Summer CSA Pickup #13

September 7, 2025

Fall

Fall prep has permeated the to do lists from turning beds opver, pulling summer plants out of the ground, to planting cover crops, spinach, turnips, bok choy, kholrabi, and radishes. This week Tim planted over 7,000 row feet of spinch at the oxbow and Sam a smaller amount of spinach here at the main farm. Paper pot spinach is also coming up in the seedroom that will go in GH8 in the coming weeks once cucumbers are taken out. Want some more info on Paper Pot Planting? Check out this CSA newsletter from last fall (You will get to see a much younger Sam!) https://www.meadowstonenh.com/csa-fall-2024/fall-csa-week-6

Asoka

This week we had a first at the farm: Asoka, one of our cows gave birth to twins. The boy and girl are both doing great, can move pretty quickly even though they are only a few days old, and energetically nursing. Asoka, as she has been in the past with all her calves, has been very attentive and an excellent mom. Red Devon cattle only have twins 1% - 2% of the time; We are thrilled! Keep an eye out for their names in the next newsletter (we are still working on names). Red Devon cattle have a long American history, arriving with the Pilgrims in 1623 as one of the very first cattle breeds in New England. They are valued for their strength, rich milk, and flavorful beef, and as you can imagine they became essential to early farms—especially as oxen for clearing land and hauling timber.

Asoka and Calves are doing great!

Cherry Tomatoes have continued with great abundance. Despite delivering 390 pints in a single week to the Littleton Coop for a sale, we continued to have them in the farmstand, sent some to the Purple Tomato in Lincoln and had some available for all of you at CSA Pickup.

The gray dodge (which has sides) is getting some repair work done, so we got creative with sides on our white truck. Thats the old bed from our now retired S10….Jav and Colin have been working together to complete food scraps with the bed being that much higher!

Cover crop in GH3 coming up nicely next to the pole beans

A short newsletter this week! More

Pickup

Come anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm to choose your share on the day you chose when you signed up, so either Monday or Thursday.

Please bring your own bags or box to gather your choices.

If you signed up for an add-on, don’t forget to pickup your Coffee, Flowers, Eggs, and Pork sausage.

Remember to contact us in advance if you will be unable to pick up on Thursday, so that we can store your share in our walk-in refrigerator to keep it fresh. You can email or call us to let us know. Thank you to all of those who have already arranged another time to pickup!

School is back in session!

Woodland Community School, who shares the same address as us, is back in session. Please be careful of kids and parents as you enter and exit the farm for pickup!

Here's what you will find in this weeks share:

Something we will ask you to take and then

Full shares receive an additional 11 choices and

Small shares receive an additional 7 choices.

Please use the tally sheets to keep track of the number of choices you are taking at pickup. We want to make sure you receive all 8 choices if you are a small share and 12 choices if you are a large share!

We have run out of MSF Potatoes (we literally grew new potatoes just for you our CSA) and are now bringing in Sparrow Arc farm potatoes. They are local out of VT and are not organic. They limit spraying, and grow as naturally as they can.

Lyman View corn is also from off the farm. Dick has been as central part of the Littleton Farmers Market and phenomenal corn growing in the local area for 30 years. He is not organic.

Pounds of Basil ($15/lb) and flats of B-grade tomatoes and or Roma Tomatoes($30/15 lb flat) are available as supplies last. Let us know and we can have them ready for you to pickup on your CSA day. Email us to reserve yours!

Want some recipe ideas?

CHECK OUT THE CSA RECIPE PAGE!

Your Farmer, Sam (For Tim, Mikaela, Jeannie, Jim, Evrald, Shawn, Jav, Jeb, Colin, Jaime, Wyatt, Ani, Sophie, Cole, and Jess)

Summer CSA Pickup #12

August 30, 2025

Onions

Turns out onions are one of the most widely used crops in the world. They add an abundance of flavor, can be eaten raw or cooked, store well in proper conditions, and can be harvested fresh with the tops or cured/dried and stored.

Over the years our process of growing onions has changed as we figure out the “best-way” for us and try different systems, and of course weather, temperature, timing, and available space play into this decision.

The last couple years our focus has been on 3 different varieties:

Ring Master: white, sweet onion harvested with green tops and sold as Spring Onions.

Red Wing: A beautiful red storage onion with firm, crisp layers and a some serious flavor. Perfect for slicing fresh into salads, sandwiches, or cooking into hearty fall and winter dishes.

Patterson: The classic yellow storage onion. This crop is firm, flavorful, and built to last. These onions are rich in flavor and perfect for cooking, from soups and stews to roasted veggies.

Our main crop of storage onions went in the ground at the beginning of May in Garden 8 out by the blueberries and in between GH8 and GH9. Typically used for greens, we set this garden up for onions by amending and resetting beds with the broadfork, covering the beds with plastic mulch and leaf mulch in the pathways. The mulch helps control the weed pressure over the duration of the season and the leaf mulch becomes an organic matter input for the garden. About 13,000 onions were planted by hand over a few days.

We bring in onion sets, while also typically starting a few ourselves by seed. At such a volume, space in our seed-room becomes challenging to manage, and bringing in onion starts has been a helpful space saving solution.

Mid august the tops of the onions began to brown and fall over which is the sign they are ready to harvest. We worked as a crew to bring in crates and crates of onions for storage and sale. We hope you have been enjoying this years flavorful onion crop.

As you can see in the picture above, we quickly transitioned these beds over to greens. As relatively weed free, these beds were easy to transition into Salanova Head Lettuce, direct seeded greens, Kholrabi, Salad Turnips, and Radishes.

The chickens arrived!

Jav, Colin, and Evrald went and picked up 700 Pullets one evening and introduced them all to the farm. They have been settling in nicely. Jim has been monitoring feed, water, and making sure they have the space they need with new roosts and easy access to the moveable coop that Tim moved into place. Jim reports the first couple eggs from this group of chickens has been layed. As daylight hours continue to decrease and our older hens drop off production a touch, we are looking forward to more eggs coming in from the pullets.

Check out the cover crop seeds drilled into G7 by Tim. As we approach the fall season, we have continues our efforts to nurture and feed the soil by planting more cover crops on the main farm and the oxbow. The dead cover crop mulch in G7 is a perfect place to use the drill seeder for the next succession of cover crop. We are working on adding more organic matter to the soil in this section of G7 while utlizing the cover crop to break up some soil compaction.

The wash-center on a busy harvest morning.

Wyatt repaired some shovels that have been waiting for new handles for at least 20 years!

Pickup

Come anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm to choose your share on the day you chose when you signed up, so either Monday or Thursday.

Please bring your own bags or box to gather your choices.

If you signed up for an add-on, don’t forget to pickup your Coffee, Flowers, Eggs, and Pork sausage.

Remember to contact us in advance if you will be unable to pick up on Thursday, so that we can store your share in our walk-in refrigerator to keep it fresh. You can email or call us to let us know. Thank you to all of those who have already arranged another time to pickup!

School is back in session!

Woodland Community School, who shares the same address as us, is back in session. Please be careful of kids and parents as you enter and exit the farm for pickup!

Here's what you will find in this weeks share:

Something we will ask you to take and then

Full shares receive an additional 11 choices and

Small shares receive an additional 7 choices.

Please use the tally sheets to keep track of the number of choices you are taking at pickup. We want to make sure you receive all 8 choices if you are a small share and 12 choices if you are a large share!

We have run out of MSF Potatoes (we literally grew new potatoes just for you our CSA) and are now bringing in Sparrow Arc farm potatoes. They are local out of VT and are not organic. They limit spraying, and grow as naturally as they can.

Lyman View corn is also from off the farm. Dick has been as central part of the Littleton Farmers Market and phenomenal corn growing in the local area for 30 years. He is not organic.

Pounds of Basil ($15/lb) and flats of B-grade tomatoes and or Roma Tomatoes($30/15 lb flat) are available as supplies last. Let us know and we can have them ready for you to pickup on your CSA day. Email us to reserve yours!

Want some recipe ideas?

CHECK OUT THE CSA RECIPE PAGE!

Your Farmer, Sam (For Tim, Mikaela, Jeannie, Jim, Evrald, Shawn, Jav, Jeb, Colin, Jaime, Wyatt, Ani, Sophie, Cole, and Jess)

Summer CSA Pickup #11

August 24, 2025

Your Farmers

Many hands over the years have fed and worked our soils, nurtured and cared for our animals, planted, cultivated, watered, and harvested pounds and pounds of produce, fixed fences, moved compost, covered frost sensitive plants, uncovered frost sensitive plants, moved greenhouses, fixed silos, fixed tractors, fixed freezers, fixed frustrations, planted seeds, washed bins, bagged greens, picked weeds, picked rocks, picked flowers, picked up food waste, and participated in the many other tasks that move your local farm forward all while growing phenomenal, tasty, high quality food for our local community.

We are thrilled to have 16 phenomenal individuals making sure that everything runs smoothly, the chaos is organized, and the produce makes it into your kitchens. These are YOUR farmers, the ones who have been working hard this season to make it all happen!

The vision of Pick Your Own Blueberries and Compost morphed into a full fledged diverse beyond-organic farm very quickly after Tim started Meadowstone Farm in 2004. His leadership, vision, passion, and hard work permeate the community and north country food system. He has made it possible for the dedicated team to do what we do.

We are psyched to have Evrald back for his third season. He comes with a wealth of experience. Evrald’s work permeates all aspects of the farm. He has a detailed eye when it comes to all tasks, especially pruning, harvesting, cultivating, and just knowing what has to be done.

Vegetable Manager and Flower Guru extraordinaire, Mikaela has been with the farm for 11 years now. She is the “Organized” in the “Organized Chaos” of the farm. She also brings good humor, good tunes, hard work, and passion and Addison who you will notice makes an appearance in a few photos! Addison is our youngest future farmer in the bunch.

Tim with Mikaela’s daughter Addison. As founder, owner, and director of loose ends (and so much more!) of the farm. Tim has created a positive, thriving, productive work culture with employees, nourished the soil with a focus on regenerative and organic agriculture, and works hard to continue moving toward making MSF an agricultural center in the community.

Having been at the farm on and off his entire life, Jeb can do just about anything. He was a go-to for special projects this summer or wherever we needed something done. We are all psyched to have his presence as part of the team this summer. When not at the farm look for him on any rock climbing wall or cliff in NH.

Eggs are the results of Jim’s thoughtful care when it comes to our chickens. He puts his heart into all that he does on the farm: asparagus, mowing, chicken care, egg packing and more.

Wyatt moves with purpose as he navigates the tasks of the farm. In addition to harvesting, weeding, and running the weed-wacker, Wyatt can be found running super fast and prepping for college!

When not writing CSA newsletters, Sam can be seen moving quickly around the farm attempting to keep the chaos organized. He enjoys moving tarps around and planting greens.

A Cilantro, Parsley, and Swiss Chard harvester (she also harvests just about everything too), Jaime also welcomes our CSA members each and every pickup. She brings hard work, laughter, and organization to our farm team.

As one of our Farm stand gurus, Jess, brings a positive, welcoming presence to the farm with all who meet and interact with her. She also brings hard work and an eye for the details.

We so appreciate Sophie’s hard work, relaxed demeanor, and her excitement around all that is happening on the farm. Not only does she welcome everyone with Jaime at CSA pickups, she can be found harvesting, cultivating, planting and transplanting, running experiments on our potting soil and welcoming school groups here at the farm.

At the farm Colin is an integral part of the team connecting with area restaraunts, schools, and stores to collect food waste. You can also find him n the farm stand, wash center, and with the chickens. “Off Campus” Colin can be found scaling various climbing routes on cliffs in the north country, and prepping for more school at Plymouth State.

After two months with us last fall, we are thrilled to have Jav back for the entire season. As the animal whisperer Jav cares for our critters with care and dertailed eye. Pigs, donkeys, goats, and cows all come running to say hi to Jav. Like all of us, they appreciate his humor, positive energy, and hard work.

Ani has been here since before she can remember and we are psyched to have her as an integral part of the day to day. She helps in the stand, packing room, and in the fields.

Jeannie is the glue that keeps us all together. She embodies the MSF vision and spirit as she welcomes farm visitors, bags and labels at the packing table, maintains the books, and connects with employees.

Shawn comes with insight, hard work, and versatile skills. We appreciate his tractor skills, harvesting, and detailed perspective on how the crops are doing.

Having grown up on the farm, Cole comes with hard work, humor, dedication, and a historic perspective on the farm and the changes over the year. Psyched to have Cole back at the farm this season for a bit!

Pickup

Come anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm to choose your share on the day you chose when you signed up, so either Monday or Thursday.

Please bring your own bags or box to gather your choices.

If you signed up for an add-on, don’t forget to pickup your Coffee, Flowers, Eggs, and Pork sausage.

Remember to contact us in advance if you will be unable to pick up on Thursday, so that we can store your share in our walk-in refrigerator to keep it fresh. You can email or call us to let us know. Thank you to all of those who have already arranged another time to pickup!

School is back in session!

Woodland Community School, who shares the same address as us, is back in session. Please be careful of kids and parents as you enter and exit the farm for pickup!

Here's what you will find in this weeks share:

Full shares receive 12 choices and

Small shares receive 8 choices.

Please use the tally sheets to keep track of the number of choices you are taking at pickup. We want to make sure you receive all 8 choices if you are a small share and 12 choices if you are a large share!

We have run out of MSF Potatoes (we literally grew new potatoes just for you our CSA) and are now bringing in Sparrow Arc farm potatoes. They are local out of VT and are not organic. They limit spraying, and grow as naturally as they can.

Lyman View corn is also from off the farm. Dick has been as central part of the Littleton Farmers Market and phenomenal corn growing in the local area for 30 years. He is not organic.

Want some recipe ideas?

CHECK OUT THE CSA RECIPE PAGE!

Your Farmer, Sam (For Tim, Mikaela, Jeannie, Jim, Evrald, Shawn, Jav, Jeb, Colin, Jaime, Wyatt, Ani, Sophie, Cole, and Jess)

Summer CSA Pickup #10

August 17, 2025

Hay Season

Amidst the craziness of the harvest season ( remember NH times eat local month with the harvest season) we have begun to store hay for the winter months when pastures are blanketed with snow.

Cole unloaded a trailer of round bales from Cross Farm in Barnet VT. You may recognize the Cross Farm name from the organic chicken we sell in the farm stand. Owner Zach Mangione was an employee here before heading off to start his own farm.

The bulk of our round bales this season are coming from Zach. We also have been filling the barn with square bales from a farm over in Easton NH.

Our cows, goats, and Donkeys enjoy the hay all winter long until the pastures wake up again come end of April/May.

When it comes to hay, the timing of the harvest makes all the difference. Farmers often talk about first cut and second cut hay, and each has its own qualities and uses. First cut hay is typically harvested in late spring or early summer. By this point the grasses are more mature, with thicker stems and seed heads, which makes the hay coarser and higher in fiber but lower in protein and energy. It’s an excellent choice for animals that don’t require rich feed, such as beef cows, dry cows, or horses that benefit from plenty of roughage.

Second cut hay, on the other hand, is harvested later in the summer after the fields have had a chance to regrow. This hay is leafier, softer, and finer in texture, with higher protein and energy content but less fiber. Because of its nutrition it’s often preferred for dairy cows, young animals, or horses needing a boost in their diet. In short, first cut provides bulk and fiber, while second cut offers more nutrition and quality — both are important for keeping livestock healthy and well-fed throughout the year.

Much of the hay we have been bringing onto the farm has actually been second cut hay.

Chickens

We are crossing our fingers while preparing for the arrival of 700 pullets. As you may recall from a previous newsletter we are short eggs this season as we at the last second were unable to acquire chickens in May. Issues surrounding the bird flu limited the supply of hens in the spring. About 500 chickens are currently on the farm providing about 29 dozen eggs a day. With the arrival of these pullets, we anticipate 50 -60 dozen eggs right as cold weather sets in.

Below: Tim with Jav’s help, rolled one of our moveable chicken coops into place to provide more roosts and nesting boxes for the new chickens.

Another feathered friend who frequents the farm. Barn swallows are a sure sign of summer. They’re expert aerial acrobats, darting and swooping as they catch insects mid-flight. We look for their arrival in May and enjoy their presence all summer long. They help keep flies and mosquitoes under control. True to their name, they often build mud-cup nests in our barns and rafters they can find, raising their young close by. Beautiful, beneficial, and always in motion, they can have anywhere from 4 - 14 babies in a summer.

Pickup
Come anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm to choose your share on the day you chose when you signed up, so either Monday or Thursday.

Please bring your own bags or box to gather your choices.

If you signed up for an add-on, don’t forget to pickup your Coffee, Flowers, Eggs, and Pork sausage.

Remember to contact us in advance if you will be unable to pick up on Thursday, so that we can store your share in our walk-in refrigerator to keep it fresh. You can email or call us to let us know. Thank you to all of those who have already arranged another time to pickup!

Here's what you will find in this weeks share:

Full shares receive 12 choices and

Small shares receive 8 choices.

Please use the tally sheets to keep track of the number of choices you are taking at pickup. We want to make sure you receive all 8 choices if you are a small share and 12 choices if you are a large share!

Please note the corn from Lyman View Farm is not organic

Want some recipe ideas?

CHECK OUT THE CSA RECIPE PAGE!

Your Farmer, Sam (For Tim, Mikaela, Jeannie, Jim, Evrald, Shawn, Jav, Jeb, Colin, Jaime, Wyatt, Ani, Sophie, Cole, and Jess)

Summer CSA Pickup #9

August 8, 2025

A week after a school group came to the farm for a visit, we received this rock from an attentive 6 year old who drew this picture of mycelium in the soil with plants above.

This rock lives in and around the farm desk and reminds us of the soil we nurture, our most important asset after your Meadowstone Farm farmers.

Tim's Soapbox: Dirt vs. Soil

When school groups visit the farm some of the first words I have them define are soil and dirt. Dirt is a lifeless entity composed of only physical and chemical characteristics that gets under you fingernails and on your pants, and is the basis for most of commercial agriculture. Soil, in addition to the physical and chemical aspects, also harbors an infinite amount of biological activity. For us at Meadowstone soil is alive and thriving and all decisions are made through a lens of improving soil health.

We accomplish this in numerous ways, but essentially we minimize tilling and disturbance and add significant amounts of organic material (carbon). Tilling is one place where philosophy collides with reality in that as much as try to minimize it, we use it as a last resort to decrease weed pressure. Before tilling we use our flame weeder and silage tarps to kill weeds but occasionally we lose the window for those methods. If we till, we try to keep the disturbance to the top couple inches but occasionally have to use more aggressive measures to reset a bed. Every time we till we recognize that we are releasing nutrients and carbon from the soil, which ultimately means we need to replenish those.

Regarding organic matter, the forests of the northeast are our inspiration in that billions of tons of biomass are generated each year and nothing is added except organic matter(carbon) in the form of leaves and dead trees. No fertilizers, no chemicals, only leaves and woody matter. These leaves are the fuel that stokes the biological activity in the soil. The biological activity and inter-relationships of bacterial, insects, fungi and plants is infinitely complex and only beginning to be fully recognized, let alone understood. These interdependent relationships release and provide the nutrients to the plants.

We add organic matter to our soil in numerous ways. We make our own compost from the animal manures, food waste and spent brewers grain, which gets spread on a rotating basis throughout our gardens. We use cover crops such as oats, peas, beans, rye, clover, vetch, sudan grass, and buck wheat (in the picture at the top of this post) extensively in all our gardens and greenhouses. We also collect grass clippings (a great source of nitrogen) from our lawns to mulch around plants and in paths. The town of Bethlehem and local contractors bring us wood chips and leaves which we also use around plants, but especially in paths to not only add organic matter but also reduce weed pressure.

Soil is complex and very different from "dirt" and is the basis for our philosophy at the farm: Feed the soil and the soil will feed the plants.

The picture above was taken in one of our gardens and shows the root system of a 4 week old bell bean plant. The beans are legumes and work hard fixing nitrogen from the air and making it available to the next crop. The little white balls on the roots are nitrogen nodules. Nitrogen is essential for plant growth and legumes like beans, peas, and vetch are crucial for us to maintain healthy plants. Interplanted bell beans in GH4 nurtures the soil while our cherry tomatoes thrive.

Pickup
Come anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm to choose your share on the day you chose when you signed up, so either Monday or Thursday.

Please bring your own bags or box to gather your choices.

If you signed up for an add-on, don’t forget to pickup your Coffee, Flowers, Eggs, and Pork sausage.

Remember to contact us in advance if you will be unable to pick up on Thursday, so that we can store your share in our walk-in refrigerator to keep it fresh. You can email or call us to let us know. Thank you to all of those who have already arranged another time to pickup!

Here's what you will find in this weeks share:

Full shares receive 12 choices and

Small shares receive 8 choices.

Please use the tally sheets to keep track of the number of choices you are taking at pickup. We want to make sure you receive all 8 choices if you are a small share and 12 choices if you are a large share!

Want some recipe ideas?

CHECK OUT THE CSA RECIPE PAGE!

Your Farmer, Sam (For Tim, Mikaela, Jeannie, Jim, Evrald, Shawn, Jav, Jeb, Colin, Jaime, Wyatt, Ani, Sophie, Cole, and Jess)

Summer CSA Pickup #8

August 1, 2025

August is Eat Local Month

Jess helping to pack orders and farm stand produce.

As we move into the peak of the summer harvest season (we harvested over 400 pounds of cucumbers and zucchinni wednesday morning!?!) we reflect on our community. Supporting the local community is at the heart of everything we do. From supplying fresh produce, meat, eggs, blueberries, compost, and flowers to you our CSA members, a farmstand visitor, a littleton coop shopper, or someone enjoying a meal at Rosa’s or Sour’s or an ice cream cone at Super Secret Ice Cream, to partnering with local schools and food access programs, we’re committed to making healthy, local food available to as many people as possible. The reach of the farm spider webs out and we hope to impact tastebuds and minds in positive thoughtful ways. All of this is part of our goal to strengthen the local food system and build a more resilient, connected community through local agriculture.

We are one of about 1,100 to 1,400 small farms across Coös, Grafton, and Carroll Counties. These farms grow vegetables, raise livestock, tap maple trees, produce honey, and craft local goods like cheese, jam, and sauerkraut. While they vary in size and focus, they all play an essential role in our regional food system and rural economy.

Eating local is one way to support that system. Folks who stop in at the farm or support us by supporting businesses who purchase from us, help keep farmland productive and keep money spent on food close to home. Eating local cuts down on transportation, and puts healthier, fresher, higher quality food on your plates and in your bellies.

As you know, August is Eat Local Month in New Hampshire and as I mentioned, the height of the growing season, making it a great time to explore what local farms have to offer. Whether it’s grabbing something fresh from a farm stand, stopping by the farmers market, or seeking out restaurants and businesses that use local ingredients, small actions can add up to creating stronger farms and a stronger local food community.

A number of us came together to weed the beans, lettuce and parsley in G6. This group effort made the time pass quickly and will set the garden up for less weeds in the future.

Evrald has picked 90% of the cherry tomatoes this season….hundreds and hundreds of pints. These cherries in GH10 are beginning to reach their peak and are the second planting. We hope to have cherry tomatoes right into the fall and the Fall CSA as long as the weather cooperates.

Tim and Sam took a walk around the farm to get a lay of the land, create a list of priorities for the weekend, month, and fall. We swung the parsley pendulum the other direction and are now in a lull with harvestable bunches, however this next succession in the CAT tunnel is looking great.

Thank you for supporting all we do here at the farm! We are thrilled to be able to help you eat local.

Pickup
Come anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm to choose your share on the day you chose when you signed up, so either Monday or Thursday.

Please bring your own bags or box to gather your choices.

If you signed up for an add-on, don’t forget to pickup your Coffee, Flowers, Eggs, and Pork sausage.

Remember to contact us in advance if you will be unable to pick up on Thursday, so that we can store your share in our walk-in refrigerator to keep it fresh. You can email or call us to let us know. Thank you to all of those who have already arranged another time to pickup!

Here's what you will find in this weeks share:

Everyone gets to take an item we have yet to decide.

Full shares receive an additional 11 choices and

Small shares receive an additional 7 choices.

Please use the tally sheets to keep track of the number of choices you are taking at pickup. We want to make sure you receive all 8 choices if you are a small share and 12 choices if you are a large share!

Want some recipe ideas?

CHECK OUT THE CSA RECIPE PAGE!

Your Farmer, Sam (For Tim, Mikaela, Jeannie, Jim, Evrald, Shawn, Jav, Jeb, Colin, Jaime, Cole, Wyatt, Ani, Sophie, and Jess)

Summer CSA Pickup #7

July 26, 2025

Greens and Flowers

Harvesting greens: Arugula, Baby Kale, Spinach, and Lettuce Mix, has been primarily moved to the Oxbow where 3 different successions are growing. With the heat and humidity they have grown quickly. Arugula takes about 21 days to go from planting to harvest, however the grow back has been spotty, so we get just one high quality east harvest. A second harvest takes a bit of work to sort out the bad leaves, bug damage, etc. Spinach takes the longest usually resulting in a harvest about 30-35 days after planting. As we move into the Fall (yes we know summer is still here, however at the farm we are thinking about the fall already!) and the daylight hours decrease, the time to harvest will increase and we will begin to bulk up the amount of spinach we are planting. The spinach tends to quickly bolt in the heat of the summer.

The newest succession of greens are coming up in Garden 5. After the first outside succession of spinach in the spring, these beds were mowed and then covered with a sileage tarp. The sileage tarp heats the soil up and breaks down the mowed greens, it also provides a good environment for weed seeds to germinate but then perish under the tarp without sunlight. After about 4-ish weeks we uncover the beds, gently rake and in this case plant arugula, lettuce mix, and spinach. After planting we put the tarp On again for 48 hours to ensure even germination. Once the season gets going, greens are planted, harvested, and beds turned over weekly.

Below Sam mowed lettuce further up in Garden 5 this week before covering.

PYO flowers have opened up for the season. We are excited to see buds turn to blooms and the variety of beautiful flowers and colors coming up. If you haven’t taken a walk by the s since the PYO peas, go for it, take a walk around and see the changes.

We turned the sugar snap pea beds over to fall Salanova head lettuce and the 2 beds of carrots you enjoyed over by the asparagus are now an oats and peas cover crop.

Pickup
Come anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm to choose your share on the day you chose when you signed up, so either Monday or Thursday.

Please bring your own bags or box to gather your choices.

If you signed up for an add-on, don’t forget to pickup your Coffee, Flowers, Eggs, and Pork sausage.

Remember to contact us in advance if you will be unable to pick up on Thursday, so that we can store your share in our walk-in refrigerator to keep it fresh. You can email or call us to let us know. Thank you to all of those who have already arranged another time to pickup!

Here's what you will find in this weeks share:

Everyone gets to take 1 bunch of Kale

Full shares receive an additional 11 choices and

Small shares receive an additional 7 choices.

Please use the tally sheets to keep track of the number of choices you are taking at pickup. We want to make sure you receive all 8 choices if you are a small share and 12 choices if you are a large share!

Want some recipe ideas?

CHECK OUT THE CSA RECIPE PAGE!

Your Farmer, Sam (For Tim, Mikaela, Jeannie, Jim, Evrald, Shawn, Jav, Jeb, Colin, Jaime, Wyatt, Ani, Sophie, and Jess)

Summer CSA Pickup #6

July 20, 2025

Animals

Our boar Buttons and our sows, Penny, Patty, Myrtle, Altouise, and Astrid primarily live in the old goat barn. We do separate the sows to their own pen when they are about to farrow (give birth). The gestation period for a pig is 3 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days, or about 114 days. We hope to have some piglets running around the farm in the next few weeks!

The three donkeys, Milton (dad), Summer (mom), and Buckwheat (son), are all in their 20’s and enjoy their time on the farm, sunning, sharing space with our 5 goats, and saying hello to visitors when they aren’t feeling so shy.

When you walk out to the blueberries, you can visit the goats and donkeys in the back pasture we call Bobby’s World after our original goat buck. These 5 goats are what is left of the herd from a few years ago. Even though we no longer milk goats and make cheese, they are an important part of the farm maintaining pastures, saying hello to visitors and keeping the donkeys company.

The cows move between 3 different pastures and until recently the males and the females were in separate locations to avoid having calves born in the cold of winter. With a gestation period of 283 days, just a few days longer than a human, becoming pregnant now will result in a calf born at the end of April which is far better than a calf born in a February snow storm.

To maintain our high number of chickens we purchase a new batch of 9 week old pullets every May. This May things fell through at the last minute and the hens we had ordered never came. As a result we only have last years batch of hens on the farm and don’t have the additional 800 birds we had anticipated. An indirect result of the bird flu. We are looking into raising day old chicks again for 2026, we will see!

Garlic

Garlic going in the ground October 20, 2024 for a July 2025 harvest.

About 13,000 heads of garlic came out of the ground over the last few days. A big effort by the team went into making this happen efficiently, speedily, and thoughtfully. We treat garlic similar to how you would an apple: gentle so it does not bruise. With such a large volume coming out of the ground, adequate space and systems to dry and cure the garlic were refined. Rather than curing the garlic in GH1 as we have done in previous years, the garlic has settled onto stacked tables under the shed roof off the back of the pole barn. In the shade and open provides a good breezy environment for the garlic to cure for storage. If you want to learn more about the garlic growing process, check out our CSA newsletter on garlic from last summer.

What a week

A few weeks ago you may recall watching the time lapse video of cover crop getting crimped. We have found crimping does not always adequately terminate a cover crop. After years of thinking about it, the farm just purchased a flail mower. A flail mower is an excellent tool for managing cover crops, at it chops the plants into fine pieces that break down quickly, returning nutrients to the soil while preserving ground cover and structure. Unlike rotary mowers, it handles thick biomass and uneven terrain with ease, making it ideal for no-till or reduced-till systems. The resulting mulch helps suppress weeds and retain moisture, setting the stage for the next crop. The inaugral mow on another section of G7 was a huge success.

Cherry tomatoes are now in 4 different greenhouses

Evrald harvested the first slicing tomatoes of the season last week.

Oxbow Team Meeting checking out G4 and the very diverse cover crop mix growing. 5% of this mix is sunflowers.

General maintaining and harvesting have been on the docket most days right now, however we did take a team field trip over to the Oxbow to see the progress.

Pickup
Come anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm to choose your share on the day you chose when you signed up, so either Monday or Thursday.

Please bring your own bags or box to gather your choices.

If you signed up for an add-on, don’t forget to pickup your Flowers, Eggs, and Pork sausage.

Remember to contact us in advance if you will be unable to pick up on Thursday, so that we can store your share in our walk-in refrigerator to keep it fresh. You can email or call us to let us know. Thank you to all of those who have already arranged another time to pickup!

Here's what you will find in this weeks share:

Full shares receive an 12 choices and

Small shares receive 8 choices.

Please use the tally sheets to keep track of the number of choices you are taking at pickup. We want to make sure you receive all 8 choices if you are a small share and 12 choices if you are a large share!

Want some recipe ideas?

CHECK OUT THE CSA RECIPE PAGE!

Your Farmer, Sam (For Tim, Mikaela, Jeannie, Jim, Evrald, Shawn, Jav, Jeb, Colin, Jaime, Wyatt, Ani, Sophie, and Jess)

Summer CSA Pickup #5

July 12, 2025

Fruits of our Labor

Jess, Mikaela, and Addison spent a busy Thursday packing up greens, for the farm stand, Littleton Food Coop, and CSA.

Addison, has been keeping a watchful eye on all that happens at the farm making sure the washroom is running smoothly! We appreciate her smiles and presence.

Shawn has been the primary carrot harvester, pulling these beauties out of Garden 1 by the Asparagus patch. We will have carrots back in the CSA hopefully this week.

Jeb, Colin, Shawn, and Jaime all working hard washing and packaging veggies for the CSA and wholesale accounts.

Evrald needed the ladder to prune and trellis GH4 cherry tomatoes. We are harvesting sometimes up to 130 pints in a single day as we also have cherry tomatoes of different ages in 3 other greenhouses as well.

Blueberries

This week Jav embarked on the task of weed wacking the blueberries. Jim meticulously mows them (and the rest of the farm) throughout the spring and summer, however we wait to clear closely around the bushes for PYO until the ripening begins.

21 seasons ago, when Tim began the farm, he envisioned PYO blueberries and Compost and began planting blueberries in the best field on the property, extending the patch all the way to the woods where Garden 7 currently resides. As the farm expanded into more than just blueberries and compost, the patch was consolidated, bushes were dug up and sold and greenhouses 8 and 9 and gardens 7 and 8 were established and constructed. The patch used to extend all the way to the woods where we now have Garden 7. As the self guided sign says above there are 5 different varieties of blueberries (Blue Crop, Blue Ray, Northland, Northray, and Patriot) that are beginning to ripen. We invite you to use one of your choices at pickup to pick-your-own pint.

Tim filling pints with the sweet blueberry crop back in 2016.

September 2009: Blueberry Patch has been consolidated to make room for Garden 7: on right side of the photo to the left of the woods.

October 2011: Blueberries and a planted Garden 7

September 2015: Notice the blueberry patch has been consolidated more making room for Garden 8

June 2025: In the last decade Garden 8 has shrunk to 4 long beds with GH8 and GH9 on either side.

Flowers

The bountiful, beautiful, bright, fragrant colors of the flower gardens are beginning to emerge bringing bouquets and specifically the PYO Flower Add-on of the CSA.

For more information on our flowers, check out the tour sign out by the PYO flower garden! You can also check out the video on our flowers below.

Pickup
Come anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm to choose your share on the day you chose when you signed up, so either Monday or Thursday.

Please bring your own bags or box to gather your choices.

If you signed up for an add-on, don’t forget to pickup your Coffee, Eggs, and Pork sausage.

The PYO and Bouquet flower CSA also starts up this week, so blooms are in your future!

Remember to contact us in advance if you will be unable to pick up on Thursday, so that we can store your share in our walk-in refrigerator to keep it fresh. You can email or call us to let us know. Thank you to all of those who have already arranged another time to pickup!

Here's what you will find in this weeks share:

Everyone gets to take: Curly or Lacinato Kale

PLEASE REMEMBER:

Full shares receive an additional 11 choices and

Small shares receive an additional 7 choices.

Please use the tally sheets to keep track of the number of choices you are taking at pickup. We want to make sure you receive all 8 choices if you are a small share and 12 choices if you are a large share!

Want some recipe ideas?

CHECK OUT THE CSA RECIPE PAGE!

Your Farmer, Sam (For Tim, Mikaela, Jeannie, Jim, Evrald, Shawn, Jav, Jeb, Colin, Jaime, Wyatt, Ani, Sophie, and Jess)

Summer CSA Pickup #4

July 5, 2025

How’s it going?

We hope you have enjoyed welcoming Meadowstone Farm into your kitchen during the first 3 weeks of the CSA. Thank you for all the feedback, questions and thoughts provided to us so far, keep it coming!

Are there things you would like to change about your 2025 Summer CSA share? If so, let us know by email or phone before your next pickup!

Options include switching share size from Small to Full or Full to Small or changing add-ons. Coffee, Flowers, and Pork Sausage are all available options. We can only offer refunds for Eggs as there are no more Egg Add-ons available for purchase.

If your CSA changes require a partial refund, the amount will be added to your Farm Bucks account in our farm-stand to be used at your convenience on any item we sell in the stand. Don't have an account? We will set one up for you!

If you owe us, bring a check on your pickup day, Monday or Thursday.

To change something about your CSA just shoot us an email with the subject "CSA Changes" and then touch base with Jaime or Sophie on Monday or Thursday.

Due to the administrative work and CSA organization, this is the week of the CSA season to make a change if you would like to make one.

—-No need to reach out to us unless you are interested in changing a part of your CSA.—-

When we were not harvesting, weeding and pruning, and transitioning gardens and greenhouses were the focus this week. More cover crops were mowed while more were planted. The seedling sale came to an end freeing up GH2 which now has been prepped and planted and GH3 cucumbers (which we talked about not too long ago in a spring CSA newsletter) have all been pulled to make way for a cover crop. Sometimes moving on from a crop can be painful when things don’t work out as expected, and these early cucumbers check that box. Spring moisture and cool weather made way for some downy mildew. Cucumber beetles recognized the stressed plants and rapidly moved in. We pruned them aggressively about 9 days ago and finally made the decision this week to move on. Focusing on soil health in GH2 with a cover crop of mustards and then the next cash crop of pole beans gives us hope for the longevity of GH2.

After Shawn mowed the cover crop in G1 at the Oxbow (above), Tim used a seeding tractor implement to drill cover crop seed directly into the mowed cover crop (below). Multiple rounds of cover crop in the same location nurtures and regenerates soil and increases organic matter.

While at the Oxbow on Thursday Tim took the video below of Garden 3. Future garden beds, followed by garlic, potatoes, then beets and carrots and a few more future beds.

As you know from this newsletter and previous newsletters weed management begins to rise to the top of the never ending to-do list this time of year. Some of the methods we use to manage weeds: basket weed, hand weed, use sileage tarps and fabric, flame weed, weed wack, mow. In some cases we want all the weeds completely gone, while in other cases we “manage” the weeds knowing 80% are dealt with while maybe 20% still remain. Mowing the weeds in pathways for example leaves debris to hinder growth; we haven’t pulled the weeds, but are dealing with them in a productive way.

(Below)Evrald, Jav, and Tim have all been using the large flame weeder at the oxbow to clean up beds before germinated beet and carrot seeds poke through the soil.

Saying goodbye to GH3 early cucumbers

Above: GH2 transformation from seedlings to more cherry tomatoes and basil.

Right: GH2 seedling sale plants.

GH8 with cucumbers on the southern most spot. If you look carefully you can see Jeb and Colin collecting carrots in the middle spot.

Those carrots you received last week were bulk harvested by Colin and Jeb out in GH8M. These were planted back in April under the protection of the greenhouse. We then rolled the greenhouse to the next spot and planted cucumbers once we knew the carrots, beets, and turnips and radishes would be alright.

Pickup

If you are unable to pickup, please let us know so we can put your share aside to be picked up at your earliest convenience.

PLEASE REMEMBER TO BRING BAGS!

Woodland Community School Camp children and parents may be still in and around the driveway, please be careful navigating the parking lot.

Come anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm to choose your share on the day you chose when you signed up, so either Monday or Thursday.

Here's what you will find in this weeks share:

Everyone gets to take: White Sweet Onions

PLEASE REMEMBER:

Full shares receive an additional 11 choices and

Small shares receive an additional 7 choices.

Please use the tally sheets to keep track of the number of choices you are taking at pickup. We want to make sure you receive all 8 choices if you are a small share and 12 choices if you are a large share!

Want some recipe ideas?

CHECK OUT THE CSA RECIPE PAGE!

Your Farmer, Sam (For Tim, Mikaela, Jeannie, Jim, Evrald, Shawn, Jav, Jeb, Colin, Jaime, Wyatt, Ani, Sophie, and Jess)

Summer CSA Pickup #3

June 29, 2025

Cover Cropping

Cover cropping is an important tool for caring for our soil and adapting to the challenges of our northern climate. With short growing seasons, protecting soil from erosion and building organic matter is essential and by planting cover crops like oats, peas, vetch, rye, buckwheat or clover between harvests, we improve soil structure, boost fertility, and help increase organic matter. This supports healthier vegetables, and a more resilient farm.

This spring Woodland Community School (the school here on the farm property) students helped us plant sudan grass cover crop seeds in holes where a spring crop of lettuce once resided. The lettuce was cut out so the roots would decompose in the soil and cover crop seeds added.

We were thrilled with the results of vetch and winter rye that came up after the winter in G7. When pollen started dropping from the rye flower we knew it was time to crimp. Crimping cover crops is a way to terminate them without tilling. A roller-crimper bends and crushes the stems, stopping their growth while leaving a thick mulch on the soil surface. This mulch helps suppress weeds, retain moisture, prevent erosion, and feed the soil as it breaks down. We use this method as it supports our efforts to reduce soil disturbance, improve soil health, and grow strong, healthy crops using regenerative practices. Water fills the roller-crimper to add more weight to the implement ensuring the crop doesn’t grow back.

In the coming week we plan on ensuring the cover crop perishes by covering with sileage tarps. We anticipate planting Salanova lettuce into this in August.

Some of you may recall last summer we included the video below of Colin crimping a cover crop in GH2. Check out last summers week #6 newsletter to get the entire picture. Colin planted a cover crop of Oats, Peas, and Beans which promptly germinated and popped up. They outpaced weeds fixing nitrogen, breaking up any hard pan, and provided organic matter for the soil. This set us up for a phenomenal fall crop of Salanova.

Above: Oats, Peas, and Beans starting to germinate and pop up.

Right: Notice the round nitrogen nodules on the roots of the Bean plant.

Beans fix nitrogen taking it from the air and converting to a form useable by the next round of plants that go in the ground. Rather than pull the nitrogen fixing cover crops, we leave the roots in the ground to decompose.

Pickup

If you are unable to pickup, please let us know so we can put your share aside to be picked up at your earliest convenience.

PLEASE REMEMBER TO BRING BAGS!

Woodland Community School Camp children and parents may be still in and around the driveway, please be careful navigating the parking lot.

Come anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm to choose your share on the day you chose when you signed up, so either Monday or Thursday.

Here's what you will find in this weeks share:

Everyone gets to take: Head Lettuce

PLEASE REMEMBER:

Full shares receive an additional 11 choices and

Small shares receive an additional 7 choices.

Please use the tally sheets to keep track of the number of choices you are taking at pickup. We want to make sure you receive all 8 choices if you are a small share and 12 choices if you are a large share!

Want some recipe ideas?

CHECK OUT THE CSA RECIPE PAGE!

Your Farmer, Sam (For Tim, Mikaela, Jeannie, Jim, Evrald, Shawn, Jav, Jeb, Colin, Jaime, Wyatt, Ani, Sophie, and Jess)

Summer CSA Pickup #2

June 19, 2025

Happy Summer Solstice

June 20th marks the summer solstice with over 15 hours and 34 minutes of daylight. That’s nearly 7 hours more light than we see on the winter solstice in December, when daylight drops to just 8 hours and 55 minutes. This abundance of sunlight fuels our fields, driving the photosynthesis that powers every leaf, fruit, and flower on the farm. Combined with healthy soils, long days allow our vegetables to grow rapidly, building sugars and nutrients that create the vibrant flavors we enjoy all season. As farmers, light plays an extremley important role in the work we do. We work in rhythm with the sun, knowing these peak daylight hours are precious for setting strong crops before the shorter days of fall arrive. The solstice reminds us how deeply sunlight shapes the growing process and helps nurture a healthy harvest.

Below are some photos of “light” from over the years in all seasons. Hard to capture through a photo, however the idea comes across. We hope you all enjoy the longest day!

Next time you enjoy the bike path by railroad street out towards Whitefield, you will notice the fields we lease. WE call and refer to these fields as the Oxbow. The 4 acres are home to new potatoes, more greens, carrots, beets, soon winter squash and pumpkins, and garlic. We spent time there this week harvesting garlic scapes (the garlic flower) which are excellent in soups, salads, and make a great pesto. Garlic scapes will be an option this week!

Below, Jav, Jess, and Evrald weeding some beets at the Oxbow.

Zucchini and Roma Tomatoes are thriving in Garden 7. Take a stroll out there at pickup. Enjoy the self guided tour and say hello to our donkeys and goats. We plant in fabric to help keep the weeds at bay.

Pickup
Come anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm to choose your share on the day you chose when you signed up, so either Monday or Thursday.

Please bring your own bags or box to gather your choices.

Here's what you will find in this weeks share:

Everyone gets to take a bunch of Kale

Full shares receive an additional 11 choices

Small shares receive an additional 7 choices.

Want some recipe ideas?

CHECK OUT THE CSA RECIPE PAGE!

Your Farmer, Sam (For Tim, Mikaela, Jeannie, Jim, Evrald, Shawn, Jav, Jeb, Colin, Jaime, Wyatt, Ani, Sophie, and Jess)

Jeb, Cole, and Tim, made quick work re-decking the flatbed trailer. It is ready to go for another 10 years at least!

Summer CSA Pickup #1

June 13, 2025

welcome to the Summer CSA! Whether you're continuing with us from previous CSA seasons, been a loyal customer for many years, or just joining us for the first time, we thank you for being a part of our farm, welcoming our produce into your kitchen, and supporting local agriculture.

Parsley surrounded by Salanova Head Lettuce in Garden 6. We utilize fabric as a weed barrier.

The 2025 crop plan created in December was set in motion day 1 of 2025 with tomato, basil, parsley, and lettuce seeds dropping into soil blocks in our seed room. This heated space sprang to life and became a lively retreat in the dark and cold of winter. We promptly filled this room, maximizing space to fit as many seedlings as possible before moving plants and turning on a greenhouse space. By March onions made their way into the back of greenhouse (GH) 1 and the radiant heat in GH3 and GH4 had moved the soil temperature up above 60 degrees spurring us to transplant cherry tomatoes and cucumbers into the ground, kicking off the 2025 season. The time and effort nurturing cherry tomatoes in the seed room and then the greenhouse on those cold nights, has paid off with plenty of cherry tomatoes already available.

The MSF team filled all 10 greenhouses with frost sensative tropical plants by mid may: Basil, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, greens, etc. By the end of May planting in many of our outside gardens and literally this week we are harvesting crops every day to stay ahead. Winter squash and pumpkins will top off the bulk of the transplanting in the ground when they go in next week. All of this has set us up for what we hope to be a successful season with many of the veggies you love. We are thrilled to begin again with the summer CSA. Check below to see your options at pickup.

GH10 cherry tomatoes. We have never planted in pots, however with extra plants unable to fit in GH4, we continued to increase the pot size eventually moving these into unheated GH10. Take a walk around the farm when you come pick up your share to see these first hand.

Evrald was integral in prepping this Greenhouse back in February and then planting in March. We trellis each plant on a string, pruning them to a single stem.

Pickup
Come anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm to choose your share on the day you chose when you signed up, so either Monday or Thursday.

Please bring your own bags or box to gather your choices. To find the pickup location look for the CSA sign and tent left and straight ahead after driving into the farm!

Under each item available to choose from will be the size of 1 choice. So for example, some weeks a cucumber choice will be one single cucumber, another week it could be 2 cucumbers. Jaime and Sophie will be present and able to help answer any questions you may have, and

If you signed up for an add-on, there will be a shelf with coffee, eggs, and pork sausage for you to take. The PYO and Bouquet flower CSA starts in late July, when the patch starts blooming in earnest!

Remember to contact us in advance if you will be unable to pick up on Thursday, so that we can store your share in our walk-in refrigerator to keep it fresh. You can email or call us to let us know. Thank you to all of those who have already arranged another time to pickup!

To keep track of choices taken we will provide you with a Tally Sheet upon arrival to pickup your share. The example is from September of Last year. You will notice a few things:

Must take item(s) will already be checked off. If you would like to take a second of the must take items, add a second tick mark.

On the bottom of the tally sheet you can circle your share size as a reminder of how many choices you get to take. The number includes the must take item(s) if there are any.

CSA: Summer 2025

Fall

Asoka

Asoka and Calves are doing great!

Cherry Tomatoes have continued with great abundance. Despite delivering 390 pints in a single week to the Littleton Coop for a sale, we continued to have them in the farmstand, sent some to the Purple Tomato in Lincoln and had some available for all of you at CSA Pickup.

The gray dodge (which has sides) is getting some repair work done, so we got creative with sides on our white truck. Thats the old bed from our now retired S10….Jav and Colin have been working together to complete food scraps with the bed being that much higher!

Pickup

Come anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm to choose your share on the day you chose when you signed up, so either Monday or Thursday.

Please bring your own bags or box to gather your choices.

If you signed up for an add-on, don’t forget to pickup your Coffee, Flowers, Eggs, and Pork sausage.

Remember to contact us in advance if you will be unable to pick up on Thursday, so that we can store your share in our walk-in refrigerator to keep it fresh. You can email or call us to let us know. Thank you to all of those who have already arranged another time to pickup!

School is back in session!

Woodland Community School, who shares the same address as us, is back in session. Please be careful of kids and parents as you enter and exit the farm for pickup!

Here's what you will find in this weeks share:

Full shares receive an additional 11 choices and

Small shares receive an additional 7 choices.

Please use the tally sheets to keep track of the number of choices you are taking at pickup. We want to make sure you receive all 8 choices if you are a small share and 12 choices if you are a large share!

We have run out of MSF Potatoes (we literally grew new potatoes just for you our CSA) and are now bringing in Sparrow Arc farm potatoes. They are local out of VT and are not organic. They limit spraying, and grow as naturally as they can.

Lyman View corn is also from off the farm. Dick has been as central part of the Littleton Farmers Market and phenomenal corn growing in the local area for 30 years. He is not organic.

Pounds of Basil ($15/lb) and flats of B-grade tomatoes and or Roma Tomatoes($30/15 lb flat) are available as supplies last. Let us know and we can have them ready for you to pickup on your CSA day. Email us to reserve yours!

Your Farmer, Sam (For Tim, Mikaela, Jeannie, Jim, Evrald, Shawn, Jav, Jeb, Colin, Jaime, Wyatt, Ani, Sophie, Cole, and Jess)

Onions

Turns out onions are one of the most widely used crops in the world. They add an abundance of flavor, can be eaten raw or cooked, store well in proper conditions, and can be harvested fresh with the tops or cured/dried and stored.

Over the years our process of growing onions has changed as we figure out the “best-way” for us and try different systems, and of course weather, temperature, timing, and available space play into this decision.

The last couple years our focus has been on 3 different varieties:

Ring Master: white, sweet onion harvested with green tops and sold as Spring Onions.

Red Wing: A beautiful red storage onion with firm, crisp layers and a some serious flavor. Perfect for slicing fresh into salads, sandwiches, or cooking into hearty fall and winter dishes.

Patterson: The classic yellow storage onion. This crop is firm, flavorful, and built to last. These onions are rich in flavor and perfect for cooking, from soups and stews to roasted veggies.

We bring in onion sets, while also typically starting a few ourselves by seed. At such a volume, space in our seed-room becomes challenging to manage, and bringing in onion starts has been a helpful space saving solution.

Mid august the tops of the onions began to brown and fall over which is the sign they are ready to harvest. We worked as a crew to bring in crates and crates of onions for storage and sale. We hope you have been enjoying this years flavorful onion crop.

As you can see in the picture above, we quickly transitioned these beds over to greens. As relatively weed free, these beds were easy to transition into Salanova Head Lettuce, direct seeded greens, Kholrabi, Salad Turnips, and Radishes.

The chickens arrived!

The wash-center on a busy harvest morning.

Wyatt repaired some shovels that have been waiting for new handles for at least 20 years!

Pickup

Come anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm to choose your share on the day you chose when you signed up, so either Monday or Thursday.

Please bring your own bags or box to gather your choices.

If you signed up for an add-on, don’t forget to pickup your Coffee, Flowers, Eggs, and Pork sausage.

Remember to contact us in advance if you will be unable to pick up on Thursday, so that we can store your share in our walk-in refrigerator to keep it fresh. You can email or call us to let us know. Thank you to all of those who have already arranged another time to pickup!

School is back in session!

Woodland Community School, who shares the same address as us, is back in session. Please be careful of kids and parents as you enter and exit the farm for pickup!

Here's what you will find in this weeks share:

Full shares receive an additional 11 choices and

Small shares receive an additional 7 choices.

Please use the tally sheets to keep track of the number of choices you are taking at pickup. We want to make sure you receive all 8 choices if you are a small share and 12 choices if you are a large share!

We have run out of MSF Potatoes (we literally grew new potatoes just for you our CSA) and are now bringing in Sparrow Arc farm potatoes. They are local out of VT and are not organic. They limit spraying, and grow as naturally as they can.

Lyman View corn is also from off the farm. Dick has been as central part of the Littleton Farmers Market and phenomenal corn growing in the local area for 30 years. He is not organic.

Your Farmer, Sam (For Tim, Mikaela, Jeannie, Jim, Evrald, Shawn, Jav, Jeb, Colin, Jaime, Wyatt, Ani, Sophie, Cole, and Jess)

Your Farmers

We are thrilled to have 16 phenomenal individuals making sure that everything runs smoothly, the chaos is organized, and the produce makes it into your kitchens. These are YOUR farmers, the ones who have been working hard this season to make it all happen!

Pickup

Come anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm to choose your share on the day you chose when you signed up, so either Monday or Thursday.

Please bring your own bags or box to gather your choices.

If you signed up for an add-on, don’t forget to pickup your Coffee, Flowers, Eggs, and Pork sausage.

Remember to contact us in advance if you will be unable to pick up on Thursday, so that we can store your share in our walk-in refrigerator to keep it fresh. You can email or call us to let us know. Thank you to all of those who have already arranged another time to pickup!

School is back in session!

Woodland Community School, who shares the same address as us, is back in session. Please be careful of kids and parents as you enter and exit the farm for pickup!

Here's what you will find in this weeks share:

Full shares receive 12 choices and

Small shares receive 8 choices.

Please use the tally sheets to keep track of the number of choices you are taking at pickup. We want to make sure you receive all 8 choices if you are a small share and 12 choices if you are a large share!

We have run out of MSF Potatoes (we literally grew new potatoes just for you our CSA) and are now bringing in Sparrow Arc farm potatoes. They are local out of VT and are not organic. They limit spraying, and grow as naturally as they can.

Lyman View corn is also from off the farm. Dick has been as central part of the Littleton Farmers Market and phenomenal corn growing in the local area for 30 years. He is not organic.

Your Farmer, Sam (For Tim, Mikaela, Jeannie, Jim, Evrald, Shawn, Jav, Jeb, Colin, Jaime, Wyatt, Ani, Sophie, Cole, and Jess)

Hay Season

Amidst the craziness of the harvest season ( remember NH times eat local month with the harvest season) we have begun to store hay for the winter months when pastures are blanketed with snow.

Cole unloaded a trailer of round bales from Cross Farm in Barnet VT. You may recognize the Cross Farm name from the organic chicken we sell in the farm stand. Owner Zach Mangione was an employee here before heading off to start his own farm.

The bulk of our round bales this season are coming from Zach. We also have been filling the barn with square bales from a farm over in Easton NH.

Our cows, goats, and Donkeys enjoy the hay all winter long until the pastures wake up again come end of April/May.

Much of the hay we have been bringing onto the farm has actually been second cut hay.

Chickens

Below: Tim with Jav’s help, rolled one of our moveable chicken coops into place to provide more roosts and nesting boxes for the new chickens.

PickupCome anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm to choose your share on the day you chose when you signed up, so either Monday or Thursday.

Please bring your own bags or box to gather your choices.

If you signed up for an add-on, don’t forget to pickup your Coffee, Flowers, Eggs, and Pork sausage.

Remember to contact us in advance if you will be unable to pick up on Thursday, so that we can store your share in our walk-in refrigerator to keep it fresh. You can email or call us to let us know. Thank you to all of those who have already arranged another time to pickup!

Here's what you will find in this weeks share:

Full shares receive 12 choices and

Small shares receive 8 choices.

Please use the tally sheets to keep track of the number of choices you are taking at pickup. We want to make sure you receive all 8 choices if you are a small share and 12 choices if you are a large share!

Pickup
Come anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm to choose your share on the day you chose when you signed up, so either Monday or Thursday.

Pickup
Come anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm to choose your share on the day you chose when you signed up, so either Monday or Thursday.

Pickup
Come anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm to choose your share on the day you chose when you signed up, so either Monday or Thursday.