Happy summer everyone!
We are so excited to announce that the North Adams Outdoor Farmers Market is officially open THIS Saturday at the Armory from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Below is more information from the farmers market managers about how the market will work to keep everyone safe. As a vendor, we are still offering pre-ordering through the market website in addition to bringing vegetables, flowers, and herbs to market on Saturday to purchase then. Pre-ordering is open from Monday to Wednesday afternoon and is the best way to guarantee getting everything you want! We have a bunch of bouquets listed on there this week, so check it out!
In the meantime, Laura and I have been taking full advantage of having Saturdays on the farm. We almost doubled our growing space this season and now have almost half an acre in permanent beds! We have been lucky enough to add a few work trade volunteers to our crew a few days a week and it's making a huge difference in helping us to stay on top of everything.
Right now we are reveling in our squash and perennial patches. We bought native perennials from our friends at A Wing and A Prayer Nursery in Cummington two seasons ago and are really reaping the benefits this year. Many of our bouquets include pollinator favorites like Bee Balm, yarrow, mountain mint, echinacea and rudbeckia. We love incorporating natives in our floral work because we love growing native plants on the farm!
We have baskets full of squash and zucchini and are so excited about how healthy the plants are this season. It's amazing what a difference watering regularly makes (last year we did not have access to water on the farm, but this year we are using our new well to irrigate regularly!)
The abundance of squash reminds me of this poem, which a friend shared with me. We hope that you all come to join us at market this Saturday, we cant wait to see your smizes! (Eye smiles)
Attack of the squash people by Marge Piercy
And thus the people every year in the valley of humid July did sacrifice themselves to the long green phallic god and eat and eat and eat.
They’re coming, they’re on us, the long striped gourds, the silky babies, the hairy adolescents, the lumpy vast adults like the trunks of green elephants. Recite fifty zucchini recipes!
Zucchini tempura; creamed soup; sauté with olive oil and cumin, tomatoes, onion; frittata; casserole of lamb; baked topped with cheese; marinated; stuffed; stewed; driven through the heart like a stake.
Get rid of old friends: they too have gardens and full trunks. Look for newcomers: befriend them in the post office, unload on them and run. Stop tourists in the street. Take truckloads to Boston. Give to your Red Cross. Beg on the highway: please take my zucchini, I have a crippled mother at home with heartburn.
Sneak out before dawn to drop them in other people’s gardens, in baby buggies at church doors. Shot, smuggling zucchini into mailboxes, a federal offense.
With a suave reptilian glitter you bask among your raspy fronds sudden and huge as alligators. You give and give too much, like summer days limp with heat, thunderstorms bursting their bags on our heads, as we salt and freeze and pickle for the too little to come.