The Last Day

Wednesday was my last day of working at Moose Hill CSA Farm. I have invested the last two summers into this job so it was sad to say my last farewell. I have met so many incredible, thoughtful, and heartfelt people through working here. I could not have asked for a better community to work alongside. I will have so many memories attached to this farm. So many frustrated moments, so many new experiences, so many laughs, and so many heartfelt conversations.

The farm had an incredible energy. I liked when you would be buried in a crop for a few hours, you could feel the fatigue and frustration setting in when you just want to be done and then you would get a feeling that you should look up. You would look up and just breathe in the farm. All around you is green and clean vegetables, the air smells fresh, and there might even be a whisper of a breeze that touches your face. Or those rainy days in August where it is warm and you just get soaked by the rain while you are surrounded by corn and it feels incredible.    

Thank you to all of the farm workers and apprentices this year for making the decision to be part of the farm life. Christelle, thank you for always keeping me up to date on your love life. Haley, thank you for always doing your signature snort (if that is what you call it). Christabel, thank you for spending that stormy afternoon with me banding rubber bands for over an hour. Ethan, thank you for always voicing your opinions and being the only one who decided to swim with me in the lake out back. Yadin, thank you for the real talks, I hope our paths cross in the future. Alex, thank you for showing me the beautiful world of RHCP, I cannot wait to hear about you and Ethan's adventures around the world. Mathew, thank you for being our fearless leader and always supplying the snacks :)

 Despite a fantastic two summers, I think it is time for me to explore new horizons and find new experiences. Who knows,  maybe next summer I will be white water rafting in Charlemont, working as a polo groom, or working in another country!

Thanks for the memories Moose Hill <3

Stop! Tomato Time!

The Tomatoes are in! Thousands a day! So many tomatoes! I love tomatoes, so this is an exciting time for me! I can gorge on an obscene amount of delicious, ripe tomatoes while harvesting! Every girls dream, right? Lemon boys, sungolds, cherry, brandywine, striped german, green zebra... the list goes on and on of delectable tomatoes!  

Currently, there is an abundance of produce on the farm. In addition to the 15-30 tomatoes each family may get, we are also harvesting a lot of corn, onions, beets, beans, eggplant, potatoes, and a variety of peppers.

In lieu of all of these veggies, I decided to make salsa. There is something gratifying about creating a dish completely produced from the farm. After my shift, I harvested a couple ears of corn, onions, jalapenos, bell peppers, cilantro, and tomatoes for this salsa. The salsa was made within, two hours of being harvested. Short of making it in the field, that is about as fresh as you can get!

Food is a great way to bring people together! Everyone eats, so why not all eat together? Eating is deeply ingrained in our American culture. Eating can be a very social occasion and is often a common place for thoughts and ideas to be shared. It is considered a time for bonding with other human beings. Although in the 21st century, we have strayed from the sit down meal with the family and have migrated to dinners in front of the television. It still can be considered a time to mix and mingle with family, friends, acquaintances, and strangers. 

However, diet can also ostracize us if we do not conform to dietary norms. Speaking from personal experience, last summer, I decided to try vegetarianism for health reasons, to practice self restraint, and as a social experiment. Whenever I was at a social gathering and there was food involved people became uncomfortable with the fact that I might not be able to eat everything served. Some would dismiss me and tell me to fend for myself (which I am fine with I can scavenge), while others would flutter around asking what else they can serve me. There was a lot of cajoling to just try a piece of that steak, chicken, burger, etc. and stop being vegetarian despite my personal choices. I felt that as soon as I mentioned I was vegetarian in situations like this it brought me one step down on the social food chain (excuse the pun). I found my experiment useful in showing how much food influences our daily lives and social interactions. However, this is only one person's observations, I am sure other dietary restrictions in other social groups and geographical areas would produce very different results. 

Rain Makes Corn... and Potatoes

Despite the leaf hopper eating all of the potato leaves, the potatoes have been coming in strong this last week. We have had so many potatoes that we have been harvesting double shares of our potato crop to the shareholders. Potatoes can be a long and dirty process to harvest. You start off by pulling the plant out of the ground, roots and all, and then you use a hand trowel or pitchfork to unearth the 6-10 potatoes that are hiding. Somehow, I manage to get most of the soil in my boots every time I harvest. 

We have been having a decent harvest of corn but now we are starting to move into the juvenile crop. I expect after this rainfall the younger corn will be ready for harvest and we will have corn coming out of our ears. At Moose Hill, we usually aim to harvest about 500-1,000 ears of corn a day. This means bringing potato sacks through the rows and harvesting 50 ears of corn per sack. These sacks can get pretty heavy, but at least I don't have to go to the gym after work!

A lot of my time on the farm, I spend thinking about the contrasts between small scale organic farming and industrial farming. I was a girl raised on an industrial farming philosophy through my education at the Norfolk Aggie and through the National FFA Organization. I learned that production agriculture is not as bad as it looks on the outside, that most farmers receive a bad reputation from ignorant outsiders that see the treatment of their animals and assume it is animal abuse. I believe that industrial farming is a very efficient method in producing the most product in the least amount of time. But is it the most environmentally efficient? Is it the healthiest for our bodies? Is there negative effects when it comes to Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO)?

At UMass Amherst, I have a secondary major in Sustainable Food and Farming. Here, there is some hostility towards the industrial farming industry. There is a lot of talk of Organic, Local, and Non GMO. While, I see much of their points and may have drank some of the Sustainable Food and Farming Kool- Aid myself, there is still a lot that I question in this faction of agriculture. How sustainable is an organic product that had to be shipped from halfway across the world? What if the GMOs are more environmentally efficient? For example some GMO's decrease the need for pesticides (which would make it more environmentally efficient I assume) or creates crops to be more water efficient for places with little rainfall like the Water Efficient  Maize for Africa Project (WEMA). The question that it all comes down to; can local agriculture feed the world?

I try to educate myself on the many divisions of this industry and recently finished reading Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan. The author gave great insight on many different aspects of the agricultural industry without asserting himself or his reader too much to either side. It was a book more of observations than opinions, which I appreciated. I would recommend reading it to those who are interested in learning more about where some of their food comes from.  

We live in a world of many opinions and ideas. Maybe, none of us are right. I think, we need to impart changes in our agricultural system. But to what extent, I am not sure. Do we eradicate the current system and go completely local? Or do we meet in the middle? Do we start increasing vertical farming and closed ( or cyclic) system farming? Maybe we need a variety of these to make ends meet. Improvements will not happen overnight but we can always be working towards improving what we have and working towards decreasing our impact on the earth. 

Weeding is the Name of the Game

Coming back to the farm after a weeklong road trip to Georgia brought so many new changes! It was hard to believe that the era of strawberries was coming to an end and that the greens were still going strong.

 Down on the farm, a lot can change in a few days. All of the sun and rain we have been having allows crops to grow so much faster than you would expect. We have already started to harvest the zucchini and cousa and the carrots are almost ready for their first day of harvest! These carrots have been long awaited. The other farm hands, shareholders, and I have spent countless hours tending to our carrot  crop in the hopes of receiving some substantial and delicious carrots.

 As I have come to realize on the farm, weeding is the name of the game. Without weeding, your crops will become overrun by weeds, will be difficult to harvest, and will not be a substantial size. With carrots, this is an especially important task. They are delicate creatures and if overrun by weeds they will only produce scrawny, less-than-nutritious-or-delicious carrots.

All of the weeding and personal investment in the carrots has me looking forward to the day when we can harvest these vibrant vegetables and have a little sampling for ourselves. I know the horses at my other job are looking forward to a sampling as well!

Back to The Farm Life

Being back at Moosehill Farm for a second summer has helped to remind me of all the joys and discomforts of working on a farm. The hot summer days, the cold rainy days, and the endless weeding which was once a distant memory is now a reality again. But, so is the excitement you get from harvesting a new crop, the enjoyment of eating a strawberry that you picked moments earlier, and the satisfaction you feel after a hard day’s work.  

On the farm, Mother Nature is in control. This year we have just begun to harvest strawberries whereas last year they were in full swing in the beginning of June. So many factors affect how things grow here on the farm. The weather, sunlight, timing, technique, pests, and disease have a major effect on plants. For example, last year where we had an abundance of radishes, this year our crop has been infested with maggots which has affected our yield this year.

So far we have been harvesting numerous types of greens including; arugula, spinach, romaine lettuce, curly lettuce, kale, swiss chard and mixed greens. We have also recently begun harvesting strawberries, spring onions, radishes, and peas! On top of a busy harvest schedule, we have been investing numerous hours in weeding carrots in the hopes of having a good yield this year. We even recruited about 60 middle schools students for the job. However, I fear there were more casualties in the carrots than there were saved.