Fields of Plenty

We love that our customers want to know how does our garden grow! We had a great tour of the hydroponics house and the high tunnel on March 23, along with sunny, windy weather. People had a chance to see beautiful vegetables grown with no pesticides and no herbicides. March is fickle---Snow on March 1, rain, some super chilly mornings, whipping winds, sunshine, a teasing day or two of warm weather, more rain and more chilly weather. March has it all!   Sometimes it seems our main crop is mud.   But temperatures are creeping upwards and the sun feels stronger, and everything under cover is growing very well! The hydro house is producing an abundance of greens, enough for the CSA shares as well as the market. Watercress, bibb lettuce, leaf lettuce, romaine, arugula, cilantro, parsley, and thousands of seedlings which are transplanted into the ground or into pots. Thousands of lettuces—very exciting for us. We are learning the growth cycles of the different plants and ...

Mary Pauline Connell Webster So many family stories are told from the father’s point of view. Particularly in farming.   In my family, I am fortunate to have a long line of strong women who stood in equal partnership with the men in the family and brought highly valued skills to the family and to the business of farming. For Women’s History Month I want to turn the spotlight on Mary Pauline Connell Webster, my great-grandmother. Born March 4, 1872, in Ashland, Delaware, to Charles Barington Connell (1846-1916) and Emma Evans Bradford (1851-1903), Mary Pauline Connell arrived in a time of great change.  The Connells were farmers and had seven children, two boys and five girls. Mary Pauline’s paternal grandparents emigrated from Ireland in the early 1840s (potato famine drove this migration).  The second oldest of seven, Mary Pauline worked from a young age on her family’s farm. The year she was born, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its doors and Yellows...