Cambridge Winter Farmer’s Market

09 Monday Apr 2012

Posted by Phoebe (she / hers) in Green Life

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Oh, naive urbanite! So unsuspecting when you should have very well anticipated your well-known lack-of-fiscal control when facing a gym filled with tables, tables lined with farm fresh veggies and value-added delights at the much anticipated Cambridge Winter Farmer’s Market.

Oh, city-girl. How you underestimate your ability to leap to excitement, time and again. Why did you think you could stroll in, coolly observe, walk out only a dollar or so poorer, homemade marshmallow chick in pocket? When was the last time you exhibited such decorum at a farm stand or food truck (never?)

To think you assumed anonymity, when you’ve made so many friends of farmers! And besides, you are a swirl in the social pudding of Cambridge. Not a chance you can step into the most happening (and only) winter market in the “People’s Republic,” and then away without bumping into a friend . . . or six. Without making a new friend, or two.

Phoebe, Phoebe. Really! You should have known.

Local Maple

28 Wednesday Mar 2012

Posted by Phoebe (she / hers) in Boston Moments, Learnin'

≈ 2 Comments

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city-farm, events, food-n-cookin, trees

Recently, I joined friends on a trip out to Natick Community Organic Farm to check out Maple Magic Day. We missed the pancake breakfast (so sad!), but we did enjoy a tour of the grounds and stood inside a real sugar shack, bathing in the steam and sugary air. I was particularly pleased because, last fall, I read a book on maple sugaring, and so felt impressed to experience the workings in person.

An added bonus was running into two friends at the farm, both of whom, unbeknownst to me, work there!

Headed in for the tour with my companions for the afternoon, Megna and Heather (my third companion Alice is off-screen.)

Welcome sign out front the sugar shack.

Rabbit watches the crowd.

A young worker tends the fire.

My friend Donelle re-tells an indigenous-people’s story of maple syrup.

Sap captured. Later it will be combined with the sap of other trees and boiled, boiled, boiled. The wisdom goes that it take forty gallons of sap to produce one gallon of syrup.