Farm Nisse-Friday December 12th from 4-6pm

Appleton Farms has its own "Nisse"- an elf-like creature who lives in our barn and protects our farmers, animals and crops.  Each holiday season our Farm Nisse appears for his special porridge. Join us as we kindly thank our Nisse for bringing luck to the farm, offer him porridge, and listen to his tales of mischief!  Share in holiday goodies, crafts, and caroling in our carriage barn.

Please Register at www.thetrustees.org or 978.356.5728 x18
Members: FREE. Nona-Member Family $10

Looking for the perfect gift? Look no more! New this holiday season at Appleton Farms: a Holiday Cheese Sampler, fresh from our farm.
The Cheese Sampler includes wedges of Sunset Hill Triple Cream, Pinnacle, and Broad Meadow cheeses. Hand-packaged with care and presented in rustic, wood boxes crowned with a signature Appleton label and cheese descriptions. The Holiday Cheese Sampler makes a perfect holiday present. Have one on hand as a hostess gift or for impromptu festivities at your own house. The cost for the Holiday Cheese Sampler is $50.
ABOUT OUR FARMSTEAD CHEESES
Sunset Hill Triple Cream
A silky-smooth, brie-style cheese with a snow-white bloomy rind, this cheese oozes flavor. It is sweet and buttery when young; bold and peppery with age.
Pinnacle
The “pinnacle” of our cheeses, this semi-hard cheese has a pleasant, grassy tang. A classic farmhouse table, tomme-style cheese. You can really taste the lush grass that our Jersey cows feed on. Fun fact: it's named after the granite spires or “pinnacles” located throughout the farm in memoriam to Appleton family members. Aged 3 months.
Broad Meadow
Earthy, nutty, smooth, and semi-hard can best describe this signature cheese that has become a farm favorite. This cheese is named for the expanse of fields rich with seasonal butterflies and grassland birds that welcome you onto our 1000-acre farm. Aged 6 months.
THREE SIMPLE WAYS TO PRE-ORDER
1. Place order directly at our dairy store (Monday–Friday, 11AM–6PM, Saturday & Sunday, 10AM–4PM); stop by or call 978.356.3825.
2. Email your order with number or samplers and pick-up dates toafwholesale@ttor.org.
3. Order online until December 20. Just select your pick-up date and click the "Add to Cart" button.  www.thetrustees.org/saycheese

Optimum Veggie Storage

So you just got home with 40+ lbs of winter squash, onions, garlic, carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes and a few other surprises.  How do you keep all this bounty fresh for as long as possible? Here is a link to a very useful table on just such a subject.  The most important figures to pay attention to are temperature and humidity.  Enjoy and happy holidays!

Thanksgiving Share Pickup Today!

Today is the Thanksgiving share pickup from 2pm-6pm.  If you ordered  winter vegetable shares, pies, or cranberries don’t forget to come and pick them up today.

The Final count down! (Last week of pickups)

It is with mixed feelings that we enter the last week of the CSA share distribution.  Although we are very much looking forward to a good long hibernation to recharge our batteries, we are also very sad to be parting ways with so many great friends.  To our CSA membership, to our volunteers and to our crew, thank you so much for all that you have brought to and brought out at Appleton Farms this year.  We hope to hear from you and see many of you over the winter.  We hope that you will join us again in the spring. 

The big news for this week came in last night.  A lovely wintery mix to send us off this season!  Of all the mixes “wintery” is my least favorite.  We covered many of our sensitive crops with frost clothe but with wind and wet snow we can’t be certain how everything faired until the snow melts off.  Make sure to thank your shareroom farmer this week because washing vegetables in this weather is brutally uncomfortable.

A few Thanksgiving shares are still available.  Although it is tough to say exactly when we will sell out it is a safe bet that it will be before the end of the week.  The Thanksgiving share pickup will be held on Monday November 17^th this year from 2pm until 6pm.  Instructions on how to best store your winter vegetables will be included with your pickup.

You may have noticed our leaflet about renewals in the share room last week.  It is true; Appleton Farms CSA is finally joining the 21^st century and going for paperless online signups.  Since we will be emailing you further details about the signup process it is very important that you provide us with your current preferred email address.  You can do this at the CSA check in desk this week.  Please print as clearly as possible.  Thanks for your assistance and understanding during this transition.      

What’s in the share: Greens*, kale, collards, turnips, beets, kohlrabi, bok choi *, celelry*, fennel, celeriac, carrots, winter squash, radishes, leeks, garlic, potatoes

What’s new: Parsnips, sweet potatoes, Romanesco cauliflower*

*Availability depending upon cold tolerance  

Week 21

Our rain gauge measures up to five inches of precipitation, after this point it is safe to assume that the fields are pretty well soaked.  By 9am on Thursday morning the rain gauge was overflowing and the deluge showed no signs of abating.  The stalwart farmers trudged through boot sucking mud, driving rain and chilling wind to harvest turnips, greens and leeks.  Your move US Postal Service.

Fortunately the weather cleared up for Saturday’s event and we had a great evening with lots of fantastic food.  I want to thank Steve and Carmen of Organic Rainbow who donated apples for the cider press and provided a fantastic cooking demonstration.  Thank you to Susan Wood who really knows how to whip up a party.  And of course thank you Alison Hoffman for organizing and planning last night’s event. 

We are getting pretty close to full with Thanksgiving share signups.  At this point we can no longer accept orders for pie or cranberries; however both will be available in the dairy store for the rest of the holiday season.  If you are hoping to purchase a winter vegetable share this year I would recommend getting your order forms in as soon as you can. 

What’s in the share: Greens, carrots, leeks, turnips, fennel, celery, beets, cabbage, garlic, winter squash, potatoes

What’s new: Popcorn, butternut

Harvest Dinner This Week!

You may have noticed a thin layer of papery litter strewn across the shareroom floor last week; the by-product of separating cloves of garlic for seed.  The time of year for garlic planting is upon us.  We grow two varieties of garlic.  Most of our shareholders are pretty familiar with the strong spicy flavor of our red garlic by now, however we have been holding off on putting our white garlic variety in the share until after planting time.  This is because we are doubling the amount of white garlic we grow for next year and we want to make sure we have enough seed.  German Extra Hardy garlic isn’t quite as pungent as our red variety but it matures earlier, grows uniformly large and produces four or five extra large (easy to peel!) cloves.  Our hope is to have even amounts of red and white garlic next season.

 Thanksgiving shares are still available although we cannot take any more pie orders at this time.  Pies will be available in the Dairy Store soon for anyone who missed the chance to order through us.  Cranberries will continue to be available as long as supplies last.  Get your order forms in early to secure your Thanksgiving share!

As the title of this post suggests, the potluck Harvest Dinner will be happening on Saturday of this week.  This is our chance to come together as a community and celebrate the bounty of the season.  If community building isn’t your thing it is worth showing up just for the food.  You are unlikely to find a better spread this season.  As an added bonus you can catch my (very brief) toast to the wonderful employees and volunteers who helped to make this season happen.  Mark it on your calendars for this Saturday from 4 to 7 in the Carriage Barn.  We hope to see you there!

What’s in the share: Greens, collards, carrots, leeks, garlic, winter squash, potatoes, beets, turnips

What’s new: Shunkyo radishes, celery, fennel

Week 19

We will continue selling Thanksgiving shares until we reach our share quota but THIS IS THE FINAL WEEK TO ORDER FROZEN PIES.  Please make sure to hand in your order form early in order to give the bakers plenty of time to do their thing.

The Harvest dinner is rapidly approaching!  We have dragged the old cider press out of the barn, pulled the banner out of storage and printed up some lovely invitations for everyone.  On October 25^th please join us at the Carriage Barn (the CSA barn just can’t comfortably hold us anymore) between the hours of 4pm and 7pm.  Fun, games and music will be followed by a potluck dinner so dust off your grandma’s best recipe and bring enough to feed the farmers.  Hope to see you all there!

What’s in the share: Kale, collards, cabbage, kohlrabi, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, greens, winter squash, leeks, garlic, potatoes, beets