Updates

Despite my at times impossibly mickey mouse tone [‘hey guys! gee, isn’t farming fun?!’], sometimes bad things do happen. Yesterday we noticed that we have a Spinach Leafminer infestation in our spinach.

The leafminer is a small fly that lays its eggs on the under side of plants. The eggs hatch, and the larvae chew their way into the leaves, then back out of the leaves (hence the name leafminer). They then drop to the ground and continue to develop; two weeks later (give or take), they reemerge as adult flies, ready to begin the cycle anew. There’s about three and a half generations per season, with one generation overwintering in the soil. It seems that spinach leafminers love lambsquarter and chickweed, two of our major weed-problems, so this infestation at least makes sense. (All of this information came from a very informative info sheet from Cornell, available here.)

So today Abby and I spent the first chunk of our morning picking the infected leaves off of our first crop of spinach. The good news is that the chickens were ecstatic to have a bunch of little grubs  to pick at all day, and I’m always happy to make the chickens happy. It looks like we’ve got many more hours of leaf picking ahead of us, so I’ll just bear those happy hens in mind.

Unfortunately this infestation requires chemical intervention, so we’ll be treating with Spinosad. Spinosad is an Organically approved insecticide derived from the bacteria S. Spinosa. Obviously, we’re not super jazzed about chemical treatments, even organically approved ones, but it seems that this situation necessitates it. We looked at introducing natural predators, specifically parasitic wasps, but the cost to efficacy ratio was not favorable in this situation. Hopefully, as we reduce the weed burden on this land, and continue to plant diverse crops and practice prudent crop rotation, the population of this insect will reach manageable levels.

This past Friday marked the first of what I hope will be many more educational excursions on the farm.  As those of you who were with us last year know, in addition to our passion for making the world a more delicious place, we will also use any occasion to hop up onto our nutritional soapbox and probably lecture you for longer than you may be comfortable.  Last year we made it a priority to give greens in every share because we firmly believe that everyone needs more greens in their diet.  Anyone who’s turned down one of my fliers with the excuse of “We could never eat all those vegetables!” has surely suffered the wrath of Abby’s nutrition rants.  (They can be pretty epic.  You’ve been warned).

Anyways, I digress.  Friday morning was kicked off by a visit from one of our favorite Belmont teachers, Ms. Cox, at Burbank.  Ms. Cox’s class came for their first visit in the fall to poke around and pull up some carrots, which everyone agreed were the best carrots they’ve tasted (with the exception of one, incredibly honest boy who said they had too much dirt on them).  This time around they came with a slightly different agenda.  In relation to their recent medieval unit they came as peasants to work their lord’s land.  We had Quarry workers clearing rocks from the field to build walls, farmers planting beets, trench diggers digging trenches and planting potatoes, and animal caretakers mucking out the chicken coop (we spare noone).  They also got an opportunity to greet our friendly goats, as it’s hard to be 5 years old and NOT hug a goat.  All the kids seemed to have a blast, and while I’m not sure how much they learned, they walked away with dirt on their face and smiles from ear to ear, and I call that a successful field trip.  Many of them will hopefully come back with their families to see their potatoes grow throughout the summer!

Later in the afternoon I headed over to Wellington to chat with a few classes about the chicks they recently hatched.  We discussed the differences between happy chicken eggs and unhappy chicken eggs, and hypothesized why we humans were not quite as good as mother hens at hatching chicks.  While my english public speaking skills are admittedly a bit rusty, I thought it went fabulously and look forward to going back at some point in the future.

Throughout my many (at least for a 26 year old, it’s many) years working in education, I find it to be a general rule that I walk away from any experience learning more than I’ve taught.  This past Friday was no different for me, so here are a few things I learned from our forray into kindergarden education:

1) 6 year olds are the BEST rock clearers

2) Never joke about throwing an egg on the floor in front of kids

3) Dirt and sunshine is the best medicine for anything

4) Kids will eat anything they have a hand in growing

5) Chickens are much better at hatching chicks than people are.  It’s just nature, people

I am overwhelmed at the enthusiastic response we’ve had from parents of kindergardeners and town day passersby that are already interested in the farm!  While in some respects it was disheartening that literally every person I talked to at town day at 90% of the kindergardeners I spoke with had never heard of the farm, in some respects it’s refreshing to see how much of an impact we can have with minimal effort.  And if you were at town day or a kindergardener parent and HAVEN’T been by or checked us out, please do!  We only bite when it’s harvest time.

This past week has been a blur: we’ve been out in the fields and the community– it’s been great!

We’re in the middle of a big push to get plants out into the fields, even though there was a frost advisory this week (can you believe that??) We’ve got our spring brassicas in the ground (kale, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, horseradish, and bok choi), planted more potatoes, more onions, plus tomatillos and the beginning of our tomatoes. I’m so excited about those tomatoes! Taking them out to be planted, I was overwhelmed by the unmistakable smell of tomato–too good! They look super happy and healthy, nestled in their salt-marsh-hay mulch. Photos and words really can’t describe the beauty I see in the soft undulations of a hay-mulched field.

We also had a class from one of the local elementary schools in to visit on friday. The kids had a blast!! Abby has been working with the Belmont Public schools on various farm-related educational projects, and I’m really looking forward to her blog-post about them.

Today was Town Day in Belmont, and Abby and I spent a few hours handing out flyers and meeting people. One of the great shames about this farm is what a well-kept secret it is, but we made some headway in righting that today.

Bringing me to my next point…

Belmont Acres has a sign!

It’s rather dashed together– I made it this morning for Town Day– but it exists! We’ve been getting a number of people wandering in during the day, wondering what the heck we’re doing with all this land in the middle of the burbs. So now they know– we’re getting signs dirty and growing food!

Just for fun, here’s a little gif I made of me spray-painting the sign:

So that’s all for now. If you’re reading this and you came here via Belmont Town Day, thanks for checking us out! We hope to see you on the farm this season. Spring is in the air, and we’ll be ready to open the stand any minute now– stay tuned for updates!

We are a 5-acre, family-run farm located right outside of Cambridge. We’re committed to growing a large diversity of the tastiest, freshest produce available with sustainable methods, emphasizing a Natural approach to agriculture. We encourage people to eat produce grown in season and to enjoy home cooked meals with friends and family.

We operate a CSA and Farmstand in Belmont, MA; you can find directions to us here. For Pictures of the farm! For more information about our growing practices, check out our About page, click here for recipes and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to drop us a line!