Intervale Community Farm

As the weeks tick by through the winter, we’ve got more and more exciting tidbits to share with our farm members and broader community of friends.  Check out our freshly released January 2012 Newsletter.  In it you’ll find a reminder to renew for 2012 (time is running out!), news about the member loan campaign that we are launching, updates on the Fourth Season Project, a few words on post-Irene local food sourcing, and a cry out for snow so we can host Wintervale events!  Right now, the Intervale is one sheet of ice, and the only upside to that is we are not tempted to go skiing and leave behind important farm planning.  But really, we’d love some snow!

Don’t hesitate to let us know what you think.  You can comment here, find us on Facebook, email Andy or Becky [at] intervalecommunityfarm.com, or call us at 658-2919.

Our December 2011 Bottom Land News is hot off the keyboard.  Check it out for info on exciting new developments at ICF, 2012 membership, and more!

As the winter and end of the year approach, the planning for next summer has started. Seed catalogs are arriving in bulk, and lists of crops are being created.  With no winter share this year, we’ve missed seeing our members on a regular basis. We will send out periodic updates and news of the farm through the winter, and the first news is that you can sign up for your summer share now.

Co-op members will be renewed automatically at the same size and for the same pick-up day as last summer. Sending in a membership form with a deposit is appreciated nonetheless.

CSA members should fill out the appropriate form and send a deposit as usual.

All credits from 2011 will appear on January statements. Please note that if you have an outstanding balance, all payments will be applied to old balances first.

Click here to select the appropriate form  and mail it to the farm; a postmark by January 31 with full payment still qualifies for a $15-$25 discount.

We hope you will join us at the farm in June!

One of the ironies of farming in the Northeast is that our short season is intense and busy, leaving us very little time to visit other farms during the growing season.  However, our community of brilliant growers, business people, and innovators is our best resource for deriving new ideas, from financing to cultivating to storage facilities to employee management.  With the Irene-truncated season of 2011, we’ve made an effort to get out of Burlington more than we typically can in the autumn.  So instead of our usual fall conversations over carrot and beet harvests, we’ve put on slightly cleaner clothes, burned a little more gasoline (but less diesel) and found some great ideas on other farms.

In October, we attended a twilight workshop at a CSA in Western Massachusetts called Brookfield Farm, which in many ways is the Massachusetts cousin to ICF.  We saw their winter share storage facilities, learned about their distribution, got some good tips on pest management, and mingled with other farmers.

In early November, we visited High Mowing Seeds, an organic seed company in Wolcott, Vermont, from whom we buy the bulk of our seeds.  But along the way, we spied a mechanized rutabega harvest at Foote Brook Farm in Johnson, Vermont.

We work closely with High Mowing to trial new varieties and rely on their high quality seeds to grow our high quality vegetables.  We were treated to a long tour and conversation with founder Tom Stearns – and left utterly inspired to plant their seeds again in 2012!

The 2011 Annual Meeting, on Saturday, November 5, was a momentous night.  With an epically difficult farm season officially over, the ICF Board of Directors, farmers, and members gathered to share a plentiful pot-luck meal, a thoughtful retrospective slide show on the 2011 season, and a stimulating presentation of the  ICF Fourth Season Project - which is an overview (click on it to see! It really is exciting!) of our exciting move onto the former Intervale Compost fields and our lease on an upgraded storage facility in their former building.

We look forward to sharing the progress on this project as it unfolds.  Thus far, we’ve picked a lot of rocks from the field – and as our hands got tired of the picking, we figured out a way to use our potato digger (which unfortunately didn’t get it’s usual autumn workout due to flooding) to dig the rocks that came in over the many years of Compost’s tenure.

Thanks to everyone who attended our meeting – and we look forward to sharing the changes ahead!