29Oct2025

29Oct2025, Happy Halloween!

If you don’t know what to do with all those Halloween / autumn decorations, the goats will be happy to eat them so they don’t go to a landfill! Drop them off wherever around the farm stand, I’ll check daily and figure it out.

You may have also heard that SNAP benefits will not go out in November, because of He Who Shall Not Be Named. I set up the farm stand outside as a collection drop off point for food bank items for the Worcester County Food Bank in Shrewsbury, and I’ll take whatever donations folks can give to the food bank weekly. A list of preferred items is here: https://foodbank.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Food-Drive-Requested-Donations-2022.pdf

They mostly need pantry goods and hygiene products. They do get fresh food to distribute to recipients, don’t worry! Those mostly come from gleaning organizations that harvest fresh fruit and veggies from farms who have surpluses.

I also set up some signs with QR codes for other nonprofits in need: Rosie’s Place, the Greater Boston Food Bank, and the MSPCA. Those organizations prefer to receive financial donations rather than food, as they get special rates and can make the money stretch further.

When I was a kid there wasn’t enough food in my household, and I’d often get sent to a neighbor’s or relative’s house to get fed for a while before going back to my mother’s house. As I got old enough to earn money doing odd jobs for the neighbors and relatives, and then old enough to get an actual W2 paying job, I could buy my own groceries and my uncles and friends taught me how to cook from their previous jobs in restaurants. One of the motivations for living on a farm is that when I was a kid and I’d get sent to a relative’s farm house, they always had plenty to eat – freezers and refrigerators full of meat, vegetables, milk, bread on the table, fresh fruit, even dessert. I’ve been in situations (while working full time, thank you very much) where being able to forage and raise my own food really saved me from going hungry. If you’ve never been hungry often enough to appreciate feeling actually full for once after a holiday meal, truly, count your blessings.

The chickens have been molting their feathers and not producing so many eggs, and bee season is about done, I’m wrapping up the hives in insulation now for the winter. I’ll start up again with eggs and honey for sale in March, and hopefully now that the greenhouse is up, I can also provide garden seedlings in spring. I did some seed saving from the garden and seed packets will also be available for sale in spring. But for now, the farm is collecting donations and disposing of all those gourds and squash and Christmas trees for you.