Great Start for the Farm at Stratford

It was a interesting first year on The Farm at Stratford

It started to rain in May and didn't stop until the middle of July. The wet conditions and the introduction of the Late Blight made growing anything a tough jog. Yet a lot of vegetable were produced. If you wanted to asked for the worst growing year in recent memory then this would have been it.

The DR mower was delivered this week !! This gift from Ms. Ellie Hawthorne will make keeping the land under control as it constantly tries to over take the Farm.

We had a total of 56 plots opened and cultivated. Some folks dropped out which is normal for community gardens especially considering the rain and appearance of the fungus known as Late Blight.

What did the gardeners learn? For on thing how when nature doesn't cooperate its hard to get things to grow. They learned that planting a diversity of plants of different families is important. The Late Blight attacks plants in the nightshade family such as tomatoes and potatoes. Some folks only planted tomatoes and lost them all.

We all learn about this particular piece of land, where it is to wet in the spring (and summer this year). Where the drainage is good and where it isn't. We learned that making raise planting beds helps with very wet conditions and parcels that don't have the best of drainage..

Gardeners learned that if they had to depend on the weather and coping with plant diseases to provide all their food for a year ..they would have all died of starvation.

All in all it was a great start to the Farm at Stratford. We are already active in planing the next season and will be working on more sustainability projects over the winter.

I'll be working on getting the Green House up before the early winter too.

Thanks to everyone for participating, thanks for your effort and patiences.

Gleaning for the hungry

As part of our community sustaionability, local food effort and community gardening we will be gleaning backyard fruit trees for food pantries. There are hundreds of Pear, Apple and Peach trees that are left unpicked in the backyards of our neighbors. Many of the owners only use a small fraction of the fruit the tree produces.

Gleaning is mentioned as far back as bibical times. However then the poor would be allowed to go over the fields and find what was left behind after a harvest to help feed themselves. This is gleaning with a twist. We have generous and kind tree owners. We have generous and kind fruit pickers and we have people who need the food. Its a great match..perhaps made in heaven.

If you know people who have trees that have useable fruit ask if they'd like to partiispaqte in this effort to feed our niegbors and people suffering from this resession.

We will seek volunteers to help us pick the fruit and donate it to local food pantires and feeding programs. Eating on the job is encouraged.

We will be picking Pears Saturday September 12th at 10:30 in Startford. Contact Terry or Paul for directions.

Rain Barrels - Make one.

Rain barrels can help reduce the amount of water that becomes contaminated as it flows on the street to strom drains. It can also help reduce water bills for those on a municipal water system.

We use potable treated water for many activities where it not needed. Watering our gardens, washing exteriors and vehicles. In some regions collected water is used to flush toilets, take showers, household cleaning etc.

This link will direct you to a site that demostartes several designs for rain barrels.

http://www.watershedactivities.com/projects/spring/rainbarl.html

Rain Garden Video - Polluted runoff is a huge problem.

Check out this 3.20 minuet video on how build a Rain Garden. This year has been very wet. Rain water that runs off of driveways and other hard surfaces then flows through the streets to storm drains. On its way the water picks up contaminates of every discription. When it enters long Island Sound or a local creek or river it delivers its load of pollutants to our waterways. Rain Gardens can help spruce up your properety and protect our waters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umKKzM88KRo

Late Blight a Real Threat

The disease that caused the Irish Potato famine "Late Blight"has been identified on Long Island. The airborne disease, which spreads via spores, has been found at the retail level on Bonnie Plants tomatoes, which are sold at The Home Depot, Kmart, Wal-Mart and Lowe's stores on Long Island. Because of the way the fungus spreads, all area tomatoes are at risk.

Check out the photos at this link http://www.newsday.com/features/home/ny-home-lateblight,0,3139087.photogallery

Tree Land Discounts

Gardeners mention the Farm at Stratford and you will get 10% discount at Tree Land on anything that isn't on sale.

Progress at The Farm at Stratford has been moving along nicely.  In fact, 39 days from the signing of the contract with the Town, Paul and Terry created a community garden and sustainability effort that appears as if they had been years in development.  There are now nearly 50 plots allocated and most have been planted or improved.  We continue to make improvements toward the permaculture aspects of the Farm and infrastructure.

Last week Paul, Terry and Jason planted over 30 fruit tress mostly apples and hardy peaches.  The trees were donated by the Adams County Nursery in PA.  We planted them along the Connors Lane fence and along the east end of the field.  Additionally, were began planting Blueberry bushes in certain areas and intend to increase the number of plants over time.

Pumpkins and Squash.  Some areas of the Farm are not well suited to general gardening but we have a plan to help those areas produce.  Ground has been prepared at the foot of the hill to plant a variety of pumpkins, gourds and squash.  We are hoping to plant a good amount of sugar pumpkins that can be used for pie making.  Almost all pumpkins can be eaten but the small pie pumpkin varieties are the best for baking and pickling.  The pumpkins can be gifted to food pantries, shared with gardeners or even sold as an earned income product for improvements on the Farm.

We have begun to establish the Farm Honey Bee yard.  We have the first hive in place and plan to have several more. Terry will be dividing a hive of his and brining the new hive to the Farm.

We have received many compliments from the neighbors about the improvements to the Farm.  Plans are in the works to build a tool shed, information kiosk and some grape arbors with benches.