Notes from Greg Maslowe, Farm Manager

As the 2009 season winds to an end this month, people often comment to me that they’re surprised at how much is still growing in the field. Some of that is crops that will be harvested for the farm stand, which continues to operate through Thanksgiving. Much, however, is crops like kale and chard that have been growing all season and will continue to grow right into winter. There’s no reason to plow these crops under in the fall to make way for a cover crop—they will serve that purpose, holding the soil and protecting it against the ravages of winter. The soil enrichment that cover crops can provide will also be accomplished by leaving these crops in place. During the growing season, as the kale and chard matured, we planted clover beneath them. The clover helped suppress weeds but will also add nitrogen to the soil for next year’s crops (clovers are a legume, a family of plants that can “fix” atmospheric nitrogen in their roots). The other benefit of leaving the kale and chard in place is that we can continue to harvest them well past the end of the regular growing season. While chard will probably succumb to the cold in December, kale is quite cold hardy and, especially if we have good snow cover, can be harvested right through the winter.

So what does a farmer do during the winter months? This is another question I hear frequently at this time of year. While my days certainly slow down, there are still many jobs to do during the short days of winter. As the year winds down we’re busy making plans for next year—budgets and a business plan; year-end reports; seed orders; bulk orders. All of this is the behind-the-scenes work that will make next season possible. Then there are also the projects that we just don’t have time to get to during the growing season: truck and tractor maintenance; cleaning up perennial plantings and working on trellising; building bridges across the swale; greenhouse improvements; and painting and maintenance in the farmhouse. This is a list that truly goes on and on. And then there’s just sleeping in a little later; spending a little more time in the kitchen and with my kids; and catching up on reading, both personal and professional. While there is still a fair bit of work each day, winter is a time to replenish and rejuvenate the body, mind, and soul.

2009 was a year of challenges, but none of them killed us, so as Nietzsche would say, they just made us stronger. Late blight wiped out our tomatoes, but we were still able to meet our budget for farm income through some creativity, innovation, and determination. And we were able to “rest” a significant portion of our field, growing a regenerative cover of oats and field peas. That kind of fallow period is something that most organic farms take for granted but that we, with our small space, get only by finding a silver lining in a devastating loss.

Some of this year’s challenges were self-imposed and led to wonderful results. This summer we began our Farmer in Training (FiT) program for middle-school students. The program was, I think, a great success, and we’re looking forward to further refining the program next year and working with a whole new batch of young farmers (and, we hope, some returning farmers). We also worked with a couple of groups to establish organic gardens off the farm site at Oak Hill Middle School and at Hamilton Park by the Lower Falls Community Center. We’ll continue to be involved with these gardens in 2010.

As activity at the farm slows, and the farmers as well as the plants get ready for winter, the seeds for next season are already being sown. Part of what is so rejuvenating about winter is dreaming about the coming spring. A clean slate, new things to try, and seemingly endless possibilities are what await us. For now, it’s time to cozy up and let our imaginations roam, our excitement growing until it bursts forth next spring.

Greg Maslowe
Farm Manager
greg@newtoncommunityfarm.org

A Good Time at the Harvest Festival

We held our annual Harvest Festival on Sunday, October 18. Despite the bad weather (snow in October?!), we had a strong turnout from all over Newton and beyond. The barn sure was lively! Everyone warmed themselves up with hot soup, cider, and yummy baked goods, and by dancing to bluegrass and children’s songs. The kids (and some adults!) had a blast with face painting, pumpkin decorating, and other fun activities.

Thanks to all who came out to visit us on such a cold day. And special thanks go to all our wonderful volunteers. We couldn’t have done this without you!

Classes

We have only one class left in 2009. In January we begin our 2010 class offerings. When you sign up for a class, please remember to print the PDF registration form from the farm’s Web site. In addition, either call the farm (617-916-9655) or e-mail education@newtoncommunityfarm.org in advance to confirm that you are registered.

Please let us know about any special interests or topics that you might want to see offered as a class, or suggest a class that you might want to teach yourself or help teach. Your input is very valuable for our educational programming, and we thank you in advance.

Yannick Perrette
Farm Educator

Bread Making
Session B: Wednesday, 12/2, 7:30-9:30 p.m.

Click here for more class information.

The Learning Garden

The Learning Garden at Newton Community Farm benefited from two grants received this year. The first, for $5000 from the Pomroy Foundation of Newton, has been instrumental in allowing us to hire an education coordinator this year and to plan and implement the Farmer in Training (FiT) program. FiT engaged a total of nearly 40 kids entering grades 6 to 10 in week-long sessions during July and August, learning to plant, maintain, and harvest a farm garden. They discovered how food is produced and enjoyed the camaraderie of fellow gardeners, farm staff, and volunteers. Sessions included community lunches and themes related to social justice and/or sustainable agriculture.

The second grant, from the Mayor’s Committee for People With Disabilities, for approximately $2500 has allowed us to take the next step in designing gardening programs for community members of all ages who have physical disabilities. Watch for the construction of raised beds in the Learning Garden in the next couple of weeks. City workers recently patched the driveway so the grounds are accessible to wheelchairs and walkers so that handicapped parking spaces can be used. These parking spaces will be clearly marked in the near future.

We’re grateful to the members of the Education Committee, Peter Barrer, and city officials whose hard work helped us to receive these grants.

Janet Springfield
Cochair
Education Committee

Farm Stand

The final days for the 2009 farm stand are Saturday and Sunday, November 22 and 23, from 10 to 2. The farm stand will reopen in May 2010.

Volunteering on the Farm

Volunteer hours are over for 2009. They will resume in the spring.

Recipes

Our fall broccoli fits perfectly into Broccoli Sauce for Pasta, a flavorful sauce that includes tomatoes and olives. Tomatoes are also an essential ingredient in Carolina Kale, a recipe that works with any green. You might enjoy browsing in the farm’s list of shared recipes if you haven’t looked before. The cold days of winter are the perfect time to return to old favorite recipes, try new ones, and learn new cooking skills. Happy cooking!

Click here for recipes.

Farm Wish List

* Digital camera
* Bookcase in good condition, preferably wood
* Large wooden desk in good condition

If you can help us with any of these items, please contact Greg Maslowe at 617-916-9655 or at greg@newtoncommunityfarm.org. We are a 501(c)3 organization. Your donations may be tax-deductible. Thank you for your support!

What’s so great about this, and why are we able to do it this year? First, oats and field peas will protect the soil from the damaging effects of New England weather but will be killed by the cold. That means that next spring the beds that are planted to oats and peas will be easier to prepare for planting. Winter rye, on the other hand, is not killed by the cold and therefore can create difficulties the following spring when it needs to be killed before we plant cash crops. In addition, the field peas, a legume, will “fix” (that is, capture and sequester) atmospheric nitrogen, which will then be available to next season’s crops. Winter rye doesn’t do this.

So why would we ever plant winter rye as a cover crop rather than oats and peas? In order to get a good stand of oats and peas before the weather turns too cold they need to be planted by mid-September at the latest. Winter rye, on the other hand, will germinate at temperatures approaching freezing. Since in a normal year we would keep tomatoes (which constitute almost 30 percent of our total growing space) in the ground well into October, winter rye is really the only option for a winter cover crop. This goes for many other crops as well. So this year’s terrible tomato blight affords us an opportunity to nurture our soil in a way that we would not ordinarily be able to do.

September is also the month in which we begin preparing the hoop house for winter growing. We’ve already seeded the first mesclun mix. As the month progresses we’ll do more mesclun, as well as seed or transplant spinach, head lettuce, mizuna, and komatsuna into benches in the greenhouse. I’ve been very inspired this summer by Eliot Coleman’s new book on winter growing, and I hope to have greens well into winter—with no supplemental heat. By the time of our Harvest Festival you should be able to visit the hoop house to see what we’ve planted for winter. For those of you who are really interested in how to do this, we’re offering a course this fall on season extension in which we’ll talk about unheated greenhouses (hoop houses), as well as cold frames, what varieties to grow, when to plant, and how to harvest during the winter. Check out the course listings on our Web site for more information.

The weather this season has not only created challenges for growing vegetables but also for raising bees. Our bees did not survive the winter last year, so we’ve been working hard to try to ensure that they’ll make it through the winter this year. One aspect of this was extracting honey earlier in the season to give the bees more time to replenish their stocks. The first step in extracting honey is getting the bees out of the supers (the parts of the hives that are used for collecting honey). This is done by installing traps that allow the bees to exit the supers, but not reenter. During this process we noticed massive bee activity outside one of the hives. Tens of thousands of bees had descended on the hive to rob the now unguarded honey! Our bee keeper reported that, while he had heard of robbing, he’d never actually witnessed it until this year. We lost about 30 pounds of honey from that hive in 24 hours! The most likely reason for the robbing is that the strange weather this summer altered the bloom schedule for wildflowers, causing many of them to bloom earlier than normal. This left the bees without food during the late summer, causing them literally to start starving. The same phenomenon has resulted in wasps devastating our raspberries. We’ll still get some honey from the bees this year, and hopefully we’ll be able to successfully overwinter the bees, but it certainly was exciting to have to try to stop that many bees with just a wet sheet and some duct tape!

Everyone is welcome at our big Harvest Festival on October 18. There will be music, children’s activities, cooking demonstrations, farm tours, delicious food, and more. See you at the farm!

We are looking for a few more volunteers to help out with the Harvest Festival. It’s a great way to enjoy the farm and make a contribution to building community around it. (For CSA sharers, it also counts as work hours.) If you are interested, contact Peter Barrer at pbarrer@verizon.net.

Photo: Hugh and Hans Toulmin at the 2008 Harvest Festival.

For more information about the festival, click here.

For the full schedule of courses through December, follow the link below.

Sept. 20: Valley View Farm Goat Cheese Tour

If you’ve ever been curious about cheese making and are interested in seeing firsthand the process of how goats’ and cows’ milk is turned into delicious cheese, please come join us for an afternoon of exploring and touring Valley View Farm. Cheese will be available for sampling and for sale after the visit. Bon appétit.

Sunday, September 20, 2009
1:30 p.m.–5:30 p.m.
Meet at Newton Community Farm to carpool
to Valley View Farm in Topsfield, MA
Fee: $10 members, $12 nonmembers

Sept. 26: Get Started in Vermicomposting

Make and take your own indoor composting system and learn the why and how of vermicomposting. Using a simple yet effective system, you will turn your food waste into potting soil with the help of red worms. Odors are minimal, the system is compact, and it can “live” in your garage or cellar all winter! You will produce nitrogen-rich liquid fertilizer for your indoor plants and compost for your garden. We provide the materials, worms, and instruction. You bring a bin, and you leave with a working system for your home. Bins are $10 each and can be preordered when you sign up for the course.

Saturday, September 26, 2009
2 p.m.–3:30 p.m.
At Newton Community Farm
Fee: $23 members, $25 nonmembers

Photo: In the Learning Garden
In spite of the many challenges the weather has sent our way this year, classes in the Learning Garden can still harvest many wonderful veggies!

For course catalog and registration form, click here.

At the end of the week, the participants were given a certificate of excellence signed by Greg and me, and a few of them came back to volunteer at the farm. The most popular activities were planting, picking, and harvesting, and probably the least favorite activity was weeding (surprise, surprise). We’re very much looking forward to an expanded, revised, and updated program for 2010. A mother of two sons who attended the program during a week with six boys wrote, “I wanted to let you know how much my sons enjoyed the FiT program last week. Many thanks to you for everything that you taught them. I hope you can have a few workshops in the fall that they can participate in and learn further.” Thanks to Greg, Jenny, and all those who participated in the development and implementation of the FiT program.

Yannick Perrette

Photo: Michael Costello deals with carrots as a Farmer in Training.

Click here to see an article on the farm and the FiT program that appeared in the Newton Tab.

Many thanks to our webmaster, Lisa Cohen, for her assistance in this project.

(For the tech-savvy: We migrated to a CMS-based system to allow multiple users to update the site. The site is now powered by Wordpress.)

We’ll have plenty of opportunities:
* writing
* layout design
* graphic design
* poster distribution
* attending community events
* street marketing
* grassroots organizing
* media relations
* Web design
* online communities

If you enjoy or have experience in any of these areas, we need you! Contact Christine at christine_liu1@yahoo.com.

Volunteer hours on the farm: Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday, 9-12

The event is part of Massachusetts Food Preservation Workshop Day, which has been organized to respond to the resurgence of interest in local foods and self-reliance. One workshop will be held from 10 to 4 at the Natick Community Organic Farm, 117 Eliot St., South Natick; and another will be held from 9 to noon at the home of Jill Ebbott, 70 Beaconsfield Rd., Brookline.

Click here for full information on these workshops.

Click here for recipe list.

If you can help us with any of these items, please contact Greg Maslowe at 617-916-9655 or at greg@newtoncommunityfarm.org. We are a 501(c)3 organization. Your donations may be tax-deductible. Thank you for your support!

Late blight afflicts both tomatoes and potatoes. In fact, it is the same disease that caused the potato famine in Ireland. It is a fungal disease and spreads through spores that can be transmitted through physical contact with plants, as well as through the air. Once airborne, the spores can spread for miles from a single infection site.

For a while things were looking much better here at NCF than at some other farms in the greater Boston area. Two major CSAs in Lincoln had to destroy their entire tomato crops a couple of weeks ago. Many other farms in surrounding communities also reported that they had to destroy at least part of their crops. Still things looked pretty good here. But with late blight that can change very quickly. The disease can kill a healthy crop in a matter of weeks. For the last two weeks I’ve been watching in dismay as our first planting of tomatoes has succumbed to the disease. It appears to have found its way into our second and even third plantings (no thanks to the deer, which are moving—and browsing—amongst the tomatoes every night these days). While we might get a small harvest of tomatoes, 2009 is going to be remembered as the year without tomatoes—at NCF as well as most of the other small, organic farms in the area.

So is there anything that could be done about late blight? Conventional farmers have an arsenal (literally) of systemic fungicides at their disposal that can effectively control late blight. Organic farmers are not allowed to use them. (Hum, I wonder why?) What organic farmers can use is copper. Unfortunately, the only way for copper to work (as well as those systemic fungicides we’re not allowed to use) is proactively—that is, you have to start spraying it before there’s any infection. And therein lies the catch for many of us small-scale, “organic” (i.e., not certified) farmers—we don’t want to spray for something that might happen. We often don’t want to spray at all!

The University of Massachusetts extension office recommends that organic farmers spray their tomatoes with copper every five days, or every time it rains, whichever is sooner. Has anyone looked outside lately? We’d certainly be spraying more than once every five days if we followed this advice. Not only is this not possible for many small farms because of the time involved in spraying a major crop so often, but copper is, well, toxic. When spraying you need to wear boots and socks, long pants, a long-sleeve shirt, goggles, and a respirator. And while tomatoes thus sprayed can be sold within 24 hours of spraying (!), UMass recommends that harvesting crews also wear long pants, long sleeves, and rubber gloves until the fruit is washed. Sound like something you want sprayed on your vegetables every five days or more often?

It’s not something I feel comfortable doing—for my sake, my crew’s sake, my customers’ sake, or for the soil’s sake. A healthy farm depends in part on fungus in the soil that helps make nutrients available to plants. Dumping a fungicide on the soil every five days or less for an entire season (or two, or three, or every year) seems a bad idea if what we’re trying to create is a sustainable farm system.

So what are we doing? Like most farms in the area, we’re destroying our tomato plantings as they become infected and replanting if possible to try to salvage some value from those beds. It may be extra carrots, or broccoli, or radishes, or greens, but many of our tomato beds will be replanted with something that we can harvest before the hard frosts come. It’s the best we can do; it’s all we can do. So we’re sucking it up and trying to stay cheery as we plow under crops that we’ve been nurturing since March.

Greg Maslowe
Farm Manager
greg@newtoncommunityfarm.org

Tuesday, September 29, at 7 p.m.

For more information and to reserve your seat, contact Jerry Regosin (jregosin@aol.com) or download the reply form on our Web site.

For more information, click here.

Mark your calendar: This year’s Harvest Festival is on Sunday, October 18.

To make it happen, we need volunteers to help out with the Harvest Festival. It’s a great way to enjoy the farm and make a contribution to building community around it. We need people to help with planning and organizing, and we also could use help on the day of the event. If you are interested, contact Peter Barrer at pbarrer@verizon.net.

Photo: Romi Selinger and Nina Lokshin at last year’s Harvest Festival

Click here to see more event details on our Web site.

Click here for the news report from the farm.

If you have any thoughts or questions about the FiT program or any other educational programs at the farm, please contact farm educator Yannick Perrette at education@newtoncommunityfarm.org or by cell phone at 917-584-4420. Happy summer learning!

Photo: Jasper Maslowe and Marissa Krasner deal with carrots in the FiT program.

For information about summer classes, click here.

This was the third year for the ride but the first year NCF participated. It was a wonderful sight to see 70 riders turning onto Nahanton Street and then pulling into the farm. They were impressed by our operation and enjoyed the fresh beans and cucumbers–perfect for a hot, sunny day.

To see the recipes, click here.

If you can help us with any of these items, please contact Greg Maslowe at 617-916-9655 or at newtoncommunityfarm@comcast.net. We are a 501(c)3 organization. Your donations may be tax-deductible. Thank you for your support!

Anyone else remember news reports of tomatoes with fish genes? They contained an “antifreeze” gene from Arctic flounder intended to confer cold resistance to tomatoes. While the experiment failed (despite continued “reporting” of this as a successful application of agricultural genetic engineering), I’m beginning to think that “fish-matoes” might not be such a bad idea. It seems like not only our tomatoes but many other crops, and even farmers, could use a set of gills to survive these days.

Yes, we’ve had a lot of rain, and farmers everywhere seem ready to pray for a good long dry spell (despite the old adage warning about getting what you ask for). National Public Radio ran a story recently reporting that many Massachusetts farms are experiencing crop losses of 30 percent or more due to the wet weather. While things certainly aren’t that bad here, we also are feeling the effects of too much rain and too little sunshine.

I recently sent a few of our high school workers out to weed and mulch one of our watermelon plantings. They took two steps down the path and sank up to their calves in mud. The water table in the lower end of our field at this point is less than a foot below ground level!

But all is not gloomy. If anyone remembers the extremely wet spring we had in 2006, I’m happy to report that we are much better off this year than we were then. This is in part due to our soil management, but also due to the swale we dug along the eastern edge of the field. A swale, for those wondering, is like a ditch, but whereas ditches are deeper than they are wide and prone to erosion, a swale is wide and shallow and often planted. This allows it to move a lot of water without eroding the soil. We dug our swale two years ago to help control water from the barn roof, the farmhouse roof, and the extensive pavement surrounding the two—all of which flows into the field in one spot. This confluence of water seriously exacerbated flooding in the field. Now, thanks to the swale, the water is quickly moved along the edge of the field and out to the wetlands bordering the Charles River, which are designed by Nature to absorb storm waters. While the field is still wet, our drainage has significantly improved, and we no longer have standing pools of water in the lower end of the field.

So all in all, things aren’t as bad as they might be. Many of our crops, while not happy, are alive. They’re just waiting for summer to come. And that, I think, is what all of us are doing.

Greg Maslowe
Farm Manager
greg@newtoncommunityfarm.org

We are offering an enticing variety of classes this summer, and there is still time to sign up. For instance, Lunch and Learn from the Garden takes place on July 22 and August 13 from noon to 1:30 p.m. This is your chance to get new recipes to use produce from the farm and be inspired toward more healthy and creative cooking and eating. For information on other classes, click on the link below.

The first one-week session of the Farmer in Training program began on Monday, July 13. Separate weekly sessions continue through August 21. Students will learn about sustainable agriculture and current food systems while gaining hands-on exposure to farming. The young farmers in training will grow food for the Newton Food Pantry in the community garden plot in Nahanton Park and have discussions about the state of our agricultural and food production methods. Details are below.

Farmer in Training
A farm summer program for middle school students (going into grades 6 through 9)
Weekly: Monday–Friday, 8:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m.
July 13–17
July 20–24
July 27–31
August 3–7
August 10–14
August 17–21
At Newton Community Farm and Nahanton Community Gardens
Weekly Fee: $125 Members, $140 Nonmembers
Maximum number of students per week: 6
Instructor: Yannick Perette, Farm Education Coordinator

Spend a week outdoors with your peers and staff from Newton Community Farm, learning to plant, maintain, and harvest a farm garden. Discover how food is produced and enjoy camaraderie with your fellow gardeners, farm staff, and volunteers. Students will work at the farm, maintain garden plots at Nahanton Park, and grow food for the Newton Food Pantry.

Students may sign up for one or more weekly sessions. Each session will include gardening, community lunches (bring your own, and share a dish made from fresh farm produce), and a different theme related to social justice and/or sustainable agriculture. Work hard, learn a lot, have fun!

To enroll please e-mail Yannick Perrette at education@newtoncommunityfarm.org.

For information on summer courses at the farm, click here.

Participants in the Get Growing! class met for the third of four sessions on June 30. The enthusiastic gardeners tied tomatoes, weeded and mulched the beds, thinned beets and basil, and best of all, they harvested peas, salad greens, onions, beet greens, and lemon basil. The kids visiting the class really got into the mulching!

This year’s Tour de Farms Bike Tour takes place on Saturday, August 1, and will feature two loops, a 15-mile route in Boston to visit urban farm and garden projects, and a 40-mile route to visit community farms, including Newton Community Farm, on the city’s outskirts. Both loops start in the morning at Franklin Park, and the longer loop is an advanced ride for experienced riders only. Both rides will be led by experienced riders, and there will be technical support in case of flat tires.

Online preregistration is required; registration and insurance fee is $10. To register online, click the link below.
For more information about the Tour de Farms Bike Ride contact Jennifer Fahy at Farm Aid at 617-354-2922 or e-mail jen@farmaid.org.

To register online, click here.

We are beginning to put together a library of books on farming, gardening, pests, weeds, foraging, preserving the harvest, and food issues in general―pretty much anything that deals with food production and consumption. The books will be used for teaching and will be available for use at the farm. If you have books that you would like to donate, please e-mail Greg at greg@newtoncommunityfarm.org with the title(s). We are trying to build a library that emphasizes sustainable approaches to food.

Open Tuesday through Friday, 3–7 p.m.; Saturday, 10–2 p.m.
You may see cucumbers, beets, carrots, kale, and chard along with lettuce, onions, garlic, and scallions at the farm stand this month.

Drop-in volunteer hours are Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays from 9 to 12:30. Wear work clothes and, if you like, bring a lunch so you can join the farm staff for their midday meal.

CSA members, when you come to do your work hours, be sure to check in with Tom Libby. We’ll have a chart in the barn for you to record your hours each time you come. This allows us to keep track of how many hours you’ve worked.

This month’s recipes focus on beets, cucumbers, and carrots, which have starring roles in July. Chilled Beet and Buttermilk Soup is a cool and refreshing summer soup for a hot day (if we ever get one). Glazed Carrots with Ginger are a sweet and tangy side dish, and Scandinavian Cucumber Salad is full of crunch and acid tang, a great alternative to pickles.

Click here for recipes.

* 1 or 2 picnic tables, preferably wood

If you can help us with any of these items, please contact Greg Maslowe at 617-916-9655 or at greg@newtoncommunityfarm.org. We are a 501(c)3 organization. Your donations may be tax-deductible. Thank you for your support!

I love June. Warm summery days, but cool nights. Rain showers and the sounds of crickets chirping in the evenings. Lengthening days leading up to the summer solstice. I find it all invigorating and enlivening. Good thing, because June is also one of the busiest times at the farm. Planting season is at its peak, but we’ve still got work to do in the greenhouse starting seedlings for succession plantings and the fall crops. The warm summery days and rain showers that I find so invigorating also invigorate the weeds so there’s hoeing to be done. And June finds the harvest season beginning in earnest. Seems like even with the lengthening days, there just aren’t enough hours to get all the work done.Thus far 2009 has been a good year for getting projects done on the farm. Despite all the planting, weeding, and harvesting that need to get done (or that we perhaps sometimes procrastinate about doing) we’re finding a little time to tackle some of the items on the very long list of projects I keep in my head. It feels good to knock off a job or two that seem like they’ve been on my mind for a year or two (or three or four). We’re slowly but surely cleaning up and beautifying more and more of the property and making improvements that will make the farm a more pleasant and efficient workplace.

One of those projects that we’re working on right now is cleaning up the space between the barn and the grass stage. For years, before Newton Community Farm took over operations of the farm, this area was used as a repository for all sorts of odds and ends—metal poles used for trellising tomatoes; old sewage pipe; tractor implements; grinding stones; corrugated metal sheets; and an eclectic assortment of granite, marble. and other stone. A lot of this was kept just in case some use could be found for it. Much of it never saw its potential realized. The area isn’t good for growing crops, which is why it was used for storing things. It’s shaded by big white oaks, and much of the ground is covered with the remnants of an asphalt drive leading up to what used to be a pit for working on tractors and trucks.

It doesn’t sound like most wonderful part of the farm, but we have a vision for how to make this a more attractive and useful part of our daily operation. Those of you who have spent a morning working on the farm during the summer know that we often have groups of a dozen or more people—CSA members, volunteers, high school interns, and workers from various schools and organizations—all helping to make the farm run. Many of them stay for lunch, and we’d like to encourage this as a way of strengthening our community. So this year we’re cleaning up that ramshackle corner of the farm and turning it into a picnic area where anyone who wants can join us for a community lunch. As part of our pilot Farmer in Training program, local middle school students will be participating in this lunch and learning how to use fresh vegetables by preparing a dish to share each day. We’re looking forward to this new aspect of the farm. Not only will it clean up what for a long time has been something of an eyesore but it will turn a formerly overlooked area into a vibrant part of the daily life of the farm.

So next time you’re at the farm, either visiting or working, consider bringing a lunch and staying to enjoy a meal with us. It’s a great way to get to know others who are interested in the farm, sustainability, healthy eating, and having a good time in the dirt.

Middle school students will have a chance to work, learn, and have fun down on the farm this summer. A weekly program for students going into grades 6 through 9 will take place at the farm and at Nahanton Community Gardens. In the Farmer in Training program students will learn to plant, maintain, and harvest a farm garden. They will discover how food is produced and enjoy camaraderie with their fellow gardeners, farm staff, and volunteers. Each session will include gardening, community lunches (bring your own and share a dish made from fresh farm produce), and a different theme related to social justice and/or sustainable agriculture.Students may sign up for one or more weekly sessions.
Mon. through Fri., 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Weekly Fee: $125 Members, $140 Nonmembers
Max. number of students per week: 6
Instructor: Yannick Perette

July 13-17 Aug 3-7
July 20-24 Aug 10-14
July 27-31 Aug 17-21

For more information see the link below. To register, go to education@newtoncommunityfarm.org.

Click here for more information.

Here are classes for all ages from preschooler to adult. For course descriptions, click on the link below. To register for courses please e-mail us at education@newtoncommunityfarm.org.

June 16 Jam and Jelly Making
June 25 From Plant to Plate (Pt. 1)
June 30 Ready, Set, Grow! (Pt. 1)

July 7 Farm Sprouts
July 11 Build an Adobe Bread Oven
July 11 Weeds on the Menu!
July 16 From Plant to Plate (Pt. 2)
July 18 Build a Bluebird House
July 22 Lunch and Learn From the Garden

Farmer in Training: from July 13 to Aug 21
Sign up for one or more weekly sessions!
Click here for course information.

J. Yannick Perrette, 34
Growing up in New York City, I made the most of my fire escape to grow edibles in containers. As I got older, I could always be found in gardens. My first job as a child was working in a plant nursery. In college, I worked at Wave Hill in the Bronx doing native forest restoration projects. The following summer I worked at Earthworks, a permaculture institute in Cerillos, New Mexico. At Brown University as an environmental studies major, I wrote my senior thesis on community-supported agriculture (CSA) farms. My conclusions were that buying a CSA share is cheaper than buying the equivalent at a supermarket, and that CSA farms at that time were hindered by inadequate farm financing and insufficient numbers of CSA farmers.

For a year I lived in West Virginia working for the Green Space Coalition and directed a regional conference entitled “Building Coalitions to Vitalize Community Green Space.” In the spring of 2000, I moved to Washington, D.C., and opened a restaurant and wine bar called Arbor, which lasted four years. It demanded even longer hours than farming. Since moving to Boston, I’ve worked at Blue Heron organic farm in Lincoln and was also involved in community outreach and education programs for three years with Red Tomato, a nonprofit in Canton. I also worked as office manager and coordinator of an ecology camp for local high school students for the Friends of Alewife Reservation in Cambridge. I have also volunteered at City Sprouts, Farm Aid, the Arnold Arboretum, Field of Greens/Food for Free, and the Greater Boston Food Bank.

Please feel free to let me know your thoughts, comments, and questions about any and all educational and coordinating concerns about the farm. Thank you for your ongoing shared input and ideas. I can be reached anytime by e-mail at education@newtoncommunityfarm.org.

As you pass through the Learning Garden (LG) at the farm, take some time to see what’s going on. As you probably know, it is the farm’s outdoor classroom. Classes such as Square Foot Gardening, Potato in a Box, and Plots in Pots have already taken place this season. Get Growing and Farm Sprouts are continuing series. Ready, Set, Grow! starts soon for families. Among other summer classes will be Jam and Jelly Making, Lunch and Learn: Cooking With CSA Produce, Weeds on the Menu!, From Plant to Plate, Building Bluebird Houses, Putting Up the Garden, and Building an Adobe Oven. Middle schoolers can enroll in the Farmer in Training program in July and August.

Get Growing participants have planted the west end of the LG. Peas, which they planted on April 17, should be ready to harvest in two to three weeks. Beet greens are ready now. These new gardeners will be enjoying the fruits (veggies?!) of their hard work throughout the season.

You’ll see three different grains growing on the south side of the LG. These will be harvested in the fall, threshed, ground into flour, and used in bread-baking classes. Ted Chapman’s Permaculture Boot Camp has resulted in a demonstration permaculture bed. A sunflower house and pole bean tepee are rising skyward, too.

The Education Committee and its new coordinator, Yannick Perrette, are very excited about our expanding educational programming. Come take a class, become an education volunteer, suggest a class to teach. The Learning Garden is a place for every member of our community.

We would like to recognize all the folks who have already signed up as education volunteers: Sheryl Boris-Schacter, Karen Kieffer, David Kieffer, Linda Brite, Alexandra Bathon, Connie King, Lisa Cohen, Alba Kotoni, Sarah Barnett, Peggy Rothschild, and Laurie Brownstein, as well as Education Committee members Trudy Lanman, Carolyn Arond, Jenny Craddock, Janet Springfield, Ted Chapman, Sam Fogel, education coordinator Yannick Perrette, farm manager Greg Maslowe, and assistant farmer Tom Libby. They assist and/or teach our classes and help maintain the Learning Garden. If you are interested in joining, please contact Janet Springfield, jjkas@aol.com.

Jenny Craddock
Janet Springfield

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Our first annual Edible Seedling Sale succeeded beyond our expectations. We uncovered a large demand for NCF-grown seedlings that members of our farm community could grow in home gardens. Our apologies to folks who arrived midway through the event and found that the items they were looking for were already sold out.

Here’s wishing for a successful 2009 growing season in home gardens. Next year we plan to have even more seedlings for sale, so please plan to come back next spring. And a personal thanks to our volunteers who made the event go so smoothly.

The farm stand, located on Winchester Street, is now open Tuesday through Friday from 3 to 7 and Saturday from 10 to 2. In June you can expect to see lettuce, arugula, spinach, green garlic, radishes, hakurei turnips, carrots, basil, and cilantro available for sale. The farm stand, in addition to the farm’s booth at both Newton Farmers’ Markets, lets you buy the produce you want at a variety of times and days.

Drop-in volunteer hours are Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays from 9 to noon. Come on any of these days wearing farm clothes and be prepared to get your hands into some lovely dirt.

If you have a hankering for guacamole but don’t have an avocado, try a pea-based version called Guacamollie, which also uses some of June’s cilantro. Those tangy red radishes that we’re getting in our shares this month make crisp Japanese Radish Salad. And for a delicious use of June’s spinach, check out Bow Ties With Salmon, Spinach, and Black Mushrooms, an elegant dish for a special dinner. They are all on the farm’s Web site; see the link below.

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* Picnic tables, one or two, preferably wood, for our new picnic area
* Chipper, either a half day’s use or one donated to the farm
* Artist/calligrapher to paint signs identifying vegetables for field, Learning Garden, and farm stand

If you can help us with any of these items, please contact Greg Maslowe at 617-916-9655 or at newtoncommunityfarm@comcast.net. We are a 501c3 organization. Your donations may be tax-deductible. Thank you for your support!

Tom and I, along with a small but determined crew of volunteers, have been working nonstop getting ready for May. What happens in May that requires so much work? The first big plantings go into the field. Many of the cool-weather crops get planted in early May, and by the middle of the month we’ve begun putting in the first succession of many of our warm-weather crops. What are successions? While there are a few crops we only plant once, most things we plant multiple times. Sometimes we do this as a way of dealing with disease (e.g., tomatoes), and sometimes we do this because we need to harvest a crop over the entire season (e.g., carrots). So our first succession of tomatoes goes into the field by the middle of May, along with cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, and many other crops.

In addition to this major planting push in the field there’s the Edible Seedling Sale. We’ve potted up literally thousands of plants for this first annual event. The greenhouse addition we put on in April came just in time: even with the expanded space in the greenhouse we’re bursting at the seams with seedlings and have to move many of them outdoors.

We’re also hard at work expanding our perennial plantings. We’re putting in more blueberries and blackberries, replacing some Asian pears, and planting seedless table grapes on our new information kiosk. We’re also trying to get a jump on the weeds by making sure that all our current perennials are well mulched. It’s exciting to think that by the end of May we’ll have three beds of blueberries growing along Winchester Street. The first bed, planted two years ago, should start producing fruit this summer!

What else is in store for the coming season? We’re planning perennial herb beds flanking the main path through the field where people can pick from a variety of herbs throughout the season. Between the field and the farmhouse we’ll be planting a flower garden. The flowers will not only beautify the farm but also allow us to put a piece of underutilized land into production when the garden matures and we open it for cut flowers. Along Nahanton Street we’ll be putting up a trellis to support blackberries, and between the information kiosk and the farm stand we’ll be constructing terraced beds.

Sadly, our bees did not survive the winter. But we have three new hives with a fourth arriving any time. Our goal, working with Needham beekeeper Tom Tyre, is to have hives that live over the winter and eventually to be able to breed our own queens! It’s great having the bees back, and as our orchards mature the bees will play an important role in ensuring good pollination.

Thanks to those who have come out already and helped us get ready for the planting season. I hope to see many more of you at the farm as we move toward summer.

This Sunday is the farm’s first Edible Seedling Sale from noon to 4pm. Come buy vegetable and herb seedlings to plant at home. You can bring your questions to our gardening experts and watch a gardening demonstration.

Produce sales will begin this week with our own asparagus! We have a very limited supply (3 to 5 pounds a day) of fresh asparagus for the next three to four weeks. The asparagus will be available starting at 10 a.m. in the lower level of the barn. We will also have spring onions for sale with the asparagus.

By the first or second week in June our Winchester Street farm stand will be open and selling seasonal produce Tuesdays through Fridays from 3 to 7 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 to 2. The farm stand operates on a self-serve honor system. Select your produce, weighing items on the scale if appropriate, and put your payment in the slot in the counter. It’s that easy. As the summer progresses there will be more produce and greater selection, so be sure to visit us often.

Starting the week following July 4 Newton Community Farm will also have a stand at both of Newton’s Farmers’ Markets. On Tuesdays we are at Cold Springs Park, and on Fridays we are at the American Legion Post 440 on California Street. Both markets run from the week following the 4th of July through Halloween. The markets open at 1:30 and close at 6.

As part of its mission to promote sustainability, Newton Community Farm is sponsoring a group ride from Newton City Hall to Newton Community Farm. Learn how easy and fun it is to get to the farm, and to the Farmers’ Market, by bicycle. Small groups led by experienced cyclists will leave Newton City Hall beginning at 10 a.m. for a 9-mile loop that includes a stop at Cold Spring Park (site of the summer farmers’ market) and a stop at Newton Community Farm. This is an urban route that includes some busy streets and a couple of not-too-steep hills as well as quiet residential areas wherever possible. Children, accompanied by an adult, and cyclists of varying levels are welcome. Everyone must wear a helmet, have a bike in good working order, and be able to bike at least 9 miles. So leave the car at home and discover the farm as a destination you can reach under your own power!

Start: Commonwealth Avenue carriage road at Beaumont Avenue (across Commonwealth Avenue from City Hall)

Registration: 9:30-10:00 a.m.
Ride to farm: 10:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Rain date: June 13, 2009

More information: AFTER MAY 31, questions may be directed to Cynthia Snow, csnow2@verizon.net or 617-731-8725.

Looking for a way to learn more about growing food? Looking for a way to get out and have some fun in the dirt and sun? Come join the farm staff and other volunteers each Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday between 9 and noon for our public work sessions. These sessions are open to anyone who would like to join us. You must, however, be at least 14 years old to come by yourself. Younger children are welcome but must be accompanied by an adult. During the sessions you’ll participate in whatever needs to be done on the farm that day. In May that often means working in the greenhouse or transplanting crops into the field. As the season progresses you might find yourself weeding, harvesting, washing vegetables, sorting vegetables for markets, planting, or doing many other activities that are just too much fun to mention. Whatever you end up doing, it’s most fun when you do it in groups, so encourage your friends to come with you and, if you can, bring something to eat and stay for lunch afterwards.

Speaking of volunteering, the farm once again was a work site for NewtonServs. This year we took on two tasks: mulching the final section of permanent pathway in the field, and preparing land in the community garden plots in Nahanton Park for use this summer in an educational program. In years past the farm has been an extremely popular site, attracting 30 or more volunteers. This year, perhaps because NewtonServs was scheduled at the end of April vacation week, we had a small turnout. But thank you to those who did come and volunteer. There was a lot of work for a small crew, but we worked hard and did what we had planned to do.

Many thanks to Sophie Duncan for the farm’s new cold frame. Sophie, a senior at Newton North High School, designed and built the cold frame on the farm with the help of our farm manager, Greg, using plastic deck material and a clear polycarbonate top. She completed the structure last November and planted arugula, Swiss chard, spinach, herbs, and other hardy vegetables. The 4′ x 10′ plot supplied Sophie and her family with fresh salad greens which she harvested at the farm several times this past winter. It was great to be able to harvest her crop in the snow, she said. Since Sophie will be graduating this year, she hopes that the farm will continue to use the cold frame. Thank you, Sophie, and congratulations on a successful project!

Sophie received school science credit for this independent project. The materials for the frame were purchased with a grant from the Newton Conservators.

May 16: Natural Architecture for Your Garden
May 21: Potato in a Box

Jun 2: Square Foot Kitchen Gardens
Jun 5: Plots in Pots!
Jun 13: Veggies in Your Flower Garden?
Jun 16: Jam and Jelly Making

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Rhubarb is lush and green in May, so here are two easy ideas for using rhubarb.

Rhubarb Sauce
Stew rhubarb in a little water with sugar to taste. Use on cut-up fresh or stewed fruit.

Rhubarb Dessert
Make Rhubarb Sauce and then add some cream for a simple, delicious dessert.

Click here to see our Wiki Recipe Collection

* cedar or redwood posts for 6′ fence (NOT pressure treated)
* wire clothes hangers
* plastic grocery bags

If you can help us with any of these items, please contact Greg Maslowe at 617/916-9655 or at newtoncommunityfarm@comcast.net. We are a 501c3 organization. Your donations may be tax-deductible. Thank you for your support!