The Farms of Hardwick, MA

Dora the Donkey (photo: Robin Cohen)

In anticipation of the Let’s Talk About Food Festival taking place this Saturday at the Museum of Science, PRK will be whetting your appetite, so to speak, with an array of posts that introduce you to some of the folks from Boston’s food communities participating in the event.

Today, meet Robin Cohen — the avocational writer, gardener and recipe creator behind the Doves and Figs food blog. Based just north of Boston, Robin is passionate, prolific and finishing up her first book. At Saturday’s festival, Robin will man her own booth, “Canning for Foodies and Nerds,” and take folks step-by-step through the process of making a simple old-fashioned jam and canning it safely. She will also explain some of the science behind canning.

For now, however, in order to give you a sense of Robin’s broad interests, we offer the first in a series of posts that will build a profile of the active, rich farming community of Hardwick, Massachusetts – one of the subjects of her forthcoming book.

Here is a taste of Robin’s visits to Hardwick, MA, in her own words.

A piglet that almost fits in the palm of your hand, a spectacular sandwich, a wondering mule named Dora the Explorer and a glass of local wine so good that it would make a Yankee girl blush. The farms of Hardwick hold many surprises, especially for a city girl like me.

Working at the Arlington Farmers Market and shopping at many of the area markets, I noticed that the locations of farms seem to cluster around certain towns. From the time when the Native Americans first planted crops in Massachusetts, people have found rich fertile land here and held it tightly within families and the farming community. Curious, I decided a few years ago to follow the trail back from the bright white tents at the farmers market to the farms themselves and get to know the people who grow and raise our food. Their stories are captured, along with farm-inspired recipes, in my forthcoming book Bounty of the Seasons.

Hardwick and the towns bordering it form one of those farm-intensive communities with more than a dozen farms within five miles of the town center. Hardwick proper has a long history of agriculture in crops and dairy, but the area was also home to lumber, paper and textile mills which flourished from the mid 1800s to the 1930s. As the mills declined, the farms remained and, in some cases, even grew with new farmers restoring the land to agriculture. Hardwick hosts the oldest running annual fair in the country. Begun as an agricultural market fair in 1762, the Hardwick Community Fair continues each August with farm and kitchen competitions, a road race, tractor show, hay rides and a pancake breakfast.

In a three-part series of posts, I will introduce you to some of the farmers of Hardwick, MA, and give you a glimpse of life on their farms.

Patsy Kraemer and piggy, Chestnut Farm (photo: Robin Cohen)

On my trips out to Hardwick, I visited Golden Egg Farm, Chestnut Farm, Roberson Farm, Stillman’s Turkey Farm, the Hardwick Winery and Rose32, a charming bakery café. If you are interested in touring some of these farms or learning more about farms in other parts of Massachusetts, the Massgrown Map is a good place to start. (You can use the map to search for farms by type or location, but please arrange your visit ahead of time and remember that many small farms are people’s homes as well as their businesses.)

I hope you will enjoy discovering the farms of Hardwick with me as I tell a bit of their stories over the next few weeks.

Hardwick Winery hospitality (photo: Robin Cohen)