• Cherry Tomatoes
• Plum Tomatoes
• Hot peppers
• Basil
• Beans
• Parsley
• Dill
• Cilantro
• Perennial Herbs
  

CSA shareholders can visit the farm to pick your own 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.

Our farm crew is down to the bare essentials these days with all of our interns back at school.  Despite our struggles with the dry weather and the need to keep the water running as constantly and efficiently as possible, Andy, Kate, Martin and I are enjoying the new rhythm of the fall work and the chance to look ahead to next season.  It is great to have the opportunity to work with the shareholders and other volunteers who come back to the farm for this beautiful time of the year. 

Challenging weather on the farm is not uncommon.  A wet year brings disease and interruptions in planting cycles; a dry year brings lower yields and lots of hours spent irrigating on our "days off", reminding us that even suburban farmers can't keep suburban hours.  My husband Mark says that I am almost always complaining about some aspect of the weather: temperatures  too high, temperatures too low.  Early frost, late frost, no snow, too much snow.  Mud. What has become most clear to me about my relationship to the weather this season, however, is how powerful a reminder it can be of the forces we are attempting to shape into a functioning agricultural ecosystem. The natural world that we interact with on a daily basis in our farming has a quiet voice, but it will not be ignored. I'll be humming along, feeling almost in control, planting, cultivating, harvesting, and then all of a sudden be knocked back on my heels by the knowledge that -- of course -- this is way bigger than I am, so much larger than our little farm and our efforts to grow food, so much larger than any of us can comprehend in our best moments of expansive mind.  

This knowledge can have several effects on me, depending on my state of mind and the time of day.  7 AM, sunny skies, temperature of 72 degrees:  feeling at one with the world, in tune with the rhythms of the earth, privileged to see the first flights of the swallow fledglings and the swoop of the goldfinches in the sunflowers.  6 PM, sunny skies, temperature 86 degrees, covered with a fine layer of dust, sweaty, thirsty, feeling completely dessicated by sun and wind and pummelled by the waves of good and bad news from the fields -- collards look beautiful, watermelons eaten by woodchucks, cover crop on, no rain in sight. 2 PM on a 90-degree weekend day, moving irrigation pipe with Mark for the third time, feeling completely content to be on the farm while Jonah gathers beets and the cicadas hum all around us.  6 AM on a 55-degree, pitch-dark harvest morning, watching the first rays of the sunrise burn off a fog over the fields as Andy, Martin and I bunch collard greens and sensing the connection we have with the mysteries of life.  6:15 AM on the same morning, as the 60 year old tractor chooses this moment to spew gasoline from his carburetor:  wondering why I decided that this degree of complexity was necessary in a career choice.  At its best, farming is a profession that gives you a glimpse of your part in the larger workings of the world; at its most difficult, it often does the same thing.   

These daily ups and downs are part of farming, and they are compounded by the overall arc of the season, whether it's a great growing year or a tough one.  In each of the past three seasons here at Waltham Fields, and on several farms in years before that, the combination of all these things made it difficult for me to retain the sense of perspective and connection that I so cherish, leaving me in July and early August with little to hold onto but the short-term anxieties of the season.  Coming to September, when the worries of the season fade away and the harvest enters the home stretch, has brought me some relief and a renewed sense of a purpose beyond the immediate.  This year is a little different -- not that I never got lost in the worries, but for the most part I was quickly found again, thanks to kind words from my amazing co-workers and shareholders, a few days off when I badly needed it, and the slow-growing understanding of the small miracles that the land here can work if we help it.  For the first time in my time farming, I can see the challenges brought by the dry weather as a moment to learn in instead of as a failure.  If that's not indicative of a little bit of growth, I don't know what is. As always, I'm grateful for the opportunity.