Notes from the Field - Crew Tackles Weeds and So Much More!

Not too long ago, on a rainy Tuesday in the beginning of June, the Weed Crew assembled for the very first time in the fertile lands of Waltham Fields Community Farm. We were all ready for whatever the ominous day would bring, determined to help with the initiative of feeding a community organically.

 

"This is Purslane," farmer Zannah said, ripping off the weedy foe right by her boot and presenting her to us, "she is taking over the carrots, we must vanquish all of it." She took a bite off one of its leaves and dropped the rest of the plant on the floor. We all imitated this action and nibbled on the leaves enthusiastically, recognizing its fresh, tarty flavor, and so the war began. 

Taking down weed after weed, we learned about all of the different kinds we will be encountering over and over again, as we simultaneously learned about those that we were trying to rescue, taking note of the more treacherous weeds, like Parsnip, who will give you blisters and rashes if you touch her on a sunny day, and recognizing the fragility of baby Carrots and Rutabagas. We slowly mastered the weapons that would ease some of our efforts, like the scuffle hoe's fine blade. So many of our enemies were delicious and nutritious, helping us sustain our energies on harder days. We tackled through together, every weekday morning since.

This year's with a reliable WFCF volunteer.
From left to right: Gina, Martha Hamilton (volunteer extraordinaire), Anna, Annie & Leo

Any time you looked away, Amaranth would rise from the ground below us and spread her seeds before you could find her. Since nobody can predict where they will spread themselves, we'd focus on rows of specific vegetables to save the bunch at once, so all of the lettuce can grow together, for example, and hopefully feed all of our hungry stomachs on time. The fields are so healthy and nutritious, it almost seemed like the weeds grew faster every day.

On harsh, hot and humid days, it seemed like the battle would never end (and it probably wouldn't). Our spirits would run low, but we always had each other to bring ourselves back to life. Since the very beginning, we found the fields to be a safe space to establish a healthy support system. After all, if we hadn't done that, we would probably end up losing this war.

The Weed Crew soldiers were all very different, and we quickly learned to love that about each other. We would fight the heat with laughter, and weed through the rain with song. We became stronger in body and spirit, helping each other grow from our flaws and mistakes. Within the crew there were soldiers, artists, philosophers, psychologists, and even mermaids, from all kinds of different backgrounds. We learned about ourselves, our efforts, our culture, the things we loved and hated, and how harmonious our off-pitches can sound together if you just believe it's beautiful.

On certain days (Fridays and Saturdays!) our troop was generally reinforced with volunteers who came into the battle with open hearts and good intentions. Conversations about the world would be shed in all kinds of different light of progressive dreams. No matter where we came from or what we did, we all wanted to help the world, at least a little bit, somehow, because we recognized the importance of our individual efforts, decisions and participation. All of these dreams expressed were often quite invigorating and inspiring, imprinting lessons from conversations that I will never forget, and critical lessons about how important even the smallest of efforts can be.

As the summer comes to an end, so does the era of the Weed Crew this year for the Waltham Fields Community Farm. Thank you, all of you, who helped contribute to this battle, and all of you who casually inspired us with your good vibes. We grew stronger and will continue doing so, together, and it wouldn't be possible without the efforts of our community, from farmers to all supporting members.

But alas, the battle is truly eternal, and there is still Purslane out there wrapped around a Tomato that is trying to grow stronger, waiting for you to eat it. Let's give each other a helping hand! It truly is much better when we're in it together.

 

I will miss my fellow Weed Crew and wish them all the best in their upcoming ventures. We came in as strangers and are departing as family. I know each one of you are meant for greatness! 

 

Leo Martinez

Weed Crew Member, Farm Stand Assistant, & Outreach Market Assistant

 

Notes From the Field - Las Plagas

Las Plagas. That's the phrase Dan and Erinn's old boss in California used to describe the travails of organic farming, and it's how Dan described all the pests and diseases to Hector when he started at our farm this spring. Little did we know how many of them we'd see in person this season.

Normally, we kind of lump las plagas together, since it's very difficult to know exactly what causes some of the problems we see in our crops on the farm without an official diagnosis from the lab at the University of Massachusetts. This season, however, we've been very fortunate to have Sue Scheufele, a vegetable specialist with UMass Extension, visiting every other week to take samples, check traps, and scout our crops in order to help us improve our organic production practices. This means that we know much more about the causes of the many pest and disease problems we've seen this season, and have a few more strategies for how to deal with them in upcoming seasons.

You've already heard in these notes about some of the major problems that Sue and other UMass specialists have helped us identify and create strategies for. Still, I thought I would run through a few of them in a little more detail for those of you keeping score at home. Here, in a nutshell, are some of the plagas that we've been dealing with at WFCF this season.

Late Blight: Its Latin name translates as "plant destroyer", and it was the cause of the Irish Potato Famine. This oomycete (not quite the same as a fungus) popped up from an unknown source in Eastern Massachusetts in late July this year. We have been spraying our big planting of field tomatoes at the Lyman Estate with a preventative combination of copper and bacterial and plant extracts, but we had left our PYO plants unsprayed to avoid the 24-hour break in harvesting that follows a spray application. It was a roll of the dice, and we got outsmarted by the disease this season. It appeared on August 9th in our cherry and plum tomatoes, and despite our efforts to contain it, spread to almost all of them by the 19th. While many organic growers, including us, tolerate some level of disease in our tomatoes, late blight is not one that we can live with. A few infected plants can create millions of spores that spread to other gardens and farms and destroy other crops and home harvests. So we don't let late blight stay on the farm, but do everything we can to destroy the plants and the disease as quickly as possible. Only one resistant variety of plum tomato (Plum Regal) and cherry tomato (Jasper) remain unaffected as of this writing, although we'll see what happens later in the season. What happens with late blight in the future? It's a good question. Right now it seems like a problem we're going to have to deal with each season, and something we need to think hard about how to manage in the future. We've already changed how we set up our tomato rows in order to facilitate spraying, and we are growing every resistant variety we can find. We need to continue to do research about how much spraying is really in the best interest of our soil and our health. We'll keep you updated!

Cucurbit Downy Mildew: When UMass entomologist Ruth Hazzard showed me the infected leaves, she said "this isn't your fault! This isn't your fault!" Downy mildew is a disease that blows in from the south every year and affects cucumbers and also, depending on the strain, other crops in the cucurbit family. It destroys plant leaves before fruit have a chance to mature, and can drastically shorten the harvest season for the crop. This year, downy mildew stopped our cucumber harvest this week, earlier than in previous seasons. As with late blight, about the only option available to an organic grower, besides the very important basics of growing a healthy plant in healthy soil, is regular applications of a preventative copper spray. This isn't something we've done for cucurbits in the past, but as with late blight, this disease isn't going to go away, and it's something we're going to need to be thinking about for the future. It's interesting to be facing two major crop diseases that aren't affected by crop rotation, since they can come in from off the farm each season. Stay tuned....

Basil Downy Mildew: Yes! Another new, destructive disease that appears to be here to stay! Basil downy mildew appeared in the United States in 2008, most likely from Uganda, according to researchers. Like late blight and curcurbit downy mildew, it spreads via wind-dispersed spores and makes its way through the country from areas where it overwinters each growing season. It causes yellowing of the lower leaves of the plant and eventually kills the crop, spreading from one succession to the next throughout the season. This is why we have been having you pull entire basil plants instead of picking sprigs, and why you may have noticed our basil crop looking a bit peaked this season. The solution? Yup, spray fungicides. There are a few organic fungicides that seem to be effective on this disease, and some types of basil, including Thai and red varieties, seem to be less affected. Still, here is another crop that used to be a sure thing, and one of the real joys of summer in New England like a beautiful ripe tomato or a crisp cucumber, that is now becoming more difficult to produce without the use of organic products from off the farm.

Flea Beetles: These have been around for a while, but have seemed particularly virulent this year. They are the tiny black beetles that hop around on crops in the brassica family, including kale, collards, broccoli, arugula, bok choy, broccoli raab, radish, and many more, putting tiny shot holes in the leaves of the crops and spreading diseases like Black Rot. This season they attacked our first planting of kale and collards so hard that, despite the fact that the plants were very healthy and well-nourished, they could not recover during the dry weather in July, and we had to take a break from these crops until our fall planting came on a couple of weeks ago. Our rutabaga crop, which we spent a great deal of time seeding in the greenhouse and transplanting in order to ensure that we'd actually get a crop this year, succumbed to black rot spread by flea beetles. We are monitoring our kale and collards, which are right across the farm road from the rutabaga, for the spread of the disease, which can also affect fall broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower. What can be done to protect crops? Resistant varieties are available, and clearly we're going to have to look into those; rotating fall brassicas away from spring brassicas actually does help with both flea beetles and the diseases they spread as well. But also, spraying pyganic to control the flea beetles, and to help control the disease, you guessed it, copper sprays. Plus they give the crop that nice patina. We haven't done any copper spraying in the brassicas yet, and we'll keep you posted.

Cucumber Beetle: This pest overwinters in the woods on the field edges and appears in the early cucumber and squash plantings. It gnaws on plants and fruit and spreads diseases (are you sensing a pattern here?) including bacterial wilt, which took down a good portion of our second cucumber planting this year. Again, resistant varieties help, as does rotating our cucurbit crop away from where it was the season before. We can also plant later successions away from earlier ones, although then we run into the larger rotational issue of having cucurbit family crops all over the farm. Here again, we have the final option of spraying pyganic, an organically approved but non-specific pesticide, if the population of beetles overwhelms our crop despite out best efforts. It's not a great option, but we did do it once this year.

Mexican Bean Beetle: This is a crop that can be particularly bad for organic growers with PYO bean crops who can't rotate beans to another field and plant small successions of beans over the course of the season. These are the copper-colored spotted beetles (related to ladybugs) and spiky yellow larvae that you have probably seen in the beans at some point this season. We've tried releasing pediobius wasps, a parasite of the bean beetle that lays its eggs in its larvae, but the progress that we are making there is hard to determine. We've done extensive scouting over the course of the season to determine the times when the pest is at its worst and spray pyganic, just before it looks like the population is about to explode. Again, it would be so much better if the biological control was effective, but we'll have to wait and see about that one.

Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD): Several weeks ago, we started to spray the raspberries with spinosad, a compound made by bacteria that is approved for use in organic systems and is currently thought to be our best bet against the spotted wing drosophila. SWD was found in New England for the first time after Hurricane Irene, although it has been a pest in the South and Northwest for some time. It is unique among fruit flies in that it attacks sound fruit that is not overripe or damaged in any way, laying its eggs in the fruit and making it, although not harmful, definitely less palatable. In a survey this winter, you told us that you'd like to see us try to use every organic option at our disposal to save the berries, and so we are; turning in beds that weren't producing as well in order to consolidate our efforts, monitoring traps on the property to see when the population of SWD rises, and then spraying once a week for six weeks to see if we can get a crop that is relatively free of SWD larvae. So far, so good.

Weeds: Those of you who have been with us for a while (and who are still reading after all these plagas) may have noticed that the population of weeds on the farm was not as bad as it has been in the past. There are still a few trouble spots here and there, but by and large the weeds have not had the impact on our crops that they have had in previous seasons. This is partly a result of the very dry season, but partly a result of the incredible work done by this year's weed crew, who finished their official season with us last week. In various configurations, Alice, Sage, Eli, and Lizzie (seen below from left to right, with farmer Dan Roberts second from right) Ashley and Jesse hoed and weeded their way through nearly every crop on the farm. There's definitely a relief in the knowledge that with all these crazy pests and diseases popping up all over the farm, some of our biggest challenges can be solved on hands and knees, and with simple tools that have been around since before the industrial revolution. The difference they made is showing itself in our yields and in the quality of our produce. We are deeply grateful.

Enjoy the harvest, Amanda, for the farm staff

Notes from the Field: Weed Crew Thanks

This is the last week that our 2012 Weed Crew, Annabelle, Becca, Katie and Meghan, will be with us and the sadness I feel is deep and real. As some of you may have noticed, this can be a weedy place. We are dealing with a legacy "weed seed bank" whose size would make Citigroup blush (see: "Too big to fail"). Some three years ago we decided that it was necessary to add a four-person crew that would be responsible expressly for hand weed control. This crew spends five mornings a week for three of our weediest months on their hands and knees pulling, prying, wrenching, levering, sometimes hoeing and occasionally, virtually tweezing weeds from the soil. All so that our crops might thrive. They bring airflow to congested beds where disease may have flourished, access to light, so that tender plants don't have to reach and become leggy, and limit competition, so that plants becoming established have their nutritive needs satisfied. They are also the people on the farm that direct our drop in volunteers during the week. They act as ambassadors for the farm, explaining the tasks for the day, keeping people moving and motivated during hot, dry, cold and wet weather. They answer questions about the farm and organization, all while focused on the task at hand: Kill Weeds.


This is no small feat. It is work that can be redundant and can feel thankless, particularly if one loses sight of its importance. It can be very difficult to remember that this work, done as maintenance between transplant and harvest, so significantly impacts our yields, ease of harvest and overall efficiency, and therefore our CSA share at the stand and ultimately the food access work that we do in our community.

We have been fortunate to have three crews in a row that were all fantastic. But this year's crew has set the bar very high for all Weed Crews to follow.


This bunch has been all business from day one; nose down, bell to bell, efficient, team driven and fastidious. They don't posses the level of hate for our weeds that some in the past have (I'm looking at you Kenny...) but these four have been the model of incredible consistency, always ready to go in the morning, always up for the task, no matter how daunting, always with a smile and a quick inquiry about the work they'd be doing or what else was going on that day on the farm. They quickly learned every technique we taught and applied them thoughtfully, efficiently and briskly, but most of all thoroughly. This crew does clean work, I mean immaculate.

It is hard for me to actually believe that they have been with us now for eleven of their twelve weeks. It is more difficult for me to picture life without them. Annabelle, Becca, Katie and Meghan - I thank you personally for your season of hard work and the spirit with which you toiled. You will be missed. Really.

Enjoy the harvest.

Dan, for the farm crew

Notes from the Field: July

July. Vacation time for many people, but not so much for farmers. Long, hot days perfect for vegetable growing. Garlic harvest, tomato tying, broccoli planting, irrigating, cultivating -- there's a reason I can't remember much about July from year to year. This is nature's peak season, every square inch of ground teeming with life and the harvest beginning to pour in.

July is not a time of the year that's commonly thought of as a time to tinker or experiment for farmers. Generally we are going full speed ahead implementing a plan we created in January, just trying to keep our heads above water and get as much done as we can before tomato harvests fill the afternoons. Last week, though, both Dan and I got projects done that we had had on our lists for -- well, for years. Dan used an old 55 gallon drum to turn our homemade transplanter into a water wheel. The water wheel adds a little water to the hole it creates for each plant as it goes into the ground, very important for fall broccoli and cabbage transplanted in the heat of summer. We are lucky enough to have overhead irrigation, which we've been using often during this hot weather to water in transplants, but overhead has its drawbacks too -- it splashes soil, which can cause plant leaf diseases (especially on crops that are in the ground for a couple of months, like those fall brassicas), and helps weeds as much as crops, since it's watering the whole bed. The water wheel gives a little starter water to the plant while keeping the rest of the field clean and dry, at least until the next thunderstorm.  So why haven't we finished this project before? July. It's one of the classic "if it's not raining, my roof doesn't leak, and if it is raining, I can't fix it" conundrums. For most the rest of the year, we can time our transplanting around upcoming rain, or use existing soil moisture and cool temperatures to help establish plants; in July, when we need the water wheel, it's July.

The other project we finished last week is similar -- I spent an hour reconfiguring our boom sprayer so that it could fold properly to travel between the rows of tomatoes to spray organically approved fungicides if weather conditions warrant. Those of you who remember the late blight epidemic of 2009 will know that this has been on my mind since then. So why this year? Why this July? The answer is one you all should be aware of: weed crew, and field crew.

2012 is the third year that we've had a designated, paid weed crew who come in at eight every weekday and handweed or hoe or clip weeds until noon. We'll talk more about weeds on our farm in upcoming newsletters, but for now suffice it to say that this crew has completely changed the way we're able to spend our time on the farm. This year, Annabelle, Becca, Katy, Meghan and Maura have been diligently working since the beginning of June on each exacting planting of carrots, the daunting giant field of onions at the Lyman Estate, the quick-and-dirty work of cleaning up the cherry tomatoes as we are tying them, and every other weeding project on the farm. They've had help from some volunteer groups and from our own bookkeeper, Deb, who is keeping our flower garden meticulously clean. On our farm, the weeding is never really done. In general, though, these women are the reason that shareholders can find sugar snap peas in the pick-your-own and that we can harvest carrots without wading through waist-high weeds (we've done it -- no fun). They are independent, unendingly cheerful, incredibly dedicated, and basically, the reason that we can work on other projects in July. We can't thank them enough.

Our field crew, who started on the farm on June 19, have already taken our work to the next level. Their first week it was 95 degrees for three days in a row. It poured rain all day on their first Monday, and thunder and lightning chased them out of the field for an hour. They picked all day long, learning the ins and outs of harvesting crops as delicate as carrots and spinach and as tricky as beets. They pounded tomato stakes, tied tomatoes, transplanted chard, beets, lettuce, squash, and okra, direct seeded watermelons to replace a diseased crop at our Gateways field, and moved irrigation. All in their first two weeks on the farm.

When we thought about this year last winter, we knew that these first two weeks of July would be a critical point in our season. Making sure that all of our tomatoes were staked and tied at the same time as we were transplanting more than a full acre of fall brassicas, with the garlic harvest, earlier every year, likely right in the middle of all of it, has always been a time when we get behind on other tasks -- it's a juggling act that often ends with one or more balls dropped and rolling off into the weeds, never to be found again until the fall. Oops, never got a second string on the cherry tomatoes. Oops, a little late getting those beds made for the second round of broccoli. Oops, missed a planting of lettuce. It's July.

By last Friday, though, Alison, Anna, Cat and Dave had put us in a position where not only are the balls still in the air, but we seem to be developing some sense of rhythm in our juggling. Thanks to them, Sutton and Zannah were able to prepare all seventy-plus beds for the fall brassicas, disking, chiseling, adding alfalfa meal and basketing them down, so that when the plants are ready to go into the ground later this week, there is a beautifully prepared field waiting for them. We'll start our garlic harvest later today, with any luck, pulling the bulbs and bringing them in to dry down in our big greenhouse until they are properly cured and ready to use. And the weather -- well, we can't complain. Really. It's a long season -- it's not even the All-Star break yet -- and there's a lot of work still to come, but right now we are joyfully rolling along in a July that feels better than it has in a while. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Alison, Annabelle, Anna, Becca, Cat, Dave, Katie, Meghan and Maura. We could not do it without you.



Enjoy the harvest,



Amanda (for the farm crew)