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By JACOB NELSON

When Heather McCann founded her Belchertown farm, Rustic Outlook, in 2020, she picked a niche that few local farmers have chosen. She decided to make beans her thing.Dry beans, specifically. They’re a pantry staple that lasts for years and a delicious...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

It’s not unusual these cold gray days to despair over the appearance of our gardens. It wasn’t so long ago that late-blooming asters and brilliant foliage punctuated the landscape. Now that I’m leaving garden cleanup until spring to help feed and...

By AMALIA WOMPA

Vidhi Salla, a radio host, author and journalist whose focus is on Indian cultural arts, is pioneering the introduction of Bollywood to New England theaters.Salla grew up in Mumbai and studied literature before moving to southern Vermont in 2018 to...

By EVELINE MACDOUGALL

Leverett resident Ben Goldberg is well-known for displaying worm bins and fielding questions about vermiculture, also known as composting with worms. At the recent Garlic & Arts Festival, Goldberg’s booth also featured toilets, because he’s also an...

By ALEXA LEWIS

Imaginary creatures large and small lurk among the leaves as visitors wander through the secret garden that has sprouted in Eastworks. Standing within the Monster Arts Project, it’s easy to forget that the mystical paintings, sculptures, oddities and...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

Late summer isn’t a pretty time in the garden, at least not in my garden. The recent mini-drought has bleached out what passes for lawn, several large hydrangeas are drooping as they beg me for water, the daylily borders are shriveled and brown....

By EMILEE KLEIN

The only structure that appeared still intact from the first superintendent’s home at the Belchertown State School was a century-old stone wall outlining a small grassy plot at 47 State St.At least that’s what residents believed until three years ago,...

By ANTHONY CAMMALLERI

In an effort to bring movie buffs from throughout the region into the city, the Garden Cinemas, and, subsequently, the Greenfield City Council, have declared the month of September “Stephen King Month.”From Aug. 30 to Oct. 4, Garden Cinemas will show...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

It’s August and in my household that means one thing: local tomatoes. For much of the year, our grocery stores offer tomatoes tough enough to endure machine picking followed by days or weeks in cold storage. Even the more expensive, so-called...

By EMILEE KLEIN

Morey Phippen and Brian Adams’ yard in Florence looks nothing like the traditional blanket of green grass associated with suburban lawns.Instead, bumblebees and butterflies bob and weave around her destined for the nearby foxglove, pink primrose, red...

By LISA GOODRICH

After the cold of winter in New England, spring on our region’s farms is a treat for the senses. While residents may argue over whether asparagus or strawberries declare the arrival of spring, Meghan Hastings, owner and farm manager of Dave’s Natural...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

After long weeks of yearning for gardening weather, we’re suddenly inundated by spring. Endless outdoor chores beg for our attention — composting, mulching, edging, scrubbing birdbaths and, at least in my garden beds, pulling out multitudes of maple...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

The word “herbarium” sounds a bit quaint, even antiquated. We may think of Emily Dickinson’s herbarium, which she created during her year at Mount Holyoke in 1847-48. Although she had begun studying plants at age 9 and was helping her mother in the...

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 founding...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

Most of us humans assume that other creatures experience the world through their senses of sound, taste, smell and touch, the same way we do. But we couldn’t be more wrong, as science writer Ed Yong explains in his fascinating new book, “An Immense...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

As the calendar page flips to the short but cruel month of February, I suspect that many gardeners, like me, are getting tired of the somber palette of gray and brown.Just in time to rescue us from seasonal ennui, a wonderful documentary, “Painting...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

There’s not a lot going on in my garden, now blanketed under a foot of snow, to inspire this month’s column. So I took a break from dreaming over the spring promise of seed catalogs and went in search of a soul-satisfying poem about the garden in...

By MICKEY RATHBUN

A few years ago I was having coffee with my two sisters-in-law at a family gathering in North Carolina. Both of them had recently built new houses and were quizzing me about how to create gardens in the bare dirt surrounding their homes. The question...