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Thankful for the harvest.

25° last night after a day of cold rain, topped off with a dusting of snow! Yikes! All able bodies have been working tirelessly to get the radishes, turnips, beets, and carrots out of the ground before it froze hard. Glenn was out late moving onions to safety, turning on heat where needed and closing up the barn.
The winter squashes are stacked high in one of the greenhouses and the apples have all been harvested and are stacked 4 high in the cooler. It’s pretty impressive and what’s even better is the the bounty we have put by and knowing all our customers that will be nourished with it. We are VERY thankful for the weather we had for the growing season!

Markets

Speaking of weather – overall, we had great weather for markets this year! Last year we know a lot of folks simply quit coming to the markets due to the ceaseless rain. It’s not particularly nice today, but I am SO glad we made it this far.
Of course you can find us at Boston Public Market every day: Sunday 10am-6pm, Monday though Thursday 10am-8pm, Fridays & Saturdays 8am-8pm. There are some special hours coming up with the holidays, so be sure to check our schedule. Don’t forget if you drive, park in the Sudbury St garage (that’s the one BPM is under) and bring your ticket for us to validate. A dollar/hour for up to three hours!!!!

It takes a lot of beets to get through the winter!

We will be at Quincy Fridays until November 15th; JP Tuesdays until November 25th and Saturdays through December 21st; Brookline Thursdays through November 21th; Copley Tuesdays & Fridays through November 20th; Canal District Worcester Saturdays (9-12) with Curt and Halley (Still Life Farm) all winter!

OOOH, and we will be open soon at the Worcester Public Market on Harding St! Stay tuned for our hours and actual opening date.

C alendar

Farm Dirt

It was awesome to see so many gleaners this year at the farm! We invite our CSA membership to roam the farm for some serious gleaning before the killing frost wipes it all out. It is not the best time to visit the farm for aesthetics, BUT, it is the very best time to come and pick all the peppers and tomatoes you want 🙂
The garlic and Spring onions are all set out. Yes, the garlic is set out in the Fall, to overwinter and sprout in the Spring. I’d like to say it was as simple as planting daffodils, but ’tis not the case. Glenn likes to mulch them with straw as a little extra protection. It’s definitely worth it when it comes to harvest time next year. The past few years we have had nice enough yield and quality to save our own seed and we have continued to buy quite a bit, adding more each year. I’m pretty sure, no matter what we do, we cannot grow enough garlic.

Overall it was an excellent growing season and with that came amazing food – in looks and flavor. Taste is really what it is about. I was reminded of how good our produce is this morning when a Charlestown farmer’s market customer called looking to come to the farm to get some veggies. She remarked that we have the best tasting produce of any farm she has ever shopped from! Music to my ears! Glenn grows and farms with an eye toward Brix. Overly simplified, Brix is a measurement of sucrose. High Brix means higher sugars. More intense flavor is a good thing in produce! Anyway, I gladly directed her to Boston Public Market where she can get her Stillman’s fix for the winter.

We are expanding our winter production of greens and lettuces, hopefully I’ll be posting pictures of that soon!

We had a beautiful bear stroll through the yard recently. He marked his new territory, was abruptly chased up a tree by Jasper and then sauntered off, to the dismay of the cows.

Black squirrels in these parts are melanistic Eastern gray squirrels (there are melanistic Fox Squirrels too). We spotted her on the feeder for the first time last Fall. She had a successful litter this summer and we see some of her grown babies running to and from the Butternut trees. Though they are mini menaces, we enjoy watching them. We are over-run with gray squirrels, as neither our Border Collie nor our outdoor cats catch them, so we find ourselves attached to the novelty of the exotic black squirrels. I guess if she is as productive as the gray squirrels on the farm, you’ll hear a change of tune in a couple years, LOL.

CSA

Sign up for 2020 summer CSA! Returning members were sent a special coupon code for returning member discount. If you will be new to our CSA, we offer a HUGE early order signup though November. Use code 15OFFCSA for 15% off.
The CSA was pretty awesome this year and we hope for an equally great season next year. As always, we depend on the early signups to get us going for seed ordering, heating greenhouses and paying our workforce.
CSA options:

A “Supersize Me!” option on the regular share to provide more extras at pickup time. This will be an option for any location where we are actually present in person handing boxes out.
CSA A La Carte – buy store credit to use at ANY of our farmers’ markets. You pay a set amount and get MORE back in store credit. For example, you pay $400 and you get $475 in credit to use at your convenience. This was the pilot year for our “a la carte CSA” and we have only received positive feedback…so you should do it if you are not into traditional CSA programs.
Workplace Wellness – we have several business that have pickups for their employees at the workplace. We are happy to add more to accommodate your workplace. More here

Be sure to check out our website to find out more.