Notes from the Field: Summer Solstice

The sun stood still last week at the northernmost point in its travels up the sky. The weekend full moon was huge, the closest to the earth it will come this year. A double rainbow graced the sky after a brutal thunderstorm pounded the fields with yet more rain. We plowed under the spring's cover crop, driving the tractors through fields of purple and white vetch and pea flowers under a perfect blue sky to prepare the way for the fall's broccoli and cauliflower. Must be summer.

The beautiful weather at week's end was a balm to farmers to whom the spiritual exercise of waiting and acceptance does not come easily in the rain. Dan, Sutton and Zannah jumped on the tractors to cultivate everything in sight, and the weed crew followed behind to clean up what was left. We were grateful once again for our well-drained sandy loam soils as the sun and light breeze quickly dried them out and left them perfect for planting and cultivating. The field crew, who had their first few days with us last week, proved that they are up to the task, picking beautiful bunches of greens and radishes and transplanting chard, rutabaga and beets for harvest later in the season. We ferried a thousand tomato stakes to the fields at the Lyman Estate, ready to tie up the robust, stout tomato plants that escaped their brush with the pythium soil fungus during the wet weather and now stand as tall as our knees. We released our first batch of beneficial parasitic wasps, to try again to cut down on the fuzzy yellow bean beetle larvae that can decimate a bean planting. We seeded a summer buckwheat cover crop on a fallow field even as we turned in our spring cover crops. Fava beans grew. Carrots and squashes lengthened and fattened. Pigs seemed hungrier than usual once the rain stopped and they could forage outside again. The sun stands still, but farmers and vegetables don't.

Still, there is a subtle shift in the tasks of the season at the solstice, despite the fact that weeding, planting, harvest and field preparation continue. The twin hurdles of the summer -- staking and tying tomatoes and planting the big block of fall brassicas -- are still before us. As those finish, we'll turn our thoughts and bodies to the summer's heavy harvests: summer squash and cucumbers in July, eggplant, peppers, and tomatoes in August. The fruiting crops remind us that the energy of summer is in ripening, maturing - the work of completion and fulfillment that tends towards the autumn seed. The quick growth of the crops (and weeds!) on sunny summer days is almost visible to the naked eye. Vegetable plants are building their framework, adding on daily, growing above and below the soil during these longest days, resting at night to prepare for more growth, more stretching, more expansion during the day. And although we farmers sometimes barely notice it in the full business of the season, the solstice is an immovable marker on the wheel of the year. It comes, and passes, whether we observe it or not. The crops tell us. The sun tells us. Our tired bodies remind us. Summer's work is upon us.

Enjoy the harvest,

Amanda, for the farm crew

Photos courtesy of Saul Blumenthal.

Notes from the Field: Too Much of a Good Thing

Plants need water. This is one of those basic lessons you learn in elementary school (or, in the case of my personal houseplants, you keep on learning -- sorry, plants). When it's raining, we don't have to irrigate. When it's raining, we can get other work done.

These are the things we kept telling ourselves last week when it just kept raining. We got six inches of rain between Friday the 7th and Thursday the 13th -- more than in the entire month of May. It rained while we were doing our first harvests, re-learning all the things we knew last season about picking and packing and washing and storing. We got a few beds of okra and lettuce planted in between the showers. We seeded lots of fall broccoli and cauliflower in the greenhouse. All of the other tasks that farmers need to do in June -- cultivating, turning in cover crop, seeding, making beds for crops that need to go in, fertilizing plants that need a little extra after the rain washes it all out, scouting for all the pests and diseases that can pop up in cool, wet weather -- had to wait. Even the weed crew, who just started June 4, had two days when they helped harvest instead of weeding last week as the rain made it too wet to pull weeds in the field.

The trick with the wet weather is the mind games it plays. We know we shouldn't be in the fields when they're that wet. Even the pigs know; they stayed inside their Pig Palace for most of last week. But farmers sitting on their hands in June, when we should be our busiest, makes for some cranky farmers. We should be out killing weeds. We should be out seeding carrots. We should be out plowing in rye and vetch to make room for fall crops. But we can't. And so we wait. And worry. We pace, and complain, and put on the rain gear again, and get used to the ache in the feet from the rain boots that -- let's face it -- just aren't that comfortable, and try to remember all the things that we had on our rainy-day list back when it was sunny and warm.

The wise farmer Dan Kaplan, of Brookfield Farm in Amherst, said of last week "at times like these we try to remember that what is required is a spiritual practice. We can only change what we can change. And for all else, we have to learn acceptance."

By Friday, acceptance came a little easier. We remembered how to deal with wet weather. You put all your plans on the shelf and seed in the greenhouse. You eat a little rhubarb snacking cake (thank you, Lizzie!) and catch up on your paperwork. You settle in to the sound of the drops on the barn roof and greet all the shareholders who don't mind picking herbs in the rain, and enjoy the sight of all the brightly colored rain gear in the fields. You wait for the rain to stop and the sun to come out so that you can check out all the crops, see how things fared, and catch up on everything else.

Enjoy the harvest,

Amanda, for the farm crew

Notes from the Field: June Thoughts

Farming is a funny thing. Here at Waltham Fields, we farm as a team, within the context of a larger nonprofit organization doing work that goes well beyond vegetable production. The winter is the time for all of us to work together on the big organizational issues that we try to work out in advance of the upcoming growing season: how are the parts of our organization integrated? How do we communicate with one another? How can we support each other, financially, programmatically, and emotionally during the busiest parts of our individual seasons? What is the 'big picture' and the future for our farm operation? Our education programs? Our volunteer program? Our organization overall? There are always more of these conversations than we have time for in the winter, so I always smile a little when people ask us what we do in the off-season.

Organizational conversations merge with spreadsheets and seed catalogs as we plan out the farm for the season. Our fertility plan takes shape at this time of year, as we pore over soil tests and recommendations for each crop, then figure out the most cost-effective and (hopefully) sustainable way to deliver what the crops need. We also spend the late winter and early spring doing maintenance on our tractors and other equipment. Dan and Zannah attended a wonderful workshop on small tractor maintenance up at Moraine Farm this spring, and Dan hit the ground running working on our three older tractors like an expert. As a result, they are running... well, I'd better not say any more about that. One of the hats we wear as farmers, a little like baseball players, is the irrational and superstitious.

We built a high tunnel: Erinn was the main carpenter and project manager, while the rest of us tried our best to follow directions. We pounded posts, measured and re-measured diagonals, bolted bows together and lifted them into place, framed endwalls and finally, on a gusty day in March, skinned the house, lifting Dan and Zannah completely off the ground as the giant piece of plastic floated up and over the bows. Then Erinn seeded greens and radishes for Sprout, our spring fundraiser, and sold a few pounds to local restaurants before clearing the field house to re-plant with a variety of trial crops this week.

As the spring progresses, we become plant whisperers. The greenhouse is the main focus of our activity in March, as we remember how to seed each crop under Erinn's expert guidance and with the help of many volunteers who enjoy the warm, sunny greenhouse during the unpredictable weather of spring. What do the plants want? What's the perfect time to seed them? To pot them up? To harden them off and plant them out? At the same time, we seed spring cover crops and begin to turn the fields, preparing beds for the earliest crops (onions, carrots, and beets) with the disk, the chisel, the drop spreader and the basket weeder. We become experts at farm math: in order to apply 10 pounds of 8.3.3 organic fertilizer to a 200-foot bed, we have to drive the little Kubota in 5th gear with some throttle. Fish emulsion is sprayed on the garlic at a rate of 1 gallon per 45 gallons of water once a week in May, using the Massey Ferguson in turtle 3. Sprayer and spreader calibration, cover crop seeding rates, measuring fields that we've never used before and trying to apply our 200-foot bed system to an irregular polygon -- these are all the kinds of things on farmers' minds in the spring.

Weed control is another thing that has been occupying our minds this spring. Dan has learned to use our Williams spring tine weeder much more effectively on our onions, fava beans, peas, and many other crops, often alternating it with our basket weeder to kill very small weeds, some even before you can see them. We spent $600 on a flame weeder that covers the entire bed top in one pass, cutting the time spent on this critical task (which kills weeds without disturbing the soil to bring up more weed seeds) by 2/3. Sutton set up our field at the Lyman Estate, traditionally a terrible weed problem for us in the hot summer months, a little differently this year and has been working on innovative ways of cultivating them; one day she brought a colinear hoe to the field and hoed the shoulders of the beds from the tractor seat as Erinn and Naomi set out spinach plants on the transplanter behind her. Sutton has also been using her iPhone to keep track of the time we're spending on different tasks for specific crops, a critical component of determining our costs.

Meanwhile, Zannah has been working at our four acres at Gateways Farm in Weston to get acres of beds made, fertilizer applied, biodegradable plastic laid, cover crop turned in, irrigation set up and fences turned on. Memorial Day weekend, she also took on a big new project when three nine-week-old pigs arrived on the farm and Zannah became a livestock farmer. Red Pig, Little Pig and Other Pig will turn and fertilize a fallow field at Gateways for the season, enjoying all the comforts of their Pig Palace and the taste of field peas and buckwheat before they are sent off to market in the fall.

We troubleshoot equipment, seed, weed, water, fertilize, and think through a LOT of logistics -- with three fields, seven tractors, six farmers, one amazing work share, one wonderful spring intern, hundreds of volunteers, forty crops, three trucks, lots of mix-and-match attachments, and never enough hours in a day, this spring has been a four-dimensional puzzle that has challenged us in every way. Bugs and diseases, of which we have apparently every one known to the Massachusetts extension service, are just beginning to make an appearance on the farm to complicate matters further. And then, somewhere around the beginning of June, those rows and beds, fields and trays become something additional: food. Our first few meals of spring greens from the farm remind us why most of us got into this in the first place. With all the hats we wear in the winter and spring, all the processes that we try to manage, at the most fundamental level we are, as all of you are, eaters. Eating is what we love, and sharing the food we grow with others is the best reward for the complexities of spring. Enjoy the harvest.

Amanda, for the farm crew

Photos by Rebekah Carter (2012 - 2013).