http://www.berkshireeagle.com/ci_13196665

POTTING SPREE AT PROJECT NATIVE IS UNDER WAY!!! 
Our plugs are ready sooner than anticipated and we need all the help we can get
potting our native perennials.  If these baby plants over grow their
container they get potbound and can quickly decompensate.  Until the end of
August we will be racing to pot up nearly 5,000 plugs. 
We welcome help from individuals or groups in the area
anytime.  All ages and levels of experience welcome and encouraged to help
out.   If you’ve got an hour, a week, or an hour a week and want to
volunteer on the farm we would be extremely grateful! 

Potting not your thing? 
The time you spend volunteering at other tasks on the farm could free up someone
else so they can pot.  Call 413-274-3433 for more information or just stop
by the farm during business hours.  Project Native is located at 342 North
Plain Road (Route 41) in Housatonic, MA.

www.projectnative.org

projectnative@verizon.net

I have difficult news to share: the epidemic of
Late Blight, a tomato and potato disease which has destroyed tomato crops all
over the northeast and mid-Atlantic regions this season has come to our
neighborhood.

Within a period of days last week, farmer after farmer
ripped out all of his/her tomato plants because the blight destroyed the crop.
By Friday, I found the fungus in our fields, as well. The prognosis is
not good–organic fungicide is not a powerful tool against this
disease–nevertheless my crew and I spent the last three days spraying each and
every one of our nearly 2500 plants and we are hoping stubbornly that we might
save a few.

 This has been a shocking blow for me and my fellow
farmers and I know this news will sadden and disappoint you, too. I am
scrambling to make a new plan for the fields and to get additional fall crops
in the ground as quickly as possible. I will not be planting fall
potatoes because the pathogen that causes this disease attacks potato plants,
too (it is the same disease that caused the Irish Potato Famine) and if the
fungus makes it from the potato foliage down into the tubers, themselves, it
will dwell in the soil and won’t be killed off by the frost because it is below
the frost line.

As you can imagine, the spectre and then the reality
of losing our entire tomato crop has been devastating to me and to the Farm
Girl Farm crew–as well as, of course, all of the other area farmers who have
lost their crops. From painstakingly choosing the varieties in January
for the perfect array of early, middle-, and late-season ripeners, color shape
and size…to starting the seedlings and potting them up into bigger cells and
watering and fertilizing and transplanting outside…to buying and laying the
plastic and buying and pounding in the stakes and trellising, trellising,
trellising, we have invested enormous time, money, and love into our tomato
crop. To lose these plants, laden with green fruit, on the brink of
tomato season is unfathomable.

More than ever, I appreciate your unwavering support.
Thanks for reading and of course I will keep you posted.

Here is a link to the New York Times article written
last weekend about the blight and how it is affecting tomato and potato crops up
and down the eastern seaboard.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/nyregion/18tomatoes.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=tomato%20blight&st=cse

This is a link to the University of Massachusetts
Extension website, which is rich with information.

http://www.umassextension.org/index.php/late-blight-alert

In Food Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry,
exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American
consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA.
Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that
often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American
farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted
chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even
tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful
bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are
riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic
level of diabetes among adults.

Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield’s Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms’ Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here."

 

Food, Inc. runs from Friday, August 7 to Thursday August 13, 8 p.m. nightly and 2 p.m. matinee on Monday. Admission is $8 ($6 for museum members).

Berkshire Museum

39 South Street

Pittsfield,

MA  01201  USA

TEL 413-443-7171, ext. 17

FAX 413-443-2135

For more information visit www.berkshiremuseum.org