Codman Farm

Codman Farm is a jewel of a treasure right in the heart of Lincoln. It has so much to offer, that whether you are gardening, looking after chickens, collecting the eggs, observing the turkeys on Thanksgiving, or watching the larger farm animals the individual components are worth more than its whole. So how did I get to Codman Farm?

The journey began about eight years ago when I read about the protests against Genetically Modified (GM) Foods in the UK. What was GM Food and why was it not being discussed in our newspapers? I decided I need to pay attention to what was going on with our food. I read and talked to as many people as I could and signed up for a graduate course on the environment and focused on GM food.

I started shopping at Whole Foods in Cambridge where I found lamb and salmon that tasted like the food I had eaten as a child. The lamb was grass fed from New Zealand and the salmon was wild from Alaska. What on earth had I eaten before?

Eventually I learned about the practice of feeding our animals corn instead of letting them forage for themselves and this sent me on a quest for grass fed meat (Whole Foods meat is corn finished) which I found at Lionettes’ in the South End. After several conversations with James Lionette, I learned about their mission of buying local. This led me to join a group of local Belmont residents who decided they would like to establish a farmers’ market in town and a year later in 2006, we had our market.

During 2007, I conducted a series of interviews for the Belmont Farmers’ Market newsletter: Francis Moore Lappe who wrote the Diet for a Small Planet, Russ and Marion Morash from the PBS Victory Garden series, Tom Johnson a Raspberry Farmer in Concord, and Jody Adams of the Rialto restaurant in Cambridge were all selected to cover the entire cycle of the food process. Francis imparted on me the importance of buying locally and organic if possible. Russ and Marion’s love of gardening and their enthusiasm for the quality of the produce that the earth gives them could not be ignored. Tom Johnson, a raspberry farmer taught me what hard work and a love of the land can do for you. Jody Adams taught me how being passionate about something is to the key to life’s changes. At the end of the interviews I thought I should be growing my own food but how to do this when I don’t have a car. In April 2007, after a car accident, I decided that given the state of the environment I could not in all good consciousness go out and buy a car. This would mean that I was totally ignoring our contribution to global warming and I’m not.

In May a friend offered to show me how to grow vegetables at Codman Farm which I could reach via the commuter rail. She shared her plot with me and I planted some seeds and some plants: Tomatoes, peppers, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, parsnips, arugula, lettuce, and beets. I planted all my Brussels plants in one hole, apparently this was not correct.

In June, I was given my own half a plot. Weeding it was a lot of work and after I was done I planted beans, leeks and carrots. While I was sprinkling seeds into the rows I had dug I kept thinking of goldfish. If you give them more than a few sprinkles of fish food you have over feed them and soon they die, I wondered what happens if you sprinkle too many seeds in one spot. I guess I will find out. Sunflowers are popping up all over the lot. They proliferate like crazy, they don’t even ask if you want them in your plot they just arrive while you are sleeping and make them selves cozy.

On the lot that I am sharing, my lettuces look nice. The Brussels are pushing up and I have some beet leaves showing. Now, if these all come up together I will be eating very well in June/July but wonder what I will have for the rest of the year? I read that lots of these vegetables are available for 4-1/2 months so I wonder if they just keep growing after I have picked them. I will have to find out; I think I need to learn what grows when, and what plants are beneficial to plant next to each other.

I look around at other peoples’ gardens and they have teepees and cloth over their plantings, and fencing, and …I guess I have a lot to learn. I keep getting distracted by all the four legged animals on the farm. They are all adorable. The cows appear to have a personality (I always thought they were dumb animals), the bunnies and hens are cute. Did you know that hens recognize your voice, or footsteps or something? Or maybe it’s the food, they love brie! I don’t think I will attend a chicken beheading it would be enough to turn me into a vegetarian.

Gardening is sure putting a dent in my social life. I tried reserving two evenings a week in my calendar for gardening, but then it would rain and everything got screwed up. My friend says I cannot schedule gardening and anyway that is my entertainment; fat chance! When I invite friends to eat my carrots, Brussels and beets they better give them due deference, as a lot more went into them then they know.

It is now July. I have so many lettuces I don’t’ know what to do with them, so I fed them to the hens and the goats. Then the cauliflowers were ready. Next year I will have to plan better as within a week they were all ready. The weather has been very cooperative as it rained at least two days each week since I started this venture. My plot of land is a bit of a disaster though, as I did not mark anything. Now I am not sure what is weeds and what are vegetables. Reading this diary I see that I planted leeks which I completely forget but I did recognize the carrots. Unfortunately I planted them to close together so I am not sure what they will be like. At the end of July I pulled the first Sun Gold tomatoes and oh my! It was worth the effort I cannot wait for more. My Brussels sprouts are very tiny but I wonder why they have such huge leaves to grow; I really don’t understand why they hog so much space.


August is here and I just found some zucchini that I completely forgot I planted. It was covered with large leaves and when I found it I was astonished. It weighted 15lbs and I have three of them, what an earth will I do with them. Maybe feed the chickens! There is an abundance of tomatoes at last; warm and tasty, they taste of what; the Sun, the Earth? No, it is more than that, for somehow they directly connected me to the earth and made me realize how precious our world is and that we only have one. I named the tomato Yo Yo Ma because it invoked in me the same sort of feelings as his music does; it put me into another planetary sphere. I am astonished to see the change in the garden plots. At the beginning of the season there was nothing, then there was orderly growth, and now they look in disarray as the gardening season is coming to an end. Next year I will do better.

Published in the Lincoln, MA Journal Dec 11, 2007: Guest Column
www.wickedlocal.com/lincoln/news/lifestyle/columnists/x1908588664
www.codmanfarm.org