WILLISTOWN CONSERVATION TRUST

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The Farm Crew

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This past week we welcomed back the Haverford Crew Team for their annual workday at Rushton Farm. It was their fourth year of coming out and doing fieldwork to help the battle-weary Rushton Staff. Pulling stakes, harvesting sangria watermelons and pulling up irrigation lines saves the Rushton Staff hours of labor.

  • Coach Stephanik looks on his team completes the morning run.
  • Rounding up the tomato stakes.
  • The Haverford Crew Team. Thank You!

Coach Stephanik makes it especially fun by starting the day with a relaxing four-mile run around the beautiful landscape of Rushton Woods Preserve. I sure get tired of watching the young men do laps around the farm. In all sincerity, their service helps us greatly at a time where we could use a little help. With intern Gage playing Indiana Jones at the University of Minnesota and intern Aidan swimming with dogs off the coast of Rhode Island (watch the waves, Aidan, it might be getting stormy) we are grateful for the crew team lending a helping hand.

Good luck in the upcoming season!

Food and Feathers

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At first glance, Rushton Farm looks like your traditional example of small-scale intensive sustainable agriculture. Crops sit nestled within the landscape surrounded by meadow and trees. The gardens and fields reflect the hard work of farmers trying to grow a wide assortment of fruit and vegetables in a way that is beneficial to the surrounding environment. Occasionally the wildlife that inhabits the farm may become briefly visible with a rabbit darting through the fields or a groundhog scuffling into the hedgerow. What is not so apparent is the wide, diverse population of migratory birds that visit Rushton Farm throughout the year.

Songbirds nesting in tomato plants


“Food and Feathers” is our term for learning about the relationship between the food we grow and our fine feathered friends who visit our fields. Bird population and diversity are key indicators to the health of an ecosystem. From the beginning of Rushton Farm, the WCT Bird Conservation Program has studied the population and diversity of the migratory and resident birds. Consistently year after year the numbers have proven that Rushton Farm is providing beneficial habitat for the birds flocking to the farm and surrounding woodland.

Tree swallow at Rushton Farm

In the spring and fall visitors can visit the bird banding station and see a wide variety of birds being banded so that they can be tracked as they make their annual pilgrimages both north and south. In the fall, our sights turn to the little northern saw-whet owls who stop at Rushton to escape the harsh winters of the boreal forest in Canada. In October and November, our bird banders join the owls and become nocturnal creatures of the night spending long hours banding these beautiful raptors.

Northern Saw-Whet Owl

Being able to walk the fields throughout the season and see the diversity of the bird population feeding in our crops has been one of my great joys since we started Rushton Farm. A spring harvest often features tree swallows diving the fields feeding on insects. A summer harvest often means harvesting tomatoes around the songbird nests that often inhabit the rows of tomatoes. Fall harvest is the most active with migratory birds flocking into the fields to feed on the seed from foxtail and other plants as well as insects. Our feathered friends provide a great service to us by clearing our crops of weed seed and invasive insects while in turn, we provide them with food to make it to their final destination. It is “Food and Feathers” at its finest and we look forward to continuing to study how this relationship can be enhanced.

All photos by Fred DeLong/Staff

Amanda Dunbar and Fox Sparrow

Water, water everywhere and lots and lots to drink

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WaEvery so often, a visitor or volunteer at the farm will ask if the water from our well is “safe” to drink. This is usually because they are used to treated water pumped to their homes from utility companies. Those of us growing up in less urban conditions are used to the comfort of knowing your water source. In Rushton’s case, it is a wonderful 600 foot well that provides cold, crystal clear refreshment on hot days such as these.

well, well, well

When Rushton Farm was first established a good water source was a must so we had multiple well engineers come out to judge the best site to drill a well. When a site was chosen drilling began and panic ensued as we reached the maximum depth without hitting a water vein with a high flow rate. It was in the last few feet of drilling that we hit a source with a flow rate of 14 gallons per minute, perfect for our farm. The water is tested every year and always comes out as immaculate. Discussing water quality may seem mundane but it is one of the most important parts of the farm. 

Meet Henry’s Garden

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In 2012 Henry’s Garden was established in memory of Henry Jordan whose commitment to addressing issues of poverty and access to nutritious food brought him to the Advisory Board of the Chester County Food Bank. Henry’s Garden is designed to be a smaller version of Rushton Farm where community members, school groups and volunteers can come out and learn how even a backyard garden can supply hundreds of pounds of fresh, chemical-free, local produce- yielding both nutritional and educational benefits to the community. 

All food is grown and harvested by volunteers and donated to the West Chester Food Cupboard or Chester County Food Bank.

BYOB – Bring your own BAG

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The average family accumulates about 60 plastic bags in only four trips to the grocery store. The majority of these bags are not bio-degradable and can take 700 to 1,000 years to break down. A plastic bag from your neighborhood store might blow from a trash can into a storm drain before traveling through pipes into the Delaware River or a tributary.

Bringing your own shopping bags to the grocery store is a great way to reduce single-use plastics. But did you know there are alternatives to those plastic produce bags?

At our Rushton Farm we’ve even switched to biodegradable produce bags for our pickup days. Reusable mesh or cotton bags are a small investment and are available from many retailers.

This July, ditch plastic bags and bring your own reusable bags instead. Stash them in places where you’ll remember them like by your front door, in your purse, and trunk. 

Declare your independence from single-use plastic by participating in the Plastic Free July Challenge at https://www.plasticfreejuly.org/ Together we can create a Plastic Free Watershed!