Week 20 - Last week of the Summer CSA

It’s hard to believe the season is nearly over! It was a cool, wet start this spring but we found our stride by mid summer, and we’ve had some really nice crops this fall. I’ve appreciated getting to know many of you in the shareroom and really enjoying welcoming everyone to the farm each week. With the season coming to a close next week, we will be saying goodbye to our full season farm crew soon. I like to extend them a huge thanks for all their efforts this season and I hope you do as well!  

Renewals for the 2018 CSA season are now open for current members. The price of the CSA & number of weeks will remain the same for 2018: $650 for the season, starting in early June and running for 20 weeks. We will continue with the same volume-based system by which members fill a canvas tote bag each week. Primary shareholders received an email this week with the link for signups. If you haven’t receive an email, please contact us at appletonfarmscsa@thetrustees.org or call 978-356-5728 ext. 4115.

Winter CSA signups are still open. A typical share features a mix of storage crops like winter squash, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, beets, onions, garlic, popcorn, and fresh vegetables like head lettuce, kale, spinach, and arugula. The three pickups, which feature quite a bit more volume than our summer share, are on Fridays 2-6pm in November and December: November 17, December 1, December 15. Sign up online at  www.thetrustees.org/appletonwinter

This week the share will include:

Greens

Spinach

Head lettuce

Escarole

Fennel

Kale

Collards

Rainbow chard

Radish

Kohl rabi

Cabbage

Carrots

Potatoes

Buttercup squash

Long island cheese pumpkin

Herbs - PYO

Corn stalks - PYO

Despite our best efforts to keep a good stash of scissors for the pick your own field, every week many go missing. I’d like to encourage you to bring your own scissors if you plan on picking.

Just a reminder, we only allow one pickup per week but the choice of day is up to you. If you cannot make it for one of the weeks, you can always send a friend to pick up your share for you. Please remember to bring your tote bags! The shareroom is open Monday & Thursday 2-7pm, Tuesday and Friday 12-5pm

Fall Cheese Share and Holiday Cheese Boxes 

We will be offering a shorter cheese share in November and December and taking orders for the Holiday Cheese Boxes.   We will have a few seasonal cheeses.  Details at the Store soon.  

Neil Young Cover Band, Rust Never Sleeps, Concert - October 22

Join us for our annual Down on the Farm Fall Concert Series at Appleton Farms! These family-friendly concerts will feature live music, food trucks, lawn games, and an opportunity to meet our dairy cows and farm animals. The series kicks off on Sunday, 

Bring your own picnic or purchase food from Joe's on a Roll and CopperDome Pizza.  Beer and wine will also be available for purchase from Ipswich Ale and Old Planters Brewing.

Gates open at 4pm and concert starts at 5pm. Leaf-peeping and family photo opportunities among the foliage in our historic Stone Paddock a bonus!

Cooking Classes and Private Events

Appleton Farm House is a great place to host book club or a small family birthday party.  We rent the kitchen and farm table space or can arrange a private cooking class.   Contact us:   screighton@thetrustees.org  

Trick or Treat:  Sunday Oct 29 2-4

Grab your best (non-scary) costume and join us for some trick-or-treating in the farmyard! Go for a walk through our barn and around the stone paddock to collect candy. Meet the animals, make a Halloween craft, and enjoy music, hot cider and cider doughnuts. Bring your pre-carved pumpkin from home to light up our carriage barn. Participants can vote for the "best of" in a number of categories and winners will be announced at the end of the event. 

An adult must attend with children at no additional cost. Please let us know if there are any allergies and we will do our best to accommodate with available candy. 

Like Cheese?  Learn how to make Mozzarella at home! 

Spend a morning or an evening  with Appleton’s own cheese maker, Kristian Holbrook, for a hands-on cheese making class in our farm kitchen.  You’ll learn all the basics of making soft cheeses, make your own mozzarella and ricotta to take home, and get a tour of our dairy operation and cheese caves. Kristian will cover all the basics of cheese making and teach you exactly how to make delicious fresh cheese at home. Next cleass is November 18th, but it makes a great outing for a book club!   contact screighton@thetrustees.org to arrange a special class. 

Or.... spend a day in the Creamery:  Oct 26 or Nov 10. sign up at the store or on line.

News from the Farm Store

Milk bottling on Wednesday this week.  

Now you can keep the taste of Appleton tomatoes all season long.  Our own tomato puree is now in the store. 

Alprilla flour, freshly milled in Essex, is back!   It is fresh and seasonal.   We will be ordering it weekly so let us know if you want a special order.   The flour comes in 2 and 5 pound bags.   Cornmeal will be coming later this fall.  

A&J King breads & pastries are delivered daily Mon-Sat. 

Pure Pastry are freshly baked Thursdays.  Pure Pastry product is refrigerated so keeps well through Saturday. 

We have several new items including toys and puzzles -- great farm related gifts!

Regular store hours are M-F 11 to 6 and Sat and Sun 10-4.

Week 19 - Fall Shares, Concerts, and Cooking Classes!

We had a threat of frost last week but it seemed to miss our fields. I’m yet to see any cold damage on tender plants. While many have been enjoying the mild fall we’ve had so far, including me, a hard frost could do us well. It does wonders to sweeten up certain crops like carrots and spinach, and it kills off some pesky weeds that are threatening to go to seed. For now it seems the mild weather will continue.

Our wonderful and talented share room manager, Sarah Kelly, who warmly greets all our shareholders each week and keeps the barn looking so good, is moving on to a different role within the Trustees. She will finish out the season with us in the shareroom on Thursdays and Fridays through the end of month as she takes on new responsibilities in an administration support role for our statewide Trustees agriculture team. In essence, it’s a shift from front of the house to behind the scenes, as she will continue her work at Appleton Farms helping with CSA signups, among other things. I’d like to acknowledge and thank her for the great work she’s done this summer!


This week the share will include:

Greens
Spinach
Head lettuce
Fennel
Kale
Collards
Rainbow chard
Daikon radish
Kohl rabi
Napa cabbage
Carrots
Onions
Sweet potatoes
Butternut squash
Herbs - PYO
Corn stalks - PYO

Despite our best efforts to keep a good stash of scissors for the pick your own field, every week many go missing. I’d like to encourage you to bring your own scissors if you plan on picking.

Just a reminder, we only allow one pickup per week but the choice of day is up to you. If you cannot make it for one of the weeks, you can always send a friend to pick up your share for you. Please remember to bring your tote bags!

MORE Ways to Get Great Food from the Farm

Sign up for our Winter CSA!

A typical share features a mix of storage crops like winter squash, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, beets, onions, garlic, popcorn, and fresh vegetables like head lettuce, kale, spinach, and arugula. The three pickups, which feature quite a bit more volume than our summer share, are on Fridays in November and December:

Sign up online at  www.thetrustees.org/appletonwinter

Meat Share will be coming to Appleton this Fall 

More info can be found here.  


Fall Cheese Share and Holiday Cheese Boxes 

We will be offering a shorter cheese share in November and December and taking orders for the Holiday Cheese Boxes.   We will have a few seasonal cheeses.  Details at the Store soon.  

Neil Young Cover Band, Rust Never Sleeps, Concert - October 22

Join us for our annual Down on the Farm Fall Concert Series at Appleton Farms! These family-friendly concerts will feature live music, food trucks, lawn games, and an opportunity to meet our dairy cows and farm animals. The series kicks off on Sunday, 

Bring your own picnic or purchase food from Joe's on a Roll and CopperDome Pizza.  Beer and wine will also be available for purchase from Ipswich Ale and Old Planters Brewing.

Gates open at 4pm and concert starts at 5pm. Leaf-peeping and family photo opportunities among the foliage in our historic Stone Paddock a bonus!

Cooking Class:  October 19th 6-9 pm  - Autumn Apple Harvest 

It’s apple season in New England and we’re honoring this favorite crop in our farm kitchen!  We’ll prepare a complete menu including both sweet & savory dishes using apples sourced from local orchards, with recipes such as Roasted Delicata & Apple Salad with Warm Honey-Lemon Dressing, Apple-Stuffed Pork Loin with Hard Cider Pan Sauce, Sweet & Sour Braised Red Cabbage and delicious Dutch Apple Kuchen.  Our workshop includes hands-on cooking, professional culinary tips & techniques, printed recipes, plus a sampling of unique heirloom apples and locally crafted hard cider! Class ends with a wonderful meal in the farmhouse dining room.  (byob beer & wine allowed).   Sign up at the Store or HERE. 

Trick or Treat:  Sunday Oct 29 2-4

Grab your best (non-scary) costume and join us for some trick-or-treating in the farmyard! Go for a walk through our barn and around the stone paddock to collect candy. Meet the animals, make a Halloween craft, and enjoy music, hot cider and cider doughnuts. Bring your pre-carved pumpkin from home to light up our carriage barn. Participants can vote for the "best of" in a number of categories and winners will be announced at the end of the event. 

An adult must attend with children at no additional cost. Please let us know if there are any allergies and we will do our best to accommodate with available candy. 

Like Cheese?  Learn how to make Mozzarella at home! 

Spend a morning or an evening  with Appleton’s own cheese maker, Kristian Holbrook, for a hands-on cheese making class in our farm kitchen.  You’ll learn all the basics of making soft cheeses, make your own mozzarella and ricotta to take home, and get a tour of our dairy operation and cheese caves. Kristian will cover all the basics of cheese making and teach you exactly how to make delicious fresh cheese at home. Next cleass is November 18th, but it makes a great outing for a book club!   contact screighton@thetrustees.org to arrange a special class. 

News from the Farm Store

Milk bottling on Wednesday this week.  

Now you can keep the taste of Appleton tomatoes all season long.  Our own tomato puree is now in the store. 

Alprilla flour, freshly milled in Essex, is back!   It is fresh and seasonal.   We will be ordering it weekly so let us know if you want a special order.   The flour comes in 2 and 5 pound bags.   Cornmeal will be coming later this fall.  

A&J King breads & pastries are delivered daily Mon-Sat. 

Pure Pastry are freshly baked Thursdays.  Pure Pastry product is refrigerated so keeps well through Saturday. 

We have several new items including toys and puzzles -- great farm related gifts!

Regular store hours are M-F 11 to 6 and Sat and Sun 10-4.

Week 18 - Warm Fall!

The season is winding down and we keep checking things off the list. This past week we did our final transplanting and greens seeding of the season, which is a major accomplishment considering we’ve been at it every week since April! The sunflowers that greet us on our way into the farm are the last of our summer crops hanging tough against the impending cool weather. The late season crops we plan for fall are going gangbusters with all the warm weather!

Sign up for our Winter CSA!

A typical share features a mix of storage crops like winter squash, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, beets, onions, garlic, popcorn, and fresh vegetables like head lettuce, kale, spinach, and arugula. The three pickups, which feature quite a bit more volume than our summer share, are on Fridays 2-6pm in November and December: November 17, December 1, December 15.

Sign up online at  www.thetrustees.org/appletonwinter

This week the share will include:

Greens

Spinach

Baby lettuce

Head lettuce

Radishes

Kale

Collards

Rainbow chard

Beets

Kohl rabi

Broccoli

Potatoes

Acorn squash

Golden nugget squash

Herbs – PYO

Corn stalks - PYO

Despite our best efforts to keep a good stash of scissors for the pick your own field, every week many go missing. I’d like to encourage you to bring your own scissors if you plan on picking.

Just a reminder, we only allow one pickup per week but the choice of day is up to you. If you cannot make it for one of the weeks, you can always send a friend to pick up your share for you. Please remember to bring your tote bags! The shareroom is open Monday & Thursday 2-7pm, Tuesday and Friday 12-5pm

Last Sunday Night Concert: October 22!

Join us for our annual Down on the Farm Fall Concert Series at Appleton Farms! These family-friendly concerts will feature live music, food trucks, lawn games, and an opportunity to meet our dairy cows and farm animals. The series kicks off on Sunday, 

Bring your own picnic or purchase food from Joe's on a Roll and CopperDome Pizza.  Beer and wine will also be available for purchase from Ipswich Ale and Old Planters Brewing.

Gates open at 4pm and concert starts at 5pm. Leaf-peeping and family photo opportunities among the foliage in our historic Stone Paddock a bonus!

Cooking Class:  October 19th 6-9 pm  - Autumn Apple Harvest 

It’s apple season in New England and we’re honoring this favorite crop in our farm kitchen!  We’ll prepare a complete menu including both sweet & savory dishes using apples sourced from local orchards, with recipes such as Roasted Delicata & Apple Salad with Warm Honey-Lemon Dressing, Apple-Stuffed Pork Loin with Hard Cider Pan Sauce, Sweet & Sour Braised Red Cabbage and delicious Dutch Apple Kuchen.  Our workshop includes hands-on cooking, professional culinary tips & techniques, printed recipes, plus a sampling of unique heirloom apples and locally crafted hard cider! Class ends with a wonderful meal in the farmhouse dining room.  (byob beer & wine allowed).   Sign up at the Store or HERE. 

Trick or Treat:  Saturday Oct 29

Grab your best (non-scary) costume and join us for some trick-or-treating in the farmyard! Go for a walk through our barn and around the stone paddock to collect candy. Meet the animals, make a Halloween craft, and enjoy music, hot cider and cider doughnuts. Bring your pre-carved pumpkin from home to light up our carriage barn. Participants can vote for the "best of" in a number of categories and winners will be announced at the end of the event. 

An adult must attend with children at no additional cost. Please let us know if there are any allergies and we will do our best to accommodate with available candy. 

Like Cheese?  Learn how to make Mozzarella at home! 

Spend a morning or an evening  with Appleton’s own cheese maker, Kristian Holbrook, for a hands-on cheese making class in our farm kitchen.  You’ll learn all the basics of making soft cheeses, make your own mozzarella and ricotta to take home, and get a tour of our dairy operation and cheese caves. Kristian will cover all the basics of cheese making and teach you exactly how to make delicious fresh cheese at home. Next cleass is November 18th, but it makes a great outing for a book club!   contact screighton@thetrustees.org to arrange a special class. 

News from the Farm Store

Milk bottling on Thursday this week. 

Alprilla flour, freshly milled in Essex, is back!   It is fresh and seasonal.   We will be ordering it weekly so let us know if you want a special order.   The flour comes in 2 and 5 pound bags.   Cornmeal will be coming later this fall.  

A&J King breads & pastries are delivered daily Mon-Sat. 

Pure Pastry are freshly baked Thursdays.  Pure Pastry product is refrigerated so keeps well through Saturday. 

We have several new items including toys and puzzles -- great farm related gifts!

Regular store hours are M-F 11 to 6 and Sat and Sun 10-4. Sometime we may stay open a little later, but generally we close at 6 pm.

Please remember to bring back your glass milk bottles. We generally bottle milk on Wednesday mornings, but due to the holiday, we will bottle on Thursday this week.

Week 17 - Crisp Mornings

It’s hard not to enjoy the crisp mornings and beautiful days this time of year. I find the light at sunrise and sunset to be most striking in fall, with vibrant colors and shadows. It’s certainly put me in the mood to clean up and prep for winter. This week we continue to put fields to rest for the year. We pulled stakes out of the tomatoes, tilled in the peppers, and put down more cover crop seed. All the potatoes are harvested now and we seeded the last round of greens and spinach for the year. The early planted cover crops have grown leaps and bounds, and are a wonderful sight, alive in green as autumn settles in around us.

Sign up for our Winter CSA!

A typical share features a mix of storage crops like winter squash, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, beets, onions, garlic, popcorn, and fresh vegetables like head lettuce, kale, spinach, and arugula. The three pickups, which feature quite a bit more volume than our summer share, are on Fridays 2-6pm in November and December: November 17, December 1, December 15.

Sign up online at  www.thetrustees.org/appletonwinter

This week the share will include:

Greens

Spinach

Head lettuce

Salad turnips

Radishes

Rainbow chard

Curly kale

Cabbage

Carrots

Red onions

Potatoes

Kabocha squash

Green beans - PYO

Sunflowers - PYO

Herbs - PYO

Despite our best efforts to keep a good stash of scissors for the pick your own field, every week many go missing. I’d like to encourage you to bring your own scissors if you plan on picking.

Just a reminder, we only allow one pickup per week but the choice of day is up to you. If you cannot make it for one of the weeks, you can always send a friend to pick up your share for you. Please remember to bring your tote bags! The shareroom is open Monday & Thursday 2-7pm, Tuesday and Friday 12-5pm

Sunday night Concerts October 8 and 22!

Join us for our annual Down on the Farm Fall Concert Series at Appleton Farms! These family-friendly concerts will feature live music, food trucks, lawn games, and an opportunity to meet our dairy cows and farm animals. The series kicks off on Sunday, 

Bring your own picnic or purchase food from Joe's on a Roll and CopperDome Pizza.  Beer and wine will also be available for purchase from Ipswich Ale and Old Planters Brewing.

Gates open at 4pm and concert starts at 5pm. Leaf-peeping and family photo opportunities among the foliage in our historic Stone Paddock a bonus!

Like Cheese?  Learn how to make Mozzarella at home! 

Spend October 7th morning with Appleton’s own cheese maker, Kristian Holbrook, for a hands-on cheese making class in our farm kitchen.  You’ll learn all the basics of making soft cheeses, make your own mozzarella and ricotta to take home, and get a tour of our dairy operation and cheese caves. Kristian will cover all the basics of cheese making and teach you exactly how to make delicious fresh cheese at home. Pre-registration required. Sign up at the store or on line here.  

Preschool Farm Explorers 

Explore the rhythms of Appleton Farms with your preschooler. We’ll meet the cows, taste test the vegetable fields, collect chicken eggs and dig into life on the farm. Preschool Farm Explorers experience it all through age-appropriate sensory activities, stories, and crafts. Each program will last 1 hour and will have a different theme such as “What Plants Need to Grow” or “Meet the Cows.” Please pre-register. Fee covers one adult and child for four sessions. Younger siblings are welcome with an additional fee of $24/$30 for member/nonmembers. Questions?  Email Engagement Manager,  Caroline at crouillard@thetrustees.org.

News from the Farm Store

Milk bottling on Wednesday this week. 

Alprilla flour, freshly milled in Essex, is back!   It is fresh and seasonal.   We will be ordering it weekly so let us know if you want a special order.   The flour comes in 2 and 5 pound bags.   Cornmeal will be coming later this fall.  

A&J King breads & pastries are delivered daily Mon-Sat. 

Pure Pastry are freshly baked Thursdays.  Pure Pastry product is refrigerated so keeps well through Saturday. 

We have several new items including toys and puzzles -- great farm related gifts!  

Regular store hours are M-F 11 to 6 and Sat and Sun 10-4. Sometime we may stay open a little later, but generally we close at 6 pm.

Please remember to bring back your glass milk bottles. We generally bottle milk on Wednesday mornings and it is ready in the store on Wednesday mid-afternoon.