This Friday and Saturday, 50 families will visit the farm to pick up their “late season” Thanksgiving Shares. Each family gets 2 big boxes — mostly local organic vegetables we’ve grown here at Stout Oak Farm. The contents of these boxes represent many months of growing, and many weeks of harvesting, washing, sorting, weighing, bunching, and bagging a ton (literally) of our best, hardiest, fall vegetables. We love to think of all this food making its way home to all of your kitchens, your crisper drawers suddenly filled with roots, your pantries now stocked with potatoes, onions, flour, and honey. You’re ready for some serious winter cooking, or maybe you’re hosting Thanksgiving this year, and you now have all the local ingredients you need!
We have a lot of fun putting these shares together, partnering with our friends at nearby farms to supplement what we grow here at Stout Oak. This year we sourced beets and onions from Meadow’s Mirth, and squash from Orange Circle Farm, Harvey Farm, Winnipesaukee Woods Farm, and Brookford Farm. The rest of the organic vegetables were grown here at Stout Oak Farm, and here’s the list: Carrots, Potatoes, Beets, Turnips, Rutabagas, Radishes, Butternut Squash, Leeks, Napa Cabbage, Green Cabbage, Parsley, Sage, and a selection of hardy greens (Kale, Chard, Winter Salad Mix).
We like to include local fruit in the shares when we can, and this year, we had the unique opportunity to actually harvest local cranberries ourselves! Our neighbor owns a cranberry bog in North Hampton, NH and invited us to harvest for the shares. One afternoon in late October, Kate and Christa got their tall boots on, waded into the bog, and harvested all of these gorgeous cranberries!
In addition to all the vegetables, here’s the other fun stuff we included in the shares this year: a pound of frozen NH Cranberries, Honey from Babcock Farm in Lee, Wheat Flour from Maine Grains, Cheddar Cheese from Brookford Farm, Salted Butter from Casco Bay Butter Company, and a dozen eggs from Stout Oak Farm’s pastured hens.
Our fall farm crew has done a great job pulling everything together. Christa and Steph joined the team in late October, and are working with Joanne and Kate to make the late fall harvest happen! We keep each other moving on the cold mornings, wearing more layers than you would think possible, making the most of the warmest and sunniest parts of the day. Thanks to our late season crew, we pulled off an extra Fall sprint at the end of a long, intense growing season. Go Team!
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| Carrots and cabbage piling up in our cold storage room |
Every year, the Thanksgiving Share will be a little different, depending on the growing season, the late fall weather, and the cool things our friends are growing at other nearby farms. We’ve been working hard to extend our growing season here at our farm, learning which varieties grow best in late fall and winter, figuring out the best planting dates for fall harvested crops, and improving our winter storage systems. We’re pretty excited that this year’s share was mostly grown right here!!
We still have a few Thanksgiving Shares available but they are going fast!
$165 per share. Get more info, register and pay online here: http://stoutoakfarm.csaware.com/thanksgiving-share-C5677
A FEW OTHER RESOURCES FOR YOUR LOCALVORE THANKSGIVING:
Looking for a local turkey? Our friends at New Roots Farm (Newmarket, NH) still have 12 – 14 lb and 18 – 20 lb turkeys
available. Their turkeys are pasture-raised broad-breasted birds, flash
frozen as soon as they come off the pasture. Here’s a link to their Registration Form.
Need some help with holiday baking? Our friends at Forty Five Market Street Bakery are taking orders for holiday pies! You can make arrangements to pick up your pies in Somersworth or Stratham. Call the bakery at 603-692-4511.
Seacoast Eat Local’s list of local farms offering pre-ordered turkeys
Seacoast Eat Local’s Winter Farmers’ Market begins Saturday November 22, the Saturday before Thanksgiving!