We are excited about a big box of donated seeds we received in the mail this week. They were sent to us from Diane Blazek at All America Selections (AAS).
It is always exciting to open a new box of seeds and think about all the plants they will produce. It is one of our favorite things! Donations are even more special. They are often unexpected and always make us very happy.
The AAS sent us wonderful seeds that will produce food for donations. The seed packets included corn, squashes, shallots, melons, and lots of tomatoes.
We have a nice row of greens growing in our hoop house. They might not grow much until the days get longer in February, but we are planning lots of harvest then. We have spinach, tatsoi, bok choi, lettuce, mustard greens, and beet greens. We’ll put an extra layer of cold protection, low hoops with fabric row cover, over them soon.
It’s been chilly many nights in the past couple weeks. We have put out long rows of white covers to protect our leafy greens like tatsoi, bok choi, lettuce, arugula, and mustards. We have been harvesting and donating a nice box or two of mixed greens the past couple weeks.
It’s late October and we are still harvesting. Mostly leafy greens, like lettuce and Swiss chard. A few cabbages. We donated 21 pounds to the food pantry today.
Another beautiful day out working in our Wayland field! We harvested and donated another 100 pounds of produce to our local pantry, Open Table of Maynard. We were hit by a surprise frost this week – three weeks earlier than usual. Our summer squash was hit pretty hard.
We’ve found many types of insects out in our fields. Earlier in the season, we saw mostly the vegetable eating pests, like aphids, cabbage worms, and horn worms. But now the good guys that eat the pests, are around en force. This praying mantis was protecting our tomato plants today.
The mantis reminds me of our garden’s name. “Aurelia” was the name Hannah, our Field Leader, gave to a mantis that lived on her garden cart last summer – for over 3 months – while she zoomed around the Mass Horticultural Society’s Gardens at Elm Bank supervising everything in her role Senior Horticulturalist. The name Aurelia’s Garden is about the symbolism we learned from the mantis and our intention to work to restore balance to our inequitable food system.
Photo by Kathy Martin
As Hannah describes, “The summer the mantis took up residence with me was one of my most hectic times. I was running all over – I tore my Achilles but had to keep going. When the mantis showed up on my garden cart I started driving more slowly. [I learned] about the symbolism behind a praying mantis choosing to enter a person’s life. The Mantis tells us to slow down, to practice patience and mindfulness, to move and act with more intention and less reaction, and to find balance in life. It was a good lesson for me and for others I worked with.
“When our newly formed team first began trying to find a piece of land for Aurelia’s Garden, we looked in the Sudbury Valley Trustees area. The land is beautiful, and we set our hearts on that immediately. We went to the site one day to walk the field. While there, we found a praying mantis egg case with the late afternoon, winter sun, shining on it. It seemed like a moment of clarity – a moment in time that heartened us all.
“So, the name Aurelia’s Garden is not really about a praying mantis – it’s about hope and balance. The name Aurelia’s Garden is symbolic of our intention to work to to work with hope and passion to restore balance to our inequitable food system.”
