Many Hands Sustainability Center

Come join the Many Hands Organic Farm and Sustainability Center staff for our second annual Harvest Festival, free and open to the public. Last year we had lots of fun with games including apple bobbing, pin the tail on the pig and feather on the chicken, egg toss, sack races, treasure hunts, find the egg in the hay, gymnastics, a rotten tomato fight, and the wasp's nest piñata. We also held a country goods and services auction. You can find images of last year's Harvest Festival here.

With 19 years of experience running a CSA, Julie Rawson will discuss elements of a successful CSA operation. Topics we will cover:

• Maintaining top-notch organization
• Intricate timing for a broad mix of crops
• Planning for food storage and distribution
• Creative labor management
• Marketing strategy
• Deliveries
• Member services
• Bottom line

We will tour the farm and cover as much as we can on nutrient density focused fertility, season extension and crop successions. MHOF has a 35 member spring CSA, 120 summer, 65 fruit, 30 flower and 35 member fall CSA using 3 acres for vegetables, 1 acre for fruit and is certified by Baystate Organic Certifiers, also for meat chickens, layers, pigs and turkeys. Participants are invited bring a pot luck item and stay for lunch and more conversation after the workshop.

From this one day field training, you will:

• Learn basic agronomic principles of growing nutrient dense crops in a morning power point presentation.
• Learn key skills like taking brix and conductivity readings, applying base minerals, foliar sprays and nutrient drenches in a field demonstration.
• Walk through the workshop location observing a broad range of crops and discussing historical experience to integrate theoretical principles into practical knowledge.

Since this is offered as part of the NOFA/Massachusetts Practical Skills Workshop Series you will need to register here (pdf).

See our root cellar and learn to can, freeze, ferment, lacto-ferment, dry, and wine various fruits and vegetables. We will also discuss pork and chicken products and share our experience using season extension with hoop houses.

Learn how you can turn your organically grown fruits and berries into wine for celebrations and gifts. This hands-on demonstration will teach you about each stage in wine making. Help pick and clean fruit, squeeze it into juice, and start a batch of wine. Also learn how to advance a batch already in progress into its primary ferment, and work with a third batch which has finished its primary ferment and learn how to rack it and start the secondary ferment. Finally, see how to siphon a finished batch and bottle it.

Since this is offered as part of the NOFA/Massachusetts Practical Skills Workshop Series, you'll need to register for it on the Practical Skills Workshop page.

Join with Jack Kittredge for a hands-on pruning afternoon. We will prune apples, peaches, pears, cherries, plums, mulberry trees, and blueberries, elderberries and grapes. Learn how to get more, larger and better tasting fruit. Go home with an illustrated handbook so you can bring these principles to your own fruit operation. You can see a few pictures of the 2009 Pruning workshop here.

Julie Rawson has been farming at Many Hands Organic Farm for 29 years. We'll discuss soil fertility and preparation; when to plant for maximum production throughout the season; raised beds and spacing; timing for things like weeding, harvesting, cover cropping; raising your own transplants; mulches and under-sowing; and practical succession planting systems.

Since this workshop is offered as part of the Massachusetts Organic Gardening Workshop Day, you'll need to register for this workshop through NOFA/Mass.

Come join us on the farm for 3 hours of fun and work in the field. If you always wanted to find out what goes on behind the scenes on our CSA, or if you would like to learn more about how to raise your own food, this work day is for you. Children are welcome if supervised.

Please bring a meal for the pot luck lunch. This workshop is free to the public.

We annually raise 450 broilers, 75 layers and 60 turkeys in a certified organic free range system, and have raised poultry for over 25 years. We will spend the day with young chicks and turkey poults in the brooding house and adult layers and broilers in the field. We will cover field and permanent housing, pasture management, organic and soy-free feed, rotations, equipment, marketing, and perform hands on slaughter.

We will have a potluck lunch at noon.

Since this workshop is offered as part of the Massachusetts Backyard Poultry Workshop Day, you'll need to register for this workshop through NOFA/Mass.