Coming home from England after being away only 7 short days provided me with an almost overwhelm of profusion. The fruit trees were all in bloom, the lettuce and Asian greens under the row cover were juniors already, the chard, kale, collards and lettuce in the hoophouses were beautifully mature and dark green, the arugula, radishes, and turnips had sprouted, the spinach and peas were up strongly and looking sassy, the 7 beds of onion sets had popped up, and the dandelions had all bloomed their stupendous yellow faces in the interim. The grass was a dark and beautiful green, and for a moment I wished that we still had a milk cow to make the most of it!
When we go away, coming home can be the most exhilarating experience, especially if we know that we are where we should be. We will be singing a beautiful Aaron Copland piece at our upcoming Circle of Song concert (May 16, 7 pm, Barre Town Hall) titled the Promise of Living, which sets out to praise the promise of growing, of working together, born of sharing, our love with our neighbor, and singing in joy and Thanksgiving. Aaron, I just couldn’t have said it any better.
I almost thought I was back in England, when I took this picture of our violets, now in two tones, that inhabit the area around the grape arbor. Jack surmised that their utter beauty has to do with the fact that we spray the grapes every other week with our mineral sprays and they “catch the drift.”
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Staff Highlights & Gratitude
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Gratitude this week
I have to squeeze in a short gratitude this week to Jack and Clare and Jim and all the staff who worked overtime to make it possible for me to visit Ellen and Dan last week and see and experience the beauty of Devon and Cornwall.
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Danny LeBlanc – Head Carpenter
My wife, Paula Bowie, and I moved to Gardner in 2018, after many years living in Somerville – Paula all her life, and me for over 40 years. I spent my career working in community organizing and development in Eastern Massachusetts, the last 20 years as CEO of the Somerville Community Corporation, a nonprofit most known for building affordable housing and for organizing and advocating for affordable housing and decent jobs in Somerville. Since 2020, while continuing to do some part-time professional work – ending this February! – I’ve enjoyed more fully immersing in my love of music, traveling with our camping trailer, working around our home in Gardner and on MHOF, and spending time with our 3 daughters and 5 grandkids.
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Paula Bowie – Working Shareholder
I’ve been a shareholder, a staff member and a volunteer and I know whatever role I play at MHOF I’ll always come back because it’s one of my top happy places. Supportive friends, access to healthy foods, constantly learning – animal husbandry, soil health, weather’s many effects on crops, and making friends. It is a physical challenge that I find myself craving as I try to stay reasonably fit in my “older years” (I’m a lifelong city gal who’s now over 70 engaged in farming!). And while it does have it’s annoying moments like when the pigs don’t cooperate, it’s never boring, Cavorting with fellow farmers in the field and watching animal interactions are but a couple things that add joy to my times at the farm.
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Thoughts About the Barre Wool
by Jack Kittredge
Readers who are also customers and occasionally come to the farm may be interested in taking a short detour next time you come in order to visit the site of an important institution in the town’s history: the Barre Wool Combing Company. Like many New England towns in the years before fossil fuels and electricity, Barre took advantage of our rainy climate and hilly terrain to build dams and channel the backed up water through turbines. Today some are still functioning, with the turbines now generally producing electricity. But when the mills were built they turned shafts and gears which directly powered machinery.
By the time the Barre Wool broke ground in 1902 steam had replaced water as the motive force in most manufacturing. The site, however, not only offered helpful power but also ample Ware River water, soft (acidic) and suitable for washing or scouring raw wool to remove lanolin. In the main building the wool was first carded, keeping the short fibers to make “top”, which can be spun into warm and fluffy yarn. Across the street the Nornay Mill produced “worsted” from the longer fibers with a hard, smooth finish that might go into a fine man’s suit.
International affairs during this period were important to the origins of the company. Tariffs then existed on many imported goods and the Barre Wool was formed by Francis C. Willey, an entrepreneur from England, to process domestic wool that was cheaper than imported because not subject to a tariff. Willey designed a village with worker housing next to the mill in South Barre, and promoted European immigration which supplied ample unskilled laborers primarily from Poland, Italy and Lithuania.
When our community band parades to the town cemeteries each Memorial Day and reads off the names of the war dead, I am always impressed how the names changed over 50 years. For the Civil war it was English names almost exclusively, but when we got to World War One it was mostly Italian, Polish, and Slav names. Lots of those names are still families in town.
I doubt if Barre is much different from many other Central Massachusetts or even New England towns. Walking through the woods you come to the stone wall of an old pasture, the occasional cellar hole of a home that didn’t work out, a stream with abutments for a bridge or dam no longer functioning. So much work has been done here by the settlers, never mind the folks who were here before them.
Perhaps it is best if we don’t think too much about all these strivings. Didn’t Ecclesiastes say something about temporary vanities? Still, it is remarkable how many clever ideas and how much hard work we are capable of. It is worth remembering that before smart people were engineering their dreams out of silicone, others were doing it out of stone.
If you would like to see this site, which has a big part of the original brick building still standing, take Route 32 south out of Barre for about two miles. It will bear right just after you have crossed the Ware River. The site is all around you, primarily now the housing spreading in all directions out from the mill, a park where the Nornay building stood, a railway siding, and the towering factory remains. Efforts to develop it have not found profitable uses, but it is a lovely community with small churches, stores, services, and restaurants.
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As noted above, we have lots of very tasty things in the ground already, with thousands of plants inside and outside of the greenhouse, and hoophouse awaiting their chance to move into the fields. Last week we started some radishes in the blue house right where the tomatoes will be transplanted in 2 weeks or so. And we have another bed out in the south field. These little gems do wonders for our digestive system and will be a welcome addition to your share throughout the season.
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In the video I also speak a bit about our foliar fertility program with the macro and trace minerals, sea products and biological inoculants that provide the superior taste for our vegetables and fruits.
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The CSA starts on the week of June 1 and there is still time to sign up.
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What is Available at the farm this week for pick up on Friday between 3-6 pm
- Kale – $4/bunch
- Swiss chard – $4/bunch
- Collards – $4/bunch
- Lettuce – $4 each
- Chives – $3/bunch
- Eggs – $10/dozen
- Soaps, salves, tinctures and frozen pork
Email Julie by Wednesday at midnight – julie@mhof.net
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Many Hands Sustainability Center
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This week we were able to pay for 12 large shares to go to the Woo Fridges in Worcester this season – all thanks to your donations over the past 6 months. Thank you!
And we had our first visit from Jonny, from a new program we are working with titled Life Connections, USA. This program is for men who have aged out of places like Stetson School. We had a great time with Jonny on Wednesday teaching him the ropes.
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Don’t miss our chicken and turkey workshop on Saturday, June 6. We have been in the pasture raised certified organic poultry business for over 40 years and can share all of our great tips and challenging failures. https://mhof.net/events-workshops/
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A Savory Spring Pie
Amanda’s Recipe
Spring greens are irresistible to me after a long winter. I think it’s also interesting that some of the first edible plants to pop up are nutritive and bitter greens that help us shed what we don’t need, get things moving, and bring more life back into our bodies just as the season invites us to do the same.
Dandelion, chickweed, and stinging nettle, are all widely disregarded as common garden weeds, but they are extremely supportive for our lymph and liver. Please make sure to harvest your greens from an unsprayed field. You can, of course, substitute the greens in this recipe for any other dark leafy greens of choice, which is nice to do as the seasons change. The sweet caramelized onion, fresh cheese, and fresh herbs add sweetness and balance. I usually grab a pie crust or two from the co-op and voila!
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pictured: remnants of said pie at the recent MHOF Mushroom Plug Workshop on April 25th
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Filling Ingredients:
- 1 medium-sized onion
- 1 cup of dandelion greens, chopped
- 1-2 cup of nettle leafs, chopped
- ½ cup of chickweed, chopped
- Half a block of fresh shredded or soft cheese (think: feta, goat cheese, ricotta, etc.)
- Salt & pepper
- Pie crust of your choice
Recipe:
- Caramelize some onion
- Rinse the chickweed and dandelion greens
- Skip the rinse for nettles
- Give everything a chop
- Blanch the greens and strain
OPTIONAL TIP: save the infused water from the drain and you have a warm, nourishing lymphatic tea)
- Chop chives & other fresh herbs
- Combine onions, greens, and herbs with fresh cheese and salt & pepper to taste
- Fill pie crust and drizzle a little olive oil
- Bake, cool & enjoy
Recipe inspired by Milk & Honey Herbs and Forager Chef
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An Annual Homesteader’s Preservation Calendar
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I am going to take a break on this until we start having things to preserve, so you can get a sense of timing.
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Interesting Tidbits from the Outside world
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I just have a few comments to make about scale. Every time I go to the UK, and from when Jack and I visited India, it is clear how much space we Americans have relative to the rest of the world. In a place like Totnes, Devon, a very old maritime city, the houses are perched helter skelter and right up on each other and the street. There are no gradual slopes on hills for things like driveways or staircases. Everything is steep and straight. People make incredible gardens in postage stamp backyards, using every inch of space to grow things. The bird population is tremendous because of all of the hedges and undergrowth.
This is a shot of Chris and Amy’s backyard which houses a greenhouse, garden, beeyard, sauna and shed
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Well, I wasn’t here for most of it, but when I came back on Tuesday afternoon I could appreciate all that Clare and the crew had accomplished. They weeded and hoed the rhubarb bed, and received and planted 12 new plants. We had moved the rhubarb from Boardwalk to Mediterranean Avenue a couple of years ago and they are starting to accustom themselves to their new locale. Luckily they live right by the wood pile so they are all tucked in nicely. And they also finished chipping the blueberries in the front yard, and seriously pruning the quince bush and chipping that. Jim has a goal of our front yard looking a little more respectable in 2026 and this move was part of the plan.
They also prepped for and planted 2 beds of cabbage, a bed of parsnips and one of kohlrabi. By the end of Friday we planted two beds of broccoli in that area of the west field to complete that planting area for the week – cauliflower up next week.
Many thousands of seeds were started – more of all of the brassicas and lettuce, and also tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, eggplant and flowers. The basil has come up nicely and the tulsi is not far behind. The peppers too, have popped through, along with the celery.
They also weeded and chipped 1 ½ of the 3 red raspberry trellises.
On Wednesday after chipping the hardy kiwi, Clare and Marissa and Jonny and I planted 500 new strawberry plants, and later Clare and I replanted some of the Swiss chard in two beds where some were missing from our April 25 planting.
The potatoes went in on Friday along with second plantings of carrots and beets, dill and fennel.
We are juggling finishing up the first round of perennial care – weeding, pruning and chipping – we are taking care to get the annuals started and in the ground at the right moments. The weather is moving forward slowly – I would say we have been looking at a perfect spring this year!
Ellen sent home a chocolate flap jack for Clare
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Yes, there are a few big things in England
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