CSA – Community Supported Agriculture is for You

  • Post published:04/13/2014
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For some people the initials CSA are just another of those annoying acronyms that can make our conversations sound like an unintelligible inter-office memo. For some CSA means Community Supported Agriculture which encompasses delicious local food, help for the farmer, and a community of like-minded folk who enjoy fresh food, and enjoy knowing they are supporting farmers and farms, and the very land and environment that surrounds us. Small farmers never think they are going to get rich…

Cellars and Cave Tour with the Heath Agricultural Society

  • Post published:03/11/2014
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The Heath Agricultural Society gave us all a chance to  go exploring the cellars and caves of our neighbors  this past Saturday. Root cellars, cider cellars and a cheese cave. Who could resist this opportunity? Over 50 people signed up for this tour, many of them from towns beyond Heath. Even Springfield! I took one group around beginning with Sheila Litchfield who first explained the basics of cheesemaking. Chemistry. Bacteria. Sheila is a nurse so she knows all…

Greenfield Winter Fare 2014

  • Post published:01/30/2014
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If I am counting correctly this is the 7th Greenfield Annual Winter Fare which will bring truckloads of fresh local vegetables to Greenfield High School on Saturday, February 1.  Enter from Kent Street off Silver Street. Beyond  vegetables there will be preserved products like pickles and syrup, honey and jams. Frozen meat!  And to keep you shopping from 10 am til 1 pm music will be provided by Last Night's Fun, and soup provided by The Brass Buckle,…

Halloween in Heath

  • Post published:11/01/2013
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Because we are such a rural, spread-out town children can't easily go trick or treating  from house to house. A Tailgate Halloween in the town center was planned, but the rain called for an instant revision. The community hall was quickly turned into Trick or Treat Central and the youngest children, baby pumpkins and kittens, arrived first, followed later by the older kids who had a map of all the houses in town where the Trick or Treat…

Greenfield Community Farm on Blog Action Day

  • Post published:10/16/2013
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Accessible healthy food is a basic human right. The Greenfield Community Farm helps insure this right to the Greenfield Community. The Greenfield Community Farm out on Glenbrook Road is actually comprised of four gardens. First, there is a production market garden, operated by grant-funded David Paysnick and his assistant Daniel Berry, that grows produce for sale through the Just Roots CSA, at the Farmers Market, and Green Fields Coop. This garden includes a greenhouse where seeds are started…

Beaver Lodge on NESEA Green Buildings Open House Tour

  • Post published:10/04/2013
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“I’m a designer. I’ve always been absorbed by fashion, interior and landscape design,” Marie Stella said when she began my tour of Beaver Lodge in Ashfield. Her current and ongoing design project is the landscape surrounding her beautiful house which has been give a Platinum LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating. This is very unusual for a residence. LEED designations require that materials be as local as possible, that recycled materials be used when possible. For…

The Wedding – Emily & Nick Begin

  • Post published:08/28/2013
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The Wedding Tent is ready. Family and friends are assembling. Emily and Nick join hands. The wedding ceremony is beautiful. The bride is hugging everyone. Everyone is hugging the bride. The cameras are rolling. Everyone had a camera and everyone was snapping away. Here is Christina photographing me photographing her. We are all wanting to capture this moment forever. I was reminded of a song from the delightful, satirical musical Little Mary Sunshine.  I was mis-remembering some of the…

Tony Palumbo and the Gifts of Irene

  • Post published:08/23/2013
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  Two years ago Irene came rampaging through the area turning the rivers into torrents overleaping their banks, washing away roads and buildings, breaking hearts and pocketbooks. Tony Palumbo, artist, owner of the Green Emporium and gardener, was at his easel watching the rain pour down. Neighbors came urging them to leave. Palumbo’s partner, chef Michael Collins, said they would wait it out. Their house had survived the storm’s of ’38 and ’87. It would survive this one…

Great-Granddaughter Bella’s First Heath Fair

  • Post published:08/21/2013
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Bella came to visit in time to prepare her exhibits for the Heath Fair. Baking for the Fair is almost as much fun as the Fair itself. At the age of 6 Bella is in a real competition which means that she has to  make her cookies all by herself. No one else, not even Granny, can touch the cookies. She measured the ingredients, operated the mixer, and used a tiny ice cream scoop to measure the dough…

Trash Transformed – Xu Bing at Mass MoCA

  • Post published:07/30/2013
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  Xu Bing, a noted Chinese artist, has transformed trash in the most stunning and delightful ways at Mass MoCA. We go to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams at least once a year, often bringing grandsons with us because there is always something weird and wonderful to see. I consider cigarettes, even unsmoked, as trash. For Xu Bing they are the raw materials of art. Xu Bing took this scroll as his inspiration, and…