My apologies for sending a bad link to the Umass Five website. I will post it again so that those interested  in the loan can take a look.

Farm Share Loan

 

 

 

 

   Umass Five College Federal Credit Union is offering a no interest loan to their members to help spread the cost of purchasing a farm share over six months!! Use the link below to find out more information on the Umass Five website. Check it out and tell a friend.

 

Farm share Loan

 

 

 

Dear Friends,

             Here we are the last hurrah!  The leaves have changed, the fields we’re not still harvesting from are cover cropped, and it looks like the first real freeze is on the horizon.

             Sometimes when we’re in the thick of it (August) the season feels so long and November seems so far away.  Then we arrive at the last share week and it feels like the season went by so fast.  This time of year it is nice for us farmers to stop, take a breath, and think back to last winter.

            From December to April, among other projects, we spend countless hours analyzing the past season going over things we did well or not so well.  We do a lot of critical thinking and formulate a master plan to hit the ground running with when spring calls.  If the farm were an etch a sketch winter would be the eraser, a white blanket giving way to a new beginning, a fresh start. 

            It is not only insightful but actually entertaining to think back to January of this year when all this food was just and idea, a plan, lines on a spreadsheet.  When we are in winter mode anything seems possible.  The excitement of a new season drives the creative thinker in us.  We say things like, “Next year we’ll do such a better job with our u-pick section” and then go on to present volumes of action plans to each other or to ourselves of how we’ll realize each of the probably over-enthusiastic goals we set for the farm. 

            Some of these goals we accomplished and were pleased with the result, others we never got to, and still others we accomplished but weren't happy with the result.  Now is the time to go back to the drawing board.  I like to think about our off-season mindset and in-season mindset as a little bit like the struggle between the architect and the builder.  Our winter spent drawing up the plan, going over the details, contemplative, slow, and cerebral.  The season hits we smell fresh dirt and it flips our internal builder’s switch... out comes the action guy, hammer in hand, ready to put the plan into motion.  The builder knows how to roll with the punches dealt by the season, when to stick to the architect’s master plan and when to say, “What the heck was the architect thinking here… well forget him he’s not out here fumbling around in the dirt, what does he know?”. 

            Looking back on it now with the season coming to a close the ambitions of the ever optimistic architect are almost laughable.  The builder has done what was possible with the resources at hand, made compromises, made improvements, given the architect new ideas and things to think about around the stove for the long winter ahead.  Above all the builder hopes to have done the architect proud.

             This season was challenging, fraught with disappointment but also accomplishment.  It’s humbling work this farming thing.  It is with great pleasure that we stop, take a breath, and look back over the season or even just at this week’s share and think despite the difficulties we were dealt by mother nature… look at the bounty we were able to coax from the earth!  We hope you enjoyed this season as much as we did.  We look forward to seeing you all next spring!  Thanks for your support!!!

On behalf of our all-star farm crew Max and Sue

Your Farmers,

Rob and Meghan

 

BULK SHARES STILL AVAILABLE !!!

 

Don’t miss the opportunity to enjoy Riverland Farm vegetables into the winter!! We haven’t yet hit our capacity for bulk storage crop shares so we’ve decided to extend the sign-up deadline to Nov. 14th (or until we sell out).  Tell your friends and neighbors!  The bulk share will be a 1 day distribution Sat. November 21st 9am-1pm

 

SHARES FOR 2010

 

We’ve recently had a lot more new shareholders sign up (earlier than usual).  As a result we expect to sell out of shares for 2010 earlier than in years past.  If you haven’t yet renewed your share don’t wait until it’s too late!!

 

SHOUT-OUTS and THANK YOUS

 

Just wanted to take a moment to thank all of the folks who have come out to volunteer this year.  We had lots of help especially with our potato harvest.  A special thanks to the crew of students from Deerfield Academy, led by shareholder Tim Trelease, who continue to help us twice a week with various projects.  Our core farm crew lost a member earlier than expected this year and as a result we leaned heavily on Max and Sue to pull us through the year.  Max will be back again next year after a well deserved vacation in New Zealand.  Sue is applying to grad school and may be  back on a part-time basis next year. Thanks so much to both of them for their hard work and dedication!!!

 

 

 

Friday October 30th from 3-5pm come to the farm and carve or paint a pumpkin !! We will supply the Pumpkins and you bring the snacks *(please bring a list of ingredients for those with food sensitivities).   See you there!

Hi Folks,

            Just a little note to give credit where credit is due.  The goat email we just sent was authored by Scott and Ferdene who started Riverland Farm way back in 1997.  Since 2007 when Meghan and I took over the farming operation, they have fed, cared for, and maintained the goats and goat pen as well as maintaining the aesthetics around the parking lot and front garden beds continuing to contribute to and enrich the experience of all Riverland Farm members.  Our heartfelt thanks to Scott and Ferdene for all their hard work!

Rob and Meghan

The farm goats, Bindu and Salsa, are neutered males and can survive quite well on hay with a mineral supplement.  However, they always look forward to share days when they can vary their diet with fresh greens from the farm. We leave it mainly for farm members to provide these treats as a mutually fun interaction. The goats love the attention as well as the food and most of us enjoy their antics and obvious pleasure when we feed them.

Unlike sheep, which are heads-down grazers and eat mainly grasses off the ground, goats are heads-up browsers and prefer the tender parts of shrubs and bushes. They avoid food that has fallen to the ground especially if it has contacted their poop (which is all over the ground) and they will let good produce go to waste if we throw it into their pen instead of using the wire rack or hand feeding them.

Goats don’t have upper teeth in front so they can’t easily bite off a piece of anything large or hard like carrots, tomatoes, peppers, squash, eggplants, etc. Most of these foods end up on the ground as a result of their struggles to get it into bite size pieces. That’s why there are usually chunks of those types of vegetables lying around even when it is offered by hand or in the wire rack.

This leads to two guidelines for feeding the goats in a way that keeps the feeding area and their pen a little nicer:

1. Please feed them mainly Fresh Greens and avoid foods like turnips, carrots, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, and squash.
2. Please Hand Feed them or Place Food in the Wire Rack.

We doubt if the goats care at all but it will improve the pen hygiene and make the experience of feeding them more pleasant for us humans!

 

My apologies for any confusion concerning the new hours. We will be open on Saturdays, and those hours are not changing. The share distribution will run from 10-2 for the next two Saturdays. The only hours that are new are on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2-6:30.

The last share day is Saturday November 7th.

 

Thanks and sorry again for any confusion,

 

Meghan

We have been watching the weather and it seems that there is about 100% chance of rain for Saturday. We have decided to cancel the Pumpkin carving potluck on Saturday and reschedule for...

Friday October 30th from 3-5 pm.

Pumpking Carving and Painting Party !!

You bring the snacks and creativity, and we will supply the pumpkins.

(Please include a list of ingredients with your dish for those with food sensitivities)

See you there!

 

  A few reminders...

  1.) Starting next Tuesday (October 27th) we will start our Fall hours:

 TUESDAY: 2- 6:30

THURSDAY: 2- 6:30

 

  2.)  RIVERLAND FARM CALENDARS

In the shareroom for the last couple weeks you may have seen boards up with pictures of the farm. A very talented member took the pictures throughout the season and created a beautiful calendar . Next week will be the last chance for you to order a calendar. If anyone is interested in viewing the pictures again feel free to contact the photographer Rick at rixpix99@yahoo.com. There are order forms in the shareroom for anyone who is interested.

 

Thanks !

 

Dear Friends,

             The last two weeks felt like a whirlwind.  Meghan and I were multi-tasking the first of the two weeks trying to squeeze in wedding preparations whenever we could.  In the second week as the big day drew closer and the wedding list grew longer, as friends and family descended on the farm from near and far we hired a few pinch hitters to take up some of the workload and turned the reins of the farm over to Max and Sue.  They did a terrific job last week allowing us a needed mental and physical break from the farm and time to accomplish all that you need to accomplish for a do-it- yourself farm wedding. 

Last Saturday out in one of our fields the clouds broke, the sun shone bright, and the gale force winds died down long enough for Meghan and I to end our 6 years of living in sin.  It was a beautiful ceremony! We’re one week in and so far all signs point to us staying together☻. 

In what was a fitting turn of events we also got our first frost on Saturday night.  We were slightly worried about it during the wedding because there were a few crops that we had yet to protect with row cover.  Meghan expressed some worry about the frost to a farmer friend of ours who was at the wedding saying something like, “Of course it has to frost tonight”.  He came back with such a fitting response saying, “No this is a good thing it is just going to make everything sweeter”.  He couldn’t be more right.  As the remaining crops we have in the ground are hit with freezing temperatures they convert their starches into sugars as a natural self-protectant antifreeze (that looks and tastes better than that green liquid we put in our vehicles).  Don’t be surprised if your carrots from this week are sweeter than last weeks’ ...and they only get sweeter!

While were on the subject of root crops… we still have memberships left for our Bulk Storage Crop Share that will be Saturday Nov. 21st.  We’ve had about how best to store root crops and several is the storage share right for me type queries so without futher ado it seems appropriate to go over some basic principles of winter vegetable storage.

Root Crops (Carrots, Beets, Parsnips, Rutabaga, Celeriac, etc.) Shelf life 3 months or more when stored unwashed and kept between 33 and 40 degrees.  An unheated garage, bulkhead, or a very cool basement are all suitable spots.  We like to keep them in a large tupperware container to discourage mice and cover with a blanket to ..

protect from freezing.  The coldest part of your refrigerator is also a good spot as long as they are kept relatively dry as excessive moisture will promote sprouting.

Potatoes Shelf life up to 4 months when kept unwashed in a dark place at 40-50 degrees.  A cool basement or refrigerator will work well.  If potatoes are kept in the mid 30’s they will convert their starch to sugar and you’ll have really sweet potatoes which some people like but it is unpleasant for others.

Sweet Potatoes Shelf life 3 months or better when kept unwashed between 55 and 65 degrees.  Do not refrigerate.  A warm basement or pantry will work.  If kept below 50 for a long period of time they will develop a chilling injury called “hardcore” and will not soften when cooked.  I’ve heard individually wrapping each sweet potato in newspaper helps them last even longer.

Garlic and Onions Shelf life up to 4 months when kept dark and dry at 40-50 degrees.  A cool pantry, unheated attic or mud room are a few options.  Basements tend to be a little on the humid side but a less humid basement can work.

If you’d like to read more about how best to store the bounty Putting Food By  Ruth Hertzberg, Beatrice Vaughan, and Janet Greene and Stocking Up  Carol Hupping are full of root cellaring info as well as canning and freezing tips.  Thanks and as always enjoy the harvest!

On behalf of the farm crew Max and Sue…

Your Farmers,

Rob and Meghan

THIS WEEK’S SHARE

This week in addition to the regular root crops and greens we’ll be distributing the pumpkins, hubbard squash, and gourds as well as brussels sprouts, butternut squash, garlic, potatoes, and cabbage.

 

FALL SHARE HOURS CHANGING

As it is getting darker and no one is picking up their share during the last half hour.  We will be shortening the Tuesday and Thursday share hours starting next week the share will now run from 2-6:30pm on Tuesday and Thursday.  The Saturday hours will remain the same 10am-2pm.  Thanks!

PUMPKIN CARVING POTLUCK!!!

As advertised we’ll hold our annual pumpkin carving potluck this Saturday October 24th starting at 2:30 at the farm.  Bring a dish to share and your creativity… We’ll provide the pumpkins, carving tools, and paint for the really young ones.

BULK STORAGE CROP SHARES

We still have some space available!! Sign up forms are in the shareroom.  We are opening up sign ups to the general public this week so they may go fast!  Don’t miss the opportunity to enjoy produce from your farm into the winter!

WHEN IS YOUR LAST REGULAR SHARE DISTRIBUTION??

The last share week will be the first week in November.  Tuesday November 3rd, Thursday November 5th, and Saturday November 7th are the final share distributions.  Please come to pick up on only one of those days!

 

 

 

 

Dear Friends,

             Life is good on the farm these days.  The fall crops (with the exception of the winter squash) are all yielding as good or better than we hoped, our summer cash crops have all been replaced with some great looking cover crops, the Red Sox are in the playoffs, and Meghan and I are getting married this Saturday!

             Last week besides harvesting for the share we came close to checking another of the big fall harvests of 2009 off the list.  With the squash and potatoes in… we turned our attention to the sweet potatoes.  Sweet potatoes and potatoes are in two different plant families and are only distantly related.  They have different growth habits and post harvest requirements and as a result we have different harvest methods for each crop. 

The potato (Solanum tuberosum) we plant in April from cut pieces of seed potatoes.  We completely bury the seed about 4 inches deep, they sprout, send up vines, produce more tubers, and the vines die back before we harvest the potatoes.  The potato foliage is not very frost sensitive and is incredibly vigorous even in a cooler spring/summer like we had this year. 

The sweet potato (Ipomea batata) on the other hand we plant in late May from slips (sprouted plant cuttings).  They are a warm weather crop and the foliage and roots are frost sensitive.  If you remember back to June 1st of this year... we had our latest spring frost in recent history and had to go back to our freshly planted sweet potato slips and replace about 30% of the plants in the field that were fried by the frost. We plant them like most vegetable transplants with the roots buried in soil and the foliar part of the plant sticking up above ground.  The vines spread out from the cutting eventually forming a thick foliar mat covering the soil completely.  Herein lies the difference… the vines and foliage do not die back like potatoes when the roots are ready to harvest they just keep growing. 

Harvesting sweet potatoes for us is a 6 step operation we must first mow the foliage down as low as we can get it without damaging the roots and then we are still left with lots of vines that are intertwined with vines from other plants in the same row and the next row over.  To deal with this we go thru with a set of discs on the back of a tractor and cut the vines in the spot where the mouth of the potato digger will go.  We dig the potatoes with the digger on a slow speed because the skin is very easily damaged.  The digger separates most of the soil from the potatoes  and   

leaves the potatoes back on top of the soil.  The 4th step is to pick up the potatoes from the ground and put them into 5 gallon buckets.  We then bag the potatoes putting them into grain sacks in the field (2 buckets per sack) and finally stack the grain sacks on pallets 20 sacks per pallet.  In summary mow, cut, dig, pick-up, bag, stack.  We did this for 10 hours on Wednesday and left the field grinning with over 6,000#’s of sweets all tidily bagged up (only 2,000#’s to go)… and what a beautiful crop it is.

Unlike potatoes after harvest we cure the sweet potatoes in the greenhouse for about 10 days at 85º and high humidity.  This helps any wounds on the potato heal and sweetens them up.  After curing we store them at about 55º and high humidity (at these conditions they will store over 4 months).  You’ll notice that we are giving out sweet potatoes in the share this week.  They are not fully cured and so won’t be quite as sweet as their potential but they are still darn good!  Now that you know more than you’ve ever wanted to know about sweet potatoes.  Enjoy the week and enjoy the harvest.  On behalf of our farm crew mainstays Max and Sue, and Caitlin (our pinch hitter for this week)…

Your Farmers,

Rob and Meghan      

 

THANKS FOR THE WEEDING HELP!!

Would you like to know who we can thank for helping to keep this year’s and next year’s strawberry crop weed free?  Well we can thank the wonderful volunteer group of Deerfield Academy students led by farm member Tim Trelease.  These guys are doing a terrific job and we are so happy to have their help.  Thanks guys!!!

U-PICK

As the fall takes hold our u-pick crops diminish as well.  We have some nice fall flowers (calendula, bachelors buttons, and cosmos that are just blooming now).  The cilantro dill, and basil is still kicking.  Unfortunately our final planting of beans has been ravaged by bean beetles and that pesky groundhog but there may be some out there to salvage.

NO SHARE THIS SATURDAY OCT. 10th

Meghan and I are getting married!!!  To compensate for the lost Saturday share we’ll extend our share hours on Tuesday and Thursday of this week.  Tuesday October 6th and Thursday October 8th share hours will be 12pm-7pm.

 

Find recipes at www.riverlandfarm.com/recipes/