Farewell to 2025
Members Only Quarterly Newsletter — 2025 Q4
Members gather around the bonfire during our founding members celebration luminaria walk on December 14th.
Dear friends,
As the final hours of 2025 tick by, with dinner in the oven and a bright moon rising overhead, I’m delighted to sit down for a bit and share a few reflections with you.
Maybe you’ve already read through my email to our full community from earlier today, calling out a few highlights by season and successes we’re celebrating. There’s always so much more story to tell, more than a weekly-ish social media post and a monthly-ish email blast can capture. The farm is so full of life, every chaotic and beautiful month in the year is punctuated by new partnerships, old collaborations, fresh ideas, tried and true patterns…
Photo by Emily Frank, friend of the farm and amazing photographer and birthworker.
As I sift through a year’s worth of photos to jog my memory, here are a few that stand out and the story behind them. Thank you for being with us, in 2025 and beyond. I’m ready to fill another year with love and care for this land and for each other, and I’m so glad you’ll be there.
Warmly and with hope,
Sarah Newkirk
Founding Director
Nila planting peas.
Charlie at the end of the summer.
Training land stewards: In addition to our summer youth training program, which brings youth ages 12-18 onto the farm through an application process, we find ourselves hosting eager learners from other venues each year. In 2024, we had Will from Garden Time, the green industry job skills training program that we partner with in various ways. 2025 brought us Nila, a senior at the Met high school in Providence, and Charlie, a student in the sustainable agriculture program at Bristol Community College. Each came to us with their own learning goals and quickly made themselves indispensable to our small but mighty team. They helped with everything from planting in the field and potting up seedlings for the plant sale in the spring, to weeding and harvesting produce for the OF Box CSA in the summer, and even stepping in to help host field trips with school groups. We learn more about ourselves and how we share space with every new partnership like this, and we’re so grateful to have met Nila and Charlie this year.
Garden Time’s crew with Gracie Folds, our farmer-educator.
Middle school students from the Squashbusters Providence program, helping to plant the Harvest Garden.
Service learning: It’s always a thrill to connect with another organization and discover our goals align, and this year was full of returning and new partnerships. Our collaboration with Garden Time began in 2023 and has grown to fit each of our evolving needs. When the Garden Time crew comes out for a work day, we are flabbergasted by how much we can accomplish! Beyond appreciating the work we can get done with so many eager and skilled hands, we are always left with a greater appreciation for this beautiful space after “seeing” it through fresh eyes. This year, our work with Garden Time focused on invasive removal and land stewardship outside of the crop fields. We’ll be meeting with GT leaders in January to determine which crops they want to grow in their beds in our Harvest Garden. Produce from their beds goes back to the Garden Time extended community via a produce distribution at Open Doors.
Our relationship with Squashbusters Providence, a youth development program built around the sport of squash, mentorship, and community service, was new this year. We’re proud to be able to offer a space for ongoing collaboration that the SB students can build a relationship with over time. The photo I’m sharing is from a Friday afternoon visit that brought about 30 middle school students to the farm. Together they planted almost the entire Harvest Garden, including tomatoes, tomatillos, pumpkins, herbs, eggplant, cucumbers, and more — a huge accomplishment for novice gardeners in just under two hours!
Emmett’s sunscald barrier for the sweet peppers.
Amora and a handful of tomatillos.
Growing youth leaders: These two photos highlight a feature of our youth program – when youth return for their second, third, fourth year in the program they are met with greater responsibility and ownership over the program and the crops we grow. This year each apprentice chose a crop that would be their special project. Their job was not only to lead care and harvesting of their crop, but also to research and troubleshoot pests and other concerns. Emmett’s crop was the sweet peppers, which can often succumb to what’s known as “sunscald” during the long process of ripening from green to red. He fashioned this remay (translucent, water permeable crop cover) sun shade to protect the ripening fruits, and with great success! We had an incredible sweet pepper crop this summer thanks to his efforts. Amora’s crop was tomatillos, which she showed off for her family and the other families who gathered on Friends & Family Day for the youth program at the end of the summer.
Chris and Dane assembling the kiosk on site.
Chris mid-install of the kiosk he built for Osamequin.
Adding clarity: These photos are an example of a small tweak that can have a massive impact. Something we’ve run up against since our founding in 2018 is the inherently complicated nature of a publicly shared space hosted on private land. As you likely know, all 500+ acres of Osamequin Farm are owned by the Jencks family, who live in two of the three homes on the property and have been the land stewards since the early 1900s (listen to our audio tour for more on this history!) They generously lease the land to Osamequin Farm Inc, the non-profit organization that we founded 8 years ago to be a community resource. Osamequin Farm Inc then further leases parts of the property to 9 different Resident Farmers, who grow in the fields and greenhouse. Another layer to this land story is that the property is almost entirely conserved, by the Seekonk Land Trust and by The Trustees of Reservations. Different parts of the land and different pieces of infrastructure and equipment are shared among the many parties involved. It’s a lot to keep straight! So we are not surprised that visitors who maybe learned of us via the pick your own blueberry field or through one of our Resident Farmers’ CSAs might be confused about what’s going on here, where they are welcome to wander, when we’re “open”, and so on. This welcome kiosk was lovingly built by our board member and friend of the farm, Chris Bull, and installed in the fall just before the Harvest Party. In 2026, this small development will do big work for us, hosting informational signs to guide our guests and share news of events coming up, and more.
Perfect Harvest Party moment captured by Emily Frank. Featuring the Vox Hunters.
Bringing people together: I can’t reflect on 2025 without pausing to celebrate the Harvest Party. Held on October 4th, this year’s gathering was our biggest yet, with an estimated 300 guests. The Jencks family and their team of friends led the charge to feed the crowd with a farm-forward feast, The Vox Hunters set the tone, and the weather couldn’t have been kinder.
Events like this remind us why we do this work. There’s nothing quite like greeting you as you come down Walnut Street, watching your kids race through giant bubbles in the field, and gathering around the bonfire as the sun dips behind the treeline. Seeing families and friends relax into this place, sharing an afternoon of connection and joy, is a true gift for those of us who spend our days behind the scenes working towards nurturing land and connecting people. Thank you for showing up, or being here in spirit, and for the steady encouragement you offer. We love seeing you love this place, and we’re excited for many more moments together in the years ahead.