Local Farm Photography: A hand full of strawberries at Heron Pond Farm in South Hampton, New Hampshire. (Jerry and Marcy Monkman)
If you’ve been following my blog for the last year or so, you know that from time to time I work on a personal project about eating locally grown food that focuses on a vegetable farm near our house called Heron Pond Farm in South Hampton, New Hampshire. I have a good collection of stills and some video ready to edit into a multimedia piece about the farm, but unfortunately those pesky paying projects have kept me from completing it (hopefully this spring!) However, today I felt compelled to write about the farm as we dipped into a bag of frozen strawberries this morning that we picked on the farm back in June (we picked 35 pounds!) I swear these small, locally grown berries are as sweet as they get, even after being frozen for the last 8 months, especially compared to the monster imported berries we’ve been finding at the grocery store lately.
Click on the above photo to see a gallery of photos that I shot over the last year or so, from harvesting greenhouse spinach in January to the bounty found at our local farmer’s market in August. I love eating locally grown food for many reasons, taste and environmental benefits being chief among them. We buy into Heron Pond Farm by purchasing both winter and summer “shares” in their community supported agriculture program (CSA) which is a great concept. It gets the farmers some cash at the time they most need it (winter and spring) and we’re rewarded by sharing in the harvest with food from a place we know. It also creates a community of people who believe in furthering the success of the farm, an important concept in the sprawl-threatened region of New England where we live. I derive great pleasure from learning about all aspects of the farm as well as the spontaneous conversations I have about food when I run into another CSA member in town. I also enjoy eating a diet that is more consistent with what grows in my region at different times of the year – I never would have enjoyed the batch of parsnip muffins (delicious) I made with farm share veggies last month if I didn’t have a winter share at Heron Pond.
CSA’s have popped up all over the country during the last decade and I highly recommend finding one near you and giving it a try. If you live on the New Hampshire Seacoast, you can check out Heron Pond Farm here: http://www.heronpondfarm.com/. Now’s the time to sign up for summer shares!
Until next time…
-Jerry
