Heirloom Harvest

"Ode to Dirty Fingernails"

CSA member Dacia Reid who has been helping out in the greenhouse submitted the following poem. Enjoy!

"Ode to Dirty Fingernails"

Echo of woodpecker wafts on morning air
Worm spouts pock the path
Purple spears of crocus reach heavenward

Repeating shrill of bird call
Celebrates the golden pink dawn horizon
and new blue sky line

Burgeoning skeletal branches
Mysteriously expand for the growing light
Wondrous greening - filigree then shade

Mid-morning cacophony buzzing
Welcome, as a worker
Kneels in the dirt

Trowel, kneepad and new starts
Warm sun, cool breeze mosquito & bee
Welcome reunion
Evidenced under her nails.

“Vernal Clouds have turned the star-wheel,
Summer is upon us!”

It's hip to be green by Newsweek

The latest article from our friends in the mainstream media about how young people are going green, and getting savvy about marketing environmentalism. This article may disgust those among you who are more earnest than stylish in your environmental choices..
Best quote: "On the surface, it may seem silly to be focused on colors and fabrics and doing a gift-wrapping book, but there is a meaning. For a long time I think people have been saying you gotta go green because it's good for you, because it's good for the planet. But no one wants to do that for that reason alone. You have to make it affordable and stylish and exciting, because at the end of the day, that's what good marketing is."

A letter from Concerned Grafton Residents

A letter from Concerned Grafton Residents

The Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, in neighboring North Grafton has applied for, and received a $15 million dollar grant to build a bio-defense research facility in North Grafton from the National Institute of Infectious Diseases.

This facility will be what is called a BSL-3 (Bio Safety Level 3) Laboratory. There is only one level higher, BSL-4. In this lab, Tufts will perform bio-terrorism and bio-defense research with infectious and contagious pathogens. Tufts is currently registered to study: Ricin, Abrin, Tuleremia, and Botulinum.

These are what is known as Category A agents that pose a risk to national security because they:

• can be easily disseminated or transmitted person-to-person cause high mortality, with potential for major public health impact

• might cause public panic and social disruption

• require special action for public health preparedness

--NIAID Biodefense Research Agenda for CDC Category A Agents".)

Our concerned citizens group feels that this lab does not belong in North Grafton. Especially considering this facility is to be within a two-mile radius of North Grafton Elementary School, Grafton Middle School, and Westborough Mill Pond School. A population of 1664 students!

The Grafton Board of Selectmen and citizenship have voted through town meeting Article #45 opposing this facility. In case you didn't catch the April 6, 2006 Worcester Telegram and local television news, Tufts is presently engaged in this research, which was a surprise to our town officials:

"Five workers exposed to botulinum toxin at Tufts " -- Five employees of Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University were hospitalized yesterday afternoon after they were accidentally exposed to a toxin that causes botulism, according to school officials.

For more information e-mail mailto:info@nograftonbdlab.org

Or visit http://www.nograftonbdlab.org where there is a petition and contact information for local officials. Get involved! Find out more information, before it is too late.

Sincerely,

Grafton Residents for a Safe Community

Earth Day, Earth

Heirloom Harvest celebrated Earthday 2006 from 1 to 4 pm on Sunday, April 23. The rain forced a change in our plans to walk the farm and pick up trash. Instead, those present filled peat pots and seeded in the barn in between education events that included a discussion of Oxfam's campaign to reform farm policy in the US, and a demonstration of how pollution affects groundwater.

Volunteer Chris Wright and Oxfam representative Stephanie Demmons work to fill peat pots and plant summer squash seeds.

Barb Harrington (left) from the Crystal Spring Center for Earth Learning gives a demonstration of how pollution from various sources—including a golf course, a factory, a housing development, a clearcut hillside, and a conventional farm—affects ground water.

Audience members participated in the pollution demonstration by playing the roles of the various facility owners on the model. Here, the "factory owner" is pouring effluent into his factory which flows out into a stream, which leads to a river and eventually to a lake and the wetlands where the water changes color from the pollution.
[We are indebted to Mark Fisette for the next three photos.]

Westborough organic farm holds first Earth Day celebration

Heirloom Harvest will host an afternoon on the farm of education, advocacy and action in celebration of Earth Day on Sunday, April 23, from 1 to 4 pm.

The farm is located along Route 135 in Westborough, behind and adjacent to Saint Lukes’ Cemetery at 30 Hopkinton Road. The farmers will be joined by the Dominican sisters in residence at the Crystal Spring Earth Education Center of Plainville, who will do a demonstration for children of how pollution contaminates drinking water.

Oxfam US organizer Stephanie Demmons will be present to discuss the 2007 farm bill,  and how residents can send a message to improve the farm bill to better support small farms in local communities in the U.S. and abroad. Volunteer Family Inc., a nonprofit community service organization with a mission of strengthening the role of families in providing service to the community, will send volunteers to help with cleanup around the farm, as well as some of the farmwork. Members of the public are welcome.

“Oxfam is working to shift funding in the 2007 Farm Bill to support sustainable, diverse and equitable agriculture and rural development programs here in the U.S.,” says Stephanie Demmons, a regional Oxfam organizer. “Oxfam is concerned that the current emphasis on commodity subsidies fuels consolidation and continued overproduction of commodities that harm farmers both here and in developing countries.”

The first Earth Day was celebrated nationwide on April 22 in 1970. It was observed in hundreds of communities and on the campuses of thousands of schools, colleges and universities. Many important environmental laws were passed by the Congress in the wake of the 1970 Earth Day according to Wikipedia, the online information source, including the Clean Air Act, laws to protect drinking water, wild lands and the ocean. The EPA was created within three years of the first Earth Day.

Heirloom Harvest is a community supported agriculture farm. Community supported agriculture is an innovative approach to the relationship between farmers and those who enjoy good food. With a preseason payment, members purchase a “share” of the season's harvest, a varied assortment of seasonal vegetables each week from early June through November. Though the farm is under private management, it has an educational mission and a program to donate food to charity. For more information,  call 508.963.7792, or visit the farm’s Web site.

What should you know about what's in your food?

California's Proposition 65 forces companies to label their food in detail about harmful substances. There's a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, H.R. 4167, that appears intended to curtail that proposition's effectiveness and possibly override any other, similar state regulations. Read more about it in this story from the Los Angeles Times about the food-labeling bill. That story was written by a California newspaper and so localizes the story to that state, but it's a national bill and so it will apply everywhere. Also, because the California market is so large, its regulations often set the standard for the food the rest of us eat. (Think about all the furniture you see with labels on it that tell you whether it meets particular California standards for flammability.)

You might choose to express how you feel about H.R. 4167. If so, you can find your elected officials via this locator. (It will work no matter where you live.)

You can find out more about Proposition 65 at this site, but a lot of the information requires registration. And there are other places to learn more, such as U.S. PIRG, AFDO, and the Consumer Scribbler.

 

Is This How You Define Organic?

What do xanthan gum, an artificial thickener, ammonium bicarbonate, a synthetic leavening agent, and ethylene, a chemical that accelerates the ripening of fruit, have in common? These and other synthetic additives commonly lurk behind that "USDA Organic" stamp of approval you see on the organic products increasingly crowding the shelves of big-box stores and boutique food shops alike. Read the entire article at Salon.

Courts have recently ruled that this stuff shouldn't be permitted under strict organic labeling, but an amendment to an appropriations bill has been proposed that would continue to allow these synthetic substances. If you'd like to contact your Congressional reps about it, here is where to find their email addresses.

Katrina's Message

Heirloom Harvest CSA member Ross Gelbspan recently wrote a Boston Globe op-ed piece about the relationship between Hurricane Katrina and global warming. Read about opposing viewpoints from Fox News and others here.
For a more in-depth article by Ross on the intersection of weather disasters, global warming and US policy, read his latest article, Global Denial, at The American Prospect.

Sowing the Seeds For Farming

I was involved in a small way, until not long ago, with an ambitious region-wide project to stem the loss of farms big and small.

The Growing New Farmers’ Consortium recently reached the end of its funding. A core group of individuals and agencies from it is launching a new effort to sustain the resources it created. The original consortium’s goal was to help nonprofits and state and local agencies battling the decline of farming throughout New England in their efforts to keep new farmers on the land.

Why is that a good thing? Consider these dispiriting statistics:

• Between 1964 and 1997, the number of Northeast farms decreased by nearly half (46 percent).

• Without new farmers, it is likely that farms will be lost to nonfarm uses, like development.

• There are twice as many farmers over the age of 65 as under 35.

• Only half as many people are entering farming as are exiting.

• 70 percent of US farms will transition over the next 15 years. Without new farmers, our region is likely to lose those productive farms forever.

• To maintain our food and fiber production and increase regional food self-reliance, we need a continuing supply of farmers.

• We need energetic, well-trained agricultural entrepreneurs to protect the agriculture sector of our economy.

• New farmers will preserve and actively manage open land as working agricultural landscapes and maintain the beauty, wildlife habitat, water quality and general environmental benefits.

The consortium I was part of was created five years ago when the New England Small Farm Institute (NESFI) won a $1.7 million grant from the U. S. Department of Agriculture to fund the project.  (The institute provides the statistics cited above.)

Growing New Farmers sought to address two problems: state and local agencies, as well as nonprofits, were innovating new programs throughout the region to help new farmers become established, but nobody among the agencies knew what anybody else was doing. Good ideas were not being shared and communicated. That meant agencies were reinventing the wheel (or the plow) when they could be learning from each other.

Another problem the consortium addressed was that many farmers didn’t know what programs were available to help. In the world of nonprofits and government agencies, relatively frequent staff turnovers, budget cuts, office moves and changing phone numbers can make it difficult to promote programs intended to help farmers. One of the ongoing legacies of this effort is the website that was created specifically for new farmers, NortheastNewFarmer.Org.

Some of the advocate agencies involved are working to ensure ongoing funding sources to keep the site going. Staffers at several agencies will continually audit this information and keep it accurate and updated.

New farmers are a hard-to-serve group of people. They come from diverse backgrounds and age groups, and no one model can successfully reach them all: some new farmers go to agricultural school and get formal training (however, there are very few programs in the country that train new farmers in organic methods), some are born to farming on intergenerational family farms, and many more move into farming from another career or after retiring, and get mentoring and on-the-job training from senior farmers. Some people just throw in to farming without any mentoring, experience or background.

The consortium brought together a diverse group of stakeholders in the region’s farming community. More than 189 organizations and agencies with missions to preserve farmland and farmers joined Grwing New Farmers. They were joined by 24 farmer advisors whose job it was to provide feedback and a “reality check” on the proposals and activities of the group.

I was one of the advisors who offered a “new farmer” perspective. (A new farmer is defined as anyone who is farming with less than 10 years of experience.) I was working as a farmhand then and about to take my first farm manager job, though I had been planning my start in farming at that point for several years. At that time I also had a beekeeping honey production business called Conservation Honey (so-named because all of my apiary sites were located on conservation land in the suburbs around Boston).

I was enthusiastic about an opportunity to learn as much as possible about who was out there to help farmers, and what was available. And I wanted to help these agencies reach out because I knew from my own experience how little seemed to be available for new farmers. Eventually, the contacts I made through Growing New Farmers became important to me in starting Heirloom Harvest, and the help I provided in my small role as one of 24 farmer advisors will help agencies and local governments better serve new farmers.

How does my work with the effort affect me now? One of the criteria I look for when hiring full-time farmhands is whether they are considering a career as a farmer, and I give such prospect hands preference. I make a point of supporting new farmers, and I encourage you to do the same. To learn more about GNF and what is available out there for new farmers, check out NortheastNewFarmer.

Of course, a farmer's work is never done, and nor is that of such an activist effort. What are some areas that I feel still need to be addressed?

• New resources must be developed to teach people how to mount a campaign to convince local governments and nonprofits — as well as their neighbors—to buy farmland for preservation in active farming.

• Many land trusts, nonprofits and towns that own farmland do not make it accessible to people interested in farming—the farmers are locked out at the gates!

• Efforts to preserve active farms don’t get enough support, as they fall between the cracks of well-established advocacy groups that work for historic preservation of buildings and structures, and conservation groups that increase “wilderness” acreage by buying farms -- and taking them out of active farming.

• More grants and other forms of financial help need to be made available for farmers that are starting a farm business enterprise.

• We need more technical training opportunities for farmers in Eastern Massachusetts.

Looking at Labels for "Frankenfood"

Are you eating genetically engineered food? Do you think you deserve to know? Some consumers think they do, and a bill in Congress would require informative labeling. Find out more about the Genetically Engineered Food Right to Know Act of 2005, and what you can do to affect its progress, by visiting TheCampaign. Remember: 3rd District Congressman Jim McGovern sits on the Rules Committee, which gives him significant influence. If you want him to use that influence on behalf of your position on this act, let him know.