I am just in from the first tedding of our first cut of hay this season. Hay making is a three-day process that only happens on the most beautiful days of the summer; it involves a plethora of community and the kind of hard, physical labor where you can see what you’ve done at the …
The Chewonki pigs have made their annual move from the barn to the woods. For the past few years, Chewonki has bought spring feeder pigs from Sourground Farm in Sabattus, Maine. These piglets spend their first two months in the manure shed attached to the barn, rooting around and helping to speed up the decomposition …
The tomatoes in the high tunnel are reaching for the sky these days at long last. I have waxed poetic about the Berry House – so named because this structure is perched on the western edge of Berry Garden, not because we’re growing berries inside – in past blog posts, but there’s something about the …
This summer at Boys Camp we are starting a movement toward greater integration of the boys into the daily, meaningful work of the farm. One structure that supports this move is the new . . . drumroll, please . . . Junior/Master Farmer program. Throughout the summer, boys are working to check off farm experiences …
I am just finishing a quick breakfast after morning chores. I do morning chores most every day of the year, starting somewhere between 5:40 and 6:45, depending on the season. The work becomes routine – rote, even. And then there is a morning like this one, when no less than 20 campers showed up to …
Well, an eleven year old on farm chores this afternoon set a high bar in terms of really solid farm puns. Here’s the story: It being a summer weekend, a subsection of the farm crew usually take on morning and afternoon chores solo, without the help of campers. This afternoon, however, four campers working toward …
Perhaps I’ll start at the end of the story that I want to tell and work backwards. Mid-afternoon yesterday, 46 people stood in a circle on the driveway of the farm. I asked each person to reflect on their day and to offer a maximum of five words to describe their experience of it. There …
The farm this summer was bursting with boy campers and firmly held to the ground by the farm crew women. Here is a celebration (albeit an insufficient one because they are beyond words) to five of them, the youngest amongst us. Lauren Brady (Semester 49, Summer Farm Crew 2014): Lauren is detail oriented and our …
An exciting move is afoot in the world of Chewonki’s food system. So much of our farm and food systems focus is insular at Chewonki, as our attempts to maximize the food, fiber, and firewood produced here for here keep us looking inward in positive ways. This growing season, thanks to the work of a …
Community Partnerships with St. Philip’s Food Pantry Read More »
Three weeks into the semester, student blog entries on the Semester’s “To the Point” blog are ripe with mention of the farm and food system here at Chewonki. Between morning chores, afternoon work programs, Wednesday Sustainability classes, and weekend activities, students have been all over the farm and accomplishing much. In “Keeping Up with Semester …
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