WFCF Assistant Farm Manager, Nadine Dyskant-Miller

The year began with planning for the season: In January and February I worked with Erinn on the crop plan, seed orders, seedling sale plans, and supply orders, and I took the lead on hiring the field crew. In March, we began seeding in the greenhouse, and from there the season quickly began to ramp up. We hosted our annual seedling sale in May, and the turnout was truly astounding, with unprecedented attendance and sales. The greenhouses were packed full of seedlings, and by the end of the second weekend we were almost sold out.

June was a month of transition, as we said goodbye to Erinn and welcomed Andy to the farm. He has worked so hard to guide the farm through this incredibly dry and hot summer, and his depth of agricultural knowledge has been very apparent and valuable from the start. I have very much appreciated everything I’ve learned from him!

July and August were a blur of unrelenting heat and sun, and we found ourselves working extra long hours to keep the crops alive and hydrated through the drought. We worked as a team to tighten the flow of harvesting, washing, and packing, which was especially important for keeping the crops from wilting in the heat; we definitely benefited from Andy’s experience farming in warmer climates. In addition to bringing in the harvest, our days were filled with transplanting, weeding, and rotating irrigation, with many popsicle breaks sprinkled throughout.

It has been wonderful working with Marie-Ana, our Outreach Farmer; she has brought so much energy and dedication to continuing to develop our food access programs, especially the Mobile Outreach Market and Produce Rx. In addition, we continued to provide weekly donations to Food for Free, a local food rescue organization, and we continued our partnership with Waltham Public Schools, with regular distributions from September to December. 

I have worked closely with the field crew throughout the season, and I can’t possibly express how grateful I am to have shared so much time with this wonderful group of people. This summer has been full of incredibly hard work, both physically and mentally, and our crew powered through with humor, care, and determination. Together we seeded, transplanted, watered, weeded, trellised, watered, weeded, covered, uncovered, watered, weeded, hauled, loaded, unloaded, harvested, sorted, washed, and distributed tens of thousands of pounds of produce to our local community, through our food access programs and the CSA. 

Thank you to everyone who makes this organization and community the wonderful place that it is, I’m grateful every day that I get to work with such an incredible group of people!