News from Waltham Fields Community Farm

Waltham Fields CSA <farmmanager@communityfarms.org>
Mon, Jun 11, 2007 at 9:24 AM
Reply-To: farmmanager@communityfarms.org
To: Shareholders
June 12 - 17
Waltham Fields Community Farm
CSA Newsletter
Distribution Week #1

In This Issue
What's in the shares
Pick your own crops
Coming soon
Comings and goings
Crop updates
Notes from the field
Quick Links
CSA Overview
Newsletter Archive
FAQs
Tips for Share Pickup
Harvest Schedule
Produce Info and Recipes
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.

Welcome to the 2007 Harvest Season!

Share pickups at the farm are:

  • Tuesday, June 12, 3-7:30 PM
  • Thursday, June 14, 3-7:30 PM
  • Sunday, June 17, 3-7:30 PM
Share pickups in Somerville are Tuesday June 12 from 5-7 PM.

Bring bags if you have them! Bring your own household compost if you don't mind the walk to the compost piles. 
 What's in the shares this week

rows of brassicasPlease note:  this list is prepared the week before we harvest your share.  Some guesswork is involved:  some things may be in the share that are not on the list, and some listed things may not be in the share.

Lettuce

  • Red and green 'grand rapids' style and butterheads; speckled 'trout' heads

Salad and Cooking Greens

  • Arugula - spicy shareholder favorite for salads and light cooking
  • Mizuna - not spicy but full of flavor for sautee or salads
  • Hon Tsai Tai - pleasant, mild taste raw in salads or lightly cooked
  • Tatsoi - mild, spoon-shaped leaves
  • Pac Choi - delicious in stir fries and other Asian specialties
  • Endive - use this crisp, bitter green in salads or cook it as a side dish
  • Spinach - limited quantities, but delicious from the farm!
  • Kohlrabi - sweet and delicately flavored; can be eaten raw or cooked, like broccoli stems

Root Crops

  • Spring turnips - deliciously crisp and white - use like radishes
  • Radishes

Alliums

  • White and purple scallions
Looking for some recipe ideas for cooking greens?! For even more ideas, see our Produce Info and Recipes.
Pick your own crops this week
  • Oregano
  • Chives with flower tops
  • a handful of sugar snap peas

CSA shareholders can visit the farm to pick your own herbs Sunday through Thursday during daylight hours.  Visit the red pick-your-own kiosk in the fields for a list of available crops and picking supplies.

radishesComing soon

This forecast will hopefully help you plan ahead.  It's slightly more reliable than a weather report.

  • Carrots
  • Beets
  • Kale
  • Napa Cabbage
  • Broccoli Raab (Rapini)
  • Broccoli (maybe!)
Comings and goings on the farm

We said goodbye to our fantastic spring interns from the Gann Academy, Emily Jaeger and Sage Ungerleider.  This week, Anna Wei and Sara Franklin joined the team as summer season interns, completing our summer farm staff. 

Recent volunteer groups on the farm included graduating seniors from Chapel Hill-Chauncy Hall in Waltham and Belmont High School and students from the Waltham YMCA.

Crop updates

savoy cabbage

The June 1st planting marathon is over:  tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and sweet potatoes are in the ground in time for the rains from tropical storm Barry.  The hot, dry weather at the end of May caused some drought loss in our early cucumbers, planted at the Lyman Estate fields where we have no irrigation.  Weeds are growing at a brisk pace, but our stellar farm crew is keeping up with them so far.  We have not suffered the major damage from onion and cabbage root maggot that we have in past years, but we did have a significant invasion of Japanese beetle grubs that chewed on the roots of our lettuce, spinach and early brassicas (hence the "maybe" beside the broccoli listed above - but spring broccoli is generally a gamble anyway). We applied milky spore, a bacteria that attacks the grubs, to parts of the field where we were seeing the greatest losses in hopes that the bacteria will inoculate the soil and prevent further infestation.  It seems like additional tillage in the future will help us expose the grubs so that they'll be gobbled up by our resident killdeers, sandpipers and cowbirds before we plant a crop into the ground.

Our cover crops, after a late start because of cold weather at thepeas beginning of April, took off during the month of May.  It is really a joy to walk around the farm and see tall stands of rye, vetch and field peas growing in many of the fields, providing nutrients and organic matter for the fields that have given us so much.  They also provide habitat for lots of beneficial insects as well as some of our less favorite animals, including baby woodchucks and bunnies.  We'll be turning them in bit by bit as we plant the fields, but check them out before we do if you get a chance.

Notes from the field

It's been a long time since I enjoyed spring.  Since I can remember, it has seemed like a season filled with uncertainty, when a surprise frost could kill the buds on a fruit tree or a four-day nor'easter could sweep down and flood a field full of just-planted seedlings.  It is a time when voracious newly hatched bugs gobble up tender young crops, when a 40 degree day is followed by a 90 degree day and a key piece of equipment malfunctions at a critical planting time.  I generally live through spring with knots of anxiety in my stomach and a head filled with planting schedules and pest management plans.  For years, I have thought of it as a season when, frankly, things could go either way:  we could ride out the turbulence of April and May and coast gently into summer, or a yawning gap could open in the space-time continuum and we could be launched into something completely different and unexpected, like the next ice age.  This is not a particularly pleasant way to spend one quarter of the year. lupine tipi

This year, something is different.  I've been noticing how beautiful the fields look in the soft light, the flight of a pair of orioles into the plum tree in the children's garden, the sounds of the migrating warblers.  I've enjoyed the one of the best spring tonics, nettle soup with toasty bread, and looked forward to the upcoming harvest.  I've been planting flowers. 

I'm not sure what exactly has changed.  There were the usual ups and downs: a broken tractor, a pest problem, a little drought - but despite all of that, spring felt almost tranquil to me this year.  Many times over the course of this normally chaotic season, I found myself feeling only one thing - gratitude.  Kate, incredibly thoughtful as always, sent away for a pair of noise-blocking headphones that we can wear when we're on the tractor that also broadcast the radio.  Listening to an early-season Red Sox game on those headphones while preparing beds in which Beaver Country Day students could plant celery and looking out across these familiar fields was one of the most calming experiences of my farming career.  Our farm is better staffed than we have ever been - we have an amazing executive director and assistant farm manager, along with talented and dedicated assistant growers and a great crew of summer interns.  This is my fourth season on a farm that I am slowly, ever so slowly, beginning to understand, and many of you coming out to the farm this week are returning shareholders who feel like old friends.  I don't know if all of those things add up to inner peace, especially for a farmer in the springtime, but they certainly make a difference.  Maybe it's the growth of a little faith.  Maybe it's simply that as I grow older, I no longer expect to not feel stress and anxiety - I only hope to enjoy the moments when they are briefly replaced by a kind of grace.  Or maybe it's just the new tractor headphones.  You never know.

 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