News from Waltham Fields Community Farm CSA

Amanda Cather <farmmanager@communityfarms.org>
Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 9:51 AM
Reply-To: farmmanager@communityfarms.org
To: Shareholders
 
local food for everyoneWaltham Fields Community Farm
CSA Newsletter #20
October 20, 2008
 
In This Issue
What's In the Share This Week
Pick-Your-Own Crops
Notes from the Field
Quick Links
Coming up:  the NOFA Winter Conference

Save the date! The Northeast Organic Farming Association's 22nd Annual Winter Conference will be held on Saturday January 17th, 2009 at the Worcester Vocational Regional Technical High School.

Eliot Coleman will be presenting the keynote address and will also present an all day intensive workshop on four- season growing. Coleman is a long time farmer and the author of "The New Organic Grower", "Four Season Harvest" and "The Winter Harvest Manual".

The conference will include workshops geared to farmers as well as backyard gardeners, consumers and advocates for a local, organic food system. The conference includes a children's program and we welcome participants to join us for a delicious potluck lunch.

Registration will begin in early December, information can be found on the NOFA website.
Squash Pancakes

From Marian Morash's Victory Garden Cookbook. Makes 6-8 small pancakes.

1 egg
1 cup mashed cooked winter squash
1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 - 2 T sugar
1/4 t salt
1/2 t baking powder
1/4 t cinnaomon
1/4 t nutmeg
1 t melted butter
1 T milk

Beat eggs and mix with squash. Sift together all dry ingredients and add to squash and egg. Stir in butter and milk. Mix well and ladle onto heated griddle or fry pan. Cook on one side until bubbles appear; turn and cook on other side.
Bring us your compost!

Bring your own household compost if you don't mind the walk to the compost piles. Acceptable compost ingredients include all vegetable and fruit scraps, eggshells, bread crusts and coffee grounds.  Please, no other animal products.  Thanks to everyone who has helped us build our compost piles!

Welcome to the 2008 Harvest Season!

CSA Pickups at the Farm this Week:
 

rows of green
  • Tuesday, October 21 from 3-7 PM
  • Thursday, October 23 from 3-7 PM
  • Sunday, October 26 from 3-7 PM
CSA Pickup in Davis Square (for pre-registered shareholders only):
  • Tuesday, October 21 from 5-7 PM

The final pickups of the 2008 season are this week. 

Remember:  Tuesdays and Thursdays are very quiet at the farm!  Please come during the week if you can!
What's In the Share This Week

Please note: This list is prepared the week before you receive your share.  Some guesswork is involved!
 
We do our best to predict which crops will be ready to harvest, but sometimes crops are on the list that are not in the share, and sometimes crops will be in the share even though they're not on the list.
acorn squash celery

Pick-Your-Own Crops This Week
cultivated rows
Pick your own is finished for the 2008 season! 

The fields are resting and look forward to seeing you all in the spring. 

Notes from the Field

The end of the season sneaks up on us.  All at once, the sugar maples are ablaze and the fields are resting in cover crops, equipment is put away and water is turned off.  All at once, the farm is no longer visited weekly by the families who own 316 CSA shares, or by school groups and volunteers.  Crops for our winter shares keep nicely in the cold soil.  We start to think about next season, doing soil tests, spreading lime and compost, and planting garlic. 

These last weeks of October may be my favorite time of year.  No matter what the trials of the past season were, they're behind us now, and next year is a blank slate filled with possibility.  In between lies the winter, the brief season of rest, renewal and celebration for New England farmers. 

mixed flower bouquetMy neighbor told me last week that he heard on NPR that one way to improve our lives is to be grateful for five things every day before breakfast.  I realized that writing these newsletters each week is my way of reminding myself of my gratitude -- to all of you, to our fields, and to all the people who make it possible for us to do what we do each season.  Despite my fretting throughout the season, thanks to the newsletter, I never forget that gratitude.

I am particularly grateful this season to the crew of staff and work sharers who each brought their own gifts to the farm fields and distribution shelter.  A difficult season can make us feel isolated in our troubles, but these folks never let it be that way; they brought care and community to our farm throughout the season.

Amanda Jellen Dumont, who got engaged to her sweetheart, Tyler, on our farm last year and married in New Hampshire this fall, worked part-time on the farm this summer.  She brought sunshine and good humor to the fields every day, and gave her all to even the most repetitive tasks.  She made me finally aware of what the old stories mean when they say someone has a heart of gold.

Anne Ramsay, Dan Burns, Amy Cook, Elizabeth Waste, Cary Giboud, and the intrepid Kate Mills worked in the fields with us as work sharers all season long, in rain and mud and heat and hail.  We can't thank them enough for their help bringing in the harvest this season.

beets and chardNatasha Hawke and her children, David Kricker, and Daniel MacPhee are our amazing distribution coordinators this season.  They not only learned your names and vegetable preferences and managed their distributions with care and attention to detail, but also helped provide our staff with feedback from you and their own perspectives as shareholders and farm staff.  We are so grateful to them all.

Sabine Gerbatsch
and Jim Dailey made our perennial garden something special this season despite their own very busy lives.  A deep thank you to them both.

Susan Cassidy, our newsletter editor, helped keep information flowing to you this season.  She has the
black eyed susanskills of a true professional and the sense of humor that is key to anyone who tries to work with farmers on the IT side of things.  She is a tremendous asset to our farm team. (And her son Ned takes great photos!)

It is very hard to find the words to say enough about Dan Roberts, Erinn Roberts and Jonathan Martinez.  Dan arrived from Oregon in April with his wife, Erinn, who had landed a job as a 2008 assistant grower with us before the 2007 season was even over.  He spent 4 months with us in the fields this season, planting seedlings, pounding stakes, picking squash, weeding strawberries, all with a diligence, humility and grace that persisted through rain, heat and the mosquitoes that tormented him more than anyone else.  Quite literally, we couldn't have done it without him. 

Erinn is a careful and talented farmer who expects a
baby bok choy great deal of herself and makes life infinitely easier for everyone else.  She is thoughtful, exacting, efficient, and tremendously fun to work with.  From her sparkly gloves to her signature flannel work shirt to her in-the-field dance moves, she put her own quirky, meticulous, deeply joyful stamp on the farm operation.  She is also a person who quietly teaches, simply through her actions, never by drawing attention to herself, the big lessons of learning and life.

Jonathan is a great communicator and a big-picture thinker who also pays careful attention to the details of farming.  He quickly went from novice to expert cultivator this season, managed our largest harvest and distribution day with quiet competence and good humor, and brought a laid-back expertise and analytical imagination to each task.  He asks hard questions in a gentle way that makes them easy to answer.  His passions for sustainable agriculture and social and economic justice work inspired us all. 

Waltham Fields is deeply indebted to all of these folks for the blessings that each of them brought to the farm this season.  Our farm is better because they were here.  We are also indebted to all of you for your encouragement, support and feedback, both positive and challenging.  Thanks for your understanding in this difficult year.  Thanks for spending your afternoons weeding with us, thanks for making the extra trip each week, and thanks for the faith to pay us for your share before we had put one seed into the greenhouse.  Thanks for your recipes, plastic bags, compost, beautiful bouquets, suggestions, ideas, and questions.   Thank you for helping us reap a harvest that is far more than simply the bounty of produce that nourishes us.  Thank you for another season.

Warmly,

The Staff of Waltham Fields Community Farm
 
Amanda Cather, Farm Manager
Debra Guttormsen, Administrative and Finance Coordinator
Paula Jordan, Children's Learning Garden
Claire Kozower, Executive Director
Jonathan Martinez, Assistant Grower
Erinn Roberts, Assistant Grower
Andy Scherer, Assistant Farm Manager
Mark Walter, Children's Learning Garden
Waltham Fields Community Farm | 240 Beaver Street | Waltham | MA | 02452