Pick Your Own STRAWBERRIES:  

Please CALL AHEAD to confirm availability  

PLEASE BUY BERRIES from your local berry farmers, and remember, recent challenging weather means a shorter and earlier season:

One farmer recently said: "The season is going to be shorter and earlier than usual  (with not much time between early and late varieties), so if you "wait until school is out", "or until Father's Day", "or until we're on vacation"... you may miss out. 

"The berries may be a little bit smaller this year.  Many growers with earlier varieties lost many of the King blooms during fluctuating temperatures this spring.  The kings are what produce the biggest berries.   It's been a very tough season already so support your local berry farmers no matter what size the berries are.  The smaller berries often have better flavor anyways ." 

Farmers Markets are open!  

         Hurray!!!!!!!!!!               Support your local farmer

Tuesdays (except Third Thursdays): * Pittsfield Farmers' Market on North Street 

Wednesdays: * Berkshire Area Farmers' Market at Lanesborough

Thursdays:   

* West Stockbridge Farmers' Market
* Farmers' Market at CHP in Great Barrington 

* Third Thursday Pittsfield Farmers Market

Fridays:  

* Lenox Farmers' Market

* The Sheffield Farmers' Market  

Saturdays:

* Berkshire Area Farmers Market at Lanesborough  

* Berkshire Community Market opens June 16 at Berkshire South   

* Great Barrington Farmers' Market

* Otis Farmers Market 

* Pittsfield Farmers' Market, Park Square

* Norfolk Farmers' Market

* Williamstown Farmers' Market   

   Photo of  Roberto Flores, Good Dogs Farm, thanks to Rural Intelligence 

 FIND FARMERS' MARKETS  on MAP-O-LICIOUS 

A regional farm property clearinghouse!

Find Farmland!   List property!

New England Farmland Finder makes it easy for farm properties to be posted, and for farm seekers to search through them.   It is free, simple, region-wide, automated and constantly current, serving as a friendly portal for property holders and farmland seekers.

This website was created to help New England's farm seekers and farm property holders find each other. For many new and established farmers, simply finding available land is a huge challenge. On the other side of the equation, more and more private, public and organizational landowners want to make land available for farming. They want farmers to find them.   

Green School's new Sustainable Vegetable Production Track is a comprehensive curriculum geared to commercial farmers, agricultural professionals and experienced gardeners. The course uses a systems approach to teach the principles of vegetable production relevant to the New England climate and beyond. In-depth classes will highlight all aspects of research-based, sustainable production relevant to both organic and conventional systems.  Topics include soil fertility, nutrient and pest management, cover crop use, how to establish rotations, and the use of season extension techniques.  The use of enterprise budgets as a tool to estimate costs and returns in a market driven system will also be covered.

Green School is a comprehensive certificate short course for Green Industry and agricultural professionals held bi-annually and taught by UMass Extension specialists and University of Massachusetts faculty.  The Green School curriculum, which emphasizes a systems-based approach to plant care and food production, is based on current research and focuses on environmental stewardship, Best Management Practices (BMPs) and integrated pest management (IPM).

 The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making  by Great Barrington author Alana Chernila 

Discover her blog: eating from the ground up 

Strawberries, Balsamic Vinegar and mint recipe   

Meet the author Thursday, June 28: Signing books at the West Stockbridge Farmers' Market, 3:00-7:00 pm.

What We're Reading

"Whoever at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) is doing the analysis and summaries of the farm bill deserves much praise for performing a major public service.

"The Senate version of the bill under discussion right now is 1009 pages long and estimated to cost taxpayers $969 billion over the next ten years, of which nearly 80 percent goes for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps).

"The NSAC account deals with the big issues: the lack of conservation requirements attached to taxpayer subsidies for crop insurance, the enormous complexity of the bill, and the lack of an overriding vision of what the farm bill should do.

"In one sense, the Senate bill reflects not so much a new farm policy as a new, confusing, and costly set of options targeted at different segments of commodity agriculture...the emerging bill is a bundle of contradictions with respect to subsidy caps and conservation requirements.... This results from, among other things, the complete lack of clearly identified policy goals....All of this would be complicated enough by itself, but as the headlines and hearings of the past several weeks amply demonstrate, before this farm bill is finished, it will very likely get more complicated still."

"As I have said repeatedly, the farm bill is a vast collection of specific programs aimed at specific constituencies, each with its own lobbyists and congressional supporters. It is so big and covers so many issues that nobody in Congress can possibly be expected to understand more than a tiny fraction of what is involved. Hence: lobbyists.

Read more "The Absurdities of the Farm Bill" at Atlantic.com

Originally appeared on Nestle's site "Food Politics": What's at stake in the Farm Bill? 

Quick Bites

DISCOVER THE:  

Berkshire Grown Online Farmers' Market

a 24 hour Farmers' Market! 

Self-propelled by Berkshire Grown members, the page benefits those of you who choose to participate in it. Farmers and food producers can post what they have available, and chefs and community members can comment or contact suppliers directly with requests for product or more information.   

Thanks for the photo of The Berry Patch's "Luscious Lettuce" to Dale Ila Riggs who posted it on Facebook.

Berkshire Grown offers this as a networking service and bears no responsibility for transactions.

MASSACHUSETTS GROWN...and FRESHER!  

 If you are traveling through Massachusetts check out this map, support our local farmers throughout the state!

More details here