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Tuesday was a classic day at the farm. The final group of this season’s Green Power students were busily working in the front garden, helping to harvest and keep our fields looking great. Land’s Sake farmers were busily washing and packing the day’s harvest and setting out berries and tomatoes for sale at the farmstand. CSA customers were literally queued up, ready to claim their share of the vegetables that were all beautifully and carefully laid out under the CSA tent. Students from the Blue Hills Boys & Girls Club romped about the garden and the fields, learning about goats and compost, green vegetables and natural systems. It was Land’s Sake at its summertime best.
In the past two months, I’ve had the opportunity to learn about and observe Land’s Sake programs, meet with many of our members and donors, work side-by-side with our farm team, and speak with many of our CSA and farmstand customers. With each additional interaction, I have learned more about what makes Land’s Sake unique, and why it is such a special place for many people. We do lots of important things: provide access to local, fresh, healthy vegetables; offer programs that teach children the relationships between the food they eat and the world around them; create opportunities for people to gather together in a beautiful place; grow produce to share with those with less access to it. Most importantly, however, Land’s Sake makes this a stronger community and a better place to live.
I am pleased to be a part of all that Land’s Sake does, and I’m excited by the opportunity that exists here. We have much work to do in the months ahead, and I look forward to working with many of you to grow and strengthen our programs and our relationships and help Land’s Sake become what it has the potential to be. Please be sure to join us for our annual fall celebration dinner on September 22 if you can. Stop in to the farm to see what’s at the farmstand, or drop by the office to introduce yourself.
See you at the farm!
Ed Barker Executive Director Land’s Sake
Many hands make quick work.
When ever we get a request from a group to help us out on the farm, the first things that flash through my mind are logistics. Do we have the time, resources and the need for a mass of people to join us in the fields or forest? There are a lot of moving pieces and to top it all off we are completely at the mercy of mother nature’s whims. Coordinating so many details can be a daunting task, but one that I can assure you all is well worth it.
This Spring a group of 25 freshmen from the Rivers School in Weston came to work on the farm. Together with the Land’s Sake farm staff we planted nearly 5000 strawberries in about an hour and a half. That is a serious amount of work. A project that may have taken days of time out of the farm staff’s limited schedule was accomplished in one fell swoop.
Jeanette Szretter, Director of Community Service and Spanish Teacher at Rivers School, said, “The weather cooperated and our faculty and students have nothing but raves about the success of their work with you today! What an impressive amount of strawberries! Thank you so much for your willingness to host us and to partner with us. We look forward to many more such opportunities!”
These projects go far beyond the tangible work that is accomplished. By focusing our physical energy on a common goal we build stronger connections with our friends, neighbors and to the community as a whole. My experience at Land’s Sake over the past two and a half years has been that when we call upon our community for support in a time of need we are often rewarded by a profound outpouring from all over.
When I arrived at Land’s Sake I felt like I was immediately adopted into a truly unique and strong community. Every day I am proud and grateful to contribute to an organization with such deep roots. Now in our thirtieth year we are working harder then ever to assure that those roots remain healthy and will support us for another thirty years. If you live anywhere near Weston and want to feel connected to an amazing community, don’t hesitate any longer, explore all we have to offer. Join us in working towards a sustainable and rewarding future any way you can.
-Douglas Cook, Education Director
Merely a month ago, the world looked a lot different than it does today. Our sugar house was fully engulfed in drifts, our logging crew was trudging through waist deep snow, and spring seemed very very far away. For those of us who love a good old-fashioned New England winter, this year certainly didn’t disappoint.
But as I write this entry, its 49 degrees and drizzling, the last piles of snow are quickly fading away, and spring seems just around the corner (9 days to be exact). With the warmer weather, you may have noticed the sudden appearance of maple buckets on trees around Weston, followed by groups of local middle schoolers rushing to collect as much as they can (without spilling it all over themselves).
During maple season, keeping up with the flow of sap can certainly be a challenge and we rely heavily on the help of Green Power students and community volunteers. A big thank you is due to everyone who has helped with tapping trees and collecting sap over the last month. If you haven’t been able to join us let, not to worry, there are several more weeks of sap collecting. If you are interesting in helping out, please email me at dave@landssake.org and I will add you to our volunteer email list.
And don’t forget – Saturday, March 26th is our annual Sugaring Off Festival, featuring a live band, tours of the sugar house, maple syrup sales, sugar on snow treats, and of course LOTS OF PANCAKES! The event runs from 9am to 1pm at the Bill McElwain Sugar House, which is located behind the parking lot at the Weston Middle School (456 Wellesley St. Weston, MA)
– Dave Quinn, Land’s Sake.
Saturday was a great day—and I went to bed last night feeling the fullness of thanks, of community, of caring and being cared for—and it was everything that the holiday spirit is about. And it was awesome.
The Melone House was sparkling (well, maybe not sparkling, but it looked pretty darn good, both inside and out!) Land’s Sake staffers had spent a lot of time over the last several weeks burning brush piles, making dump runs, tidying, organizing, moving furniture, vacuuming, and scrubbing – all in preparation for our Holiday Open House and Tree/Wreath Sale. Some of us spent a fair amount of time cooking, and one of us spent a lot of time making wreaths! And all of us had a great time. The house looked great, smelled great (soup and mulling cider on the stove) and was toasty warm on a perfect bright-but-chilly December day.
This year’s event was particularly special for a number of reasons. First of all, it was the first time we’ve had a chance to show off the newly renovated Melone House—what a difference! Secondly, we weren’t able to hold this annual event last year, due to the aforementioned renovations—and we as a staff missed it, and missed seeing the excitement of a newly chosen Christmas tree in the faces of our friends and their children. So it was especially nice to reconnect in that way with folks about whom we’ve grown to care deeply, and who care deeply about us.
It was also special because of new friends and new connections:
Hilary Crowell can be described as a can-do, capable and enthusiastic young farmer. She demonstrated her handwork skills this summer with gorgeous onion braids that were sold at the farmstand, and when we began thinking about wreaths this Fall, she jumped on the bandwagon with both feet. I introduced her electronically (isn’t e-mail great for that sort of thing?) to Nea Glenn, of the Weston Garden Club, who graciously gave her a private lesson in wreath-making. Thank you, Nea! Next thing you know, Hilary is a wreath-maker extraordinaire, and banging out wreaths like there’s no tomorrow. Her enthusiasm was contagious, and I think I got as big a kick out of the fun Hilary was having as from the wreaths themselves.
We invited our Weston neighbor and collaborator Afton Cotton, proprietor of Pigeon Hill Preserves, to join us yesterday to sell her wonderful preserves and gift baskets, some of which feature our very own strawberries. Afton taught some awesome canning and preserving workshops for us this year, and the publicity generated by her new business and the workshops has benefitted both parties. We are always delighted to be able to interface with like-minded individuals and organizations, especially fledgling ones.
I often serve as greeter/gatekeeper at our Land’s Sake events, and in that capacity I usually get a chance to say a brief hello to most everyone who attends. But that is generally against the backdrop of large crowds, high anxiety (okay, I admit it!) and having to concentrate on taking money and making change. What I particularly like about our Christmas Tree day is that it affords the opportunity to visit with our friends in a quiet, relaxed way without the fracas of lines and crowds and hustle-bustle. And in some ways it feels like a gift that we give people: the drive up our long driveway almost demands that we disconnect from the holiday rush, take a deep breath, and draw respite from the simple act of walking in the woods to select a holiday tree and taking it home, like the treasure that it is.
In the shortest, darkest days of the year, it seems especially appropriate to give thanks for and to our new friends, our old friends and our supporters—without whom Land’s Sake could not and would not exist—and to my colleagues, in particular the farmers, whose toil and strength combine to bestow upon us the bounty of the earth and the fruits of their labors. I am humbled and awed by them and so grateful to them and to Mother Earth for a great season.
Thanks,
Annie
For the Sake of the Land 