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By Credit search: For the Gazette

By ERIC WELD

I made a mistake.

By LISA GOODRICH

For local farmers, winter is a time for planning the next growing season, catching up on small business tasks, and maintaining structures and equipment. For the local community, winter is the time to lock in prices on produce for the growing season by signing up for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) membership.

By MICKEY RATHBUN

I received the announcement of the Western Massachusetts Master Gardener Association (WMMGA)’s spring symposiums earlier this month, when the wind was whipping the falling snow into spiraling towers of white. In early February, it’s hard for the imagination to break through the winter doldrums. Will we ever feel the touch of soft spring breezes or enjoy the sight of green shoots pushing through the cold dark soil? The WMMGA symposiums help us to jostle our gardening passions out of hibernation and into activity, even if only mental.

By MOLLY PARR

Some of the best things to come out of my kitchen lately have actually been second takes: leftovers taking on a new life in a totally different dish. To wit, the roasted winter roots salad with quinoa and arugula was good, but my 9-year-old would argue that it was the quinoa patties with broccoli and cheddar served the next night that were even better. And our Valentine’s Day Shabbat dinner of lemon risotto, roasted salmon, whipped ricotta topped with roasted beets and blood oranges was fancy-restaurant good. But Saturday night’s winter fish chowder, made with the leftover salmon, was the most memorable dish of the weekend.

By JACOB NELSON

Plenty of young kids tap a few maple trees, inspired by the sweet promise of maple syrup. Few become enamored with it to the point of kickstarting a family business. Cooper Deane, who helps run Bear Hill Sugar Farm, is one of them.

By LORETTA YARLOW

In 2013, the widely acclaimed artist Carrie Mae Weems — a charismatic artist, activist and educator, known for installations, videos and photographs that invite the viewer to reflect on issues of race, gender and class — was among 10 artists commissioned to participate in “Du Bois in Our Time,” an exhibition I curated when I was director of the University Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

By RICHARD MCCARTHY

In 2023, working with Mathew Berube, head of Information Services at the Jones Library in Amherst, several of my old columns were fed into ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot. AI produced a lengthy analysis of my writing. Then I wrote a new column, which we did not show AI, and Mathew asked AI to write on the same subject as the new column, in my writing style.

By TOM LITWIN

During migration season this past fall, researchers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, using Nexrad weather radar, tracked approximately 4 billion birds migrating from Canada into the U.S. and 4.7 million birds leaving the U.S. for the tropics. Clearly one strategy for dealing with New England weather is to leave it behind. But other species’ strategies have traded the benefits and perils posed by thousands of miles of travel for the benefits and perils of northern winters.

By LISA GOODRICH

Richardson’s Candy Kitchen in Deerfield celebrated its 70th anniversary last year. The Woodward family has operated the business since 1983, when they took over where the Richardsons left off. Owner Kathie Williams (née Woodward), grew up in the business, which has always had strong ties with the local farming community.

By MICKEY RATHBUN

Although Emily Dickinson is now considered one of America’s greatest poets, during her lifetime she was better known for her horticultural skills, as Dickinson scholar Judith Farr has observed. From a young age Dickinson was fascinated by the natural world. She enjoyed helping her mother in the gardens that she kept both at the Dickinson Homestead and the house the Dickinson family lived in for several years on North Pleasant Street where Ren’s Mobil Station now stands. During her year at Mary Lyon’s Female Seminary (1847-48), now Mount Holyoke College, she studied botany and made an extensive herbarium, a collection of pressed flowers and plants from the local area, that eventually contained more than 400 specimens. A family friend is said to have commented, “Emily had an uncanny knack of making even the frailest growing things flourish.”

By JOAN AXELROD-CONTRADA

Life is like a washing machine – complete with cycles and plenty of agitating to get at the messy stuff. If I were a songwriter (spoiler alert: I’m not), I’d pen a catchy tune about that simile, weaving together verses and a killer refrain set to the hum of a real washing machine.

By RICHARD MCCARTHY

I was biking in the countryside of Montague one summer day (remember those?), and I pedaled past a house with a substantial side yard furnished only with a small table and two simple chairs. Later, when I was home, I watched the sunset from my back porch, and found myself envisioning two people sitting at that side yard table in the twilight.

By EVELINE MACDOUGALL

A rollicking group of women who bonded through a class at Franklin County’s YMCA in Greenfield have produced a calendar for 2025 that celebrates beautiful humans in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. Let’s meet some water nymphs who could grace your wall if you get your hands on one of these fabulous calendars.

By STEVE PFARRER

During my last several years as the Gazette’s arts and features writer, I compiled a list of my favorite books of the year each December, given that newspapers all do that best-of-the-year thing and I thought it would be fun to get on board...

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 JOAN AXELROD-CONTRADA

Taylor Swift’s song “I Can Do It with a Broken Heart” has turned me into a full-on Swiftie. Yes, you read that right: This 60-something widow is now belting out lyrics about pain and power with a vigor that could rival any teenage girl wrapped in...

By JACOB NELSON

The Christmas season, for people who celebrate, tends to be full of traditions. Maybe it’s watching the same corny holiday movies every year. Maybe it’s making Grandma’s special cookies, a yellowing index card with her faded cursive handwriting...

By RICHARD MCCARTHY

Recently I had an appointment with my primary care provider, and after checking in with the receptionist, I looked to find a seat in the waiting room.One of the only seats available was perpendicular to a young woman with a child about 5 or 6 months...

By ZICHANG LIU

AMHERST — University of Massachusetts professors Chang Liu and Xiaojun Wei have discovered a new method to detect per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — “forever chemicals” found in water, soil, air, food, and other consumer products, paving the way...

By STEVE PFARRER

War has been a regular horror in Lebanon for nearly half a century, flaring most recently this fall with Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon in attacks against the Iranian-backed paramilitary group Hezbollah, a spillover in turn from the brutal,...

By JACOB NELSON

In South Deerfield, the North Main Street bridge over the railroad tracks has been closed for repairs since May. “I was joking that we’re probably the only ones on this street happy about the detour,” Kelly Kicza says with a laugh.That’s because cars...