The Newton Farmer
June 2022
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Dear Farm Friends,
The past month has been a whirlwind of activity at the Farm. With our annual Spring Seedling Sale, our pop-up tomato plant sale, after-school kids' classes, an herb-growing class, and lots of volunteers helping at the Farm, we've had more than 1,000 visitors in the month of May. It has been wonderful to connect in person with so many enthusiastic gardeners and learners. To support our community of plant enthusiasts, we are starting a gardening circle this month where you can share and get gardening advice. And we'll be welcoming students for an interesting class on growing your own mushrooms. Read on for more information.
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June is always an exciting time on the Farm as we harvest our first crops. Our Summer CSA pickups start this month. Soon our farm stand will open for the season and we'll be back at the Newton Farmers' Market on Saturdays for our 17th year. We dropped off our first donations of the year to the Newton Food Pantry and Freedge (lots of spinach!), and we look forward to ramping up this program as the veggies grow.
In addition, June is the month that we welcome seasonal staff to the Farm, and this year we have some terrific people joining the team. Read on to learn more about the staff you'll be meeting this summer. We are so lucky that Tomoko, Satchel, and Theo will be sharing their talents with all of us.
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Don't forget to sign your kids up for our summer kids' classes! Here are just a few examples of what students do in our outdoor, fresh-air program:
- Vermicompost with our bin full of red wiggler worms
- Create our own nutritious snacks with produce we harvest from the Learning Garden
- Explore our historic Farm and barn
- Immerse ourselves in the different natural cycles happening around us
- Create nature-based art using materials from around the Farm
- Experience the joy of working outside with our hands
- Make tea blends using plants from our herb spiral
- Learn about and save seeds
- Explore the history of the plants we grow
- Dig in the soil to discover what is happening under our feet
- Observe insects and note their unique characteristics
- Spend time with the chickens and learn their habits
- Discover many big and small habitats
- Learn about the challenges and triumphs of growing your own food
- Make deep and meaningful connections with the natural world
And with our scholarship program, made possible by the Charles River Neighborhood Foundation and individual donations from supporters, we strive to make these classes accessible to all who are interested in attending.
We hope you'll stop by the Farm soon!
With gratitude,
Sue Bottino
Executive Director
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Mushroom Workshop with Fungi Ally Thursday, June 9, 6–8 pm, $50. Sign up for an interactive workshop with Willie Crosby, who has been teaching and growing mushrooms with Fungi Ally in Montague, MA, since 2013. Willie will share his extensive knowledge of mycology, and each participant will leave with an inoculated log to sprout oyster mushrooms at home. All supplies will be provided.
NEW! Gardening Circle, First meeting on Wednesday, June 22, 6–8 pm, free. Do you have questions about plants you are growing in your garden? Want to share helpful information about a vegetable or flower that you love to grow? Come to "office hours" at the Farm! To support everyone’s gardening efforts, we are starting a gardening circle, a time when you can ask questions, share your knowledge, and help build a strong network of local plant enthusiasts. No registration required, but feel free to email Director of Education Matt Durham (matt@newtoncommunityfarm.org) to RSVP.
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Drop-Off Programs for Kids
Wednesdays, May 11–June 22, 1:30–3:30 pm for ages 5–12, $280 for the session (The session is prorated, so start anytime.)
Plant seeds in the Learning Garden, uncover the hidden world beneath our feet, conduct experiments with plants, and spend time with the chickens.
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July 5–September 2, mornings, 9–11:30 am for ages 5–8, or afternoons, 1:30–4 pm for ages 8–12, $250 per week (Age groupings are flexible; let us know if you want to keep siblings or peers together and we will try to accommodate requests.)
Calling all future farmers, scientists, chefs, naturalists, and gardeners! Join us to discover boundless connections between our food, each other, and the natural world. We will explore a different garden-based theme each week on topics like life cycles, the food system, and garden creatures, and learn gardening skills. We'll create a garden snack during each class to enjoy. We hold classes in our Learning Garden as well as the larger farm, giving kids valuable time in a natural space that they can call their own.
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Scholarships of up to 75% of a program fee may be available
thanks to the Charles River Neighborhood Fund and individual supporters.
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Welcome to New Staff Members |
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Summer Educator Tomoko Deeney
Originally from Kyoto, Japan, Tomoko has been a Field Study Guide at the Arnold Arboretum since 2017, sharing explorations and learning about organisms with kids in grades K-5. Her background is in art (fiber arts), and outdoor education and gardening/farming have been her passions during warmer months in more recent years. She’s looking forward to meeting you all as a summer educator to share her love for nature, growing food, and composting. When she’s not elbow deep in soil in the yard, she enjoys practicing her Appalachian dulcimer, making things with her hands, and talking about plants with her husband, friends, and neighbors in Roslindale.
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Summer High School Field Crew Intern Supervisor Satchel Lefebvre
Satchel is from the Berkshires, the well-known tourist location for beautiful views and farm-to-table eats. He comes to the Farm with a longstanding background in education and organic produce farming. After starting at Clear Brook Farm as a high school student in 2010, Satchel has spent the past twelve summers there, developing farming and agricultural educational skills alongside his field crew. In the off-season, Satchel teaches high school math. He brings a passion for teaching and a strong belief in hands-on learning. He is moving to Medford this summer to start graduate work in mathmatics at Tufts. Satchel enjoys biking, cooking, and spending time with his space-obsessed wife and cat.
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Field Crew/Farm Stand Manager Theo Kiniklis
Theo is a recent Natick High School graduate. Over the past few years, he has worked at farms in Concord and Natick and is always looking to learn more about agriculture. He loves to give quality customer service and work on projects with a meaningful effect. As a former Boy Scout, he often spends his time outdoors hiking through local parks and trails. He enjoys listening to music and has played the guitar for over five years.
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Where can you buy Farm produce? Starting on June 25, you'll find us at the Newton Farmers' Market every Saturday, 9:30 am–12:30 pm, through October 15. The Saturday market is at Newton North High School in the rear parking lot at 352 Lowell Avenue in Newtonville.
Our on-site farm stand on Winchester Street will open mid-to-late June depending on the weather and growing conditions. We will be open on Thursday and Friday afternoons, plus Saturday mornings. Keep an eye on our website for the official opening date!
Pickups for our Summer CSA program begin on June 1. (Our summer CSA program is sold out for this year.) If you have purchased a summer share and haven't received an email from us, please send us an email.
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Thank you so much to everyone who volunteered to help with our seedling and tomato plant sales in May! More than 50 volunteers assisted with everything from getting the plants out and arranged for the sale, hanging up signs, tallying items, cashiering, answering questions, customer support, and much, much more. We truly could not have done it without you, Craig, Madelyn, Anna, Sabrina, Pete, Fatima, Dede, Paul, Linda, Debra, Linda, Paul, Karen, Marietta, Anne, Melissa, Tanya, Stephanie, Nyssa, Claire, Barbara, Laura, Adrian, Ray, Jon, Anne, Dan, Lynda, Bhamini, Margot, Sasha, Gerry, Sheila, Judy, Ronit, Anna, Joanna, Becky, Jim, Dean, Maureen, David, Emily, Michael, Marcia, Audrey, Rebecca, Helen, Mindy, Kate, Catherine, Yael, Alexa, and Fiona. |
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Meet a Volunteer
If you came to the Spring Seedling Sale this year, you may have seen Madelyn Sorensen, busy volunteering as a cashier. Madelyn started helping out at the Farm with the 2020 seedling sale, back when the entire sale was online with preorders and we needed to organize 500+ orders and fill them. In addition to buying cherry tomatoes and herbs for her own garden with her husband, Paul, in Newton, Madelyn has helped make it possible for so many local gardeners to create their gardens with seedlings from the sales over the past few years. Madelyn is a recent retiree and has been incredibly helpful with her excellent administrative skills. She has made plant labels, updated signs, organized orders and pickup times, worked on our fundraising appeal mailings, and more. She is always quick to lend a hand and is diligent and detail-oriented.
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Madelyn enjoys volunteering with the Farm because she knows that the work she is doing is contributing to the Farm's success in concrete, tangible ways. The tasks are well defined and short in duration, and she does some of them from her home. She also has an affinity for farming because she comes from a family of farmers in Maine. She grew up on a dairy farm, and her family has been farming for many generations. She remembers haying, canning, and freezing vegetables as a child and feels that her work at the Farm is a way of honoring her parents. Madelyn also helps at the Episcopal monastery in Cambridge and enjoys trying out recipes for America's Test Kitchen. She is glad that she can help the Farm with administrative tasks and encourages others to find an area that they can help in, too. Thank you, Madelyn! |
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Looking for ways you can volunteer? Here are some ideas!
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Translate written materials into Mandarin, Portuguese, or Spanish to help increase accessibility to our programs. Email sue@newtoncommunityfarm.org to let us know that you are interested.
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Get your hands dirty and have fun on a summer Saturday morning working in the field. Sign up online for a two-hour shift here.
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Can you commit to weekly weeding at the Farm on Thursday mornings this summer? Join our weed crew! In July and August (and possibly June depending on availability), a group of committed volunteers will meet weekly at the Farm on Thursdays at 9 am to work three hours, primarily weeding the vegetable beds. Email sue@newtoncommunityfarm.org for more info.
Please note that for volunteering at the Farm, the minimum age is 12, and volunteers ages 12–15 must be accompanied by an adult. Volunteers must sign up or email us ahead of time; we are not able to accommodate volunteers who have not registered. Wear comfortable clothes, closed-toe shoes, and be prepared to get dirty! Bring a water bottle. Thank you!
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Farm Manager Greg Maslowe was one of the farmers recently interviewed for The Boston Globe article "‘I can picture the people who eat the food I grow.’ Amid worldwide supply threats, local farmers keep feeding Greater Boston" by Nancy Shohet West. From the article: "But even with many people now comfortable returning to old shopping habits, new factors have underscored the value of local agriculture. 'There’s the supply chain. The Canadian trucking strike. The increase in fuel prices due to the war in Ukraine,' said Greg Maslowe, farm manager at Newton Community Farm. 'All of those are reasons that the price of food is going up. Any kind of large disruption, whether a war or pandemic or massive fires or record heat waves, highlights the fragility of a global economy that relies on goods being transported long distances. In the past, that’s been an effective system because it makes things cheaper for consumers, but it isn’t a particularly resilient system if there’s any sort of large-scale disruption. Local economies, on the other hand, have built-in resilience.'"
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Recently we made this beautiful raw watermelon "cake" in appreciation of Catherine, our volunteer highlighted in last month's newsletter, as she starts her next adventure and to celebrate our successful seedling sale. Matt (Mr. D.) suggested that instead of a traditional cake or fruit salad, we combine the two! The recipe is pretty simple. Purchase a very large watermelon; remove the rind and shave it down into a cake shape. Scoop out a little watermelon from the top to create a recessed bowl and fill it with fruit to make a mound on top. (You could also add whipped cream to the bowl-shape first.) Decorate with fruit and fresh mint using toothpicks where needed to secure. It was so good and so pretty! |
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Newton Community Farm is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, EIN #20-2482452. If you would prefer to donate by mail, please send a check payable to Newton Community Farm at the address below. Don't forget to ask your employer if matching funds are available. |
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NEWTON COMMUNITY FARM
303 Nahanton Street
Newton, MA 02459
617-916-9655
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