Wildlife, history and herbal tea: Farm walk traces Cornelia Warren’s legacy

Twenty-six people gathered at Waltham Fields Community Farm on July 23 for an evening of local history, birdwatching and farm-fresh refreshments at the farm’s annual history walk and talk.

The evening opened with a talk by Dee Kricker on Cornelia Warren, the Waltham philanthropist whose 1921 will set the course for much of the land the group would be walking on. Warren, who inherited the 200-acre Cedar Hill estate from her father, paper manufacturer Samuel Dennis Warren, divided the property among the Girl Scouts, the Massachusetts Agricultural College — now UMass — and the city of Waltham, with the intent that it serve the public. The Beaver Street parcel she left for agricultural use has been farmed continuously since the mid-17th century and is home to Waltham Fields Community Farm, which began growing there in 1995.

Kricker was joined by Sonja Wadman, executive director of the Waltham Land Trust, and Stacey Daley of Waltham Fields Community Farm.

After the talk, the group walked the fields, where rows of produce and cut flowers shared the landscape with an unusually generous cast of wildlife. Attendees spotted a hummingbird, wild turkeys — including a hen with a chick — a blue heron, killdeer, a robin, chimney swifts, barn swallows, a goldfinch and house sparrows. A green heron flew overhead. Two bucks with large antlers, a doe, a groundhog and Eastern cottontail rabbits also made appearances.

Along the way, the group learned why some of the ground looked idle. Letting a field go fallow, farm staff explained, restores soil health, supports long-term productivity, disrupts pest cycles and improves the land’s ability to hold water — a practice with as much to do with the next decade’s harvest as this one’s.

The walk ended in the shade with a question-and-answer session as the sun set, over teas brewed from herbs and flowers grown on the farm and an assortment of light snacks that tasted like they had not traveled far.