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Our Field Today

By Kathy Martin / August 6, 2020 / field
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We are so excited to be at the Wayland Festival to We are so excited to be at the Wayland Festival today! Lots of super fun activities for the whole family! Come on by and say hello - we are right beside 'Touch a Truck'! @waylandcultural @artswayland
We love our crops that winter over in the field an We love our crops that winter over in the field and these parsnips were exceptionally sweet! Please enjoy some of our silliness @aurelias.garden digging the hearty root from her winter resting place! #foodsecurity looks like pushing the accepted limits of our growing season! Parsnips are very cold hardy and easily overwinter with minimal protection. But, did you know you can ALSO easily over winter beets?! A follow up post will talk more about THAT!
A lovely season opening was had by all this past S A lovely season opening was had by all this past Saturday at Patterson's Field in Wayland! A glorious early spring day spent planting an extra row of garlic that we didn't get to last fall (not the ideal time to plant, but yes, you CAN plant garlic in the very early spring and still get a nice harvest), moving heavy silage tarp, weeding and broad forking! #farming #womenwhofarm #foodsecurity
And the season begins! We have been busy starting And the season begins! We have been busy starting seeds for the past few weeks! Here, @roadhammer_gaming is helping out planting an ancient heirloom onion from France - seeds we have been stewarding and adapting to Massachusetts for many years now! In just 7 short weeks, these will be making a new home in our Patterson's Field site in Wayland MA! We will plant well over 5000 onions tonight! #volunteer #foodsecurity #freshproduce #locallygrownproduce #organic #onion
What a nice way to close out a great year! A few o What a nice way to close out a great year! A few of us gathered on this beautiful sunny day to plant some garlic. We had a few surprise visitors too - a ukulele player and a stray chicken who wandered over from the neighbor's flock. As we departed for the day, she brought all of her flock mates out to the parking lot to meet us! #microfarm #allvolunteers #supportlocalfoodbanks #waylandMA #mastergardeners #womenwhofarm #donations #foodinsecurity #garden #gardening #microfarming #vegetablegarden #vegetables #waylandgarden #zone6garden #localproduce
Aurelia's Garden is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, volunte Aurelia's Garden is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, volunteer led organization that farms in two locations in Metrowest Boston. Our goal is to grow food specifically to donate to local hunger relief partners. Entering our sixth year, we have donated over 45,000lbs of produce so far! Please make a tax deductible donation today and help us real our Annual Appeal goal! your contribution will reduce your taxable income to the fullest extent of the law and will be spent directly on costs associated with growing food!
Happy Holidays to all our Aurelia Garden community Happy Holidays to all our Aurelia Garden community! We are grateful to do this work with people who share our joy and mission to alleviate hunger for our neighbors! This year, we remain committed to growing as much nutritious food as possible! We will also be doing more to help our farming community grow more. By conducting vegetable variety trials and participating in plant breeding projects, the Aurelia's Garden team will deepen the knowledge base for northeast farmers. Stay tuned, exciting plans are unraveling soon!
Today, on #worldsoilday , we remain committed to o Today, on #worldsoilday , we remain committed to our soil health initiative. For the past 5 seasons, we have prioritized soil health building practices to increase our soils capacity to hold carbon, water, and nutrients, and to cultivate vibrant microbial communities. Our soil today is a rich medium in which we grow extra nutrient dense foods, have drastically reduced our need to irrigate (we didn't use our irrigation system once this year, despite drought conditions from early August-November) or supplement plant nutrition with externally sourced fertilizers. We only plan to do more moving forward and have aligned some of our soil goal setting with the Massachusetts Healthy Soils Action Plan AND the Massachusetts 2050 Road to Decarbonization initiative! Follow along as we document increases in soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration as well as increases in nutrient density - with relation to continued improvement of soil health indicators - of the veggies we grow!
There's just something special about #fallcrops! A There's just something special about #fallcrops! After a few light frosts, most of our tropical plant friends have died back but the cool weather crops are coming in hard! Gorgeous #lettuce #cabbage #carrots #beets #bokchoy #collards #swisschard #kale #spinach #cauliflower #broccoli #celery #celeriac are all doing amazing this year! ...and SOOO tasty!
Harvest scenes as we pack up this load, about 500l Harvest scenes as we pack up this load, about 500lbs, for @opentablema #morelovelesshunger gorgeous #swisschard, #kale, #bokchoy, #tomatoes #heirloomtomatoes, #organicproduce #foodpantryfarm #cabbage, #peppers
Aurelia sunning herself on this gorgeous afternoon Aurelia sunning herself on this gorgeous afternoon as we have an impromptu harvest ahead of the nasty rain coming in tomorrow!
Cauliflower! Carrots! Peppers! Oh my! The fall cro Cauliflower! Carrots! Peppers! Oh my! The fall crops are BOOMING! We are also thrilled with this cauliflower because it is part of a huge variety trial we are conducting this year. Farmers in our region often have trouble growing cauliflower reliably and rely on a small handful of F1 Hybrid varieties without being able to risk the space to test them. This year, we planted 18 varieties, some OPs, for fall so that we can evaluate how they perform in relation to each other. We look forward to sharing the results of our trial later this winter and hope it helps other farms more easily to grow cauliflower!
Huge harvest yesterday, with ginormous summer squa Huge harvest yesterday, with ginormous summer squashes and bok choy! Not pictured: lots of tomatoes and Swiss chard too! #microfarm #allvolunteers #supportlocalfoodbanks #waylandMA #mastergardeners #womenwhofarm #donations #foodinsecurity #garden #gardening #microfarming #vegetablegarden #vegetables #waylandgarden #zone6garden #localproduce
Another gorgeous morning at the farm... It's been Another gorgeous morning at the farm... It's been a great year for cabbages and we just transplanted a few hundred more brassica seedlings for our fall harvest! #microfarm #allvolunteers #supportlocalfoodbanks #waylandMA #mastergardeners #womenwhofarm #donations #foodinsecurity #garden #gardening #microfarming #vegetablegarden #vegetables #waylandgarden #zone6garden #localproduce
Have you hugged your cabbage today?! We have! Cons Have you hugged your cabbage today?! We have! Consistently, cabbage is one of our best crops, and we grow a LOT of it! Spring planted rows are coming in fast now, and we are in the midst of planting all our fall brassica seedlings! Today's harvest included some gorgeous bulb fennel, the last of our spring lettuce, mountains of Swiss chard, beets, squash and zucchini and #kamo eggplant from @gohyang_fields (the earliest of our eggplants BY FAR this year!) all of which was sent off to @opentablema with #morelovelesshunger
And just like that, BAM, the garlic is harvested a And just like that, BAM, the garlic is harvested and spread out over various locations around the farm to cure! The winner this year is Romanian Red from @filareegarlicfarm - a variety we started trialing 3 seasons ago, this has done beautifully at our field every year, with huge, flavorful cloves and bulbs! Another winner is Bogatyr from @theresa_at_prairie_road which has also been a standout every year for us even before @aurelias.garden was formed! We also love #musicgarlic and #germanwhitegarlic. We try to grow at least 10 different varieties each year for diversity and to trial - it may be time to #settledown and focus on the ones that have consistently performed the best for us!
#teamwork @aurelias.garden ! Nothing would get don #teamwork @aurelias.garden ! Nothing would get done if we all operated autonomously! This hard working crew of #volunteerfarmers sure knows how to get the job done... TOGETHER!
Lots of progress today in the delightful misty mor Lots of progress today in the delightful misty morning (ok, it poured for a bit but who's counting?!)! Starting to feel like we are ALMOST caught up with planting - and ALMOST time for succession planting! Today we seeded another big row of carrots, got some more mulching done, and prepared for a HUGE day of planting tomorrow! #foodpantryfarm #hungerrelief #ecologicalfarming
After an exhausting week of high heat and wicked h After an exhausting week of high heat and wicked humidity, the farm is in full swing! With still a bit more planting to do, we are finally over the biggest hump of field prep! Our harvests are going strong, and cover cropped areas are buzzing with buckwheat, daikon and peas in bloom! @kathy.martin.315428 is sporting one of our super handy new harvest bags from @johnnys_seeds as she heads off to pick about 15lbs of delicious sugar snap peas! Susan and @nancykahn1 are pictured harvesting #garlicscapes! Today, we were thrilled to deliver our produce to @aurelias.garden Some victories this year include the incredibly low presence of leaf minor on our Swiss Chard and beets thanks to diligent scouting and removal for the past few years. Another is finally getting weeds under control in our onion rows and lower crab grass pressure overall!!! Hard work pays off folks - in weed management and in pest control. Stay vigilant and take action immediately - learn the life cycles of your pests and weeds and prioritize efforts to strike at the right time with the right tool! More to come this year on what we have learned over 9 years of trial and error! PSA: Heat stress is real and all of your farmers here in the Northeast have been through the wringer this week. This exhausted #farmgirl is writing this with heavy eyelids, grateful to finally have some rain and respite from the grueling heat. PLEASE pay a farmer's market a visit this weekend and BUY SOMETHING! Get the last of the magnificent crop of strawberries we've enjoyed this year or the first of the sugar snap peas or anything else in between! #buylocal #supportfarmers #foodpantryfarm #womenwhofarm #volunteer #volunteerfarmers #bostonareafarmers #bostonareafarm @aurelias.garden
A gorgeous day and huge THANK YOU to @amerescosola A gorgeous day and huge THANK YOU to @amerescosolar for celebrating #earthday with us and helping us get a jump on some spring tasks! 1300 onions and 300 cabbage seedlings are in the ground! We also poured some much needed love (i.e. compost and mulch) on our #asparagus !
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