News from Waltham Fields Community Farm

Waltham Fields CSA <farmmanager@communityfarms.org>
Mon, July 9, 2007 at 9:24 AM
Reply-To: farmmanager@communityfarms.org
To: Shareholders
July 9 - July 16
Waltham Fields Community Farm
CSA Newsletter
Distribution Week #5

In This Issue
What's in the shares
Pick your own crops
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.

July 15th - Eat Your Greens Contest August 19th - Putting Food By: An Introduction to Preservation Methods
September 16th - ***TBD***Have Suggested Topics or Speakers? - send them to Alison Horton.
October 21st - Panel on WFCF Programs: Hunger Relief, Education, Volunteers November 18th - Harvest Potluck - Details to follow.December 16th - Winter Solstice - Details to follow.

For more information...

 Welcome to the 2007 Harvest Season!
kohlrabi

Share pickups at the farm are:

  • Tuesday, July 10, 3-7:30 PM
  • Thursday, July 12, 3-7:30 PM
  • Sunday, July 15, 3-7:30 PM

Share pickups in Somerville are Tuesday July 10 from 5-7 PM. Fruit shares usually begin around the last week in August. Please check our website for more information.

Bring bags if you have them! And bring your own household compost if you don't mind the walk to the compost piles.

 What's in the shares this week

Please 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.

Salad and Cooking Greens

  • Kale
  • Swiss Chard

Root Crops

  • Carrots
  • Beets
  • Salad Turnips

Alliums

  • Bunching Onions

Coming Soon...

  • Sweet corn and tomatoes!

Have you checked out our ideas on our Produce Info and Recipes page? Feel free to submit recipes and cooking ideas to us at waltham.csa.news@gmail.com!

Pick your own crops this week
  • Basil
  • Green Beans
  • Fava Beans
  • Parsley
  • Epazote (a Mexican herb that is exceptional in bean dishes)

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.

weeding at the farm

Comings and Goings on the Farm

This past week was the first week of our annual Children's Learning Garden program.  Our longtime partner, Cambridge Adventure Day Camp, returned to the farm, while new groups from the Cedar Hill Girl Scout Camp and the Waltham Parks and Recreation Department joined lead teacher Mark Walter and many volunteers, including Judy Fallows, Reva Dolobowsky, Kerri Klugman and three peer educators from Waltham High School. 

The visiting children planted, weeded and watered, tasted raspberries and vegetables, and observed bugs and flowers in the Children's Learning Garden and around the farm.  We are glad to have our newly expanded children's program back on the farm!

Crop updates

It's dry - very, very dry on our farm.  This is crunch time for us, when fall crops of broccoli, carrots, collards, kale and rutabagas need to be planted, weeds are still growing like crazy and our harvests are starting to gain intensity.  Extremely dry weather means that in addition to all these tasks, we need to spend person time moving irrigation pipe on our Field Station site - and praying that the crops at our Lyman Estate field, which does not have irrigation, will make it through the dry spell.  Every localized shower or thunderstorm seems to be missing us, and as of the moment when I'm writing this we have not had significant rainfall since the beginning of June.  In addition, with the notable exception of the last week of June, it's been generally cooler than average - this is great weather to be working in, but it means that everything grows more slowly than it normally would, and so it take longer for the crops to close their canopy, meaning more time for weeds to grow, meaning more weeding for us and slower growing crops for you.  As some folks like to say, farmers are never happy with the weather.

Our tomatoes and peppers, thanks to soil-warming plastic mulch and drip irrigation, have not been touched by this drought or the cool weather.  They are growing fast and furiously, with lots of blossoms and deep green foliage.  Sweet potatoes and eggplant are beginning to take off as well.  The cucumbers, squash and watermelon that we planted at the Lyman Field are slowly recovering from their woodchuck feeding frenzy.  We tried many different things to help keep the woodchucks away, and we have some hope that we can hold them off long enough to get a good harvest from those crops within the next month or so.

Notes from the field: Carrots for the wife

Most of you have probably seen Robert, even if you didn't realize it at the time.  He's the tall white-haired gentleman in the straw Panama hat, striding across the farm with a distinctive gait, a little white dog at his heels, and a few cardboard boxes under one arm.  The boxes are gleaned from local businesses to hold the vegetables for our hunger relief partner agencies.  Devlin, the West Highland White terrier, has been Robert's constant companion for the past four years.  Robert has walked Devlin and his predecessor, MacGregor, a legendary hunter of woodchucks, around the Beaver Street and Lyman Estate fields since the early days of Waltham Fields Community Farm.  He stops by at all times of the day - first thing in the morning, at lunchtime, late in the evening - but his favorite time to visit is during a CSA distribution, when the fields are full of shareholders and the stand is full of freshly harvested vegetables.  He approaches the distribution shelter with his distinctive hearty greeting and surveys the available produce with a practiced eye.  It has always been our informal agreement that in exchange for his box collecting, Robert can take home a bit of produce from the distribution stand or from the field.  Until very recently, though, no matter what we had on offer, he would look it all over and take home only one thing:  a bunch of bright-orange, summer-sweet carrots 'for the wife'.   

sunflowerRobert never referred to his wife, Maryam, by name when he talked about her to the farm staff.  Instead, he always called her 'the wife,' and although he often added "that red-headed Irish Catholic - I'll never marry another one", the bemused tenderness in his voice made his words gentle.  After fifty-two years of marriage, two children, and decades of work for the telephone company and as a Bentley college policeman, Robert still had eyes only for 'the wife'.  After she became ill with lymphoma several years ago, she could no longer join him on his daily walks around the fields.  He drove her to every doctor's appointment, and we received regular updates on the ups and downs of her illness when he visited the farm to drop off boxes or stroll around the fields.  Each season, as the first carrot planting matured, we were sure to see a little turned-over patch at the edge of the bed with a few twisted-off tops lying beside it:  evidence that Robert had stopped by to pick up a few carrots for the wife.

This spring, Maryam became progressively sicker.  She entered a nursing home, and one weekend morning Robert said sadly that he knew that she would not be coming home.  The next time I saw him, he was standing by the distribution shelter on a Thursday afternoon, accompanied by Devlin and holding a few boxes, but looking pale and stricken.  "The wife is gone," he said.  "She waited for me and she went at just past one this afternoon.  The last thing, I asked her, 'are you mad at me?' and she nodded, 'yes'.  Then I asked her, 'do you love me?' and she nodded, 'yes, a lot.'  I don't know what I'm going to do without her." 

In a community like the one that supports our farm, it seems like we are always both celebrating and mourning.  On a smaller scale, we celebrate the arrival of the first tomatoes even as we mourn the loss of our summer squash to nibbling woodchucks.  We are joyful at the first flight of the baby barn swallows and sorrowful at the death of a fledgling killdeer.  We celebrate the birth of children and the accomplishments of our community even as we mourn the departure of friends and the losses of our members.  When we are faced with a love as great and as long-lived as this one which has suddenly been profoundly transformed by a death, it seems only appropriate for us to stand still, celebrate, and mourn. 

After a few days, Robert returned to the farm, bringing boxes and news of the first days of managing without the love of his life.  After we talked for a little while, he walked over to the vegetables under the distribution shelter.  He walked slowly down the length of the tables.  When he came to the carrots, he paused.  His hand lingered over the bunches, finally lighting on a particularly beautiful one.  He lifted it in his hand and walked back towards me.  "She loved these, you know," he said. 

Robert made a donation to the farm so that a memorial to Maryam Kelliher, a lifelong resident of Waltham, might be placed here in her honor.  We mourn and celebrate her life with him.

 

 
 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