Thursday, August 18, 2011

The Second Field and Natural Roots Farm

The second field is looking GREAT! If you look closely you can see the pole beans climbing right up the corn stalks, and the squash is doing a great job of keeping weeds down. We've done very little to this field since planting it, the idea was to keep it low maintenance so we could focus on our more finicky vegetables in the first field, and I'm happy to say so far it looks like the plan is working. 

Beans crawling up corn stalks

Sunflowers in the foreground


Winter squash keeping down the weeds. We planted pumpkins, delicata squash, acorn squash and butternut squash.


We went to the NOFA (Northeastern Organic Farming Association) Conference last weekend at UMass Amherst. It was really fun and inspiring. I went to some workshops on growing mushrooms and farm financial management (thrilling), Dave learned about animal powered logging and forestry and building root cellars and we all got to visit a couple of larger organic farms. 

Our favorite was Natural Roots Farm in Conway, MA. They are totally horse-powered, which is great for environmental (grass as fuel) and aesthetic reasons (no tractor smells and sounds). We were also impressed by their intensive weed control program. It was by far the most weed-free farm we've seen so far. 

Look how clean!


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