September & October 2024
Volunteer Impact
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September and October were the busiest volunteer months of the year, with 175 volunteers sharing over 661 hours of their time between these weeks. The changing of seasons is reflected in the type of field work to be done, weeding is winding down, harvests are consolidating, and thousands of native seeds ripen every night.
The bounty of heavier crops such as squash and tomatoes have helped increase our donation number to over 11,400 lbs of farm fresh food passed along to pantry partners, and with just a few weeks left of the season we are excited to watch that number rise a bit higher. Every bit of help ensures the fields are healthy and produce as much as they can to share with others.
Volunteer tasks these past two months have focused on weeding vegetable beds, fruit beds, and flower beds; harvesting native seeds; gleaning for our pantry partners; mulching; working on hiking trail clearing and maintenance; mural painting; cutting flowers for the farm stand's flower bar, and pruning and trellising. In addition, over 21 volunteers joined us in September to assist with the farm's Native Plant Sale, over a dozen helped with October's 5K and Health & Wellness Day Event, and 45 corporate volunteers pitched in with native seed harvesting.
What a fall so far!
See you at the farm,
Cynthia
HHF Food Donation + Volunteer Coordinator
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"Every person can make a difference, and every person should try."
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Community Farm Work Days are all about many hands making light work of bigger projects on the farm.
The next Community Farm Work Day is Sunday, November 17th from 10am - 12pm: help plant our largest garlic field yet! Volunteers will help to carefully place over 10,000 cloves of seed garlic, more than triple what was grown in 2024. Learn about the garlic growing cycle, and how to plant and care for your own garlic bed. Reserve your spot today!
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September's & October's Community Farm Work Days
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Both months focused on spreading mulch in the farm's first no-till vegetable field. Such a large scale project definitely required a few days of hard work, and we are so grateful to have had such a good turnout and to have completed so much of this project thanks to volunteers!
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These CFWD helpers consisted of returning volunteers, as well as lots of representation from Boys Team Charity and local colleges and school programs.
Once the tractor shaped the beds and walkways, volunteers pitched in with shoveling lots of mulch into wheelbarrows, and spreading it evenly in the walkways.
After both CFWD sessions, more than half of this project was complete!
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Certain beds were the focus of volunteer weeding efforts, such as tender greens and raspberry rows. Here, young lettuce was almost overrun with large weeds before our weeding session.
Thanks to this attention, a few weeks later the harvested lettuce was near perfect, and certainly some of the largest heads we've had this season!
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Leading up to the farm's first 5K run, volunteers made a last push to put the finishing touches on the newly cleared hiking trail. Look at all that cleared space! This project was a successful collaboration of effort between HHF maintenance staff, NY-NJ Trail Conference volunteers, and scores of HHF volunteers clearing, cutting, and walking. Fall is the perfect time to walk through here and enjoy this route.
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The farm welcomed two groups of Regeneron volunteers for their weeklong Day for Doing Good initiative, where we were thrilled to have their help harvesting native seeds throughout the farm. The varied fall textures and colors of these plants, along with the various harvesting techniques for each species, made for a great activity that showcased how special these plants are.
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Some seeds need to be collected by pinching off fluffy seed heads or dried seed clusters, and some plants need larger stalks cut, where the miniscule seeds will be shaken out of their coverings once fully cured.
Over the course of two days, these groups collected 11 native species' seeds over several acres, doing the work of a whole month within a few hours.
A big thank you! to all our Regeneron volunteers who came out in force this year!
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The farm's inaugural Native Plant Sale in September was the culmination of a long season of growing and watering, especially in the drought conditions present for much of it.
Volunteers not only have helped with caring for these plants year round, but they also stepped up and made the sale itself a success with label writing and tray packing, and assistance the day of with leading tours and packing and holding orders. We were so happy to have these new and returning volunteers involved, including a great group from a local college.
All of the volunteers were an enormous help, and our customers- and certainly staff!- appreciated all those who pitched in to make the day such a hit.
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Much volunteer work has focused on helping the native plant program these past few weeks: harvesting seeds needs to be done almost daily, there are beds to clear out, seedlings to plant, and tarps to wash and fold. Returning volunteers have been joined not only by corporate volunteers, but also local garden clubs, nonprofit organizations including Westchester Parks Foundation, and other Parks employees in this endeavor.
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All of these helping hands are so appreciated in this busy time!
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The colder weather often includes lots of opportunity to pass along vegetables to our pantry partners.
Gleaning efforts focused first on harvesting the last of the warm weather crops ahead of the colder nights, before including other crops that were in abundance and had to be cleared out in order to make way for cover crops and other field work.
And, for the third year in a row, the farm supported the Nuvance Health and Vassar Brothers Medical Center's Community Health Day in Poughkeepsie by supplying the event with over 276 lbs of farm fresh food.
What a great donation trajectory we are on!
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| An October sunrise on the Hilltop: a little later in the morning, but just as stunning.
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"Try and leave this world a little better than you found it." |
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