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Today’s Harvest

By Kathy Martin / September 7, 2020 / tomatoes

A half harvest. The summer vegetables are ripening so fast that we are picking twice a week now.

Photo by Kathy Martin

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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 !

Now we have had more than 10 hours of daylight for

Now we have had more than 10 hours of daylight for more than 6 weeks, the cold-tolerant seedlings that we started late last Fall that have been nestled under our caterpillar tunnels are ready for our first harvest of the year! Today we harvested two nice-sized boxes leaf cabbage, mustard greens, tatsoi, vitamin greens, arugula, and kale and donated them to @la_colaborativa in Chelsea, MA

#microfarm #allvolunteers #supportlocalfoodbanks #waylandMA #mastergardeners #womenwhofarm #donations #foodinsecurity
#garden #gardening #microfarming #vegetablegarden #vegetables #waylandgarden #zone6garden #localproduce

Food Security means a lot of things, but all these

Food Security means a lot of things, but all these 'things' have a common denominator. That is 'access to resources'. Food INsecurity is not a stand-alone problem. It is tied to an overarching INability - due to power imbalances - to access adequate resources of all kinds: money, land, education, self-determination, social standing, to name just a few.

Sharing resources we have access to that others don't is a small - LOCAL - but powerful act we can take to redistribute some of the power imbalances within our own communities.

We are deeply grateful to @johnnys_seeds for their generous donation of seeds for our 2 farming sites! Not only will we be able to plant many of these, we will also share many of these with the clients of our food pantry partners through our Resource and Seed Sharing Initiative!

@opentablema @sudburycommunityfoodpantry @la_colaborativa @medwayvillagefoodpantry

#thinkgloballyactlocally #local #sovereignty #righttoselfdetermination #foodsystem #foodsecurity #securitynotinsecurity #workinginpartnership #community #communitypartners

Our first major winter storm of 2024 brought some

Our first major winter storm of 2024 brought some magical beauty to Patterson's field in Wayland! The snow stopped falling last night, but today, trees are snapping everywhere under the weight of the wet snow that has since frozen solid with this morning's colder temps. We were lucky to find only minor damage from a tall pine limb that fell on our deer fence. We cleared away some of the boughs, all sticky with #pinesap, so that we can access the gate, but we'll have to come back later in the week with chainsaws to cut up the main branches. We also tried to bang snow off the heavily-weighted limbs that hang over our hoop house. The field looks glorious in today's sun, with all the hoops and row covers blanketed in an insulating layer of snow.

#apricity
#microfarm #allvolunteers #supportlocalfoodbanks #waylandMA #mastergardeners #womenwhofarm #donations #foodinsecurity
#garden #gardening #microfarming #vegetablegarden #vegetables #waylandgarden #zone6garden #localproduce

Some treasures slumbering at Patterson's Field, ou

Some treasures slumbering at Patterson's Field, our Wayland site! We have several rows planted with nutritious greens that we will harvest later this winter when the daylight lengthens a bit more! #farming #wintergrowing
#lowtunnel #wintersalad

And, we also are getting ready for a native plant sale later this spring/summer! We have grown all of these northeast native plants from seed! Right now, their pots are nestled into a nice bed of mulch, which will protect their roots throughout the winter cold! We can't wait to share this new adventure with you this spring! #nativeplants #ecosystem #northeast

Happy New Year from Aurelia's Garden to all of you

Happy New Year from Aurelia's Garden to all of you! Thank you for an incredible year and opportunity to grow food for our community! We are so excited for 2024, our FIFTH year farming in Wayland and Medway! Have a safe and joyful new year!

Aurelia's Garden is a nonprofit farming organizati

Aurelia's Garden is a nonprofit farming organization co-founded by four extraordinary women during the outbreak of the pandemic. Our mission is to grow food in an ecologically harmonious way to distribute freely through food pantries in the Greater Boston area. Operating in 2 sites, our largest in Wayland and smaller site in Medway, we cultivate just under 2 acres, distribute to 5 food pantries and reach approximately 450 families each week; sending roughly 12,000lbs of produce a year. Being an entirely volunteer organization, even our leadership, our operating costs go directly towards the supplies needed to grow food. While most startup nonprofits don't make it through their third year, we are proudly marching into our fifth! With a fresh set of ideas for 2024 and a solid track record of delivering on our past goals, we will begin to take steps to not just provide food to help fill an enormous gap in our broken food system, but to also begin contributing our efforts to strengthen amd heal our food system and bolster our communities' ability to grow more food locally. on Giving Tuesday, we humbly ask on behalf of all our volunteer farming force and the clients we serve that you consider donating to our Annual Appeal! Our goal for this fundraiser is $15,000, any amount you care to entrust to us will directly translate into food on the tables of our many neighbors struggling with financial insecurity and lack of access to fresh, nutritious produce!

During this month of gratitude, we'd like to highl

During this month of gratitude, we'd like to highlight some of our partnerships in battling food insecurity!

We are especially grateful for our food pantry partner @la_colaborativa who visited our farm a few weeks ago and left with two full cartloads of about 200 pounds of produce for their pantry, including tomatillos, tomatoes, flint corn, cabbages, #gilo (Brazilian eggplant), carrots, collards, lots of green peppers, and an ample supply of the delightful herb, Huacatay, which has raised quite a bit of excitement amongst La Colaborativa’s clientele!

You can read more about our experiences growing Huacatay (aka “Nematocidal Marigold”), a fascinating plant that is also culturally relevant to the Latin American community, on our blog post! (link in bio)

#huacatay
#microfarm #allvolunteers #supportlocalfoodbanks #waylandMA #mastergardeners #womenwhofarm #donations #foodinsecurity
#garden #gardening #microfarming #vegetablegarden #vegetables #waylandgarden #zone6garden #localproduce

Preparing for our final main season distribution t

Preparing for our final main season distribution this week to our #foodpantry partners @opentablema @la_colaborativa @sudburycommunityfoodpantry and this year, we have been busy all season growing, harvesting and drying many herbs such as this gorgeous parsley! With temperatures finally dipping into the low 20s, we have harvested the last of our open field grown #herbs and spent the weekend getting them into these cute packages! Also being packed up is #huacatay, #sage, #rosemary, #thyme, #celery leaf, and #mint!

We beat the war on #pepperflymaggots! Last Friday

We beat the war on #pepperflymaggots! Last Friday we harvested a bumper crop of 200 pounds of peppers! Seven of these crates were the yield from a single row at Patterson’s field in Wayland. We distributed them to 3 of our food pantry partners last Friday and this week.

While many of the peppers are still green, as we decided to harvest them early in anticipation of some colder nighttime temperatures this week, they are fully-sized and deliciously crunchy!

Our success this year is the result of some careful planning and preventative measures, such as insect-exclusion netting covering the plants during pepper-fly season in mid-July, and carefully removing any stray infected plants from the field.

#microfarm #allvolunteers #supportlocalfoodbanks #waylandMA #mastergardeners #womenwhofarm #donations #foodinsecurity
#garden #gardening #microfarming #vegetablegarden #vegetables #waylandgarden #zone6garden #localproduce

Thanks so much to volunteer farmer John who used h

Thanks so much to volunteer farmer John who used his engineering skills to figure out how to get our new ride-on trailer hooked up to our BCS walk-behind tractor. We used the trailer this week to haul several loads of wood chips to the field to make an insulation bed for some potted native perennials that we will be overwintering before transplanting them next Spring. The kids at the nearby preschool were fascinated by the sight of our vehicle, and dubbed it the “dune-buggy”. John also contributed many other much-appreciated improvements this week, such as attaching handles to cabinet doors and installing more hooks for our volunteers to hang their gear.

#microfarm #allvolunteers #supportlocalfoodbanks #waylandMA #mastergardeners #womenwhofarm #donations #foodinsecurity
#garden #gardening #microfarming #vegetablegarden #vegetables #waylandgarden #zone6garden #localproduce

A super productive day at Patterson's Field Friday

A super productive day at Patterson's Field Friday! A tremendous THANK YOU to an enthusiastic and very hard-working volunteer crew from @amerescocareers in Framingham! Running through the gamut of a no-till farm's tools, this crew cleared several paths using scuffle/stirrup hoes and then, in preparation for cover crop seeding, aerated this entire section of our field using broadforks! They also loaded and hauled into the field many big cart loads of woodchips for our Wine Cap mushroom patch! They worked tirelessly and we are deeply grateful for their time, energy, and enthusiasm! #volunteer #notill #broadfork #agroecology #foodsecurity #foodpantryfarm #organic #locallygrown

Nighttime temps will be above 50 with sunny, warm

Nighttime temps will be above 50 with sunny, warm days ahead this week! So many crops have a lot to still to give and after the cold, rainy September we had, need a little support to give their one last burst of energy to fruit production! It was a gorgeous day to be doing very thorough foliar feeding/microbial inoculations! Also got the last of our beneficial nematodes down on a few small problem areas where we observed some pepper maggot damage #microbes #organic #fieldtomatoes #fieldgrowntomatoes #localfarmers #womenwhofarm #tomatoes #sweetpeppers #carrots #eggplant

Instagram post 17959946300649864

Instagram post 17959946300649864

Rainy days are perfect for planting and harvesting

Rainy days are perfect for planting and harvesting! The last of our fall lettuce seedlings are in the ground! It has been a very challenging growing season for farmers all over the region and we are no exception. Complete crop failures and successes alike are fodder for deep thought and planning for next year. We are taking stock of crops that have done well for us for the past four years across all sorts of changing weather patterns, including this year, and will use that to plan for increased efficiency and harvests next season! Planting more of some things and a lot less of others, cutting sunk costs and going with things that work! #carrots #cabbage #lettuce #collards #kale #tomatoes #peppers #jilo #italianeggplant #tomatillos #onions #garlic #leeks #bokchoy #bulbfennel #flintcorn and #herbs of ALL sorts including #gongura #lemongrass #ginger #huacatay #basil #parsley #molohkia #kkaennip #mexicanoregano #thyme #rosemary I'm sure I'm forgetting something!

Crops we will take a break from include broccoli, cauliflower, many types of squash (but not all)

Crops we will continue to experiment with varieties and planting dates include cucumbers, zucchini, kohlrabi, bok choy, winter greens ...

We love our #produce and we love our #volunteers T

We love our #produce and we love our #volunteers
The carrots are really starting to come on strong and so is our basil, among other yummy goodies! (Pic #3 is just ONE stem of basil!) Another great harvest sent to @sudburycommunityfoodpantry yesterday included about 16 pounds of fresh basil! We are excited to be growing #obsession #passion #thunderstruck and #devotion basil varieties from @rutgersbasil and happy to report we have ZERO presence of #bdm (basil downey mildew) on any of the four varieties spread over 3 planting dates! #foodpantryfarm #foodsecurity #notill #localfarmers #agroecology #carrots #basil #basildowneymildew

Making cocktails in the field! Plant health has be

Making cocktails in the field!
Plant health has been especially difficult to manage this year as the exceptional amount of near continuous rain has put a huge strain on our field, soil and plants! We rely on microbes and foliar feeds to help bolster our plants' immune systems and boost our soil microbial health.

Here, Farmer Olivia and Hannah prepare some soil inoculant that are rich in phosphorous cycling microbes. These are being applied to soil where we have just incorporated our summer cover crops! Roots systems are rich in phosphorous (remember ATP from general biology?!) and buckwheat, one of the plants in our cover crop mixture, is particularly good at accumulating that from deep layers of soil. These microbes will help cycle that critical nutrient into the working layers of our soil as the cover crop residues break down.

#microfarm #allvolunteers #supportlocalfoodbanks #waylandMA #mastergardeners #womenwhofarm #donations #foodinsecurity #volunteer #boston #organic #farm #soilhealth #soilmicrobes
#garden #gardening #microfarming #vegetablegarden #vegetables #waylandgarden #zone6garden #localproduce

Stages of a timeline We have been working to imp

Stages of a timeline

We have been working to improve the quality of the produce we donate since we began farming at Patterson's Field 4 years ago. An unexpected and generous donation from the Gilson Family Foundation after our first year allowed us to begin constructing this pavilion/wash station. Serving as command center for field operations, the pavilion also serves as our station for preparing harvests for distribution. After sending a handful of our volunteers for Food Safety Handling training (thanks to a grant at Cornell that allowed farms to send staff to their FSMA training for free last year) we decided to go the distance and install a full wash station. As a charity organization, we are protected by Samaritan laws and are not held to the same standards as farmers selling their produce. But that didn't sit well with us, so we began planning an off-grid system to treat and sanitize water from the brook running alongside the field. (We have no electricity or running water at this site!) It's taken some time and a few fundraising rounds to get here, but today we were able to get our water bank, faucets and plumbing all hooked up to our solar powered, 12V treatment system!! We even finally have gutters to capture the rain into a few rain barrels! We are almost there!

Next step is to fully run the system and get some water tests to verify the purification system is working as we need it to! SOPs are at the ready... stay tuned! -Hannah T, President and farm manager

It's a very rainy day today so our work session wa

It's a very rainy day today so our work session was cancelled. Here is our gorgeous cabbage harvest from last week!

#cabbage #cabbageharvest #growingcabbages
#microfarm #allvolunteers #supportlocalfoodbanks #waylandMA #mastergardeners #womenwhofarm #donations #foodinsecurity
#garden #gardening #microfarming #vegetablegarden #vegetables #waylandgarden #zone6garden #localproduce

We found a very nice fat toad in the wood chip pil

We found a very nice fat toad in the wood chip pile today. She (?) hung out for a while as we gathered several loads of wood chips and hauled them from the parking lot to our field (1/4 mile through the woods).

#microfarm #allvolunteers #supportlocalfoodbanks #waylandMA #mastergardeners #womenwhofarm #donations #foodinsecurity
#garden #gardening #microfarming #vegetablegarden #vegetables #waylandgarden #zone6garden #localproduce

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