Raspberries Saved Their Land

Silferleaf Farm

In Concord, Massachusetts, Svea Johnson and her son Tom have been growing organic raspberries on their farm for over 20 years. Silferleaf farm came into being in 1978 when Svea decided that she needed a way to get the land to pay for itself. Svea was recently divorced, raising two small children, and working as a nurse and so things were not easy for the family. One day she sat down and wondered how she could use the open fields to get the land pay towards its upkeep. What would give her a decent return for her efforts while not taking a lot of time? Both raspberries and blue berries were considered. She checked around to see if there were any other local growers of these fruits and finding there was not, decided on raspberries as they would produce berries the following year. She made the decision to plant an everbearing variety, so she would only have one crop in the fall, and thus avoid the summer heat. Svea and her son Tom cleared the first field of brush and several cedar trees and in1978 plowed the field. In spring the entire extended family was involved in the process of planting the little sticks and roots. So began the job of hard work, lots of learning about life and running a business.

Silferleaf Farm occupies eleven acres and is a natural work of beauty with ponds, woods, and fields.. Back in the 1800s there was a dairy farm on this land along with a guesthouse for vacationing city people who arrived by train from Boston. In WWII it was a chicken farm and now it is a raspberry farm and so the farming tradition continues!

On average, the land yields 2000 lbs of raspberries per acre during the 6-8 weeks growing season. The Johnson’s raise the fruit on two acres of land of which a portion is always fallow. They rotate the crop every 12 years allowing for a 3-year rest before replanting. On another small piece of land the family grows their own vegetables and has planted a few apple and peach trees.

From the beginning the decision was made that it would be a “Pick Your Own” farm which means they essentially have no labor costs. If they had to pay local labor costs they feel that they would not have a viable operation because they would be competing against California berries that are picked under much better conditions and much lower labor costs.

Even though they only have one crop on two acres of land they are constantly rotating, fertilizing, weeding (we go across the fields 3 times a year) along with hand weeding, trellising, and monitoring the drip irrigation system. Long durations of rain will destroy the crop so this is always a worry and one that is out of their hands. High humidity is another problem as it will cause molding on the bush. They decided to grow a heritage long time standard of fall bearing variety raspberry so that the bushes could be pruned mechanically and cut down at the end of the year. The summer bearing variety, produces several crops but has to be hand pruned which is why they didn’t choose it. Raspberries are one fruit where the flavor is locked in the moment you pick it, they do not continue to ripen once you pick them. The more ripe the raspberry the more flavor they have.

As is natural when you have an abundance of raspberries on your doorstop, Svea started looking for something to do with them. In Sweden, where Svea’s parents were from, they take any fruit and thicken it with potato flour to make a pudding and that was the first thing she made with the raspberries. The following year they had an excess of berries and Svea made some raspberry fusion and sold a few bottles at the farm stand Two yeas ago they decided to go ahead and get the kitchen certified by the town and the state so they could expand the sales of the Raspberry Infusion. The infusion is a brilliant idea, because when it rains people don’t come out to pick and wet raspberries do not have a shelf life.

When they began production, the majority of their customers were people who came to pick their berries. They have now expanded the distribution to include some local shops in their town and two branches of Whole Foods Markets. Word has since been spreading on the product and they are now receiving calls regularly from people looking for it. Bottles will be available again in September 2007.

The raspberry infusion is great on ice cream, salads, spritzers, as a vegetable glaze or a meat marinade. It can be purchased directly from Silverleaf Farmm 460 Strawberry Hill Road, Concord. You Pike starts in September, call for more information at 978-369-3624 or email Silferleaf@cs.com.

Published in edibleBoston Summer 2007 and Farmers Markets Today Dec/Jan 2008

My writing can be found at http://www.edibleboston.net/index.htm and www.belmontfarmersmarket.org/newsletters/2007