you in touch with them.
Third Sunday Gatherings
Third Sunday Gatherings are back this season! For those of you who are new to the farm or to Third Sunday Gatherings, they are a great opportunity to meet fellow shareholders and learn about various topics related to our mission.  Each time, we will start with a farm-fresh potluck at five o'clock followed by a guest speaker.

June 17th - Composting, Karen DiFranza of Down to Earth Farm (Hubbardston) - As harvest begins, Karen will teach us how we can put the vegetable scraps to good use.

July 15th - Eat Your Greens Contest  - Can't get your kids to eat Kohlrabi, Kale, Collards, etc.?  Bring a potluck kid-friendly dish, and a copy of the recipe, using one of the more unfamiliar or unpopular vegetables in your household.  We'll let the kids sample first and judge their favorites.  Recipe exchange and discussion will follow.

August 19th - Putting Food By: An Introduction to Preservation Methods - Is the harvest becoming too bountiful?  Come learn the basics of preservation so you can look forward to a "local" taste of summer during the long New England winter.

September 16th - ***TBD***Have Suggested Topics or Speakers? - send them to Alison Horton.

October 21st - Panel on WFCF Programs: Hunger Relief, Education, Volunteers -  Representatives from various WFCF programs will talk about the work they do.

November 18th - Harvest Potluck - Details to follow.

December 16th - Winter Solstice - Details to follow.

Third Sunday Gatherings begin at 5. Please bring a farm-fresh potluck item to share and in the interest of conservation, your own place setting.

Greetings!

First CSA Pickups at the farm are: White Board showing weekly share

  • Tuesday, June 12, 3-7:30 PM
  • Thursday, June 14, 3-7:30 PM
  • Sunday, June 17, 3-7:30 PM
First CSA Pickup in Somerville:   
  • Tuesday, June 12, 5-7 PM

Pick-your-own hours begin June 12.  You can pick your own herbs, flowers, and designated veggies during daylight hours every day except Fridays and Saturdays.  We'll put a list of currently available crops in the newsletter each week. 

Come work with us on the farm!  You are welcome to drop in at 8:30 or 1:30 on Sundays, Tuesdays or Thursdays to help out in the fields or the greenhouse.  No need to call ahead, but if you have questions, please email Andy.

Contribute to the newsletter!  Send recipes, articles, poems, and photos to Susan Cassidy, our shareholder communications coordinator.

Don't forget to send in your final CSA payment by June 1! Mail payments to us at Waltham Fields Community Farm, 240 Beaver Street, Waltham, MA 02452. Drop Amanda an email if you have any questions about your CSA share.


SPROUT... a success!

Thanks so much to everyone who attended SPROUT, Waltham Fields Community Farm's fundraiser at the beautiful Paine Estate.  It was a wonderful evening filled with great music, an incredible silent auction, and tasty food.  The generosity and support of our community was on great display that evening, as we met and even exceeded our goal of raising $20,000!

SPROUT is an important annual celebration for Waltham Fields - it is a chance to come together to launch the growing season, and to raise funds necessary for running our hunger relief and educational programs throughout the year.  If you would like to be a part of making this event happen in 2008, we would love for you to join the SPROUT committee.  To indicate your interest now, send a quick email to Meg. We'll start meeting in the late fall, so stay tuned!
Introducing Kate and Martin

Kate Darakjy and Martin Lemos, 2007 Assistant Growers

This year, we are extremely grateful to have Kate Darakjy and Martin Lemos with us as Assistant Growers for the season.  Both bring a combination of farming and people skills to their work with us, and have jumped in to lead volunteer groups, transplant thousands of vegetable seedlings, and work with all of our tractors in their first month on the farm.

Kate DarakjyKate is a native of Vermont.  Her resume came to us a few moments before the final deadline for applications, accompanied by an email that read 'getting this in right under the deadline, phew.  Thanks for checking it out.' Talking with her during her interview was like having a conversation with an old friend, and ever since she arrived on the farm she has thrown herself into her work with passion and good humor.  Kate has worked on organic farms in Arizona and Western Massachusetts, and is a graduate of Lesley University's Audubon Expedition Institute.  She has spent large portions of the past five years as a backcountry caretaker and field supervisor for the Green Mountain Club, where she developed her management skills and an impressive degree of self-motivation.  It is very hard to take a photograph of Kate, because she so rarely stands still (that's Kate attaching the spader to the tractor above). She has a passion for human waste composting, and she's presenting on the subject at SolarFest in Vermont in July (find out more at www.solarfest.org).  Kate hopes to participate in the management of a community farm in the future, so a season at Waltham Fields is a perfect next step for her to develop her farming skills.

Martin LemosMartin was born in Uruguay but moved to New Jersey when he was seven.  He has worked on a family farm in New Mexico and also participated in the grape harvest at Cameron Winery in Oregon, where he developed a taste for white burgundy.  He is a graduate of Hamilton College in New York, where he studied comparative literature and mathematics, causing Kate to joke that he can read and do math, which turns out to be quite true.  His extensive farming experience comes primarily from his 16-month apprenticeship at Sauvie Island Organics in Portland, Oregon, where he took on roles as varied as greenhouse manager, harvest manager and assistant field manager.  Martin knows that farming is in his long-term future, and believes that "this country is on the cusp of realizing the importance of sustainable food systems and now is the time to push that realization to the forefront."  He is hoping to find a piano teacher for the season, if anyone knows a good one!

Both Martin and Kate are living in Waltham, where they're enjoying the local night life and the chance to run and kayak along the Charles River.

Seeds, cookbooks, & gardening books
Recommendations by shareholders and farmers...

Seed sources

Johnny's Selected Seeds, Albion, ME  www.johnnyseeds.com  One of the outstanding seed providers in New England.  Consistently high quality, a good range of varieties and good customer
service keep us ordering from Johnny's year after year.

Fedco Seeds, Waterville, ME  www.fedcoseeds.com  Maine cooperative seed packer has phased out all seed varieties owned by Monsanto, and provides information on seed sources.  Great varieties.  Also a source for organic gardening supplies in small and large quantities.

High Mowing Seeds, Wolcott, VT  www.highmowingseeds.com.  Family owned organic seed company.  Really great people.  Really great seeds.  Need we say more?

Seed Saver's Exchange, Decorah, IA  www.seedsavers.org  A nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of heirloom seeds.  Outstanding varieties of rare seeds, including some of our favorite tomatoes, that are unavailable elsewhere.

Cookbooks

Farmer John's Cookbook:  The Real Dirt on Vegetables by John Peterson.  A CSA farmer from Illinois writes a cookbook... and some pretty amazing columns about farming as well.

Local Flavors:  Cooking and Eating From America's Farmer's Marketsby Deborah Madison.  Amanda's personal favorite for a fancy dinner, filled with delicious recipes for just about every vegetable we grow.

From the Cook's Gardenby Ellen Ogden.  Also make sure to check out her seeds and plants at www.cooksgarden.com

From Asparagus to Zucchini:  A Guide to Cooking with Farm-Fresh Produceby the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition.  Easy, delicious recipes that focus on veggies grown on community supported farms.

Gardening books

The Garden Primer by Barbara Damrosch.  A well-written, practical guide to gardening, including flowers, trees, vegetables and much more.  A great basic text and reference for the novice or experienced gardener.

The New Organic Grower by Eliot Coleman.  Focused on pretty intensive vegetable gardening, but a great book on everything from crop rotation to planting extra for the bugs.

How to Grow More Vegetables and The Sustainable Vegetable Garden by John Jeavons.  Classics in the field of organic home gardening.

Send us your suggestions!  We'd love to hear from all of you.

 

Crop Updates

Red lettuce in MayIt's spring in New England!  If it's not 35 degrees and raining, it's 80 degrees and sunny.  In general, despite the vagaries of the weather, our crops are growing well.  We switched potting soils in the greenhouse, and our seedlings seem stronger and better nourished this spring.  Thanks to generally favorable weather and the help of many volunteers, we've kept right on schedule with direct seeded and transplanted crops, with the notable exception of our peas, which went in late and germinated slowly because of a cold wet weather at the beginning of April. 

We're keeping a close eye on our alliums (onions, leeks, scallions and shallots) and our brassicas (kale, kohlrabi, broccoli and cabbage), which are usually visited at this time by root maggot flies, which lay their eggs around the base of the plants and tunnel into the roots as the larvae hatch.  By the time the forsythia flowering is done and the weather warms up for good, we are usually out of the woods, but we generally have some damage to our early crops nonetheless. 

Carrots, beets, lettuce (that's red lettuce in the photo above), spinach, and Swiss chard are growing away, although they've been set back a little by the extremely dry weather we've been having for the past two weeks (you know it's dry when the National Weather Service issues a fire weather watch for Waltham).   The first planting of tomatoes (affectionately called the "suicide planting" by local farmer Chris Yoder) is in the ground, getting over the shock of its transfer from the greenhouse to the field, suffering through some chilly nights on its way to August bounty. 

This season, we will be buying in our potatoes and winter squash, which are being grown for us by Jenny and Bruce Wooster at their farm in Winchester, New Hampshire.  Jenny is a former Waltham Fields farm manager with strong ties to our community.  We will also be purchasing IPM sweet corn from Verrill Farm in Concord, MA, as part of our CSA shares this season.  You can find out more about both of these farms on their websites at www.picadillyfarm.com and www.verrillfarm.com.  We are excited about these partnerships with local family farms with a strong commitment to sustainable agriculture. 

 Warmly,
From all the staff at Waltham Fields Community Farm:
Meg Coward, Executive Director
Amanda Cather, Farm Manager
Andy Scherer, Assistant Farm Manager
Kate Darakjy and Martin Lemos, Assistant Growers
Josh Levin, Vincent Errico, Anna Wei, and Sara Franklin, Interns

Waltham Fields Community Farm | 240 Beaver Street | Waltham | MA | 02452