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One Day Farmers Market 11/23/13, Food Safety Modernization Act, 2014 farm shares, Grass Fed Lamb and Certified Organic Chicken
Long Life Farm
One Day Farmers Market                                                      NOVEMBER NEWSLETTER
November 23, 9-1pm: Ashland Community Center                                                                                                                                

We hope someday we are able grow vegetables and communicate with our shareholders and community through a monthly newsletter, but for now the off season gives us more time to gather thoughts about the season at Long Life Farm.  We have put much of the fields to bed, but have been continuing to grow some limited crops for a one day Farmers Market on Saturday, November 23 from 9-1.  This will take place at the Ashland Community Center 162 W. Union St (Route 135), Ashland, MA.  We should have broccoli, spinach, peppers, cabbage, arugula, lettuce, mix greens for braising or salad, salad turnips and some kale.  Hope to see you there.  The caterpillars or quick hoops as you can see below help us to extend the season for these cold hardy crops.  As we continue to improve our soil fertility, plants have better immune systems and can withstand colder temperatures. 


The Food Safety and Modernization Act (FSMA)  

You may have read about this new law that was signed a few years ago and is still being implemented.  The FDA gave the public a comment period which ends Friday, November 22, 2013.  To learn more go to this link.  Most small organic farmers like us and many consumers have sent comments to the FDA as to how the new law would impact them in hopes of fixing it prior to implementation. Currently the new law is in conflict with the National Organic Program, which the FDA chooses to ignore.  Organic farmers can use manure to fertilize the fields as long as it is applied at least four months prior to crop harvest. The Produce Rule in the FSMA requires a nine month waiting period so the use of manure would take the fields out of production for that growing year. The proposed Produce Rule includes costly, burdensome, and unscientific standards for irrigation water including water testing and treatment requirements.  Farms using water from creeks, streams, and rivers on produce crops will have to test  their water every 7 days if the water touches edible  parts of a crop. We currently are required to do testing once per year and based upon those results are only allowed to use the water for drip irrigation, not overhead where the irrigation water might come in contact with edible parts of the produce. Our water test  lab charges $110 for our three water sources and requires us to use their sample cups for an additional fee, multiply that by 30 weeks in the growing season and you come to an amount of money that is not sustainable. While the Produce Rule seems to exempt farmers with sales of less than $500k over the previous three years, if they also sell to direct customers (produce grown on large farms using processors and shipping their produce all over the place are at higher risk of contamination),  the exemption is voided if we buy produce from another farm. While we pick the blueberries managed by Dick Amato, buying them to include in our shares would technically nullify our exemption to the law. This would also prevent us from sourcing other items from other farms to include in your share bag. If I were to buy honey from the beekeeper who harvested off of the same fields we are using to grow your vegetables, I would no longer be exempt from the law.  So take action and send your comments to the FDA before end of day on Friday, November 22. 

2013 Season Reflection
The season started off normal enough during April when all the onions and potatoes were planted moving into end of May when it is normally warm enough to plant peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, squash, cukes and beans. Then came the 12 inches of rain in June.  Any plants that already were in the ground drowned and the mud prevented us from planting most of the warm fruiting plants until 3 weeks after they should have gone in the ground. That really set the pace for the whole season and caused all fruiting crops to harvest that much later in the season. Not only did rain and mud delay planting, but the amount  of rain leached out the soluble minerals and nitrogen that many plants need to thrive. Organic gardeners don't usually use nitrogen amendments as we rely on the nitrogen that organic matter creates each year in the soil. That rain however leached it all out and hence both summer and mostly winter squash suffered because of it. Swiss Chard and beets also suffered. We are looking at different nitrogen sources: feather meal, soy meal, seed meal approved by OMRI that we can use in the future. Our sweet potato slip vendor also had failure and never sent our slips to us, and it was too late to find alternate vendor so late in the season. Despite their tardiness, tomatoes were abundant and delicious. Next year we will definitely plant twice as much head lettuce, so if we get the type heat and bolting we got this year, we will have some back up. Overall we harvested 10,000 pounds of produce from mid June through October.  

Check out the grass fed lamb offering to the right, and if you are interested in certified organic chicken, Natick Community Organic Farm has just processed 100 birds. Contact Casey Townsend, Assistant Director  www.natickfarm.org  1-5 birds for $5.50 lb, 5-10 birds for $4.75 lb and more than 10 birds $4.00 lb. Birds range in size from 5-8 lbs each.  

 

 

Our hearts are full of gratitude to our shareholders and our customers at the Ashland and Hopkinton Farmers Market. Thank you for your commitment and trust.  Happy Thanksgiving!   

Laura Davis and Donald Sutherland
LONG LIFE FARM SHARES 
If you were a shareholder this past season and did not complete the survey, we would love your feedback. We will publish information to shareholders when 2014 shares open up for sale.  I would like to give existing shareholders a chance to renew their shares prior to opening up to new shareholders.  Unless something changes dramatically with our land tenure we will make 65 shares available again for 2014.  We are pleased to support our library by donating a share to the Friends of the Hopkinton Library. They will be holding a raffle for the10 week, every other week share again next year.   We also donated a 10 week share to the Hopkinton Public Library Foundation to incentivize residents to invest in the Thousand Homes Project that earned the foundation $18,000 at the Hoptoberfest. 
Tomato Plant on Oct 18
I am pleased to say that this tomato plant was still thriving on October 18.  This particular part of the garden is in front of our house and has been remineralized since the fall of 2010, so one more year than our Pond St field and two more years than our East St field. The reason I was interested in enhancing the fertility of my soil was not only to achieve higher levels of nutrition from the same plants, but also to increase yields and enable a plant to achieve it's genetic potential.  You see, indeterminate tomato plants are not supposed to die off until the first frost  In the past my plants use to run out of needed nutrients and die off sometime in early September. This plant lasted through the first frost and then succumbed when the temperature went down well below freezing on 10/29.
Grass Fed Lamb
Our neighbor and young farmer raises lamb and pork and will have a whole or side of lamb available for sale and pick up on Dec. 9. Sides are somewhere between 25-35lbs. Side $7.50/lb, Whole $6.50/lb. Please call Chris Casella directly at 508-244-9331 or napoli16161616@hotmail.com. Pork will be available March or April. 
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