Community Garden

Our family has one of 35 plots at the new community garden site in town. This summer we helped build the beds for the 10′ x 10′ plots. In addition there will be 2 handicap beds, a children’s garden and 3 sites for composting.

We expect to plant carrots, tomatoes, kale, spinach, arugula, eggplant, snap peas, cucumber, and patty pan squash. I took E to visit the site as it’s important for her to see it during the different seasons and phases.

Today’s Harvest

Posted: September 27, 2011 | Author: becca neumann | Filed under: Farming off the Farm, Gallery - Visual, In the Kitchen | Leave a comment

Thanks Farmer Dan

Posted: September 7, 2011 | Author: becca neumann | Filed under: Farming off the Farm, In the Kitchen | Leave a comment

a gift from a good farming friend – rosemary, parsley and basil

a batch of pesto and loaves of potato/rosemary focaccia bread coming soon!

August means Blackberries

Posted: August 20, 2011 | Author: David | Filed under: Farming off the Farm, Gallery - Visual, Little Green Thumbs | 1 Comment

On our way to the beach we foraged…

Little Helpers

Posted: August 19, 2011 | Author: becca neumann | Filed under: Child Centered Activities, Farming off the Farm, Little Green Thumbs | 1 Comment

Three little helpers tended garden today.

Mid August

Posted: August 15, 2011 | Author: becca neumann | Filed under: Child Centered Activities, Farming off the Farm, Little Green Thumbs | Leave a comment

Greens!

Posted: July 23, 2011 | Author: becca neumann | Filed under: Child Centered Activities, Farming off the Farm, Gallery - Visual, Little Green Thumbs | Leave a comment

Mid July

Posted: July 21, 2011 | Author: becca neumann | Filed under: Child Centered Activities, Farming off the Farm, Little Green Thumbs | 2 Comments

TOMATOES

ONIONS
PATTY PAN SQUASH

MORE TOMATOES CARROT GREENS TO THE RIGHT and NEW BRUSSEL SPROUTS IN CENTER

“…the softly focused gaze of Pissarro…”

Posted: July 2, 2011 | Author: becca neumann | Filed under: Art & Healing, Farming off the Farm, What is an Art Farm | 1 Comment

Our friend Dave Hopkins sent a note of encouragement and his comments on Camille Pissarro struck a chord. Dave lives along the watershed of the Deerfield River in Western Mass. His footprint is light: solar panels on the barn, on sunny days, generate more power than they consume – they are feeding back into the grid – and the humanure is composted into fertilizer, amended back into the soil to nourish the vegetables, and in turn the animals and humans. It’s an integrated set-up. His work with the land has inspired us as much as the ideas he has passed our way. By his permission, we post his comments here. On a note of serendipity, this work by Pissarro, from 1886, is titled “Apple Picking.” That works for us.

“Good to hear from you! I read some articles in your blog and found it very interesting indeed. Love what you and your family are doing to raise your own food.

I’m musing on an article now on Camille Pissarro, the Impressionist painter and anarchist who had a immense passion for agriculture and rural life. Saw a wonderful exhibit of his work at the Clark in Williamstown, MA, and I strongly recommend it if you come to Western Mass. this fall. It runs to Oct. 2. I realize that what you’re doing is, on the surface, different, but Pissarro believed that modern industrial civilization would collapse and we would return to a living, local, agriculturally based economy, without hierarchy and without a central state. I’ll be talking about how the softly focused gaze of Pissarro was a kind of revolutionary act, rejecting the eye-intense, hyperfocused, hypercontrolled mindset of modern Western civilization. These farm workers have a quiet dignity and are one with the earth.