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Keyword search: CULTURE

By SCOTT MERZBACH

HADLEY — A changing climate’s impact on farms and their ability to raise crops will be the focus of a farmers’ roundtable taking place at Plainville Farm on Friday.The Hadley Climate Change Committee is partnering with farm owner Wally Czajkowski on...

By CHRIS LARABEE

Farming is already a tough field to make one’s living. Throw in three consecutive years of extreme weather and personal burnout and you’ve got a recipe for what is shaping up to another difficult year for valley farmers, as they prepare their fields...

By CHRIS LARABEE

SUNDERLAND — The change of the seasons, as farmers know, often brings a slew of other changes along with it, and at Kitchen Garden Farm, this spring brings the largest change of all.Soon, the farm will change hands for the first time since its...

By DIANE BRONCACCIO

The groundhog predicted an early end to winter: did that also mean an earlier start to maple sugaring? Apparently so, according to several maple sugarers in the region.“This is the earliest we’ve ever started,” remarked Chip Williams of the...

By JAMES PENTLAND

NORTHAMPTON — Area organizations are welcoming grant awards that will boost the supply of fresh, local food available to those in need and provide support for local farmers.“We’re really thrilled to have been selected,” said Lev BenEzra, executive...

By LISA GOODRICH

Though more weeks of winter lie ahead, National Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) week — Feb. 19-25 — marks the symbolic start of the CSA cycle, when member sign-ups start rolling in and participating farmers begin planning for the coming growing...

By MADDIE FABIAN

SOUTHAMPTON — By the end of the year, a large-scale solar project at Bashista Orchards could be completed, generating nearly 2 megawatts of electricity and helping provide some stability to the farm in the face of climate change.The project was...

By SCOTT SONNER

The blank canvas of desert wilderness in northern Nevada seemed the perfect place in 1992 for artistic anarchists to relocate their annual burning of a towering, anonymous effigy. It was goodbye to San Francisco’s Baker Beach, hello to the Nevada...

By STEVE PFARRER

As Christa Whitney sees it, chance has played a big part in her life. But so has her love of history and literature. Whitney is the director of the Wexler Oral History Project at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, a program that has recorded...

By JACOB NELSON

WORTHINGTON — “Agriculture is going to have to look different,” says Lincoln Fishman of Sawyer Farm in Worthington, given the climate crisis. “And I’m just not interested in farming the old way.”Well-read and well-spoken, Fishman has a keen ability to...

By CHRIS LARABEE

WHATELY — After the death of James Pasiecnik in January, his three daughters banded together to ensure the family business, 5J Creamee and Pasiecnik Farmstand, is operating in full force this summer.Justine Pasiecnik, the oldest of the three sisters,...

By EMILY THURLOW

HATFIELD — By most familial accounts, Frank J. Skawski, Jr. and Linda Skawski were always together. The couple founded and co-ran their Hatfield business, Skawski Farms, that has thrived for more than four decades. Season after season, Linda could be...

By MICHAEL CONNORS

PLAINFIELD — A defunct dairy farm owned by the family of the late fire chief Dennis Thatcher is about to get a jolt of new life after a Plainfield couple and business owners bought the well-known property earlier this month.The property’s new owners,...

By STEVE PFARRER

For a long time, he was unsure of his singing voice, wondering if it was really good enough to front a band. And for a good part of the time he was making albums, he also shunned most live performances, not feeling he could sing in front of an...

ERIN O’NEILL

Rock legends Aerosmith were reunited with their original tour van from the 1970s, which was plucked out of the Chesterfield woods last summer on the TV show “American Pickers.”Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz, hosts of the show on the History Channel,...

By STEVE PFARRER

In a childhood that had its fair share of pain and confusion, Jarrett J. Krosoczka can recall a couple of incidents that really stood out.When he was three, his grandparents, Joe and Shirley Krosoczka, told him a few days before Christmas that he’d be...

By SCOTT MERZBACH

AMHERST — Customers of a community supported agriculture farm share program have enjoyed the fruits of Simple Gifts Farm owner Jeremy Barker-Plotkin’s labor for more than a decade. Soon even more people will have the opportunity.Barker-Plotkin, who...

Massachusetts has long been on the cutting edge of enterprises ranging from education and biotech to changes in our health care system. But there’s another home-grown enterprise that the state is cultivating that is more down to earth –...