10 Days Until Harvest Home!

Harvest Home Fall Festival and 5K will be taking place on Sunday November 3rd from 10:30am to 3pm at 37 Wheeler Road, North Grafton MA. Starting at 10:15am, there will be a kids fun run and 5K trail run. Athletes will run through beautiful trails on and around the farm before enjoying free admission to the festival. Festival tickets will be sold the day of for $10 per adult with a $30 family cap. Kids under 5 are free. Tickets can be purchased ahead of time here. Online registration for the 5K Trail Run will close on Thursday October 31st. There will be day of registration for $35. Register online here.

 We will be selling apples from our orchard in Harvard, merchandise and baked goods. There will be great food including butternut squash soup, chili, hotdogs, pulled pork and apple crisp. You can warm up by the fire with some hot apple cider and hot chocolate. Wachusett Brewery’s Wally Airstream will be joining the festival and will be serving craft beers and wine to attendees over 21. 

There will be hay wagon rides around the farm, petting zoos featuring rabbits, chickens, alpacas, goats, cattle, donkeys and baby potbelly pigs, a ton of kids crafts and face painting and an antique tractor for the perfect photo op. DJ Jam Events will be providing music for the 5K and the beginning of the day before Big Jon Short performs.

Water’s Corporation will be participating in a pumpkin trebuchet competition, launching pumpkins through the air all day. Guests are invited to shoot apples out of apple cannons.

 There will also be a scarecrow contest determined by popular vote, lawn games and a raffle, made possible by generous donations from local businesses across central Massachusetts. All proceeds from this event will go towards our mission of hunger relief. 

Generously Sponsored By: 

Harvard Pilgrim HealthCare Foundation – Unibank

Wegmans – Homefield Credit Union

 

Waters Corporation – Lampin Corporation – Halstead Insurance

Savers Bank – Window Logic – Mancuso Insurance

Reliant Medical Group – J.J. Bafaro Inc. – Scheier, Katin & Epstein PC

Pyne Sand & Stone Co Inc. – Koopman Lumber – Atchue Opticians

J.F. Cove Insurance Agency Inc. – Clifford Rano & Associates

Gaudette Insurance – Cornerstone Bank – LaBounty Family – Collette Motors

Leominster Credit Union – H&M Bay Inc. – Millbury Savings Bank

 

Read the rest of the October Sprout here!

End of Season Orchard Update

From our Orchard Manager, Susan:

In just a few weeks we will be ending the harvest activities for the 2019 season at the orchard (phew!).  It is a great feeling to see almost all of the fruit off the trees and the last boxes of apples from the cooler being shipped out to our partners.  While apple harvest is my favorite time of year, I do look forward to the quieter days of November and December and the tasks of putting the farm to bed for the winter months.

Before the temperatures really drop, there are some projects we will be working on to prepare for the winter and also get a jump start on the next growing season.  The apple trees will receive their fall application of fertilizer which will get them off to a good start in the coming Spring.  Mouse guards, which protect the tree trunks from winter mouse damage, will be installed on all of the young trees whose thin bark is most susceptible to girdling. Additionally, the property will get a final mowing, which also deters rodents from entering the orchard as they become exposed to predators without the tall grass to hide in.

As always, I would like to thank the volunteers that have helped and continue to help us at the orchard this year.  Whether you came to volunteer once or weekly, your hard work was much appreciated.  This year marked our first peach harvest from trees planted in 2017 with the help of volunteers.  We picked 20,000 pounds of apples from our two acre high-density trees, also planted with volunteers in 2016.  Every growing season has challenges but I am always uplifted when I see the people of the community working together to help grow healthy food for others in need.  Thank you!

Read the rest of the October Sprout here!

Help us reach ONE MILLION MORE pounds

Generous volunteers and contributors have made it possible for us to donate more than one million pounds of fresh produce to local hunger relief over the last five years. Fresh, nutritious fruits and vegetables were made available annually to 60,000 of our neighbors who don’t have enough nutrient-rich food to put on the table.

Food insecurity is a widespread but often invisible issue in our state. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines food insecurity as a lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life. For over 1 in 9 people, purchasing food becomes an uncertain choice. When limited funds are necessary for expenses such as rent, heat, transportation, and medication, the quality of the food that is available declines. There is an alarming cycle of food insecurity and chronic disease that begins when an individual or family cannot afford enough nutritious food.

This letter we received from a student volunteer named Kevin highlights just how critical fresh produce donations are:

“Thank you for taking on this amazing role in the community that other people wouldn’t take on. It’s difficult to be so helpful, so I’m grateful that you guys are taking on such a hard but extremely helpful task. Seriously, believe me, I appreciate you guys so much because for two years of my life my parents had to rely on food pantries to give me, my brother, and themselves proper nutrition. Without that, I wouldn’t be as healthy as I am today. What you guys do is save people, so I, and many others, want you to be recognized.”

Volunteers and contributors funded the vital supplies and tasks needed to get vegetables from our fields into the hands of those who need them, like Kevin. 

Because hunger in our community is not going away, we’re embarking on a campaign to donate ONE MILLION MORE pounds by 2025. If you donate today, $25 will provide 75 servings of green beans, $50 will provide 150 servings of leafy greens, and $100 will provide 300 servings of cabbage.

Please consider making a year-end gift to Community Harvest Project so we can donate ONE MILLION MORE pounds to those experiencing hunger. Together, we can ensure our neighbors have the nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables they need to thrive.

Thank you for your support!

Read the rest of the October Sprout here!

Volunteer of the Month: Team Leaders

Team Leaders and Staff at our orchard in Harvard

As we finish out the farming season here at CHP it is always a great time to reflect on our successes over the past months. As always the first thing that comes to mind is the power of our programming thanks to the dedicated team of Volunteer Team Leaders that support our work. Without this great group of welcoming, engaging and committed volunteers the work of our farms would not be possible. We are incredibly lucky to have this group on our side and on the front lines representing us as the face of the organization on a daily basis. If you visited our farms this season you are likely to have a story of your own about how inspiring our Volunteer Team Leaders are.  

We regularly hear great comments from our volunteers about their visits and are always impressed when someone leaves our farms and remembers a name. Comments like “Bruce was an awesome team leader. He was knowledgeable and friendly. Thank you for having us. We will be sure to come back again!” let us know just how valuable these connections are. Every day we are lucky enough to be surrounded by this great group as a supporting cast. There are so many ways to describe all that they inject into our work and how much they give of themselves to make our programming run smoothly day in and day out. 

With that we could not miss the opportunity to applaud our Volunteer Team Leaders as our Volunteers of the Month for October. We would like to thank them for all that they are and all that they do to make it look seamless to the thousands of volunteers that support us over a season. We would like to offer a sincere thanks and acknowledgement of their role at Community Harvest Project. We can’t thank them enough and are humbled by their presence on a daily basis. Thanks to an amazing group of Volunteer Team Leaders, we can’t do this great work without your support!

Read the rest of the October Sprout here!

What’s Cooking: Quinoa Salad

For September’s cooking classes we learned all about whole grains! Whole grains are grains that are less processed than refined grains, leaving the bran and germ intact (refined grains are just the endosperm of the seed). This makes have a higher fiber content which means they take longer to digest and therefore make you feel full longer, and more vitamins and minerals than their refined counterparts.

For the cooking class we made a summery version of this quinoa salad with peaches, cherry tomatoes, and corn. Now that we’re well into fall we adapted it with apples and roasted squash.

There are just a few more cooking classes for the year left! Click the class titles below to see the full class descriptions and sign your child up.

Broccoli Head Chefs (9-12 year olds)

• You Can Make Pasta – Wednesday, November 6th, 2019, 4-6pm
• It’s a Party! – Tuesday, December 10th, 2019, 4-6pm

Celery Sous Chefs (5-8 year olds)

• Personalize Your Pizza – Thursday, November 14th, 2019, 4-5pm
• Personalize Your Pizza – Monday, November 18th, 2019, 4:30-5:30pm
• Delightful Dips – Wednesday, December 4th, 2019, 4-5pm
• Delightful Dips – Thursday, December 12th, 2019, 4:30-5:30pm

Quinoa Salad with Apple and Squash

Adapted from https://www.twopeasandtheirpod.com/summer-farro-salad/ 

INGREDIENTS:

FOR THE SALAD:

• 2 cups cooked quinoa
• 5 kale leaves, torn into small pieces
• 1 large apple, pitted and chopped
• 2 cups roasted squash or sweet potato
• A large handful basil, torn into pieces

FOR THE DRESSING:

• ⅓ cup olive oil
• 3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
• Kosher salt and black pepper, to taste

DIRECTIONS:

1. In a jar combine olive oil, vinegar, a pinch of salt, and a few grinds of pepper. Shake to combine.
2. In a large bowl combine the quinoa, kale, roasted squash/sweet potato, and basil. Add the dressing and toss to combine. 
3. Enjoy!

Read the rest of the October Sprout here!