NET-Zero in 2020!

Solar panels over the milk house/farm kitchen and office at Codman.

Solar panels over the milk house/farm kitchen and office at Codman.

We’re excited to announce that the solar panels topping the barns at Codman are finally hooked up to the grid and producing electricity! You might remember that these panels were actually installed way back in late June. This very long process began as a part of our Vision 2020 Capital Campaign to invest in the farm as a long-term community resource, and it’s wonderful to see the solar project finally come to completion!

Farm Manager Pete Lowy (left) and former Board President David Alperovitz switch on the solar array at Codman for the first time. (pc: Fan Watkinson)

Farm Manager Pete Lowy (left) and former Board President David Alperovitz switch on the solar array at Codman for the first time. (pc: Fan Watkinson)

David Alperovitz, pictured here, a former Codman board member and President, was key to writing the state and federal grants that helped us to fund this project. His passion and vision were critical to seeing this project through to reality. Our thanks go out to David for all of his support and hard work, and for helping us to achieve our goal of greatly reducing our energy footprint. We fully anticipate Codman Farm to be NET-ZERO in 2020!

These panels should meet all of our energy needs, which is a huge step for us, and for the Town of Lincoln, as these panels are the first solar array on a town-owned building - though Codman Community Farms paid for and owns the PV System.

As we enter 2020, we are looking forward to another year of regenerative, sustainable farming - something the world desperately needs. Our respect for land, animals and people are at the core of our farming practices, and this solar array helps us to live by those values. You can help support us in this mission by donating, becoming a member, or shopping at our year-round Farm Store, stocked with our own, Lincoln-grown, pasture-raised meat and eggs. If you have questions for us, or would like to get involved by volunteering, donating equipment, leading a workshop or something else, feel free to get in touch with us. For now, we’re wishing you a happy and healthy start to the New Year!

Until Next Time,

~ Jon

Winding into Winter

The first snows have fallen, and the barns and pastures lie coated in a dreamy white blanket. It’s a far cry from the green robes of summer, when the sunflowers and zinnias bloomed in the Pick-Your-Own flower garden, and the pigs rooted and cooled off in the shrubs and shade of the treelines.

Winter is a quieter season at Codman. The animals are all home at the main Codman Farm: the cows are back together as one herd in their winter pasture, the hens are living in and around the greenhouse, and the pigs are nestled behind Barn D, getting warm and cozy. Our rhythm has changed from traveling all around town moving water and feed, checking on animals, and cutting and baling hay, to making our daily rounds of the farmyard here at 58 Codman Road. We’re still collecting hundreds of eggs a day, but the chickens are only a short walk or 4-wheeler ride from the cooler and the egg-washing room. Our last meat birds were harvested well over a month ago, and the turkeys are all long-gone as well.

Having all the animals back home makes it easier to tend to projects around the farm that we can’t otherwise get to during the busy season. Repairs, equipment maintenance, research and planning for the next year are all on the agenda for the coming weeks. Our farmers will evaluate what worked well this year, what can be improved or changed, and what new opportunities we might want to try out. We’re also using this time to plan new events, workshops and opportunities to connect with the farm in 2020. Keep an eye out on our blog and our email list, as we’ll be asking for your input to help us create meaningful opportunities for community connection with local food and land.

New, white oak shelters arriving, with curious cows onlooking

New, white oak shelters arriving, with curious cows onlooking

While things are quieter, there is still activity on the farm! New cow shelters arrived the other day, to all of our excitement. Our Red Devons are a hearty, cold-faring cattle breed, the same kind the pilgrims brought with them to America for that very reason. They spend the winter outdoors, but these shelters will provide them with a sturdy windbreak for those especially cold days. The old shelters had been around for thirtyish years, and their time had finally come to be torn down and recycled. Hopefully these beautiful oak structures will last us just as long!

On November 17th, we gathered one last time in the barn at the annual Volunteer Appreciation Brunch. On this frosty-yet-cheery day we shared good food and good company and we celebrated our dedicated volunteers who lend a hand to help out the farm during the year with a myriad of tasks. We enjoyed connecting with everyone, and even though we will be here working, and the Farm Store will be open all winter, it felt to me like the end of summer camp - both a celebration and an ending of sorts.

A farm ebbs and flows with the seasons, reminding us of our essential ties to nature - physically, emotionally and culturally. While things here may seem quieter, more muted like the snowy landscape, our Farm Store is still open, and we have a steady supply of fresh Codman eggs, meat and other local goods to warm you up through the winter days. Like a seed, there’s a core of life that carries on at Codman through the winter - perhaps a little quieter, tucked away a little more out of sight, but waiting, ready to spring forth when the warmth returns and conditions are right.

Bringing our Laying Hens Home

(the following was sent as an email to our chicken catching volunteers on Nov. 13th, 2019)

Dear Chicken Chasers and Hen Wranglers,

Thank you to all who came out last Sunday for our frosty-yet-fun night of chicken catching! Pete, Jared, the Board and I were floored by how many people responded to our call for volunteers - with over 60 people signed up in total. We've never had a turnout for chicken catching that large, and it was moving that so many people wanted to come help. The night was a huge success, and probably set a record time for a hen roundup, totaling less than 45 minutes.

Some of our laying hens on pasture this summer

Some of our laying hens on pasture this summer

When I say that we can't do this work without you, I truly mean it. As a non-profit, we have a very small staff, with only two full-time farmers. They do a fantastic job of running the farm day-to-day, and we all have a deep respect for how hard they work, and how creative and inventive they are in leading operations and solving the many challenges that arise on a farm, especially one as unique as ours. That said, when there's a big job like this, we need help in a very real way. I love farm work for that reason, among others - it's very clear and tangible how you are helping and contributing with your work, whether it's weeding a bed of tomatoes or rounding up over a thousand chickens. I hope you felt that sense of pride and usefulness from this weekend as well.

In this case, because of your work, our hens will be able to continue laying in their semi-sheltered space at the farm, and we'll be able to collect eggs through the winter, providing roughly 1,000 high-quality, pasture-raised eggs to the community.

While we have less need for volunteer work until April or so, I invite you to stay in touch with us! We'll be spending the winter planning events, educational workshops, film screenings and more. If there's feedback you have for us, or some way you'd like to get involved, please let us know. You can contact me directly, or reach out to us at info@codmanfarm.org.

Here's our attempt at a photo from the night - unfortunately with our impromptu head-lamp lighting the front rows were a little overexposed, but we have something to remember the night by!

Our 2019 laying hen roundup crew

Our 2019 laying hen roundup crew

Thanks again, and sending you the warmest of wishes on this frigid day.


Warmly,

Jon

Community Support, Our Last Chickens of the Year

Maples turning on the Codman Community Farms laneway.

Maples turning on the Codman Community Farms laneway.

It’s that time of the season, when the leaves fall, the holiday decorations come out, and we begin making plans to reconnect with our friends and families. Here at the farm though, we are busy preparing for the coming winter by cleaning up the greenhouse, fields and farm yard for the imminent return of the hens, cows and pigs. We look forward to winding down, and to shorter days, after working so many long days all spring and summer, but first we have to wrap up all of our equipment and animals that have spread out in pastures across Lincoln.

Last weekend was our final chicken harvest of 2019 and it was the largest one of the season. In one weekend, we harvested over 500 Cornish, Capons and Freedom Rangers! This last harvest marks the end of a long season, going all the way back to the first chicks arriving in the March. This year we grew over 4000 birds for our community to enjoy, and we are proud that it was once again a successful year of growing beautiful pasture-raised birds. We owe so much to our hardy volunteers, who came out in all weather to nine chicken catchings in five months. These events are a fun time for all, but are also hard work between the lifting and catching, so we are always grateful for all the good cheer and help with this critical last step in the process of growing healthy, fresh, and local pasture-raised chickens. Our freezers are now stocked with chicken for the winter and spring, and while there are still so many projects we have planned for the farm, the daily chores are finally starting to subside, and we look forward to the slower workload during the winter months.

Our farm is a community effort, whether that comes in the form of volunteers helping to chase chickens, or devoted customers who come and shop at our little farm store, especially when there are so many choices for food from organic grocery stores to home delivery services (though few that raise their animals the way we do and are truly local and pasture-raised). Last weekend was evidence of how much you, our community, support this farm. The store was packed all day with people stopping in for their last chance to buy fresh chicken this year, and to select the turkeys that they had pre-ordered for Thanksgiving. I was there helping all day, and it was by far one of the busiest weekends we’ve ever had. Even our Farm Manager, Pete Lowy, was surprised. “I expected it to be busy, but not like this,” he told me at one point.

Our Board President, Nancy Fleming, unloading crates at a chicken catching.

Our Board President, Nancy Fleming, unloading crates at a chicken catching.

We’re excited to announce that our Annual Feast is sold-out, and we’re hard at work preparing for the shindig on Saturday. If you missed out on buying tickets this year, we’ll have plenty of events in 2020 to look forward to! And as always, the store remains open year-round, with its lights twinkling away even on the coldest of winter nights. Stop by support your local farm and to pick up everything you need for hearty winter dishes to warm you up.

Thank you for helping to close out the 2019 growing season with a memorable and successful weekend at the store. Your support allows us to keep producing high-quality, pasture-raised local food, to regenerate the farmland and ecosystems in Lincoln, and to provide community access to local farms through education, events, and more. From our bustling store to the sweat and laughter of our volunteers, we feel your support, and are grateful for it.

Until Next Time,

Jon

The 2019 Harvest Fair

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Last Sunday, I arrived to the Codman Fair -

Signs crafted by our Farmer’s Helper program dotted the fairgrounds

Signs crafted by our Farmer’s Helper program dotted the fairgrounds

- as board members and volunteers bustled around the parking lot and main field, putting on the last touches. Hard at work since eight in the morning, the group had transformed the Codman parking lot into a fairground, complete with tables for selling food, a craft-fair section, a wagon loaded with hay for hay rides, and all kinds of games laid out in the front pasture.The Reasons to be Cheerful Chillwagon, a vintage ice-cream truck, completed the festival atmosphere created by home-made decorations, a sizzling grill, and the buzz of people setting up for the day.

As the fair opened, crowds of people appeared - young, old, with kids and without. The sounds of laughter and good conversation filled the air, bubbling over the folk music drifting across the farmyard. The entire fair had a relaxed feeling to it, like everyone knew this was a time when they could stop for a moment, eat some good food from the farm, and let the kids run free. The adult games, especially the skillet toss, were reportedly a hit. I missed them because I was busy giving a spoon carving demonstration with my hatchet. Our crafter’s row was also popular, and throughout the day people wandered by and stopped to enjoy watching the artisans, like Erica Hood and Caroline McCall, working at their crafts.

People just seemed happy to relax and enjoy the farm, and to me, the day was a huge success. What a gift for us to all get to spend a day outdoors, connecting with our friends and neighbors, and laughing together. 

It seemed like everyone ended the day tired but reinvigorated and renewed. That’s so important as the daylight dwindles and the nights get longer during this part of the year. I’m reminded by this event why I care so much about forging a deep connection to place and people.

Our growing season is winding down, and we’re looking forward to the pause, and then to jump into planning for next year’s Fair. If you’re interested in helping, or have feedback and ideas about the Fair, send me a note at jon@codmanfarm.org. Thanks to all of our hard working volunteers, wonderful artisans and tablers, and to everyone who attended. We’re lucky to live among people willing to come together to celebrate our farm and community, and to enjoy some simple, slow, old-fashioned fun.

While other farms and farmer’s markets close down, our little Farm Store stays open through the depths of winter, stocked with our own pasture-raised meats and eggs, as well as local produce and storage crops, locally produced artisanal goods, and warm, fresh from the oven bread on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Stop by anytime - we’ll see you there.

Until then,

Jon

Mid-Summer Stride

Over the weeks since we last posted, the farm has been buzzing along, even as Lincoln has settled into summer vacation. On my way in to the farm in the mornings, I pass crowds of people heading down to Walden Pond, towels and folding chairs in hand, looking to cool off in the summer heat. While we’d love to join them, especially on hot days like this past weekend, there is still plenty of work to be done at the farm!

Organic red currants from the Codman orchard

All our animals are on the farm, and Kari, Brian, Pete and Jared have settled into the routines of daily animal chores. We have our laying hens, turkeys, and some of our piglets growing on the fields at the end of Codman Road, and just had our fourth calf of the season born! We expect to get a few more, but we’ll have less than usual this year, as we’ve kept some of our mother cows from breeding so that next year they’ll all be calving at the same time - ideally in the spring or summer, rather than the depths of winter, which is a hard time for calves to be born. We just harvested our old laying flock of hens, and our pigs that were born around Christmas, so we have stewing birds available for purchase in the store. We’ll be getting more of our pork products soon from our friends at Adams Farm in Athol, MA, who process all of our animals except for our chickens.

Vegetable harvest continues, and some of our favorite summer crops have started showing up in the farm store! Most recently, we’ve been picking beans, red potatoes, and our very first cherry tomatoes of the season. I’m particularly fond of the red potatoes, both for their creamy taste, and for the story that goes along with them. These potatoes came in as seed potatoes all the way back in April, and were cut up and prepared for planting by students from the MassBay Waldorf High School. Our Farmer’s Helpers class of 1st to 3rd graders planted them out in early May. Several volunteers weeded and hilled the potatoes throughout the summer, and now, finally, they’re being dug by hand by our own staff, youth employees, and some hardy and dedicated volunteers. The journey of these potatoes captures the spirit of Codman as a Community Farm, with many different hands coming together to work, learn, connect with the soil and with one another, and to produce high-quality, healthy food for the community.

Last weekend we had another fresh chicken sale! We continue to be one of the only farms near Boston where you can come and pick up fresh, never-frozen, pasture-raised chicken directly from the farm it was raised on (shameless plug to check out the Farm Store!).

We take pride in how we raise our animals, and in the many volunteers and partners who help us bring them from chick to market, and are happy to offer such a unique product to the community. We also had a Codman first this past weekend: our first ever Open House! Folks came and enjoyed cold drinks in the barn, meeting and mingling with some of our staff and our Board of Directors, and tours led by farm manager Pete Lowy. We plan to do another one in the fall, so stay tuned and subscribe to our email list for more info.

As always, please reach out with any feedback, comments, thoughts, musings, love notes, appreciations, wild ideas or other concerns. Swing by and pick up some pasture-raised proteins for your next cookout, and we hope to see you on the farm some time soon.

Until then,

Jon

jon@codmanfarm.org

The Codman Campout

An old-fashioned sing along at the Codman Campfire

An old-fashioned sing along at the Codman Campfire

A hardy camp by Codman Road

A hardy camp by Codman Road

Saturday night, June 15th: A full moon illuminates the barnyard and surrounding fields.  Tents dot the landscape, standing in the community garden, on the grass in front of Barn B, and one right next to the lamb pen.  A campfire is roaring, surrounded by farm friends singing “Codman Road, take me home…” to the tune of “Country Road”, of course.  Farther away, flashlights flicker in and out as a sprawling game of flashlight hide-and-seek occupies the under-12 set. 

The Codman Campout has always been one of my favorite farm events.  A low-key June dinner outside the barn, and lots of kids playing games under the stars make this a homey, familiar summer night.  This year was made all the more special as we enjoyed Codman’s own beef, pork and chicken for dinner. We ate farm-raised hamburgers, sausage, chicken drumsticks, hot dogs and veggie sandwiches - plus brownies and s’mores for dessert!  

John and Jon, board members during the week, grill masters on the weekend!

John and Jon, board members during the week, grill masters on the weekend!

The moon remained bright, but eventually the guitar-playing wound down, all the hiders were found by the seekers, and the whole farm, animals and humans alike, conked out for the night.  We were up with the animals the next morning for bagels, orange juice, lots of coffee for the adults and an early morning hide and seek game that began again almost immediately after the break of day.

A huge thanks to the Board and volunteers for organizing this year’s spectacular event! I’m already looking forward to next year, and to brushing up on my campy Codman songs.

~ Ginger Reiner, CCF Treasurer

Egg Shortage Comes to an End

Eggs in the farm store - goodbye to an empty cooler!

Eggs in the farm store - goodbye to an empty cooler!

The good news is that the egg shortage is coming to an end! Our new flock has started laying, and the number of eggs we collect each day is ramping up quickly. By the end of the week, we should have plenty of eggs in the farm store each day with no fear of running out! Whew! Finally the shortage is over!

But why were we running out of eggs? After chatting with enough people at the farm, and answering their questions about the shortage, I realized it could be helpful to shed some light on our farming processes, and what happened to lead to this situation.

Each year in late April/early May we get a new flock of over 1,200 laying hens. Typically these hens (also called Pullets), are about 16 weeks old and are approaching the age at which they begin laying their first tiny eggs (called Pullet eggs!). Our hens are a breed that begin laying eggs at a fairly young age and lay A LOT of eggs their first year. Each hen produces roughly an egg per day at the peak of their maturity - actually more like 5-6 eggs a week. As the hens get older, usually around a year to a year-and-a-half, their egg laying slows down, the egg shells get thinner, lighter in color and are larger in size (which is why this time of year even our regular eggs are extra large).

The Farmer’s Helper program paying a visit to our old laying flock!

Normally by the time the old flock is getting tired, our new flock has arrived and is beginning to lay eggs so it takes the pressure off of the old flock to keep up with demand!  The timing works out so that the pullets start laying as the old flock slows down, and we have eggs consistently year round. This year, however, we couldn’t get our pullets from the breeder that raises them until about a month later than usual. There was a shortage of breeder flocks for our breed and so we had to wait until they could acquire enough eggs to hatch the chicks that would become our new flock. This led to a gap where our new flock was too young and wasn’t laying yet, but the old flock’s egg production had slowed way down.

In farming, you try to plan and organize your systems so that you can get the product you want, when you want and need it. But sometimes you come up against the fact that you’re working with nature, and nature doesn’t always lend itself to being managed. You can’t always get exactly the animal that you want, and you can’t make a chicken start laying before it’s ready. You are captive to the bounds of biology - it’s not like ordering industrial components or stuff from Amazon. Still, we do our best to meet the demand for our products while farming in a way that is sustainable and healthy for the land, the animals and our customers.

So now that our new hens are laying, we encourage folks to try the pullet eggs!  They are small, but are also the best eggs we have each year. The egg yolks and whites are extremely firm and tasty and are easily poached. Chefs love to work with our pullet eggs, and they are great to use on salads and on top of dishes as an accent. Small, but tasty!  Within a few weeks the hens will continue to grow as they mature and so will their egg size. So while we will have a lot of pullet eggs in the next few weeks, gradually we will have more and more regular sized eggs available as well.

If you have any questions or comments about the brief egg shortage, or anything else, drop us a line! In the meantime, look forward in the near future to plenty of fresh pullet eggs in the store - but get them soon, because in a few weeks they’ll have grown to normal-sized eggs.  We also have a great supply of all of our meats, and a rapidly growing selection of our own Codman grown veggies and vegetarian items in the store!  Fresh chickens will be available all summer (schedule here), and even our own fresh fruit (coming soon: currants!). Thanks for your support of Codman, and as always you can reach me at jon@codmanfarm.org.

Until next time!

Jon


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