Meat, Poultry, Eggs and Produce
Located in a rural corner of Lexington, Massachusetts, Meadow Mist is an integrated small farm that raises and sells grass fed beef, lamb, pastured chicken and turkey, cage-free fresh eggs, and seasonal garden vegetables and berries. We use only organically certified animal feeds, and avoid the use of any type of insecticide, herbicide or fungicide on our gardens and pastures. We rely on crop rotation, on-site composting, cover cropping and rotational grazing to build soil health.
Welcome.Call first
Fresh Picked - Summer Harvest
It won't be long
Farm News and Current Offerings
July 2014
Vounteer Day At Meadow Mist Farm
Next weekend July 19 th from 9 to 5: 30 pm is Meadow Mist Farm's Volunteer Day. Please join us for a day of weeding and enjoying what it is like working on a farm! Dress appropriately with long pants, boots, hats, sunscreen and water bottles and join in the fun!!!!!
Kids Cooking Green is excited to be visiting Meadow Mist farm with a group of children and their parents this Friday July 11, from 10-12:30. We still have a few room for more families to join us! Learn how our food is grown and visit this wonderful Lexington Farm!
Spend the mornings with us, dig in the dirt, & learn about being a farmer.
Did you know that some farmers use pigs to help them weed?
Another farmer uses worms to create rich soil for her strawberries!
And yet another farmer has a refrigerator full of ladybugs that she uses to
help control pesty bugs on her crops!
Join us as we visit this awesome local farm, and the farmer! This is a hands-on workshop where children will learn from farmer that grows our food. Help collect eggs, see a goat up close, and a baby pig.
Bring a bag lunch and after our tour we will spread a blanket and eat together. Dress to get dirty. This class is appropriate for kids aged 4 and up with an adult. Children entering grade 2 in the fall may attend alone. Younger child must be accompanied by an adult. Contact Lori Kids Cooking Green Classes Registering Now
Pick your own vegetables and Strawberries and Blueberries just beginning
Pastured raised supplemented with only organic feed whole flash frozen roaster chickens no cornish crosses available 6/23/14
Come visit the latest editions to our farm: Grunt and Squeal our new piglets
And Katie and Josh our registered White Faced Hereford Calf and Cows
SummerEgg CSA Sign Up is coming
ONE DAY SUMMER CAMP FOR BUDDING YOUNG CHEFS AND CHILDREN TO LEARN ABOUT WHERE THEIR FOOD COMES FROM
Kids Cooking Green Summer Camp is on July 11th 10:00 am Please contact Lori at Kids Cooking Green 617 212 2820 if you would like to enroll your child for this one day camp for all young and upcoming chefs!
SNAP FUNDRAISER TOUR OF THREE LOCAL AND HISTORIC FARMS SPONSORED BY LEXINGTON
FARMERS MARKET
Posted by Meadow Mist Farm , June 14, 2014 9-11:30 am
Saturday, June 14, 2014, 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Please contact Helen Theodosiou at Htheodosiou@rcn.com to find out beginning location and how to sign up
Maintaining the farming heritage of Lexington: the LFM brings fresh, healthy food to all through a SNAP fundraising tour of three LOCAL & historic farms
For 5 years the Lexington Farmers Market has offered a double incentive to our snap customers, encouraging them to shop, cook and eat locally grown nutritious foods. When SNAP customers shop at the LFM, we provide them with DOUBLE their SNAP money (up to $20.) Thus, one is able to purchase 40$ worth of nutrient dense-farmed foods for $20. As a result, our SNAP customers have been increasing annually; in 2013, we gave away $2500.
This saturday we are hosting fundraiser / “garden tour” . On June 14th, from 9:00-11:30 we are hosting a VERY “local farms” tour, to honor the agricultural tradition of this town. Three historic farms: two in Lexington and one in Winchester are the focus of this event. Preservation of these farms and the sustainable methods in which they are being farmed is to be celebrated. The more local farms we can support, the healthier our community and all it’s inhabitants. These farms are a haven from the hectic lives we lead, bringing us back to our roots, our sustenance.
Our first farm is one mile from the center of Lexington. Meadow Mist Farm is the former Meek Dairy Farm of the early 1900’s, which produced dairy products and later wholesale vegetables on 16 acres. Today, John and Lauren farm the remaining 6 acre parcel, off Marrett Rd. on Bacon St. They are using organic feeds, making their own compost, and avoiding any type of insecticide, herbicide or fungicide. Meadow Mist raises beef, lamb, chicken, pork and eggs, and grows vegetables and berries in season. Though small in size, Meadow Mist today is a working farm, an integral part of the local community, and an unspoiled remnant of the town's once vital agricultural past.
Lexington Community Farm, is a non-profit community farm in the location of the old Busa Farm, bordering the Arlington Reservoir. Janet Kern, previously an LFM volunteer, managed a successful grassroots effort to preserve the land. The town had purchased this parcel with the intention of building soccer fields and housing. The mission for Lexington Community Farm is to "preserve and transform this historic farmland for public benefit: offering hands-on education, volunteer, and recreation programs, food donations to food pantries, and making the landscape of a working farm accessible to residents of all ages."
Lastly, Wright-Locke Farm in Winchester, which has been operating as a farm since 1638! In 2007, the Town of Winchester purchased the farm to protect the 20 acres from intensive residential development. The Town formed the Wright-Locke Farm Conservancy to oversee the operation of the farmstead and arable fields, and in 2011, granted the Conservancy a 30-year lease on 7.6 acres that comprise the present day farm. Wright-Locke has a CSA and pick your own raspberries. A barn built 1827 is used for farm-to-table dinner parties and events, such as the family farm nights held Thursdays beginning mid-June. Local musical groups perform and families can picnic while meandering about the farm. These events are free, and the family "PICNIC" dinner can be ordered ahead of time and delivered by BISTRO 7, a wonderful Italian restaurant that features locally sourced foods, in Medford.
Come join us to explore these three amazing local farms on June 14th with a $25 suggested donation. Please contact Helen Theodosiou at Htheodosiou@rcn.com for more info and to register. Donations are appreciated and can be made to the LFM, to directly benefit SNAP, as we expect the demand to grow this season.
Stay Tune for our Blue popcorn, un-sprayed Strawberries, Blueberries and Raspberries additional grass fed meats,Heirloom Dried Beans and other Slow Food Arc of Taste Products...Ask to be added to our email list to be up to date with all of our unusual offerings..at laurenyaffee@gmail.com
Or join us for our farm tour to help support the Lexington Farmer's Market SNAP program for low income families who live in and shop at the market on June 14th.
Raw unprocessed HONEY from Meadow Mist Farm sold out
Pork is coming to Meadow Mist Farm this fall
ALTERNATIVE LOG TO BURN IN THE FIREPLACE
We are offering an alternative to the LOG to add to your fire in the fireplace. They are light weight, easy to carry, and to load into the fireplace and they burn really well. Inexpensive too. Come by and stock up for those warm and cozy nights in front of the fireplace with which to enjoy your favorite book and beverage. Ask us about them!
MEADOW MIST
Our Summer EGG CSA will be open for sign up in June.. It will begin on Tuesday June 23rd for the summer months with pick Ups for extra eggs can be made by sending us an email at laurenyaffee@gmail.com
Grass fed beef: is here.
Pork Available in the Fall 2014
Grass Fed pastured raised lamb: available in the late fall Nov/Dec
Cage free organically fed farm fresh eggs: One of our most popular farm products, our eggs are sold mainly through our 3-month Egg Share CSA. Some additional eggs are available for retail sale here at the farm. Please call to check availability.
Genuine organic, single cold pressed, unfiltered, unprocessed, extra virgin, single estate Sicilian olive oil. The best Italy has to offer. Lexington resident Giuseppe Taibi imports this premium product from his family's generational olive farm in Sicily. For the best and freshest quality, buy small quantities and use it quickly.
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Losing 'Virginity': Olive Oil's 'Scandalous' Fraud
Olive oil is one of the central ingredients in the Mediterranean diet. But producing a truly natural, high quality olive oil is a far more complex and time consuming process than most people know.
Recently, Terry Gross, host of NPR's Fresh Air program interviewed Tom Mueller, author of "Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil"
TOM MUELLER: “Olive oil is really the only commercially important vegetable oil to be made from a fresh fruit. Everything else is made from seeds or nuts. And what that means, essentially, is that on the one hand, olive oil, you're getting fresh-squeezed fruit juice. And on the other hand, you're getting what has to be highly refined to make it edible. So soybean and sunflower and so on are always run through a refinery, whereas extra virgin olive oil should never be run through a refinery. It's a kind of a heavy industrial process, where the hexane or another industrial solvent is dumped on the crushed seeds or nuts, and then once the oil is out, it has to be de-solvent-ized and de-acidified and deodorized and de-gummed and all the other D's that you can imagine, which pretty heavily impacts the chemical structure of the oil.”
“And olive oil, you know, being fresh-squeezed fruit juice, has a remarkable range of highly beneficial ingredients that is very perishable and would disappear if you refined it. What that gets you from a health perspective is a cocktail of 200-plus highly beneficial ingredients that explain why olive oil has been the heart of the Mediterranean diet. And at the same time, you have a huge range, since olive oil is - comes from 700 different kinds of olives, you have a huge range of cooking options that great chefs are only just beginning to understand and use.”
You can read the rest of the transcript here:
(by copying and pasting to your browser)
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=143154180
Saved from the Dump!
We will soon have available bundled firewood kindling and bagged mini press-logs from our mill in Somerville. The kindling consists of strips of kiln dried lumber of various species. The logs (measuring about 2 inches in diameter by 4 inches long) are pressed from sawdust and wood shavings. Most of the material would otherwise end up on a landfill.
ALTERNATIVE LOG TO BURN IN THE FIREPLACE
We are offering an alternative to the LOG to add to your fire in the fireplace. They are light weight, easy to carry, and to load into the fireplace and they burn really well. Inexpensive too. Come by and stock up for those warm and cozy nights in front of the fireplace with which to enjoy your favorite book and beverage. Ask us about them!
142 Marrett Road, Lexington, MA 02421
781-354-5037 laurenyaffee@gmail.com
(We are a small operation and off the beaten path, so please see directions on the Contact page, and call ahead if you're coming by
Hours: Mon Fri 10-6pm Sat-
We understand what food should be:
"Wholesome, seasonal, raised naturally, procured locally, prepared lovingly, and eaten with a profound reverence for the circle of life."
From The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollen
Meadow Mist Farm
To receive weekly emails of current offerings during the growing season, email us at laurenyaffee@gmail.com and write "add to list."
“This magical, marvelous food on our plate, this sustenance we absorb, has a story to tell. It has a journey. It leaves a footprint. It leaves a legacy. To eat with reckless abandon, without conscience, without knowledge; folks, this ain't normal.”
― Joel Salatin, Folks, This Ain't Normal: A Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better WorldEnd of the Road
The watering hole - Garden pond in late spring
Presentation and Q & A with Rancher and Restoration Ecologist
Allan Savory
Founder of the Savory Institute and originator of the Holistic Management approach to restoring grasslands, winner of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge Award, finalist in the Virgin Earth Challenge
While governments posture and dither, a pragmatic practitioner and intellectual entrepreneur, Allan Savory, has been developing and demonstrating a powerful technique that can reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere immediately while reversing desertification and providing livelihoods and food for millions of people. His applied research based in Zimbabwe on the restoration of grasslands has now been replicated onmillions of acres worldwide. The application of his methods has the potential to significantly reduce atmospheric carbon through an increase in plant growth and soil formation. This process begins immediately and involves no new technologies, only a shift to the Holistic Management practices for livestock that he has pioneered. Major organizations and institutions are now recognizing his work, but climate scientists and governments have yet to incorporate it into their analyses and policy prescriptions.
Free and open to the public. Hosted by the Agriculture, Forests, and Biodiversity Program of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at The Fletcher School and Planet-TECH Associates.
View event flyer
.MEADOW MIST FARM ALSO PRACTICES SUSTAINABLE FARMING PRACTICES
5 Things You Don't Know About Sustainable Farming
By Allison Gray, PBS Food
For more than 40 years, Earth Day has raised awareness around the need for environmental conservation. Sustainable agriculture embodies what Earth Day is all about–protecting our landscape from development by keeping it in production, while providing healthy and nutritious food for our communities.
I talked to Kathleen Frith, president of Glynwood, an agricultural nonprofit based in Cold Spring, NY working to strengthen the regional food system in the Hudson Valley, to get her perspective on how we can advance the field of sustainable agriculture. Along the way, I learned five surprising facts about sustainable farming and food that you might not be aware of.
MEADOW MIST FARM ALSO PRACTICES SUSTAINABLE FARMING PRACTICES
1. While livestock is important to keeping our agricultural land in production and our ability to provide healthy food to our communities, most of the meat in our country is raised through CAFOs, or concentrated animal feeding operations, which have a host of environmental and animal welfare issues. These operations don’t provide much room for the animals and use antibiotics to keep animals disease-free.
The good news is that there is a growing sustainable meat production movement. “Sustainable farms, such as Glynwood’s Farm, integrate their livestock into the fertilization process across the entire farming operation. There is a way to raise animals in an environmental and humane manner that results in really beautiful meat,” said Frith.
2. It’s difficult to source organic feed for livestock, especially grain. “At Glynwood, we have moved away from all genetically modified feed for our livestock, but it’s proven challenging to produce food in an economically viable way that doesn’t involve genetically modified feeds,” said Frith. Organic feed is more expensive and harder to procure than traditional feed varieties, and raises the cost. “We need to expand our availability of affordable, organic feed,” adds Frith.
3.. According to the 2007 Census of Agriculture performed by the USDA, the average age of farmers across the country is around 57, and the fastest growing group of farmers is 65 and older. “We are quickly losing our farming population, so one of our priorities at Glynwood is to help new and young farmers overcome the challenges that are inherent in entering the field of farming. We desperately need new farmers, but it’s particularly hard to access land and capital when you’re just starting out,” said Frith. One of the many things Glynwood has done to respond to this need is to develop a farmer apprentice program that offers both farm-based and business training. “There is a growing interest in sustainable agriculture, but those just entering need training, which, historically, has been handed down from generation to generation.”
4. Agriculture needs to transition towards more of a regional-based system, creating products and using farming techniques that are suitable for particular regions. “I would like to see a regionally-based agricultural system across the nation that produces specific products that speak to that particular region,” said Frith.
One way Glynwood is working to create a regional food identity in the Hudson Valley is through its Apple Project, which has fostered the creation of a regional food culture around hard cider produced in the region. “Many farmers have been losing their apple orchards because traditional apple production is economically challenging, so we’ve been working with apple growers to help promote craft hard cider production. Due in large part to Glynwood’s work in this area, we’ve witnessed a recent reemergence of hard cider, which is actually one of the most traditional American beverages.”
5. Rural communities are becoming increasingly aware that keeping their landscape in agricultural production is essential for their economic viability. As a result, sustainable food and farming is now recognized as a critical component of community planning and development, as rural communities work to ensure economic prosperity into the future. Another one of Glynwood’s programs, Keep Farming, helps communities do just that by guiding them through a process of identifying their agricultural resources and establishing strategies that will encourage the long-term viability of farming.
