We’re opening the Farmstand again this Saturday for a special pre-order only veggie pickup day. During this health crisis we want to continue to provide healthy & nutritious veggies to our community. We want to reduce the spread of Covid-19 at every point possible, but also not contribute to any food panic. This is our best idea for now.

Pre-order your veggies & farm products on our online store and come to the Farmstand between 10am – 2pm on Saturday, March 28th for a low-touch pickup outside the Farmstand on the front porch. Your pre-paid order will all be packed and ready to go. Please practice social distancing while you’re at the Farmstand and help us keep the interaction as low-contact and low-risk as possible.

Jordan Brothers Seafood will also be set up at the Farmstand on Saturday from 10am – 2pm with fresh fish, shellfish, and delicious chowders and bisques. Please pre-order by emailing the Jordan crew at jordanbrothersseafood@yahoo.com.

If you’d like to pay for your order with SNAP and/or HIP, email us your order and we’ll pre-pack it and run your card at pickup.

More items may also be added to the online store tomorrow, as we secure veggies from other local farms.

Farming in the era of Covid-19

There’s a lot of uncertainty right now about what the future days, weeks, and months will look like, and that can feel really destabilizing. We’ve been getting questions about how the Covid-19 crisis is affecting the farm. We have a few answers to share.

First, we’re obviously following the CDC, MDPH, and Easton BOH mandates and guidelines on how we run the farm: tons of hand washing, using lots of disposable gloves, social distancing, not working if sick, basically anything and everything we can do to reduce the spread of germs and keep our food, our customers, and our crew safe and healthy.

Under Governor Baker’s essential services exemption, we are continuing operation of the farm (we’re food producers, food wholesalers, and food retailers all in one). Given the mild winter we’ve enjoyed, we have been able to start our spring field prep early and we expect to be out planting by the end of the week, which is definitely ahead of schedule. For right now we haven’t made significant changes to our crop plan for this season, though we have pushed up the planting schedule on a few things, which the weather has been kindly accommodating.

Our crew is pretty excited to be back out in the field. We’ve been doing some tilling to prepare fields for imminent planting, as well as cover cropping some other fields. Getting a spring cover crop in now means we can get a few months of soil health-building before we plant it this summer with crops that we’ll harvest in the fall.

There’s some good news that we’re excited to share. This season we’re leasing a new piece of land, called the Marshall Farm, from the Oliver Ames family. It’s close to 25 acres, nearby Langwater, and it will allow us to expand production a bit this year. We’re transitioning that field to organic production immediately, though it will be 3 years before everything we grow there can be labeled certified organic. For this season, we’ll be growing Sweet Corn, Pumpkins, and a few other crops there, which frees up some other field space at Langwater to grow more organic veggie crops and soil-building cover crops.

No Winter Markets

For the next few weeks, we won’t be at either of our usual winter farmers markets. The Original Easton Farmers Market is closed for this week and we are choosing not to go to the Pawtucket Wintertime Market. We think the outdoor pre-order veggie pickup we’re offering at the Farmstand this Saturday is safer and lower-risk for both our customers and our crew. For our southern Langwater fans, our veggies will still be available via delivery through Market Mobile and Whatsgood (see above for more info).

Thank you for your support at the markets these last few weeks. We think our decision at this time is the best option (or maybe the least-worst option) given the circumstances.