Come join us for a weekend perfect for the whole family at our second annual “Carolyn’s Garden” Sunflower Festival on Saturday August 3rd and Sunday August 4th from 10am to 3pm. The weekend will be featuring our gorgeous sunflower field that will be open for all ages to explore and pick your own flowers from and will serve as a great background for your summer photos. Pack a lunch or grab a bite to eat from a food truck and enjoy a picnic complete with fun lawn games, crafts and activities for the kids, and ice cream!
Tickets for the event are $10 per adult and include 5 sunflowers. Additional sunflowers, as well as zinnias and amaranth can be purchased for $1 each. Adult tickets do not include kids’ activities, but a $5 Kids Pass will be available for purchase the day of the event. Kid Passes do not include picked flowers, but they can be purchased separately. Kids under 3 are free. Adult tickets can be purchased ahead of time here.
Read the rest of the July Sprout here!
Photos by Norm Eggert Photography.
As we move further into July, the farm is transitioning from tending season to harvesting season. We are all very excited about the progress on the farm, especially the interns! Most of us haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing the harvesting process here at CHP. Recently, with the help of our volunteers, we harvested cases of lettuce, kale, and collard greens that were distributed to the Worcester County Food Bank. During our tour of the food bank, we even got to see the greens that we harvested separated out on pallets to be distributed to folks in the area. Spending the summer as an intern at CHP is really rewarding and we’ve been learning so much with the help of the staff and regular team leaders that come in each week. It’s been incredibly uplifting to witness each stage the vegetables go through, from planting, tending, and then setting up irrigation, to now harvesting. Also, seeing volunteers return excited to get to tend to the crops that they planted is so awesome!! What was really surprising to us was seeing how involved the volunteers really are in everything we do on the farm. They are absolutely vital in the operation here at CHP and we are feeling very grateful for the amount of people that are involved.
In our time at the Orchard, we have been doing the out-of-season maintenance that is required to produce the apples that CHP distributes every year. The orchard is 75 acres, so there is quite a bit of work that must be done in order to ensure the quality and health of our apple trees. One of our biggest projects has been painting the trunks of the apple trees white to protect them from sun damage in the winter. In the winter, the tree trunks are so much darker than the snow, that they get burned in the sun, which can kill them. We have also spent a lot of time replacing mouse guards, small wire cages that are wrapped around the tree trunks to prevent mouse damage to the bark. These tasks seem tedious, but are crucial to the growth of the trees, and they ensure apples will continue to thrive year after year. In addition to maintaining the apple trees, we have done some general upkeep work around the orchard, such as clearing plant growth from the fences and breaking down an unused greenhouse, which opens up more land to be utilized by CHP in the future. 
Have you been thinking about volunteering and getting involved in your community? Do you have strong communication and leadership skills? Would you like to support hunger relief efforts while spending time in the great outdoors? Does leading diverse groups of volunteers in farm activities sound of interest? Would you consider volunteering in a key position at Community Harvest Project as a Volunteer Team Leader? If so, we need you! 
We’re deep into salad season. There is nothing better than picking fresh vegetables right from the garden, making a quick vinaigrette and tossing together a salad. We’ve made dressing with kids as young as 2, who got great joy from picking the oregano, squeezing the lemons, measuring out the other ingredients, and giving everything a good shake in a jar (which you can do instead of the whisking suggested below).
Community Harvest Project Blog 