Skill-Building in the Off Season: Berkshire Grown’s Winter Workshops

By Martha Jackson Suquet

Image courtesy Riiska Brook Farm, Sandisfield.

Amidst taking stock of the past season and planning for the next, putting together seed orders, crop plans, and grazing maps, applying for farmers markets, and making wholesale commitments, farmers often use the winter months to squeeze in a little education.

Farming is a surprisingly technical endeavor, and a successful farmer or farm team needs to build knowledge across a range of subjects. No matter how much experience a farmer has, there are always new recommendations, new threats, new crop varieties, and new technologies to learn about. Many sources for farmer education help fill those needs: university extension programs, conferences, courses, books, listservs, and the age-old tradition of chatting with other farmers at markets.

Berkshire Grown offers an annual series of winter workshops for farmers. Despite the availability of other educational resources, there is a place for locally-focused workshops that can be tailored to the specific needs of Berkshire area farmers. Now in our ninth season of workshops, we’ve offered sessions covering a wide range of topics ranging from no-till farming to social media strategies to effective meat marketing, and more. Since 2020, most workshops have been held virtually. While the pandemic has brought about a certain amount of “Zoom fatigue”, hosting virtual meetings allows busy farmers to attend without extra travel time, and allows Berkshire Grown to pull experts in from a wider geographic range to lead the sessions.

The workshops fall under the scope of our Program Manager, Alyssa VanDurme, who transitioned into the position just as the current workshop season began. “The things I enjoy most about my job are the opportunities for learning and engaging with our community of farmers,” Alyssa notes, and the workshops are a key part of that element of the job. “It’s all about helping support the needs of our local farmer and foods business members.”

The current workshop season kicked off with “Incorporating Perennial Crops on Your Farm”. Agroforestry expert Jono Neiger of the Regenerative Design Group shared strategies for farmers looking to diversify their offerings while continuing to work their land regeneratively. Key points included which perennial crops are best suited for our climate, the market opportunities for those crops, and potential funding sources for farmers looking to add perennial crops to their farm.

Next up was the first of a two-part “Grant Writing for Farmers” series, led by food systems consultant Kara Weinstein. The first session took a deep dive into understanding grant funding sources for farmers, how to interpret a grant application, and tips for a successful grant proposal. In part two, participants presented their responses to a sample grant application question and received constructive feedback to help guide them in future proposals.

In “SNAP/HIP Best Practices”, Zoey Sloate helped farmers better understand how to create an inclusive and welcoming environment around food benefit programs at their farm store, CSA, or farmers market. Food benefit programs like SNAP (food stamps) and the Massachusetts-specific Healthy Incentives Program (HIP) can help farmers attract more customers and make local food affordable for more shoppers. The workshop covered language choices, checkout set-ups, online shopping options, and technical issues.

“Move Well, Work Well”, the final workshop of this season, will be an in-person Labor-Movement session. Cynthia Flores will teach farmers ways to move their bodies as they work on the farm in order to reduce injury and fatigue. This is a popular topic for farmers, and it is the workshop that Alyssa, who farms in addition to her work at Berkshire Grown, is most excited about. “I know firsthand how farming takes a physical toll, and taking care of our bodies is often an afterthought”, she explains. “The work that Cynthia is doing is so important to farmer well-being, and really aligns with our mission to Keep Farmers Farming!”

Agriculture in the Berkshires is so varied that each new workshop season offers Berkshire Grown the opportunity to dive into new subjects, or explore past topics with a fresh perspective. To learn what our member farmers might need in terms of short-term, focused education, we send them an annual survey with questions about challenges, obstacles, specific needs and interests, and we plan our workshops accordingly.

Healey-Driscoll Administration Declares March “Massachusetts Maple Month”

Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources

To celebrate a new agricultural season in Massachusetts, Governor Maura Healey declared March as Massachusetts Maple Month. Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR) Commissioner Ashley Randle joined state and local officials and representatives from the Massachusetts Maple Producers Association at Severance Maple Products in Northfield to raise awareness of the state’s maple sugar industry and to encourage residents to visit their local sugar house and purchase locally made maple products.

The visit to Severance Maple Products included a tour of their operations and retail store, along with a reading of a Governor’s Proclamation and ceremonial tapping of a maple tree to commemorate the official start of the sugaring season. Owners Milt and Robin Severance have been sugaring since 1976. Their first year yielded a couple of gallons of maple syrup, but today, they produce a couple thousand gallons annually. All of their products are produced locally in Northfield at their sugarhouse kitchen, with availability online, in local stores, and at craft and agricultural fairs in the area.

Massachusetts is one of the top maple-producing states in the country, home to over 300 maple producers that produce more than 70,000 gallons per year. The sector employs over a thousand people, contributing over $15 million to the local economy. Maple sugaring profits allow many Massachusetts farms to stay in business year-round by diversifying their offerings, serving as a supplemental source of income to their other crops.

Read MDAR's entire press release here.

Find the Best Maple Syrup, Maple Products, and Sugar Shacks in the Berkshires by Using Berkshire Grown's searchable map!

Scenes from around the 2024 Maple Season in the Berkshires. Upper left and clockwise: Sweet Brook Farm, Williamstown, Justamere Tree Farm, Worthington, Turner Farms Maple Syrup, South Egremont, and Holiday Brook Farm, Dalton.

How Sugar Maple Trees Work

Explaining Sap Flow

Sap flow from sugar maples is entirely temperature dependent. A rise in temperature of the sapwood to above 32 degrees F. causes a positive pressure within the wood. This pressure produces the sap flow. Many people assume that maple sap flows up from the tree’s roots on warm days. Actually—on warm spring days which follow cold nights—sap can flow down from the maple tree’s branches and then out the spout. The sap can also flows back and forth laterally within the tree. It will flow out a hole drilled into the tree or out through a broken or cut branch. The internal pressure of the tree, when it is greater than the atmospheric pressure, causes the sap to flow out, much the same way blood flows out of a cut. If you visualize a portion of a tree trunk as being under positive pressure, a taphole is like a leak, sap moves towards the point of lowest pressure from all directions.

Read the entire article here.

Our Last Winter Market is April 20!

Housy Dome, 1064 Main Street, Housatonic, MA

10AM-2PM

Help support programs like the

Winter Farmers Market.

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What we're reading:

How Climate Change Is Impacting the Maple Syrup Industry

By Lauren Milideo for UVM

As New England winters get warmer, Vermont maple producers are innovating in the face of climate change

Image below courtesy of the Library of Congress.

In the depths of winter, sugar on snow is a yearly treat many Vermonters eagerly anticipate. But with winters warming and snow barely on the ground in some parts of the state, climate change presents a host of challenges for Vermont’s iconic maple industry.

Loss of suitable growing conditions, coupled with increasing pressure from invasive insects and plants, are creating “real threats,” says University of Vermont maple specialist Mark Isselhardt. But maple syrup has never been a predictable crop, he says, and producers are adopting new strategies, from improved technologies to boost production, to forest management practices to keep the sap flowing in our warmer, wetter future.

How is climate change affecting maple production in Vermont, Quebec and the surrounding region?

Vermont is among the fastest-warming states in the U.S., along with the rest of the Northeast. The biggest short-term threats to maple producers include high wind events, late frost or sudden, extreme warming episodes, such as those seen in 2012 and 2021, which can end the sap run prematurely for the year. Over the long term, the loss of ideal conditions for both recruitment of regeneration and growth of established crop trees, which have made Vermont the top domestic syrup producer and responsible for half of all the syrup made in the United States, will play a significant role in determining whether sugaring remains sustainable long-term.

Read the entire article here.

Digging into Regenerative Farming in the Berkshires

The practice was the focus of the documentary "Common Ground" screening in Lenox on March 22

By Leslee Bassman for The Berkshire Edge

At The Farm at April Hill in South Egremont, visitors can hear the whoosh of the wind amid the trees. The farm uses regenerative practices that only include hand tools. Photo by Leslee Bassman.

Visitors to The Farm at April Hill in South Egremont don’t hear the loud whirr of tractors or machinery. About an acre in size, April Hill is a hand-scale farm, meaning its crew doesn’t use any mechanized equipment—hand tools only so the soil structure remains intact and healthy, as Farm Director Sarah Monteiro explained.

The practice is the subject of “Common Ground,” a documentary selected by the Berkshire International Film Festival was part of its year-round Environmental Film Focus series that was shown on March 22 at Lenox Town Hall. Roaring Brook Family Foundation is sponsoring the 90-minute film that features big-name stars including Rosario Dawson, Laura Dern, Donald Glover, Woody Harrelson, Jason Momoa, and Ian Somerhalder. It is an award-winning sequel to “Kiss the Ground,” a documentary from the same producers, Josh and Rebecca Tickell.

In its seventh year, the series chose “Common Ground” for its focus on regenerative agricultural practices, efforts to improve the health of the soil housing the country’s crops, reduce erosion, and implement carbon sequestration (the act of removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in an attempt to reduce greenhouse gases), said Lillian Lennox, international programmer for BIFF and member of the Roaring Brook Family Foundation’s Board of Trustees. “Regenerative farming practices stand in opposition to industrial farming,” she said.

Industrial farming involves the use of chemical fertilizers, laboratory genetic modification, and monocropping (growing the same crop year after year on the same land), with the latter exhausting the soil, turning it into “a dustbowl,” Lennox said.

“Regenerative agriculture is a response to that, to keep the soil incredibly healthy, and this [practice] is very deeply explored in ‘Common Ground,’” she said. “It’s an important story. We need to keep telling this story.”

Read the full article here.

Use the 2023 Guide to Local Food & Farms as a resource to find local farms offering summer CSA's.

Watch for the 2024 Guide in early May!

The 2023 Guide to Local Food & Farms remains the region’s most comprehensive guide to local farms, farmers markets, and restaurants offering local foods.

Use it to find farm stands, CSA farms, pick-your-own farms and orchards, as well as locally sourced value-added products like charcuterie, preserves, and fermented foods and locations and hours of food pantries spread across the county.

You can also find the best in locally grown food and products near you by using Berkshire Grown's searchable map!

Shop the (Winter) B erkshire Farmers Markets

Find fresh, local food all year long!

Winter farmers markets in Pittsfield, North Adams, Great Barrington, Williamstown, Bennington (VT), and Millerton (NY) continue through April.

Visit Berkshire Farmers Markets to find your local farmers market. Summer markets will be announced soon!

Use SNAP or HIP, WIC or Senior Coupons? Many of the markets offer Market Match and other budget-boosting programs. Visit Berkshire Farmers Markets for dates, locations, and more information on where SNAP, HIP and other benefits are honored. Click here to learn about HIP program basics and FAQs.

Hannaford, located at 32 State Route 82 in Hudson, NY will donate $1 to Share the Bounty, a Berkshire Grown program, for every specially marked Bloomin' 4 Good bouquet purchased during March.