Books, Barns and Berries

Happy Tuesday garden bloggers!

After a weekend of intense sun, everything has sprouted up so much! Our babies are now little toddlers, getting a little unruly sometimes with the neighboring weeds but on their way to a healthy adolescence.

A few happenings early this week: we visited NESFI (New England Small Farm Institute) yesterday and today we made a farm visit to Nourse Farms where we saw their berry operation and, sadly, a barn burning down on the way there. To our knowledge, it wasn’t theirs; if it was, they seemed pretty calm about it in the office and the fields.

Books and Nooks

NESFI is tucked away in Belchertown, MA and serves as an educational community space for small farmers and gardeners. Random fact: Belchertown produces enough food for 117% of its population – very cool! Anyways, NESFI offers workshops, trainings and has a really impressive, extensive library filled with information and resources on local and organic agricultural production, a lot of which is specific to New England and the Pioneer Valley. Brittany got lost in information about the history of CSA farming (Community Supported Agriculture) while Annie tore through periodicals about farmer’s markets and sustainable practices in the Valley. It is free and open to the public and, for a $10/year membership, you can check out books to take home with you. The barn housing this library and its offices is beautiful, overlooking the farmed plots of land owned by NESFI and its neighbor, Stone Soup Farm. There’s a chicken coop with at least fifty hens (Brittany counted!) and one rooster very intent on cock-a-doodle-dooing. Stone Soup sells fresh eggs and seems pretty adorable all around so, on a rainy day, stop by their farm stand, read some garden books and enjoy the view!

Nourse Farms

This morning we went to Nourse Farms, in South Deerfield. For some reason we thought we would be going to Shelbourne Falls. False. So the drive was a lot shorter than we had anticipated! We still ended up driving around in circles though, due to very sad circumstances. As we drove by the farm, a neighboring barn was burning down! We were about to call the cops, and then the ambulance got there. Soooo sad. We can only hope that everyone was okay, and that there were no animals in there when it happened.

When we got to Nourse Farms, Rose showed us around the dormancy rooms (giant refrigerators kept at 28ºF where they keep live plants to be sold across the country), the greenhouses, and the lab where all plants are “started” from one mother plant and grown in an agar gel. Surprisingly not an organic operation. We were a little bit surprised, though, to find out that they supply to Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Maine (who we ordered this year’s seeds and hoes from). Huh.

We went outside to check out the U-pick fields, and felt like we were walking onto the set of “when raspberries attack”. They were GIANT, larger than the strawberries from King Creek Farm (and also less tasty, disappointingly). They were a pretty good deal, though, as far as raspberries go. All in all, the morning was fun, but we think we’ll pay closer attention to the CISA website, and stick to organic farms from now on.

Finally, we’d like to thank our good ol’ friend Jen Hughes for figuring out that the mystery dog toys are actually, in fact, for softball pitching machines. As Brittany was raised playing tennis, and Annie soccer, we would have no way of knowing this – whoops!

Check back in later this week to see what things are going on!

Peace, love, and veggies
Annie and Brittany
MHC Student Garden Interns

PS- a fun fact: it is illegal to grow black currants in the state of Massachussets. Who knew? Rose. She told us so on our farm visit.