Ev Hatch, now retired from farming, is a member of the Hunger Task Force and a member of the First Congregational Church of Greenfield. When the First Church began planning a special day of service they called ‘Feet, Hands and Voices to Faith’ he knew just what to do. He donated a half acre of his farmland, and his services to prepare the field. On May 16th he and a crew, that included Luella McLaughlin (aged 93), set…
Someone is dining out in the garden. Not slugs. The lettuce has been pulled out of the ground and eaten. Some has been eaten down to the ground. This row was attacked differently, but still, the lettuce is gone. I've never had bunny damage before, but this looks like what I imagine bunnies would do. Who has experience to share? On that assumption I took out the sample bottle of Deer and Rabbit Deterrent that Liquid Fence sent…
Saturday I went into Greenfield to buy plants at the Greenfield Garden Club Plant sale, but also stopped at the Greenfield Farmers Market to buy beautiful lettuce from The Kitchen Garden for Gourmet Club, and I bought a pot of beautiful double white petunias from LaSalles. The Farmers Market was full of vegetable starts, flats of annual seedlings, as well as the first greens of the season and huge bouquets of peonies from Hadley where spring has sprung…
The harvest has begun, but with the help of Mother Nature. Last night we had our first garden fresh salad, mostly with these self-seeded lettuces in the vegetable garden. The spinach in the Herb Bed needs thinning (and weeding) and I added the thinnings to the salad. The Red Sails lettuce directly seeded in the new Front Garden is also ready to be thinned. All of a sudden it is really taking off. I love being able to…
Jeannie Bartlett, a senior at The Academy in Charlemont, has many interests including “farms, food, the environment, health and community” which she put together in a delicious way. Local Lunches, her Independent Senior Project, fed Academy students a monthly lunch composed of local ingredients all year. Todd Sumner, Academy Headmaster, explained “Senior projects are intended to extend a student’s classroom learning to provide service, and to apply and implement their learning. Students have to be responsible for a…
When we first moved into our old farmhouse in Heath in November of 1979, I cooked in what the previous owners called ‘the summer kitchen’ although there was no other kitchen. It was small and oddly shaped because of the stairway that went up to a loft/attic space. The 1930s era stove was on the north wall next to a small window that looked up the hill, across the field to an old apple tree. When the wind…
This was the view of the newly planted Front Garden yesterday morning at 6:30 am. It was still snowing and the temperature was 32 degree. Windy. You can't see, but my tiny lettuce and broccoli transplants appeared to be damaged. The herbs did not mind the snow and by 10 am the snow was gone and temperatures had risen to 40 degrees. All is well - as far as I can tell. Today dawned with brilliant sun and…
A wet snow was falling on Friday morning. It did not last long on the ground, but the day continued wet and chill and not suitable for gardening. I was happy that I had spent most of Thursday cleaning out, weeding and putting some semblance of an edge on the Herb Bed in front of the house. Since we added the Entry Walk to the Piazza and Welcome Platform, the Herb Bed has expanded to approximately 33 feet…
The main task for these past few beautiful days has been setting up the new garden in front of the house which gets protection from the wind, and sun early in the season. I thought I could plant hardy vegetables here and start my harvest early. Once again I used the lasagna method of starting a new garden. First I put down old chick house cleanings in lieu of finished compost. We did not get chicks last year…
It seemed only appropriate to serve Beauty Heart radish at our Valentine’s dinner. We were introduced to the beautiful pinky red radishes when we were living in Beijing where it is very popular. Members of my Women of China work unit brought some pickled Xin Li Mei radish to a picnic outing. They called it Beauty Heart which I much prefer to Red Meat, as it is sometimes called in seed catalogs. It is also called Watermelon radish…