About Hawks Wing Farm

Hawk’s Wing Farm is a farming Co-operative that seeks member supported contributions to support the farms efforts to raise naturally grown, organic seed fruit and vegetables. Members will get first notice of available crops to pick and a discount from the public price of our produce. We will have a strawberry festival next year –we are planting an acre of different variety strawberries- that we think families will love. The blueberries and raspberries will take another year.

Hawk’s Wing Farm is 4 acres and nestled in a pocket surrounded by 300 acres of Yarmouth conservation land. There is a 96’ greenhouse and another 90’ hoop house going up soon so we can grow organic produce year round! That’s our goal.

Hawk’s Wing Farm is the winner of a Mass Technology Grant for $49,000 to build and install a 10Kw wind tower at the back of the farm. Come see it built this fall. It will allow the farm to be completely self sustaining, incurring no electrical expense from the Grid.

The Farm is applying for a grant to become the first handicap accessible farm in the state, we seek a grant to make the fields accessible and raised, so that a wheelchair can easily be maneuvered among the rows. The Farm's Wind Generator, Yarmouth's first, is unanimously approved by the Old King's Highway District Oct 25th. Now we wait for the Town Counsel and the Building Commisioners ruling. Thanks to the many neighbors who supported us!

Our goal is year production of fresh, organic vegetables utilizing solar thermal in our greenhouses. (in January, we don’t mind at all a ‘pushed sweet organic tomato or crisp lettuce).

We have planted, lots and lots of sweet organic corn, snap peas( now ready), Haricot Vert (fin d’ bagnol), heirloom tomatoes, peppers, okra, musk melons, watermelons, all squashes, zucchinis, eggplant, and of course Pumpkins- Pumpkins - Pumpkins and incredible onions, herbs, and more! Check (still under construction) for picking news and to see which crop is ready, but please come by to visit anytime, we can put coffee and tea on anytime. We are looking for help from master gardeners or just plain ‘experienced small farmers” or Garden Clubs. We’d like to eventually have one of the Cape’s premier perennial gardens for visiting in addition to the Cape’s largest pick your own strawberry farm.

We want this farm to be your farm, all suggestions are welcome.

Notes from our first Year (2006)
 

During our first year, it was wonderful to get to know and introduce our farm to the Yarmouth/Mid-Cape community. Here's some interesting history. Hawk's Wing Farm is a repurposed sand pit. For 40 years contractors removed the sand and gravel that the glacier had spent milleniums depositing. Now the Snowden family is filling it back up, creating rich organic soil in 4 acres of what was a dusty sand pit. Thanks to the Town of Yarmouth's D.P.W. and Robbie Angel, the Town Landfill manager, the yellow, sand floor was covered with 2,200 cubic yards of black, composted leaf mulch from the town dump. Now that's co-operation from your local community.Thank You!

The leaf mulch proved it was a great beginning. The Ph was a little high for some plants and ok for others. It was low in nitrogen. You composters know the 25 - 1_(N to C) ratio and what we had was too high in carbon and after the 21 inches of rain in June (whew) any nitrogen was washed out. So we planted clover everywhere to fix nitrogen in the soil. Look above and you can see the clover rows between the beans on the left and the entire hill covered in a thick green clover carpet. All in less than 5 weeks. We brought in 50 yards of Watts family organic compost but honestly, we were a little disappointed in the mixture. It was mostly composted produce from local grocery stores and little of the hoped for turkey manure. We worked it into the leaf mulch which was about 8 inches thick- at least until the 10" of rain we had in 24 hours in June. The rain came down so hard and so thick it compacted some spots to a 3"-4" thick down from 8". It was as hard as concrete in some areas. it had to be tilled all over again. So it goes. You wanna be a farmer, huh, Billy? Want to hear God and nature laugh, tell them your plans.

Welcome to a deeper sense of a sense of humor.

Anyway, it's Fall now and the hoped for 1000 pumpkins became less than 50 thanks to soils, weather, squash borer and inexperience. The butternut squash came out as mini butternut squash , which we promptly marketed as such. Hey, if they can sell tiny ears of corn, we can convince people that a 3 inch fully formed and ripe butternut squash that fits on a tea saucer is the new hotty totty, upscale mini veg of the moment. You get the picture. The harticot vert bean from Johnny seed was a great success, it grew well, tasted great and lasted all summer into the fall. Timing is everything. We had to learn when to pick it so it was small and thin for the restaurant trade. We had to suffer the admonishment of one famous( for the mid cape) local chef who ranked on our harticot vert beans like they were plump over stuffed kids who needed to be sent off to fat kid summer camp to get fench bean fashionable thin for the plate in his eatery. The other success was the sugar snap peas, bush and vine variety. They were incredible and we sold a lot of those to local chefs and gave away a lot of samples. the 2007 season will see a lot of these two crowd pleasers.

We had corn. It was smallish but really sweet. No question about it. Organic delivers a much better tasting piece of corn. We promise to get good at growing this family dinner fav. We also had corn borer. We are learning how to beat them and when. they got almost every ear of corn. Next year we're ready for the suckers.

For work: it was fun, maddening, delicious, cramping, sweaty, smelly, dirty, delightful, transcendent, spiritually educational, physically corrective( lost 65 lbs) and wholesome. Nothing beat eating a dinner that came from the fields you worked. The tomatoes were all heirloom, old school and massively tasty. Next season they will be mostly grown in the greenhouse to beat some of the bugs and to have a better yield. we snuck into competitor farms and that's how they do it, tomatoes planted in bags of soil with auto water and feeders.( hey, we gotta duplicate success and compress our learning curve) Pretty simple, I think. But we'll still have some of the outside sun drenched naturals for those real purists among you.

Have a school group that wants some education and hands on planting and learning in the greenhouse this winter ?? ...then call us at 508-280-8798 to schedule a visit or Click here for directions to come see how we are developing, or share some gardening advice on our farm blog. Please join in our farm blog, share your reactions or feelings or experience. We enjoy visitors!

Thank you again for all the community support we received - specially you folks down at Deb's Hill!!.