The Full Strength of July

It seems as though the season is moving along at such a quick pace.  It's already the second week of July!  Cooler weather crops have come and gone, and we are settling surely into the summertime.  We are nearing the end of greenhouse seeding for the season (just two weeks left!)...thus closing the spring and looking ahead to the fall

as we start to plant autumnal brassicas.  I was amazed, standing in the field the other afternoon with Erinn and Anna as we checked on the recently transplanted broccoli seedlings: they're taking root so fast!

The crew seems to be mimicking that rooting behavior.  Last week we welcomed a fourth field crew member Andre to the team and it feels like we are really hummin' now.  The jokes and camaraderie are as plentiful as the harvest.  We've enjoyed fresh cucumber popsicles made by Stacey, and ended one Friday with an intense race to plant celery.  We split into two teams, and among all of us we planted two 200' beds in under fifteen minutes!  Imagine eight sweaty farmers at the end of their week, bent over planting, yelling, laughing, and moving faster than tractors, all within inches of each other.  Strategizing, competition and motivation were at an all-time high.  It was neck and neck to the end and totally incredible.  And, in case you were wondering, my team won...

            Despite the dry weather, the farm looks lush right now.  The squash and zucchini plants are deep green and huge, and I've never seen such consistently beautiful lettuce.  Both our Lyman and Weston fields are in the groove as well, and the potato plants are up to my knees! Some highlights of the past week have felt like benchmarks.  Dan and Erinn finished tying the first round of tomatoes, and we began the garlic harvest last week.  I won't say too much, but it's coming out of the ground and looking impressive.  The flower field is blooming and every day I fall more in love with the snapdragons.  We are watering nonstop.  I must say I am feeling the full strength of July now.

As we make our way into another warm week, I remind myself of the ebb and flow of this work.  There are patterns and rhythms, joys and frustrations.  Sweltering days and moments of reprieve.  It seems as though we are finding our stride now.  Erinn asked me the other day what my favorite thing to do on the farm is... I simply can't choose.  Since April, I have learned so much about farming, and while our days follow a pattern, there's always something new, whether it be a small victory or an interesting challenge.  The first harvest of the morning is always my favorite and I hope you enjoy it on your plates as much as I enjoy harvesting it from the field.

Until next time ~     Janelle, for the crew

Notes from the Field: Introducing the Farm Crew

Farmers are never satisfied with the weather. This gets boring, actually, and so even though I could tell you this week about how schizophrenic it feels to be partly hoping that it DOES rain for the thirsty greens at our Lyman Estate field and partly hoping that it DOESN'T rain while the strawberries are still ripening - I won't. Instead, I want to take this opportunity to introduce you to some of the folks who grow the food here at Waltham Fields Community Farm. Some of us have been at WFCF for years, while others are new to the farm this month. Some of us are likely in farming for the long haul, while others may leave it for more predictable, lucrative, or climate-controlled employment. But all of us share a commitment to this little farm for this growing season.

Many of you know some of our farmers. Andy Scherer, who managed the farm expertly last season, is perhaps the most Yankee of all of us, despite his roots in Pennsylvania. Andy is responsible for coordinating our produce donation - a $50,000 goal this year, including the 900 pounds of lettuce that we sent to the Greater Boston Food Bank earlier this month. In his five seasons with WFCF, he's helped the farm become more efficient and more sustainable through the addition of the weed and field crews, the purchase of (often extremely cheap) appropriate equipment, and a continual commitment to controlling costs. He is also a stickler for organization and neatness on the farm, and even though it's taken five years, his efforts are finally starting to pay off.

Erinn Roberts, now in her fourth season with WFCF, is originally from New Jersey but finally has a working knowledge of ice hockey. She is both one of the funniest people you will ever meet and one of the most diligent and hardworking. She manages our greenhouses and seedling sales, and selects all the delicious products from other farms that we offer to our shareholders each week. Erinn is also one of the most thoughtful and observant farmers I know. The farm benefits from her wisdom, her intelligence, her constant self-education, her intense attention to detail, and her unerring sense of style.

Dan Roberts, who came along with Erinn when she arrived at WFCF and has made himself indispensable to the farm, is often on a cultivating tractor these days. You can sometimes hear him singing over the sound of the engine. He has taught himself a great deal about the equipment on the farm, often with the help of YouTube videos, and has helped us make wise equipment purchases in the past couple of years - including the brand new walk-in cooler that will hopefully make an appearance on the farm this week. He is the fearless leader of the weed crew, an exceptional pizza maker, and a learned musician whose beautiful songs you can find on our farm CD. He also continually amazes me with his ability to be reasonably conversant about just about any topic.

Another set of critical people on the farm is our weed crew, without whom there would be no carrots, lettuce, fresh herbs, fall root crops - or just about anything on the farm. These three (soon to be four) hard-working women are in the fields five mornings a week to do gentle battle with our galinsoga, amaranth, lamb's quarter and all the other weeds that enjoy the rich soil of our fields. Their cheerful faces lift my spirits every time I see them in the lettuce with hoes in their hands or crawling the carrots on a rainy morning. Laura, Shira, and Rachel are also highly educated and well-traveled, and are a joy to weed with if you have an hour to spare. If you happen to be on the farm in the morning, greet them warmly with a wave or a blueberry muffin. They like brownies, too.

Next week: less weather. More Lauren, Larisa, and the farm work shares. Until then, enjoy the harvest season.

Amanda, for Andy, Erinn, Dan, Larisa, and Lauren

Notes from the Field: Spring in New England

Even by the standards of spring in New England, this has been a wild one. Instead of writing this week's Notes, I seriously considered just including a link to the first Brookfield Farm CSA newsletter, where their longtime farmer, Dan Kaplan, brilliantly recounts the ups and downs of the weather and their effect on crops, with the simple caption "what he said." But when it comes to producing forty different crops, every organic farm has its own story, ever so slightly different from any other. So here is ours.

This spring began for us in the greenhouse, where Erinn nurtured thousands of tiny seedlings to maturity while we watched the thick blanket of snow on the fields slowly melt away. We seeded cover crops in March on fields that were deceptively dry - until the cold, wet weather of April settled in to stay. With the help of many volunteer hands, we dodged rainstorms to plant onions, leeks, lettuce and spinach on schedule. These crops promptly hunkered down in the cold, damp soil and did absolutely no growing at all.

Then, in early May, the hot weather hit. It seemed to go from March to July in a matter of days. Sunscreen and ice cream replaced sweaters and hot coffee in the farm office. Early season transplanted crops, already stressed out by the cold, wet weeks, now experienced a drastic swing to the opposite conditions. Crops that we seeded directly in the ground did not germinate in the abruptly powdery, superheated soil. Spinach and lettuce threatened to bolt if we didn't get irrigation on them immediately - not usually a priority at this time of the year. Even heat-loving transplanted crops like the cucumbers, sweet potatoes and summer squash that we transplanted were traumatized by the ferocious wind and dry soil. But we kept up on the weeding and managed to get our strawberry planting almost clean just in time for the plants to bloom.

Then, another spell of rain and cold (sweaters, transplanting, weeds growing, inside doing tractor maintenance), followed by temperatures that soared into the 90s and tumultuous thunderstorms that brought brief hail and spectacular lightning (more ice cream, this time accompanied by the first of the strawberries). The morning after these storms is always a little nerve-wracking - walking the fields to see what survived the night is not anyone's idea of a great way to start the day. So far we have been fortunate where hail is concerned. The fluctuations in temperature and moisture, though, have definitely made our spring crops confused and a little bit cranky - most are a little smaller than we would like (lettuce), some are a little later (napa cabbage), and some have been attacked by flea beetles or cabbage root maggot while they suffered from drought stress (bok choy).

All of us are happy to have the spring behind us and the bounty of the summer just ahead. We look forward to connecting and reconnecting with volunteers, shareholders, program participants, and other visitors throughout the season. Thank you for supporting us and the work that we are fortunate to do - even when the weather tries to thwart us!

Amanda, for Andy, Erinn, Dan, Larisa and Lauren