Coming up at the Farm
Harvest Family Program September 23 9:30-11am For kids ages 0-4 and their caregivers.
Clearance Yarn Sale September 26th, 9am-4pm. Come support education and
food access programming at WFCF while getting amazing yarns at rockbottom
prices from Northeast Fiber Arts Center in Williston, VT.
Waltham Farm Day, September 26th, 2pm-5pm Come help us celebrate MA Harvest for Students Week and farming in Waltham!
Felted Slipper Workshop, October 10th, 10am-4pm Get a jump on your holiday gift planning this year by learning the technique of turning wool into unique felted creations.
Our Children's Learning Garden Fall After School Program has filled up! But, we'd love to have you with us next season.
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| Recipes |
We love getting recipes from our shareholders!
Do you have a recipe you'd like to share? Don't be shy -- let us know!
For more information, see our Recipe pages.
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| Fun for the Kids |
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Story Time on Tuesdays, 4-4:45
Boudicca Hawke (age 9) will once again do Story Time on the farm for children of all ages. It will be held each Tuesday from 4:00 to 4:45 at the meeting shelter. She will have a selection of books that are related to farms and the creatures that live on farms, however if anyone has a favorite book they'd love to share, please bring it as she will be happy to read that too.
Fun on the Farm, Tuesdays, 3:30 - 5:00 pm
Kids, please join us for free play, old-fashioned games, story hour (see above), nature drawing (bring supplies!) and a nut-free snack. About once a month, we'll do a special activity such as tour bee hives and chicken coops, inventory birds and insects, make cornhusk dolls and our famous Silly Olympics. Parents, nut free snack contributions would be great! Look for Anastacia near the distribution shed at 3:30.
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Apple Shares
If you've signed up for Apple shares from Autumn Hills Orchard in Groton please remember to pick yours up when you come to the farm.
To see what's in the fruit share this week, click here.
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| CSA pickup schedule for the week
Tuesday, September
22 from 3-7 PM
Thursday, September 24 from 3-7 PM with Jonathan's pumpkins for sale and Fish Guy visit at 4:30
Saturday, September 26 from 8 AM to 12 noon
Please remember: while PYO stays open all day Saturday, our distribution shelter closes at noon. Please plan to arrive with plenty of time to pick up your veggies from the shelter before noon. Thank you!
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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.
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Pick-Your-Own Crops
 Shareholders are welcome to pick-your-own anytime during daylight hours. Please remember to always check the white board on the red kiosk for updated PYO information.
Why limits? We've heard several people say "it can't hurt if we pick more than what it says on the board -- there's so much here!" While this probably looks true for some crops at certain times of the year (and certain times of the week), it's important to remember that we have 350 shares on the farm, and that each of these shares is entitled to the same amount of PYO crops. As the farmers, we do our best to judge the total of what's available and to spread it out over all three pickup days and all 350 shareholders. That's where the limits come in -- if we feel like there are not enough beans for everyone to pick what they'll use, we put a limit on the board. Please feel free to ask us at any distribution if you'd like more information about PYO!
PYO hint: weekend pickup times are busy on the farm. If you can do your PYO at another time during the week, you may find that crops are easier to find!
- Perennial herbs and flowers (including mint and thyme)
- Flat and curly parsley
- Genovese basil -- almost done for the season
- Hot peppers
- Husk cherries
- Tomatilloes
- Raspberries will probably still be around, but please check the white board for more information on how many to pick, since quantities may be limited.
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WFCF CSA Share Renewals for 2010 Begin October 1
On October 1, we will send an email letter to all 2009 primary CSA shareholders with information about how to renew your share for 2010. You'll have two weeks to return the letter with a $50 non-refundable deposit to hold your place for next season. If space allows and there is interest, we will offer shares to secondary shareholders (split share partners) who might want their own shares in 2010 beginning on October 15.
In January of 2010, we will offer remaining CSA shares to all members of our nonprofit organization by lottery.
If you are sure that you want a CSA share in 2010, we strongly encourage you to take advantage of this advance signup period to renew your share, since there is no guarantee that you will receive a share if you wait until January. Please ask our staff at any CSA pickup this week if you have questions about CSA share renewals.
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WFCF Pumpkins for Sale!
In addition to your CSA share this fall, I am excited to offer Pumpkins for sale. I grew two varieties of jack-o-lanterns, Racer and Charisma, as well as New England Pie pumpkins. I am grateful to Amanda and Andy for the opportunity to manage a small enterprise project this season. I am also thankful for plastic mulch and fish emulsion-two very effective tools that helped me keep down the weeds and grow uniform and healthy fruits.
On Thursday, September 24th, pumpkins will be available for $1/lb at the distribution shelter during regular pick-up hours. Look for a sign at the shelter for future days and times they will be available.
Enjoy! Happy Fall!
-- Jonathan Martinez, WFCF Assistant Grower
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| Cape Ann Fresh Catch offers
Fish Share pickup at WFCF
 Local veggies, apples, meat, wine, syrup, honey, cheese... and fish? Many of you have probably already heard about Cape Ann Fresh Catch (CAFC), a collaborative project of the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance and the Gloucester Fishermen's Wives' Association, which are offering shares in the haul of Cape Ann fishermen all over the Boston area, including distributions at several local farms. CAFC is interested in offering a fish share distribution at Waltham Fields beginning October 1. Steve Parkes, otherwise known as "The Fish Guy", will be at the farm at 4:30 on Thursday to talk about the fish shares and maybe even demo a fish fillet.
 Check the websites above for more information about CAFC, and get in touch with them or talk with Steve if you have any questions about the fish, the shares, or CAFC. Then watch for signup forms on the farm all this week! |
Notes from the Field
 Despite all the hints that have been in the air for weeks, it's still hard to believe that fall finally arrives at noon on Tuesday. With the changing of the seasons, as if a switch had been thrown on the farm, comes a shift in our daily tasks and thoughts, away from the hectic pace of spring and summer and towards the fruition, cleanup, and planning period of fall. Many things, like next season's plant diseases and weather, are completely unknown at this time of the year. Still, much of the blueprint for the upcoming season is put into place now, from a preliminary crop plan to planting next year's strawberries and garlic to seeding winter and spring cover crops that provide nutrition for upcoming vegetables.
Cover crops are a key component of crop and soil health on an organic farm. Whether they fix nitrogen from the atmosphere, as is the case with legume cover crops like clovers, hairy vetch and field peas, or add lots of organic matter and simply hold nutrients in place, preventing them from leaching out of the soil, as is the case with buckwheat, rye, oats and other grain crops, cover crops are an organic farmer's way of 'giving back' to the soil ecosystem that has provided so much for us over this incredibly challenging growing season.
The window for planting fall cover crops in New England is small, and coincides inconveniently with much of the largest vegetable harvest period. Undersowing, or seeding cover crops into established and growing cash crops, works well as long as the cash crop is relatively strong and free of weeds, which hasn't been the case for us this season. The other option is to clear the crop from the field completely by mowing and disking with the tractor, then sowing the cover crop and lightly incorporating it so that it is in contact with soil moisture and can sprout before it gets too cold. If you walk around the farm over the next two weeks, you should see more and more patches of what looks like bare ground with tiny blue sprouts rising out of it; that's a good sign, the sign that cover crop is established and growing.
 In the fall, we like to use a combination of a grain and a legume in our fields (at other times of the year, we might use one or the other alone). Oats and peas, which are both killed by very cold weather in the depths of winter, are a good choice for places on the farm where we're going to plant early-season crops; unfortunately, the window for seeding these really ends at the beginning of September so that they can get good growth before the cold weather hits. Our other main late-season choice, a winter rye-hairy vetch combination, is what you'll see on the farm this fall. It will put on some growth in the fall and then really take off in the early spring, becoming a beautiful mass of bright-green organic matter before we turn it under with a plow and disk about 3 weeks before planting. We need to get all of our cover crops seeded before the first of October in order to make sure they establish, so that job will keep us busy right up until then.
This week, we'll plant our strawberries for next season. We'll cover them with reemay (a floating row cover which provides frost protection and a few degrees of warming) so that they get vigorous vegetative growth before the cold weather settles in; then, in November, we'll mulch them with leaves to keep the temperature closer to constant at the soil level in order to prevent them from heaving out of the ground with the freeze-and-thaw pattern of the winter. As the big job of cleaning and sorting onions and garlic comes to an end, we'll begin the sweet potato harvest, and then the job of breaking up our best harvested garlic for the planting that begins after the first frost. Before we can plant garlic, though, we need to make sure that the field is well-fertilized and tilled, so compost needs to be added and incorporated before planting can start.
 These are deeply satisfying fall tasks, laying the groundwork for a good season next year while beginning to wrap up the loose ends of our season; we hope you can take a walk around the farm to observe or participate in one of them this fall. Happy Autumn to you and yours!
Eat well!
-- Amanda, for the farm crew
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Warmly,
The Staff of Waltham Fields Community Farm |
Jericho Bicknell, Education and Outreach Coordinator
Amanda Cather, Farm Manager
Debra Guttormsen, Administrative and Finance Coordinator
Paula Jordan, Spring & Fall Children's Learning Garden Assistant
Jonathan Martinez, Assistant Grower
Blake Roberts, Outreach Market Intern
Dan Roberts, Assistant Grower
Erinn Roberts, Assistant Grower
Nina Rogowsky, Children's Learning Garden Teacher
Andy Scherer, Assistant Farm Manager |
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