Tag Archives: crops update

Crops Update: The Return of Flowers

Posted on August 4, 2020 by Kelly R.

Good thing we didn’t give up on the flower patch when we learned that selling ornamental flowers wouldn’t be permitted at Union Square during the pandemic. Volunteer Sheila continued seeding them in the greenhouse, the farm team kept up with the transplanting, and community volunteers and camp kids went after the weeds in the patch. Last week we learned that the rules had changed and we would once again be able to sell all types of flowers. Hooray! Volunteer Coordinator Pam had already arranged for volunteers to help us cut edible flower stems on Friday evenings, so we were in good position to ramp up and start cutting the previously underutilized zinnias, dahlias, cosmos, celosia, strawflower, gomphrena, rudbeckia, statice, amaranth, ageratum, grasses, and all the other flowers we have come to love growing. The flower work went on well into Friday evening, and the stage was set for a successful day of sales both at the farm and in Somerville.

In addition to the moment of the full blooming of the flower patch, we’ve reached those magical few weeks when our fields are producing several summer favorites at once: melons, corn, and tomatoes. By next week, we’ll have harvested the last sweet corn of the season.

Many thanks to Jill, Margaret, Jack, Highsmith, and Avril (plus more market volunteers!) for creating such beautiful displays at the farmer’s market, and for selecting and bagging the items for each customer. Pre-COVID, customers would wander around under the tents, pick out their own produce, and our work mostly involved ringing people up, restocking, bagging greens, and shifting the display as items sold out or needed more visibility. Despite our fears that the new system would hurt sales, weekly totals are now outpacing last season’s.

On Saturday, back at the farm, Paige, Nina and I worked with the second volunteer group of the year from the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC). Once again it was hot out there, and the dry soil felt like sand. Together we finished this year’s onion harvest before planting lettuce, fennel, and the last summer squash succession of the season. Volunteers Kate and Lesley stayed late to help us get the last plants in the ground. Thanks AMC for the much-needed help! The unexpected rain that came on Sunday afternoon helped water-in those seedlings, and it would have hurt the keeping quality of those last onions—so, double bonus. That Sunday rain also arrived just after I finished seeding some fall turnips, beets, and carrots in anticipation of a potential soaking from the remnants of hurricane Isaias later tomorrow. We hope that still happens as all this sunny, 90 degree weather is rapidly drying out the soil.

Your Farmers

Crops Update: Impeding Crop Pests

Posted on July 27, 2020 by Kelly R.

August arrives on Saturday, and we’ve mostly finished establishing crops for the season. What we’re thinking about now is the harvest—when to go after it, how best to move it, and where to put it all. We shifted today’s harvest session from the afternoon to the morning in order to escape the worst of the heat. By 10 a.m., we had lugged around 500 pounds each of potatoes, cucumbers, and summer squash!

Friends & Family Volunteering

We were joined by my sister’s youngest, Bea, and it has been a joy for me to work with both Margot and Bea over the past two days. However, it’s time for Margot to prepare for college, so after two months of some of the best volunteer help imaginable (more than 50 hours per week!), we need to say our goodbyes. It’s fitting that on Saturday morning Margot taught Paige how to install deer fencing around a crop. Over the years, volunteer Fred has taught many Drumlin farmers how to do this job, including Jill and Margot, and together, the two of them have done all the fencing of strawberries and corn this year. But on Saturday, with Jill at market, Margot took on the instructor’s role, and together with Paige, they made sure the second planting of corn got protected. Thanks Margot for all your great work since the end of May (and during the previous three seasons), and to Bea for your help hauling heavy crops on this the hottest day of the year! And thanks as always to the farm team for warmly welcoming my family members into our group.

Combating Deer & Tomato Hornworm

All that fencing we’re doing is a response to the growing deer population on the sanctuary and the damage they’re causing. They’re even getting into the hoophouse through the side vents! We were installing a deer barrier around the second chard patch on Thursday afternoon when a lightning storm surprised us and delivered a much-needed soaking to the fields—the last significant rain had fallen on July 5. We admired the storm from the hoophouse where the cherry tomatoes have almost reached the ceiling. The plants are producing lots of fruit now, but are also being munched by tomato hornworms—snake-thick caterpillars filled with an alarming amount of goo. They are well-camouflaged amongst the vines, and finding and removing them has become a bit of competition amongst us. Jack got 13 today—impressive!

More Crops on the Horizon

We are half-way through the onion harvest thanks to the continued good work of the afternoon community volunteer groups. Friday’s group helped us harvest beans and mini eggplant for market before crating up the first storage onions of the season. Some of those volunteers then stayed into the evening to cut flowers for sale the next day at Drumlin’s farmstand. Saturday’s volunteers planted collards and storage kohlrabi—the last of the fall brassicas. They also weeded beans and carrots in addition to harvesting more storage onions. We finished the day’s work by hoisting the shade cloth up and over the greenhouse where the onions are drying. By the end of this week, the greenhouse will be completely filled with onions, and we’ll be wondering where to put the last of the lettuce seedling trays. Also, by the end of the week, we hope to harvest the first watermelons and full-size Italian eggplant of the season.

Your Farmers

Crops Update: Rain & Visitors Back on the Farm

Posted on June 30, 2020 by Kelly R.

Adapting to Rain

Wow, that was a lot of rain! Several sizzling thunder and rain storms have hit Lincoln, and below, you can see the before and after state of our soil. On the left, Paige and Margot proudly stand over the third succession of summer squash they planted into the dust on Saturday morning—just the two of them! On the right, Monday morning, the oats and field pea cover crop is breaking through the mud in a field that will lie fallow this year. While all this rain will reduce the quality of the remaining strawberries, all other crops will greatly benefit. We were able to maximize the value of this year’s strawberry crop thanks to the harvesting work of volunteers and the farm team.

Stop by our Farmer’s Market Stand

This past Friday afternoon, another group of volunteers helped us pick about fifteen flats of berries for sale at the Union Square Market. Margaret, Jill, Nina and volunteer Avril did a great job selling them, and to date, sales at the market are far closer to average than we had predicted heading into a retail environment greatly altered by COVID regulations.

Reopening for Visitation

Thanks to the hard work and careful planning of many Drumlin staff members, the sanctuary opened to the public (who registered ahead of their visit) for the first time this weekend. It was great to see so many masked families exploring the farmyard and fields, and several people stopped to watch us hurriedly planting before the rains came.

If you’ve been missing Drumlin Farm and are overdue for a visit, please reserve your spot here so that we can safely manage our capacity limitations. Stop by the fields to say hi and see what the farmers and volunteers are working on!

New Veggies on the Way

On Saturday, in addition to the 640 summer squash Margot and Paige planted, we also set 2,400 Brussels sprouts and 1,100 flower seedlings, and seeded the next round of greens and radish. The last four rounds of greens have been affected by high heat and lack of rain; we’re looking forward to having a renewed supply of them in about three weeks.

In the meantime, a new set of exciting crops will start to appear in your CSA shares this week. We’re beginning to harvest the March 23rd seeding of carrots; it’s about two weeks later than we had anticipated due to the cold spring and subsequent lack of rain. We’re also harvesting the mid-April seeding of red and gold beets (our thanks to Volunteer Anne for weeding and thinning them!) and the first spring onions, fennel, fava beans, and field cucumbers of the season.

Food Donations

We continue to donate food to area pantries, and this past Tuesday we made our first delivery to the Lincoln Food Pantry—dinosaur kale, scallions, and salad turnips for 90 families. We also continue to bring produce to Food for Free in Cambridge. All told, we’re approaching $20,000 in food donations since mid-March! Thanks to all who are making it possible for us to contribute in this way.

Your Farmers

Crops Update: Moon Over Drumlin’s Flower Team

Posted on October 2, 2019 by Kelly R.

For those of us lucky enough to be at Moon Over Drumlin this past Saturday, we were treated to an event thoughtfully orchestrated in every detail. The tent looked beautiful, and every dish the chefs created amplified the love and attention that goes into raising Drumlin’s livestock and crops. I felt especially grateful to have a moment to relax with the Crops team away from the fields and say thanks for a job well done—both in preparing for Moon and throughout the season. Here we are as a team cutting flowers for the event, that would become table centerpieces:

From L to R in the back is Highsmith, Jill, Erica and Veronica. In the front is your narrator (Matt), Maddie, and Kari. We were joined by many flower cutting volunteers that night, and more volunteers assembled the table bouquets on Saturday morning. Congratulations and thanks to all who participated in making the event a success! A special thanks to Jill for designing the bouquets and leading so many new-to-harvesting folks. Thanks also to CSA member Jocelyn Finlay (and her daughters) for help with the flower harvest and for taking this wonderful picture!

It looks like two nights of more serious frost coming our way this Friday and Saturday. Thankfully, we’re already half way through the sweet potato harvest because of the work of four volunteer groups over the past week. Volunteers from Wayfair, Appian Way Energy, Paytronix and Wellesley College all dug one bed of sweet potatoes each. On Tuesday, Wayfair volunteers also dug regular potatoes (lots of digging for them!) and picked tomatoes for CSA distribution. On Thursday, Appian Way volunteers weeded the strawberry patch and picked beans for Saturday’s market. On Friday, Paytronix volunteers picked tomatoes, eggplant, beans and peppers for market. Thanks all for keeping us on pace with the fall harvest. As soon as we finish the sweet potatoes, we’ll start filling the root cellar with storage potatoes.

See you in the field,

Your Farmers

Crops Update

Posted on September 25, 2019 by Kelly R.

Tuesday morning’s harvest was especially long because of all the additional food going to chefs for this Saturday’s Moon Over Drumlin—our annual farm-to-table gala and live auction. Moon Over Drumlin features one-of-a-kind tastings from seven local partner chefs made with ingredients from Drumlin Farm. A few tickets are still available too! We’re looking forward to seeing you all there, and to tasting what our talented partnering chefs concoct.

If you were wondering, yes, it did freeze at the farm Thursday and Friday mornings of last week! This is one disadvantage of farming at the bottom of an ancient lake—cold air settles there. Beans, cucumbers and husk cherries are the first casualties of the fall, but tomatoes and melons continue to produce, and you will find some beautiful fruit at the stand today.

We did get all the edible squash out of the field before the frost. And thankfully, the pumpkins were exposed to only two cold nights before volunteer coordinator Pam pulled together an emergency volunteer group from the Appalachian Mountain Club to help clear the patch this past Sunday. Maddie, Veronica, and Kari worked an extra afternoon, and the volunteers (some returning to the farm for the third time this season!) got a serious workout loading the pumpkins onto the trucks and then ferrying them into the greenhouse. Thanks to all your hard work, the greenhouse is very crowded (pictured below)!

We would have been even more behind schedule this morning if not for the harvesting help given to us on Monday by a volunteer group from Middlesex School. Together we picked over 100 pounds of cherry tomatoes for chefs, and also started digging the sweet potatoes. We’ve worked with Middlesex students before, and they always do fabulous work.

We’ll continue getting ready to celebrate the intersection of the community’s labor and the Hatheways’ vision for what this land can provide on Saturday. Looking forward to raising a glass with you at Moon Over Drumlin!

See You in the Field

Your Farmers

Crops Update: Butternut Squash on the Horizon

Posted on September 17, 2019 by Kelly R.

It’s predicted to be in the 30s by early Thursday, and so we are in harvesting high gear trying to maximize 2019 yields before frost. This past Thursday, we finished the restaurant harvest just as a group of Lexington Christian Academy freshmen were arriving to help with the squash harvest. We had clipped several beds of butternut squash the previous afternoon, so they started by crating and loading them onto a truck. Next, we transplanted the last 1,600 lettuce seedlings of the year before weeding through two beds of collards. Then we handed out clippers, and the students and chaperones cut, crated and loaded acorn and more butternut squash—over 2,500 pounds of it!

That afternoon, a large group of volunteers from Perkin Elmer started by unloading all that squash into the greenhouse—we made a long bucket brigade and passed each crate from person to person, from the truck bed to the greenhouse bench. We then headed to the field where half of the volunteers harvested, loaded, and then unloaded an additional 5,000 pounds of butternut squash. The other half of the group harvested beans, tomatoes and husk cherries for Saturday’s market. What an amazing day! Thanks all for working hard and accomplishing so much.

On Saturday, volunteers from Boston College School of Theology arrived just as it started to pour. Improvising, we took shelter in the greenhouse where we worked on topping onions for an hour. We still have more to do, but we made enough space to bring in some mini-pumpkins later that day. We were disappointed to discover a lot of rot in the pumpkin patch, but it looks like this is going to be where we experience the down side of what has been a very wet growing season. On the positive side, brassicas and cover crops have been loving the rain. The buckwheat is in full flower, and those sections of the field look snow-covered (pictured above). The second successions of tomatoes, melons, and watermelons are still producing well; come to the stand today to get yours.

See you in the field,

Your Farmers

Crops Update: September Transitions

Posted on September 10, 2019 by Kelly R.

It’s your last chance to register for the Fall CSA farm share program, starting Wednesday, September 11! Get your share of fall favorites, end-of-summer delights, and flavorful melons to enjoy Drumlin Farm produce throughout the season. Register online today!

Thankfully, we got hardly any rain or wind from hurricane Dorian. The fields are still wet, but getting drier. With all those pumpkins and squash sitting in the field, we’d like it to stay sunny and warm until we have a chance to harvest them. In addition to all the critters and bugs that like to nibble winter squash, temperatures below 55 will also damage them. We still need to clear the greenhouse of onions in order to move more squash in there, so we’re in a holding pattern for the moment harvesting large quantities of beans and tomatoes while trying to find a spare moment to organize the fall harvest.

On Thursday of last week, volunteers from Change Healthcare gave us a tremendous boost with field and harvesting work ahead of Saturday’s market. Together we weeded beets, harvested 150 pounds of string beans, and planted our second-to-last round of lettuce for the season. Already that was a lot of work, but they stayed on for an extra 45 minutes harvesting husk cherries. Thanks to them, we had enough beans and husk cherries for both the Union Square market (pictured below) and Saturday and Sunday’s farm stand!

Today, for the first time this year, we delivered produce to the Cambridge school system— cherry tomatoes, greens, radish, watermelons and peppers. Next week, we begin delivering to the Somerville school system. Fall CSA begins tomorrow, so register asap if you haven’t already. It’s a fun time of year to be sharing the bounty of the fields with you. On cool nights you can roast squash, garlic, and root veggies, and on hot days you can still cut open a Drumlin Farm watermelon.

See you in the field,

Your Farmers

Crops Update: Restaurant Preparations

Posted on August 27, 2019 by Kelly R.

The Fall CSA farm share program is fast approaching and begins Wednesday, September 11. Get your share of fall favorites, end-of-summer delights, and flavorful greens to enjoy Drumlin Farm produce throughout the fall. Register online today!

We had a chill 46 numbing degrees for this morning’s restaurant harvest! Thankfully, the sun came up fairly quickly to thaw us out. It’s dry in the fields after two weeks without significant rainfall. Greens are germinating more slowly now with only morning dew to get them going, but established plants seem to be enjoying the dry conditions. Cucumbers and melons, which often suffer from foliar diseases this late in the summer, look healthy and continue to produce lots of delicious fruit. But rain is predicted for tomorrow night, and we need to seed cover crop on the next set of fields to take advantage of the potential free irrigation. We’ve been plowing and raking fields where we’ve finished cropping for the season in order to prepare them to receive cover crop seed.

With the smaller Crops Team after end-of-summer departures, Monday’s pre-harvest is the key to a successful Tuesday restaurant run. Many thanks to Maddie and volunteers Anne and Francesca for picking twenty pounds of string beans and eighty pounds of cherry tomatoes yesterday afternoon. That was a good start towards finishing this morning’s mega harvest for 15 different chefs. Our availability list for this week has over 60 individual items on it, so it’s a complicated process in the wash station distributing all that variety to so many accounts. The team has come up with many nifty organizational strategies to streamline all aspects of our work with chefs (pictures below). But then there’s still lots of old-fashioned pointing and shouting out directions, which is part of the fun and thrill of crops teamwork, deadlines, and getting more done in less amount of time than we thought possible.

While we’re working on restaurant work, we’re also separating out the produce that needs to go to the farm stand. This morning, Veronica and Kari, with unexpected and welcome help from Maricella, displayed beautiful cantaloupe, watermelons and tomatoes at the stand. We’re just now starting to pick from the second succession of peppers, tomatoes and melons. So as the first successions begin to decline, the quality of produce should remain high into the fall.

See you in the field,

Your Farmers

Crops Update: Crops Team Departures, Deer Arrivals

Posted on August 21, 2019 by Kelly R.

The eggplant, tomatoes, and melons are loving this warm, sunny weather. There are lots at the stand today, and we’ll start picking the larger watermelon varieties tomorrow. Without much rain over the past two weeks, fruit flavors are concentrated and at their best. There has been some morning dew, and a sprinkle here and there—enough moisture to get the cover crops going that we seeded last week. Teachers, now is a great time to walk the fields and investigate the different shapes and sizes of the young cover crop plants!

It’s that time of year when people on the Crops team start heading in different directions. Last week, we said goodbye to Kirsty, who had been helping us part-time since April and on Saturday, Margot finished a month of full-time volunteering. We already felt their absence this morning during the restaurant harvest, but we got it done thanks to the pre-harvesting Erica and Maddie did with volunteers Anne and Francesca on Monday afternoon. To those moving-on from Drumlin, thanks for your hard work! To those of us staying, it’s time to step up our game!

At this time of year, we could spend every daylight hour harvesting and marketing the produce, but there are still weeds to control. Last Thursday, our Teacher Naturalist Sally once again brought high schoolers in Lowell’s summer employment program to the farm for a tour and some field work. Together, we weeded through the entire sweet potato patch (pictured below).

Nice work! My only concern is that now the deer will have an easier time finding the sweet potato leaves—one of their favorite crops. I haven’t been seeing deer lately, but their tracks are everywhere, and they are damaging carrots, chard, lettuce and beets. Based on the number of hoof prints, there are more deer in the field than at any time since I started here in 2005. If you see one out there, kindly make it scram!

We’re also looking forward to the Fall CSA farm share program starting September 11. Shares include summer favorites like heirloom tomatoes, peppers, and carrots; the best of fall, including parsnips, winter squashes, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and other root crops; and variety of fresh and cooking greens. Register for your spot today!

See you in the field,

Your Farmers

Crops Update: Tomatoes, Melons & Corn

Posted on August 7, 2019 by Kelly R.

It’s the only week of the season when we’ll have tomatoes, melons, and corn for sale at the same time–and all are at the stand right now! We just started picking cantaloupe yesterday, and the flavor is superb. We’ll have corn for the next few days, and possibly over the weekend, but then we’re out. We eliminated our last succession of corn, because in our no-spray corn system, those late ears get too buggy for people to enjoy. Watermelons are only a few days away, so keep an eye out for them as well.

We’re currently in the process of moving electric fences from the sweet corn to the melons. The coyotes have already started to enjoy a few melons, so it’s time to exclude them. We love having coyotes in the field because we believe they keep the deer on edge and moving, but we know from experience that they don’t know how to exercise portion control when it comes to the melons!

Garlic was step 1 of the fall harvest and we’ve almost completed step 2, the onions. Step 3 begins in late August and September with winter squash and pumpkins, wrapping up with root vegetables (carrots, potatoes, parsnips) in late September and early October. On Thursday, volunteers from Definitive Healthcare of Framingham helped us search around in the weeds (pictured above) for what looks like a very promising crop of storage onions. They had already weeded in the strawberry patch for an hour before hauling the onions, but survived the heat and humidity and got lots done. On Saturday, community volunteers helped us bring in more of the crop. The onions are drying in the greenhouse, and the shade cloth we’ve stretched over the top of the house keeps the temperature down and direct sun off the bulbs (pictured below). If exposed to direct sun while drying, the onions will turn green.

On Tuesday of last week, volunteers from ENGIE Insight helped us dig potatoes and harvest eggplant for the next day’s CSA distribution. They have helped us in years past, and we’ve really appreciated having help from all individual and corporate volunteers during these hottest days of the summer. Hopefully those hotter days are behind us. The dragonflies continue to help us with pest control, and you can observe hundreds of them patrolling the fields in the evening. A few nights ago, there was a school of them at the edge of the bobolink field, more easily heard than seen. But, if you looked toward the lighter sky you could see them silhouetted against it. In this picture below, you can see two of them towards the left. However, we recommend taking walk out there one evening to get the full experience.

See you in the field,

Your Farmers