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: And Then There Were Five

28.

This high summer we love will pour its light

the fields grown rich and ragged in one strong moment

then before we're ready will crash into autumn
with a violence we can't accept

a bounty we can't forgive

Night frost will strike when the noons are warm

the pumpkins wildly glowing      the green tomatoes

straining huge on the vines

queen anne and blackened susan will straggle rusty
as the milkweed  stakes her claim

she who will stand at last      dark sticks barely rising

up through the snow      her testament of continuation
We'll dream of a longer summer
but this is the one we have:

I lay my sunburnt hand 

on your table:      this is the time we have

- Adrienne Rich (from Your Native Land, Your Life)

Now that the field crew is gone, it's pretty quiet on the farm.  With Andy away on paternity leave, it's just Sutton, Zannah, Dan, Erinn and me in the fields to harvest the vegetables and do whatever else we have time to do when the pick is done.  These days we are coming in around 8 AM, since the mornings are dark and cold.  We all put on rain bibs and boots against the heavy dew, drink another cup of coffee, and head out into the fields.  We harvest all morning, with one person in the wash station to rinse and process the food as it comes in and four picking and transporting the vegetables.

Occasionally, we are joined in the fields by a bird of prey.  Around the first of October, voles and field mice become bold and voracious as they stock up for the winter, and their predators follow suit.  Red-tailed hawks are very common in the trees around the farm, and often soar over the fields pursued by a noisy murder of crows.  Less often, a forest hawk appears silently and disappears as quickly as it came.  Last season, a great blue heron stalked the fields, and this year, for the first time, a northern harrier skimmed the tops of the tall weeds as it hunted. As the stresses of the season fall away, it is much easier to take the time to notice the diversity and beauty of the life in the fields that we never put there, and can never take away.  

If each month of the farming season could be summarized in a Big Life Lesson, they might look something like this:



April:  Rebirth is Hard.

May:  Anxiety Does Not Make Things Grow.
June:  Good Luck (see June CSA newsletter).
July:  You Are Not in Control.

August:  Lift With Your Legs.

September:  Abundance.

October (two lessons):  Let Go and Savor.

The deeply dualistic nature of this time of the year on the farm, when we are letting go of the season while intently enjoying each beautiful fall day, helps balance the single-mindedness that can sometimes dominate our world view during the rest of the farming season.  This time of year, we watch one crop after another finish its life cycle.  Late last week, we mowed and disked the tomatoes; it was funny to watch a crop that we had spent so much time and effort trying to maintain, and then spent so many hours harvesting, disappear from the face of the farm.  One of the joys of farming:  all our efforts, all our successes and all our failures return to the soil equally.

Hope you are enjoying this beautiful time, and the harvest.



Amanda, for the farm crew

Images by Rebekah Carter (2012.)

Notes from the Field: All in Good Time

One of our favorite farmers, Clayton Carter, posted some photos from Failbetter Farm in Maine this week with the title 'August is Hell.'  These pictures were not of suffering sinners or rings of fire.  They were not even of extreme heat, tornadoes, or the terrible drought in the Midwest.  They were snapshots of beautiful vegetables including tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers ready to go to market, lovely tiny carrot plants growing for harvest in October, and other wholesome, vibrant, farm-y subjects that one would not normally associate with Hell, if one were inclined to think much about that dark place.  No one was being tortured, or even punished for anything, except maybe for the crime of planting a few too many vegetables to reasonably harvest.  In fact, those photos looked very much like what we envision when we think about a successful harvest as we create the farm plan for the year in midwinter.



At the beginning of last week, I was wondering if we were ever going to get enough cherry tomatoes for everyone to harvest.  I kept walking and driving by the field tomato patch, looking at the same green tomato every day, wondering if it was ever going to ripen.  It seemed to have been the same size and color for weeks.  Even the harvest records from last season, which clearly showed that our tomatoes don't really begin to ripen until the second week of August, did not convince me.  Watched pot never boils or not, I was starting to become a little obsessed.

After a few days of August weather (hot, but not too hot, and humid), it began to appear that that particular worry was probably misplaced energy.  By Thursday it was clear that we were DEFINITELY going to have enough cherry tomatoes for everyone to pick that afternoon.  Friday it rained, which causes the Sun Golds to split when they are very ripe, so there were lots of cherry tomatoes for, let's see, about 24 hours.  A few more hot, humid days, and it became difficult to explain to some enthusiastic Sunday evening cherry tomato pickers why we had ever had a 2-pint limit.   On Monday we picked 195 pounds of tomatoes.  Two days later, we picked more than 700 pounds.  I was reminded (once again) that while we can control certain things on the farm, like when crops are transplanted and when and how they're fertilized or weeded, one of the many, many things we cannot control is when they ripen.  They ripen when they are ready, and when they are ready they need to be picked.  Now.


August harvests, which are marvelous, are also backbreaking.  Peppers and eggplant and okra and tomatoes all put us in the same hunched posture for picking.  Summer squash and cucumbers require us to lean all the way down to the ground for hours at a time.  Melons are another thing entirely; they took Erinn and Andy all day long on Friday to pick after a morning in the squash plants -- lifting and tapping or smelling each one, examining it for signs of ripeness, then gently, gently sliding it from the vine and tossing it to the other person to load onto the truck.  All this picking doesn't leave very much time for transplanting (lettuce and spinach are still going in the ground for October harvest), seeding (arugula, radishes, turnips and other fall greens), fixing tractors (Gretta and Gus), weeding (those delicate fall carrots), fertilizing (broccoli!) or office work, which is why I'm writing the newsletter this week at 12:30 at night.

Now, I'm not complaining.  Better this than the alternative.  Better abundance than scarcity. There's no way to rush this kind of summer harvest.  Staring at the tomatoes will not make them ripen; being anxious about them will not make them ripen.  Same with the melons.  Only their own good time, a little warm weather (but not too hot!  Not too windy!), and some ethylene gas can make it happen.  All we can do is be ready to pick them when they do.  All of them.  Right now.  


Enjoy the harvest,

Amanda, for the farm crew

Notes from the Field: Balance

The solstice is all about extremes: light and dark, summer and winter, growth and hibernation. The equinox, which passed last week, is a completely different creature -- especially, I think, if you happen to be a vegetable farmer. In spring and fall, daylight on the equinox is the equal of dark; these are the balance points on what the New England nature writer Hal Borland called "the wheel of the year", and each holds the memory of the season that is ending as well as the seeds of the one to come. In spring, the muddy equinox often comes with reddening maples, yellowing willows, the call of a red-winged blackbird along the river. While most people venture outside for the first time in a while and rejoice that winter is giving way to spring, we farmers have more mixed feelings about that moment in the year. For us, the rest, peace, and potential of the winter becomes reality, anxiety, urgency, and unpredictability in the spring; while we are also glad for the lengthening daylight and the melting snow, the spring equinox is a clarion call to action that shakes us from our dreamy winter state.



The autumn equinox is similar for us. Even though it comes as New England becomes its most beautiful self for a short time, many people feel a little melancholy at the beginning of autumn; it signals the turning from summer's ease to the daily challenges of winter. Even the call of the geese heading south can sound lonely as the sunsets creep earlier and the nights bring a familiar chill. On the farm, though, that sense of melancholy is balanced by the awareness of fruition and completion, the knowledge that the coming of autumn marks the turning point for us from frenetic energy to a more measured pace, a chance to slow down, sum up, and take stock of the results of the season's work.



There's still plenty to do on the farm. We're in the middle of a long, slow sweet potato harvest, as well as a big cover cropping push, which is made much easier this year by the biodegradable plastic we used under many crops -- it can be turned in with the tractor instead of pulled out by hand, so it is a huge time and labor saver as well as being MUCH less plastic in the landfill. Our harvests continue five days a week until the end of October, but now they are interspersed with the end of the season work -- cleaning up, pulling stakes, mowing and disking and seeding cover crop, and watching the land slowly return to what I like to think of as its "Big Sky" winter look. We know that our good friend and work sharer Naomi's freezer is getting full of her preserved vegetables from the farm and her own garden -- so bring on the fall.



This has been a funny growing season, for us as well as for some other growers. We were fortunate to avoid the worst of the rain from Hurricane Irene and the other wicked late-summer storms, but we got our fair share of water nonetheless, and it had an impact on us. A shortened tomato, okra, and melon season, less pepper ripening and hot pepper production, washed-out fertility that means many crops have seemed to come to a standstill in the fields -- all of these are results of cool weather and lots of rain. As we've said before, this unpredictable weather seems to be the new normal, something that we vegetable growers are going to have to learn to live with over the next ten or twenty years. Resilience, adaptability, and flexibility in the face of failure seem to be becoming some of the most important traits of a successful farm operation. The equinox, that balance point, often brings us a sense of enduring gratitude, even when we can still feel the season's work in our bones and our backs.


There is also the enduring lesson that fruition is a close relative of decay, that all we do breaks down and passes away -- sometimes in rich leaf mold, sometimes in smelly rotten pepper and tomatoes. The harvest is close to the compost pile. The end is sown with the seed. We grieve as we celebrate, reap as we mourn, all in the balancing season.



Enjoy the harvest,

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

Notes from the Learning Garden: From One Season to the Next

Summer programs have come to an end here at the farm, which gives me a little time to reflect before we launch into our fall season of programs, events and happenings at Waltham Fields Community Farm.

For many years now, WFCF has been working with the Waltham Recreation Department to offer after-school and summer programs for area youth. In August we held two of these programs which were 4 mornings each for children who will be entering 1st-3rd grade in the fall. From exclamations of "This is more fun than fencing!" (yes, the one with swords) while harvesting basil, to the image of children sitting on a blanket in the shade singing "The Garden Song" this was a truly memorable experience for all (adults and kids alike).

This year for the first time we also offered a full day program for children ages 9 to 12 which we called our "Farmer For A Week" program. Participants got to delve a little bit deeper into farming and food preparation than those in our other programs with activities such as jam-making, chicken chores, working with the farm weed crew, pickling, and planning out their dream garden using a multitude of seed catalogs from our farm bookshelves. They ended the week by putting together boxes of vegetables, herbs, pickles, and jam to take home and share with their families.

Farmer For A Week Plum-Raspberry Jam

Ingredients:
1 lb Plum, washed, pitted, and chopped finely
3 lbs Raspberries, mashed
1/4 C Water
3 lbs Sugar
2 T Lemon Juice

Directions:
-Place chopped fruit and water in a preserving pan, soup pot, or other large saucepan and bring to a boil over medium to medium-high heat, stirring occasionally.
-Add sugar and stir until dissolved.
-Return to boil and continue boiling until temperature reaches 210F, stirring occasionally to make sure jam is not sticking or burning.
-Add lemon juice and continue boiling to bring temperature back to between 210F and 220F
-Do a test to see if you jam has gelled. The best thing to try is put a little bit of your jam on a plate and stick it in the freezer or fridge for a minute or two to cool it down. When cook, it should have a slightly thicker gel-like consistency. When that happens, it is a good indication that the pectin is activated and it is time to put your jam into jars and process them in your water bath canner!

Farmer For A Week Harvest Box

As the education staff was setting up for the last day of our final summer program a few weeks ago we couldn't help but comment on the speed at which summer rushed past yet again. Lately, I feel as though this has become a mantra for me: "I can't believe the month is over already", "I can't believe the next season is almost here". I suppose as we get older each section of time becomes a smaller percentage of our lives and thus seems to pass by much more quickly. I remember when an hour seemed like a lifetime and as I watch the kids playing in the garden, chopping veggies, or looking at worms I try to put myself back in that mindset and hope that the few hours that they spend with us feels long enough and meaningful enough to stay in their hearts and minds at least until their next visit, next program, or perhaps just their next meal.

Happy gardening,

- Jericho

Fall after-school programs for children in grades K-5 start September 20th! Sign your child up today for six weeks of gardening, cooking, composting, and just generally enjoying the wonders of fall on the farm!

Images by Rebekah Carter (2011).

Notes from the Field: Chisel Plows and Tomato Stakes

All of a sudden we turned around and it was July. The vigorous, weedy growth in our fields could have told us this, as could the newly disked and fertilized beds waiting for fall broccoli and cauliflower to be planted this week, or the tall, gangly tomatoes that need to be staked and twined. We get a little infusion of additional labor in the fields this week from our new field crew members, Rachel and Andy, recently back from their travels, and our fully staffed weed crew; we are at full strength now in the fields and will stay that way through August.

July may be the busiest time of year on our farm. We have quite a bit of seeding and transplanting of fall crops to do, and while it's not as many beds as the huge planting push of April and May, it's combined with ever-increasing harvests and other tasks, like cultivating, weeding, dealing with insects and diseases, and tying tomatoes, that make these weeks feel like the very peak of the roller-coaster ride of the season. Before July, it's plant, plant, plant. After July, it's harvest, harvest, harvest. For these brief four weeks in July,it's try to get it all done at once, hang in there and enjoy the ride. Ice cream helps with this.

It is interesting for me, after a year of being mostly away from the farm after the birth of my daughter Sadie, to notice which of our farm's large collection of tools feel particularly useful during this peak season. Some are old friends: the shade cloth that covers our greenhouse in the heat of the summer is the only reason we are able to germinate and grow lettuce transplants for our summer successions. Some are new purchases: our Schaper Brothers fertilizer spreader, built for us by hand in Pennsylvania this spring, has helped us eliminate the "hate labor" of pushing a heavy hand spreader over uneven field surfaces for hours at a time, one of my least favorite jobs when I was pregnant (or, really, at any time on the farm). Some are incidental purchases that turn out to be incredibly useful: our new cultivating tractor, which we've affectionately named "Li'l K", since it's the smaller of our farm's two Kubotas, happened to come with a three-point-hitch mounted rear cultivator that turns out to be almost the perfect tool for cultivating plastic pathways, though it's not for the faint of heart. Some are unexpectedly valuable far beyond their cost in dollars: a six-hundred-dollar mini-chisel plow, which can fit in the back of our pickup truck, has reshaped our tillage regimen, helping us make beds more quickly while minimizing compaction and soil layer inversion in our fields. Our tractor-mounted boom sprayer, despite its idiosyncracies, saves us hours and hours of time with a backpack sprayer applying fish emulsion or organic pesticides when we need to. And the funny little fertilizer injector that sends fish, kelp and micronutrients directly through the drip irrigation lines to the roots of the plants, which cost us less than $200 a couple of years ago, may be one of the most effective and important tools on the farm, though you may miss it if you walk around the fields.

Because labor is by far the biggest cost on our farm, when tools that are supposed to save us labor work the way they should, we feel it acutely -- we're able to direct our precious person-hours to tasks that no equipment can do as well as human hands. Hand weeding carrots and parsnips can't be avoided, despite our best efforts with the cultivating tractors and the flame weeder. Harvesting is highly skilled work that takes training and practice to perfect. And we haven't been able to find any machine that can pound posts or tie tomatoes.

Our farm is a funny size -- at eleven acres, we're big enough that wise purchases of equipment can have a big impact on our productivity, but we still require a large crew of people to make it all happen. Being able to afford all this -- both the ongoing development of our fleet of tools and the development of an efficient and manageable staffing model -- is something that is on our minds every day, even during this peak season. After seven years at Waltham Fields, I feel like these complex interactions between equipment and people are still one of the fascinating puzzles that make farming a constant learning process.

Meanwhile, the sun is shining, the weeds are growing, and it's time to get back to work. Enough chatter. Stay cool, everyone.

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

Getting our Hands Dirty

In action!

The beauty of the Children's Learning Garden rests not only in its luscious, green glory, but also in its ability to bring children together to learn about the land, farming, and food production.

Getting through the drought

Garden work, including seeding, transplanting, weeding, watering, and harvesting, helps kids develop an understanding of the plant world and its importance to humans, animals, and ecosystems all over our planet.

Collecting basil

By taking part in all aspects of the plant life cycle, the children gain a stronger appreciation for their food and the life-giving nutrients it provides us.

Food's more fun when you grow it yourself!

In the Learning Garden, we try to grow a variety of interesting fruits and vegetables like the ones that you 'll see highlighted in our blog, as well as a number of staples that kids (and adults!) love to eat. If you or your child have any suggestions for next year's crops, feel free to email your ideas to us at wfcfblog@gmail.com.

Media (text and image) created and published by Rebekah Carter 2010.