This week, we are featuring a farm that you might have heard of before. You can find Pete and Gerry’s Organic Eggs in grocery stores all across New England. That fact might make you pause; aren’t we supposed to be supporting small, family farms instead of commercial, large-scale growers? Actually, that’s exactly what we’re doing. Pete and […]
Who said kids shouldn’t play with their food? This November, UMass Dining staff and about two dozen UMass students visited Lambert-Lavoie Memorial Elementary School in Chicopee for the Fun with Food Fest. A collaboration between UMass Dining and ChicopeeFRESH, the event sought to teach 4th and 5th graders about local, healthy food in all sorts of
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With Thanksgiving right around the corner, it’s time to celebrate our local turkey supplier, Diemand Farm! Located in Wendell, MA (15 miles north of Amherst), Diemand Farm is run by siblings Annie, Faith, and Peter. Since 1936 when the farm was founded, the Diemand family has been providing food for their local community. Until recently, Diemand Farm
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Date: 11/11/2014 Pine Hill Orchards, located 30 minutes north of Amherst in Colrain, MA, is a 75 acre orchard run by David and Matt Shearer. Of course, apples make up a big component of their farm. During the fall, you can visit their orchard to pick your own apples and ride on their tractor. For wholesale
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Anna Hankins is a second year student at UMass Amherst paving her own path through education by combining both classroom learning and organizing work. Anna enjoys being agitated about food injustices, spending hours in meetings trying to change them, and eating copious amounts of chocolate in her spare time. An Earth Day baby, Anna has
Edwin Matuszko, Linda Kingsley, and their son, Josef, are third and fourth generation farmers of Twin Oaks Farm in Hadley, MA. Since 1979, when Ed and Linda took over the farm, Twin Oaks has grown an increasingly diverse selection of vegetables ranging from cabbage to ornamental pumpkins. Linda says, “We used to have only two crops.
Pete and Tara Roy are the proud owners of PT Farm in North Haverhill, New Hampshire. Operating a beef and hog farm is not easy work, but it’s not their only job. They also have five children: Calvin, Madeleine, Dory, Gabriel, and Rose. Tara admits that this can lead to having a “crazy lifestyle”. Despite their
Over the summer at UMass, while classes were out and the campus was vacant, the university Dining Team was hard at work. As the spring semester came to a close, the team set two goals for themselves to accomplish before September: create a new menu design and increase local sourcing. Throughout the season, UMass Dining
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In 1950, Teddy C. Smiarowski founded Smiarowski Farm on 70 acres of fertile, sandy loam. Since then, the farm has changed in a number of ways. First, John Smiarowski and his three brothers Bernie, Ron, and Jim, have since taken over the operations of the farm from their father. Each brother plays a different role in
Date: 10/6/2014 This week’s Farmer is UMass’s very own Amanda Brown. Amanda helps UMass students make their passion for growing food for their peers a reality through the UMass Student Farming Enterprise. The Student Farm is a unique year-long course that provides students with hands-on experience running an organic farm. The course started in 2007
