Pioneer Valley communities mark harvest season with pollinator research and historic craft demonstrations

The end of summer brings harvest season to the Pioneer Valley, with corn at full height, abundant tomatoes and stone fruits, and the distinctive sight of tobacco leaves hanging in valley barns. The season extends until the first killing frosts and marks a transition back to school, old home days, and farmers' markets heavy with late-season produce.

Local efforts to sustain the region's agricultural heritage and natural ecosystems are underway across North Amherst, Ashfield, Sunderland, and Northampton. Two pollinator gardens maturing by the North Amherst Fire and UMass Police stations have hosted bioblitz weekends where volunteers from the UMass Bee Campus Committee, the Fernald Entomology Club, and UMass Grounds and Landscape Department netted and documented pollinators. Images submitted to iNaturalist will contribute to the university's pollinator-monitoring project and help scientists address the global biodiversity crisis.

The pollinator gardens reflect UMass's roots as the Massachusetts Agricultural College, founded in 1863 to improve the state's understanding of food systems. The university is using these gardens to demonstrate how native plantings can reduce runoff, lower lawn maintenance costs, and create more sustainable landscapes.

Historic architecture in the region tells its own story of the valley's past. Homes from the turn of the 19th century feature wavy-edge or live-edge clapboards with natural, irregular bottom edges that follow the organic curve of the tree. Similar rustic design principles appear in Civilian Conservation Corps buildings constructed during the Great Depression, including nature trail huts at Mount Tom State Reservation in Holyoke and Tolland State Forest in Otis.

A lecture and demonstration on broom corn held at the Sunderland Public Library brought together local history and traditional craft. Faith Deering, a former museum educator at Historic Deerfield, discussed the history of growing broom corn in the Connecticut River Valley, including innovations by the Shakers and the crop's likely arrival through enslaved Africans. Attendees learned that Levi Dickinson of North Hadley was probably the first to grow broom corn in the valley, crafting a broom for his wife from the crop's seed heads. The Swampfield Historical Society, named after Sunderland's original name, plans to follow the lecture with a broom-making workshop hosted with Warner Farm in the fall.