THE CSA Cycle Starts Again

June 3, 2024/in CSA, Newsletter /by Jennifer

Today starts our 2024 Summer CSA. For the next 26 weeks (22 for summer and 4 for fall) we know what we will be doing on Monday, Wednesday and Friday each week. We started our CSA in 1992 so this will be year 33. We may be one of the oldest continuous CSAs in the country, for those who like to keep stats (yes you, Lew!). Shawna was asking me the other night if I get excited about the CSA still, and I responded with a resounding “yes”! There are those of you who have been members for years or decades, those who made it through the rough first year of changing eating habits and decided to come back, and there are the newbies, many of you excited to change your lives for the better by significantly shifting your eating habits for the first time, and making that commitment with your $$ to go on a 22 week journey together to tap into local farming cycles and get that much closer to the natural way of things. We realize that anyone can now days get any food you want any day of the year, and especially appreciate that you are willing to eat in season with us. We hope you will find this decision to have been a life-changing one.

Expressing Gratitude this Week

It is all about the CSA. First, super gratitude to Matt who found the funding for 8 summer and 8 fall CSA shares for the Fridges, and who also noted that his neighbor will continue to be a shareholder if he still wants his lawn mowed. And there are the 26 people with whose pooled resources we were able to come up with 8 summer and 8 fall Community Fridge shares And then there is a new star, Matt, who pulled off 16 shares for the 696 Crossfit Gym in Gardner, and finally the woman behind so many shares, including Matt’s, Jennifer. I watched her pigeonhole a woman in our driveway one day and get her to sign up. Thank you, Jennifer.

Continuing on the CSA theme, special thanks to Dan, Shawna and Meghan who came over for dinner and helped us prepare CSA bags for a couple hours. Jennifer, though sick this week, did all the back-end work for labels, spreadsheets, pick lists, and email notifications. And finally, there is Jack, who offered to help me with the slog of printing 10 different colors of labels (about 400 or so), cut them, laminate them, cut them again, punch holes in them, tie them, and then tie them onto the bags. We got it all done by Saturday night, right after I took him out to the Sole Proprietor for a thank you supper.

On Thursday in process

Letters from folks

Julie,
thanks for your thoughtful reflection on Memorial Day and helping set an example of remembering on that day that is often lost today as a holiday only.
Lew
——-
https://youtu.be/oho9KaoxI-4?si=8m1XI1KNB5pBMlg9

Hi Julie, I was one of the lucky/fortunate ones who, despite having a low draft number (53), was saved by the college deferment. Why going to college would make such a difference I will never understand. It was a white, middle class advantage I had that so many others didn’t for a war that should have never happened. I was a classic example of “There but for fortune go I”.
This tune was released in 1985 and is still a powerful condemnation of the Vietnam war. So many veterans of that war are still fighting it in their shattered psyches.
Peace, Love and Grooviness, Frankadelic

Thank you, Frank, you expressed so eloquently what I was trying to get across. Julie
——–
I like your sentiments…maybe we are twins! They also apply to me and my evolution. I am 76 presently. My brother was in college during the war and when he graduated got a high draft number.

Love to You and your Beautiful Soul,
Doris

Thank you, Doris, I am happy to be your twin. 😊 Julie

The CSA has Started

The deadline has passed to join up for the first week of the CSA. But we are still taking new shareholders. The price goes down incrementally each week. Check the website here for how to sign up.

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The center of gravity for the CSA has shifted a bit this year, in large part because of the work of Jennifer and Matt Cali.

We have folks picking up in the following numbers:

Athol – 8
MHOF – 30
Gardner – 26
Holden – 19
Shrewsbury – 12
Worcester – 39

What is in your Share this week

Lettuce

Chinese cabbage – I like this sauteed in a stir fry or lightly steamed and cooked with eggs. You can also just steam it and serve straight. Good with garlic, onions, olive oil, tamari. Don’t overcook it.

Kale from the hoop house or Swiss chard

Spearmint – chop it into salad or make sun tea – put it in a jar of water and leave in the sun for half a day and have a wonderful cooling drink

Green onions – please use the entire onion. You will be getting these for awhile. I use them in everything from salads to stir fries to soups, to egg dishes.

Oregano – can be chopped fine for salad, or added as a seasoning in soups and stews

Spinach
Radishes

Need some help? Give me a call. 978-257-1192

Education this week

No time to listen this week!

Volunteering at MHOF

There is no question that we survive with our regular staff of paid folks and volunteers, but we are able to thrive with the help of one-off volunteers and groups. This past Saturday at a co-sponsored MHSC and NOFA workshop on keeping the soil covered the folks had a “working education” where we planted two beds of tomatoes, hilled and mulched 3 rows of our 14 potato rows and mulched some of our hemp and winter squash. We are still taking working shareholders. Alex joined us last week and Declan starts today. Be in touch.

Alex with the big biceps to the right of Stu – kale weeded and mulched on Monday

Dear friend Dale, hoeing potatoes while former colleague and 2011 working shareholder Laura videotapes the workshop on Saturday

Didier came to the workshop to translate as needed, but it turns out he grew up on a coffee farm in Colombia and had the time of his life working in the field again.

Videos

Chive paste making

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Baby meat birds arrived

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Don’t forget the Party on June 29

Here is half of the invite that went out via email. This must be a Jack featuring week!

Beginning of Summer Gala Party and Pot luck at Many. Please RSVP
Many Hands Organic Farm
Saturday, June 29 from 2:00 pm until the end
Jack Kittredge and Clare Caldwell are two very essential remarkable members of the Many Hands community. We are celebrating them for a few reasons
Jack turned 80 this year and this is a celebration of his long and productive involvement in the world. Here are a few highlights.

Radical from his early age – when he took over the island at Carleton College to protest the Bay of Pigs; or the armory on Cape Cod to protest the lack of housing for poor people on the Cape, then there was the cow on Boston Common to protest the unavailability of raw milk in Massachusetts, the proposed GWEN tower in Barre, gmos in our food, etc., etc.
Master designer and builder of the MHOF house, barn, sheds, chicken tractors and pig houses, sets for Quabbin shows
Master designer of board and video games – Cosmic Encounter, Dune, Borderlands, and others
Editor, of the family newspaper at age 5, and later editor of the Natural Farmer for 33 years, popular Christmas newsletter, etc., etc.
Father for 46 years and superb life partner for 47 years. The list goes on, but most importantly,
Highly intelligent, discerning, integrated and iconoclastic member of the world

2024 Workshop Series

Here listed is our last workshop for the spring. Register here. – https://mhof.net/events-workshops/

Homestead Carpentry

Saturday, June 15, 2024
9am-12 with pot luck lunch
Price: $50-$100 – sliding scale
Presenter: John Wilson, with some help from Jack Kittredge and Danny LeBlanc

There’s a time in every homesteader’s life when some carpentry is needed to build or repair something made of wood. This workshop will provide a solid grounding in getting started. Very basic questions will be explored in a setting that requires no knowledge of woodworking.

Topics will include: how to select the right lumber for your task, how to measure it and cut it to size, the options for fastening it together, and making a good assembly. Each topic will cover the tools needed, with a demonstration of technique, and how to avoid some common pitfalls. Emphasis will be on hand tools where feasible.

While in his 20s, John Wilson was a carpenter for 10 years. He worked on framing apartments, finish work in condos, a cabinet shop, and built two houses. He’s kept active in carpentry remodeling work in the intervening years, and was part of the MHOF garage and chicken coop renovations the past two years. He has always had an appreciation for tools and techniques.

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Jennifer’s Recipe of the Week

Sorry, Too sick to cook and eat this week. Recipes will be back next week using the amazing CSA food.

Farm Doins

It was a most beautiful and productive May. This year we got a jump on our haymaking thanks to Jim for cutting, Luke for raking and Clare for managing the pick up. That will keep in process until we complete our first round. Last week Jim cut the annex and the west field.

Luke raking in west field

In terms of planting we got the following in the ground – more lettuce, 2^nd round of carrots and radishes, corn, some tomatoes, all of our squash and cucumbers, and some of our flowers.

We knocked off 6 rows of corn planting in 40 minutes

In the weeding and mulching department we took care of the kale, 3 rows of potatoes, some squash and hemp, and also made some more chopped hay.

Clare and Matt straining over a leaf tote to be used for mulching potatoes

Another round of foliar spraying until both sprayers died, but Dave came over and worked with Matt to get them up and running.

The mowing got done this week and we now have three functioning mowers, though we are awaiting Dave’s fixes on our weed whacker.

Many hours on CSA prep, and 10 new blueberries planted and 20 pints of chive paste for the freezer. A new round of lettuce seedlings started. Baby meat birds arrived.

The pig yard is ready to go. Jack and Julie started an aborted trip to Maine to get our piglets. Our truck is awaiting a new strut at Quabbin Auto.

Julie

Quick Links

Buy meat
CSA pick up information
Contact Julie
Products available right now at the farm
Become a working shareholder
Donate to the MHSC
Links Workshops

Link to buy J and J’s book – Many Hands Make a Farm-
https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/many-hands-make-a-farm/

If you are still breathing, your purpose on earth has not yet been fulfilled – Andy Andrews

March 21, 2022/in CSA, Newsletter, Photos /by Christy Bassett

I have really been enjoying my books on tape since I signed up to Audible a couple of years ago. Thanks to brother Tom for that wonderful tip. Andy Andrews wrote “The Seven Decisions”, and if you like the Norman Vincent Peale approach to life as laid out in “the Power of Positive Thinking,” you will enjoy his book. Something about the quote above really resonated for me. I have never been a proponent of “retirement” and I think this statement encapsulates a lot about why. Here is another tip that I picked up. I have always been one to smile at every person I meet when I am out, but adding more smile time to one’s day, actually makes you happier. Try it. Andy’s approach to self-improvement started and seems to continue with an insatiable interest in the biographies of folks who have risen to the top in one way or another – not always to the “traditional top.”
Recently I also enjoyed “Unlock Your Subconscious Mind” by Joseph Dispenza. After reading this book, I finally understood the relationship between the conscious (5-10 %), subconscious (40%) and unconscious ((50% or so) mind. This is more of a review than an in depth book, but gets one started who has an interest in delving more deeply.
I am also in the middle of “Make it Stick” by Peter C Brown, which is a very scientific exploration of how we best retain what we learn.
These books on tape have created an opportunity for me to learn while housecleaning, an endeavor which in the accomplishment of same, I have received a solid C minus thus far!

Never too early to join the CSA
We continue to do a fast business in CSA shares. A welcome outpouring of support for our high quality food.
You can sign up here – https://mhof.net/community-supported-agriculture/
And if you are already a member and can help us with outreach, contact me at Julie@mhof.net. We can discuss ways to reach out to your friends and relatives. We now have pick up sites in Barre, the Barre Health Center, Holden twice, Worcester, Princeton, Gardner, Shrewsbury, and Sutton.
In other produce news we are happy that the Insight Meditation Society is back in business. They are one of our oldest accounts. We started selling to them in 1985.

CSA share August 9, 2021

Food Corner: Green onions, chives, and onions
Starting early in the CSA season and throughout, you will receive one or more of our green onions, chives and onions. Chives generally are milder than green onions, and onions. All have the pungent taste that aids in the digestion of food due to its heating quality. They can be eaten raw in salads or on top of other cooked dishes or cooked right into just about any dish. When cooked they take on a sweeter taste.

Agriculture Education
I want to talk about seedlings and fire blight.
Seedlings – A long time ago when we first started growing food here I made up my own potting soil, started seeds too early, spent way too much time transplanting, and ended up with leggy seedlings which I diligently (with the help of the rest of the family) moved in and out of the house before planting. Over the years, we started using commercial potting soil. I really prefer the product that Mike Lombard of Ideal Compost in Peterborough, NH makes that is high quality and laced with minerals and microbes that give things a good start. We have had our wonderful attached greenhouse since 1982. In 2007 we upgraded our system for seedlings by adding the yellow and blue houses (which you have heard about incessantly this winter! And then I studied under John Kempf who educates us that seedlings need to be small when planted, grow constantly, with no arresting while in the seedling stage, not be fed with N or K, but instead supported with adequate Ca and P for short stocky growth. For most of our seedlings, we try to have a policy of cradle to planting of between 3-5 weeks. That is easier with summer started seedlings to reach the 3 week goal, but most spring started seedlings can be ready in 5 weeks. Another suggestion of John’s that we follow is to not harden off seedlings, but start them late enough that you can plant them “in their time” (i.e. first week in June for tomatoes here, for example). So we start everyone up in the attached greenhouse, and as soon as they germinate they go out to the yellow house, on the ground. We cover them with row cover if the temperature is going down below freezing, and open the doors of the house when it is sunny on a week like this past one. Besides the great potting soil, we use the following recipe for transplant drench at planting, and then spray the seedlings weekly with the same mix. They go from the hoophouse into the ground, unless it gets too hot in there, in which case they live out in front of it until they are ready. No transplanting, no potting up, no dragging plants here and there, and no cell paks either. With our 10” x 20” open trays we can pack in thousands more seedlings in our very small 10’ x 14’ greenhouse. They never dry out, and their roots are never too tight. Son Dan has a great metaphorical question. “Would you leave your three year old in a crib?” We save hours and hours of time over our old system of 40 years ago.
Transplant Drench and foliar – 2 Quart Rejuvenate, 2 Quart SeaShield, 2 Quart PhotoMag, 2 Quart SeaStim, 1 Quart HoloCal, 1 Quart SeaCrop, Mix into a 2 ½ gallon jug and use ½ – 1 cup per 2 gallon watering can. Add a pinch of mycogenesis to each watering can.

March 14, seedlings ready to move outside to hoop house.

And here they are, where they will live until they are planted – the ground holds the heat well at night and they get full sun.

Fire blight – I am not sure why we got fire blight on some of our apple trees last year. It was a new occurrence for us. We quickly asked Nathan from AEA about an appropriate spray (recipe here), and this spring we are doing serious pruning 18” below any visual damage on affected trees. As it turns out his advice was to do that pruning right away, which we didn’t accomplish. But we will prophylactically spray the 2021 affected trees and hope we can bring our trees back from this nasty disease.
Fire Blight Foliar
1 gallon sea crop
1 gallon sea stim
1 quart rebound copper
1 quart rebound boron
——————–
Add 1 Tablespoon Micro 5000 to tank

Jonathan cut out a lot of fire blight infested branches from our beloved 1987 Baldwin tree.

Health Education
This Week I have been catching parts of the DrSummits Energy Healing Summit – https://drsummits.com/. These are free for 24 hours, so if you are cagey you can get a plethora of information on a particular topic without paying anything. Their last one was on Lyme disease. Speakers of note this week for me were Tony Robbins, who has a new book coming out titled “Life Force”, Mark Divine who authored “The Unbeatable Mind”, Keesha Evers, who authored “Solving the Autoimmune Puzzle,” and Robby Besner, owner of TheraSage. He focuses on infrared and got his start healing his daughter’s Lyme. In the end he suggests that we walk barefoot (which I did all day on Friday and it was fantastic). Check out Ho-oponopono with Joe Vitale and his book “Zero Limits” and Chunyi Lin on qigong. There is a lot of cool stuff out there and much food for thought.

Ellen’s Spring Cleanse
Ellen’s Spring Rejuvenation Cleanse begins in April. Join now for the early bird discount. All details here: https://ellenkittredge.com/cleanse.php

Working Shareholders
No one new came this week but next week we look forward to Jhoanne. Keep em coming!

– https://mhof.net/volunteer-at-mhof/ .

Staff Spotlight:
Jonathan is an experienced farmer who worked in farming for 10 years in his teens and twenties. He loved the work but wasn’t sure it was sustainable income for his family so he decided to go on to college and enter the corporate world. He started his own small farm at his home raising chickens and vegetables for his family and friends. He left the corporate world about a year ago when he made the decision to homeschool his children. He has decided to take on farming again as his profession at Many Hands Organic Farm with the thoughts of maybe some consulting on the side. He is a tall, strong and soft spoken man who is highly competent and positive spirited. He is at present farming part of the day and managing the garage upgrade part of the day. Additionally, he will be a site coordinator for our CSA in Sutton MA.

Good Local Maple Syrup
Our syrup is a small family operation. We primarily tap in West Orange along the Millers River Valley. We currently have syrup in tins, quart mason jars, plastic, and 1/2 liter glass jugs.
Tins and quarts are 20 each
1/2 liter jugs are 10 each.
We have all grades in stock from fancy to dark.
Folks can call or text me to make arrangements to purchase syrup.
978-660-8137.
Thank you
Travis Knechtel
tknechtel1@gmail.com

Jobs At MHOF
Well, we don’t have any at the moment. We may be looking around for summer help when things get really intense. So reach out if that might be a situation that fits your schedule

On Farm videos on this and that

Seedlings into the hoop house.

Fire blight video.

Dandelion greens harvest.

Farm store hours
M-F – 12-1 pm
Tuesday 5-7
Friday 5-7
Always call ahead to be sure of supply.

Available this week

Free range organic eggs at $8/dozen – we newly added free choice kelp to their now full farm free range lifestyle.
holy basil, burdock, in 2 ounce bottles – $12
2 ounce jars of comfrey salve – $10 each
2 ounce jars of hemp salve – $10 each
2 ounce jars of calendula salve – $10 each
garlic powder – $10/2 ounce
frozen pork stock – $7.50/quart
frozen chicken stock – $7.50/quart
frozen pork cuts –regular ribs, ground pork and roasts – $12/lb.
ham and bacon – $18/lb.

Farm Doins
This week Jonathan hoped to get the entire roof re-shingled on the garage, and by gosh he did it (with a little help from his friends). Chuk came over on Monday am and they shingled the hard west side with the steeper slope. And then later in the week with help from Ian, Clare and me and then a final push with Stu, Danny and John and a final push until 4 pm on Friday, Jonathan completed the roof before the rain came on Saturday. Next is a redesign of the brooder house on the back of the garage. This project is proceeding nicely with tech support and sometimes on site support by Chuk, and lots of helpers that arrive here and there.

We did the big move outside of our first batch of seedlings into the yellow house, another first for the season, a true sign that things are heating up. We worked some more on the orange house, to eradicate all of the greenery, but did not complete that task. That is in line for completion next week. We did accomplish the laying of all of the rest of the 100’ x 30’ tarps – 13 in all, and lots of heavy sand bags. Thanks to Ian, Laurie, Paula, Leslie, and Deb who helped Clare and me pull that big job off.

We had to remove all the sturdy brassica stalks in advance of the tarps.

6 tarps in place in the pond field – we covered the entire growing area.

On the pruning front we accomplished 1 row in the pond orchard – 2 rows to go.

Friday we started our chard for the season and our first round of lettuce. Celery was planted last Monday. Clare completed our planting schedule this week. If you want a copy, reach out.