November Newsletter

November at the Farm

With the shortening daylight and colder temperatures the work on the farm is quickly coming to an end for the season. We have slowly been taking out all of our summer plants and planting cover crops or garlic in all the empty beds. All of our sweet potatoes have been harvested and cured and we are getting towards the end of our root crops and greens. Before the end of the season we hope to have a new perennial bed put in and all the pathways remulched in order to get a jump start on the weeds next spring. We were very excited to finally be able to move into our new shed this past week! The shed will cut down on a significant amount of travel between the office and the farm allowing for a more efficient work day.

The last week of October marked the last week of our Market Stand and CSA for the year. Special thank you to all of our CSA members this year! We are so grateful to have had you all as dedicated customers this year and loved being able to share all of our bounty with our members each week. The CSA is an important part of our business model because it allows for some cash flow at the start of the season and guarantees sales throughout the season. It also gives us a closer relationship with our customers and encourages member to eat seasonally and try new produce. Look out for information for our 2016 CSA season early next spring!

We had several volunteer days this past month that were a huge help in getting us started on all our fall clean up. The volunteer groups helped us paint the shed, pick up trash, make new compost bins, take out tomatoes, and wood chip pathways. We always appreciate extra hands at this time of year to help us finish larger projets and tie up loose ends on all the projects we have started throughout the year. 

The garden club students took a field trip this past week to Milburn Orchard where they got to pick apples and pumpkins, make apple cider, and enjoy delicious fall treats. Despite the rainy weather on Wednesday they all had a great time. The students also got to show off what they have been learning this year during Cecil Elementary School's Annual Harvest Fair. Every student at Cecil got a chance to come to the garden and receive tours from garden club students and sample one of the garden club recipes!

We hope you all will be able to join us at our Second Annual Growing up Green Farm Feast. This year the event will be held on November 18th from 6-9 pm at Peabody Heights Brewery. Event will include a five course meal prepared by local chefs featuring Boone Street Farm Produce, brewery tours and tastings, performances, and silent auction. See Flyer above for more information and where to get tickets!

You're Invited! Second Annual Growing up Green Fundraiser dinner

Boone Street Farm and Cecil Elementary School invite you to join us at our Second Annual Growing up Green fundraiser dinner. 

All proceeds from event go towards supporting Cecil Elementary School Garden Club Program and Boone Street Farm's educational Programming. Tickets and more information can be found here:

Calling all University of Baltimore Students

Come Volunteer at the Farm tomorrow 7/11/15 from 10 am - 2 pm and stay for a community BBQ/Potluck from 3 - 5 pm

Reflections from High School Intern Kendell about her two weeks working on the farm

Though farm work may not be as glamorous as one reads in books and blogs, or sees on tv, it still is wondrous work. I’ve learned this growing up when I would help my grandfather in his garden, and I certainly reinforced these sentiments this past week and a half working at Boone Street Farm for my independent senior project for Garrison Forest School. Farming is tiresome, straining, sweaty, and sometimes bloody (if you’re clumsy like me and you accidentally cut yourself with a hand tool on the first day…) work. Weeding is, frankly, boring, but is a very necessary part of farming if you want your crops to survive and not the weeds; it is also something that needs to be done often, because they’ll just grow back. Creating new rows is tiring and probably requires every muscle in your body for hours on end, but again, it is very necessary, as this is obviously where the food is grown. Harvesting is pretty easy and fun, but this is only a fraction of the work on a farm. It’s the handful of performances after months of long rehearsals, set building, costume designing, figuring out lighting and music, as well as everything that goes on backstage during a show. However, like performances, farming too is so rewarding, and when you step back after a long day outside, sweaty, with dirt covering the entire surface of your body, new blisters on your hands, and ready to take a nap (after a cold shower), you realize how awesome this work is. Through the endless hours you feel completely at peace with the land you are working with, you talk to people about anything and everything (though it usually relates to farming somehow), and you feel a sense of satisfaction comparable to nothing else on earth. Not to negate other jobs, but little to none are as fundamentally important as that of the farmer. They are the ones who produce food, and, simply put, humans could not survive without it. Thus, humans could not survive without farmers. So you can imagine the pride a farmer has when they hand their fresh produce to their customer, because at that moment they realize the long hours they put into producing that crop meant they’re giving their customer something so important to their health.

However, in the modern world this exchange happens very rarely. Most people rely entirely on grocery stores to provide their food, having no idea who produced it, who spent hours weeding, and planting, and watering, and harvesting. Frankly, that these events even occur is something the grocery store shopper doesn’t even have to think about; to many grocery store shoppers, food just magically appears. However, when you can buy directly from a farmer, you can appreciate your food so much more, and even though it may be more expensive than conventionally farmed food, as the buyer you can appreciate that you’re supporting an individual, a real person, instead of a faceless corporation.

        As I phase out my two-week internship at Boone Street Farm, I know I will put to good use everything I have learned. Between sustainable farming practices I have been shown, to a little bit about soil health when I attended the Soil Building Workshop, to simply the true love and passion I have for producing my own food, I know I will come out of this experience a more valuable member to the modern organic farming movement. Whether I make a career out of it after college or not, I know I will always be farming in some way, even if it is a tomato pot on my deck and a few small house plants if I don’t have a yard. Growing food is something so satisfying and rewarding to me, especially when I think about how much work and love I’ve put into it.

        I wish all the best to Boone Street Farm in their upcoming season, and am so lucky to have been given the opportunity to work on their beautiful farm.

Soil Biology Workshop at Boone Street Farm Tuesday May 26th

Earth Day Festival April 22nd!