What’s New

We’re overjoyed to report that our bid to relocate our farm to Canterbury, NH was supported this week by a town vote. You can read more about the vote here and here.  We will be sure to keep you updated about all the details of the move as we know more, but for now, we can tell you that the move will be taking place this spring. To fund the gigantic project of relocating Brookford Farm, we are selling Christmas trees for just $20 each from our own Farm Store, which will be fully staffed this Saturday and Sunday from 9 AM – 7 PM. Thanks for your support!

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After a year-long search for land, this Saturday marks an extremely important day for the fate of our farm, when citizens of Canterbury, NH are voting on whether or not to sell us land. This is the only viable piece of property we have found in New Hampshire, and if we can’t move here, we are afraid we will have to leave the state entirely. If you’re wondering what you can do to help, here are a few ways you can show your support:

1. Write a letter to the editor of the Concord Monitor expressing your support for our farm’s bid.

2. Come to the vote on Saturday, December 3rd at 10 AM, at the Canterbury Elementary School, and help us explain to Canterbury residents why Brookford Farm would be an asset to their community.

3. Help us spread the word by posting this message through social media, on blogs, and with calls and emails to friends.

4. Urge your friends, colleagues, and relatives in Canterbury to get out and vote in favor of our organic, grass-based farming efforts, and tell them that what we are building is not just a farm, but also access to healthy food, revitalized soil, and strong communities in our area.

Thank you so much for your support! (read more…)

 

We owe a huge debt of thanks to all the volunteers who cooked, worked in the parking lot, organized vendors, silkscreened T-shirts, taught workshops, led events, painted faces, carved pumpkins with kids, and baked cakes yesterday at QuarkFest. Thank you to Erin and Cate for teaching phenomenal food workshops, Cathy and Sharon for painting faces and carving pumpkins all day in the kids’ area, to Jeanette, stellar vendor and raffle coordinator, Lisa and Maria for being there wherever needed and all day long, Jonathan and Barbara for masterminding the food area, Kaniska for putting together the cooking class materials, Hannah and Mack for tabulating the Quark-Off ballots and doing countless other jobs throughout the day, David, Caleb, and Lorelei for helping from set-up straight through the last event, Kurt and Tom and Jacqueline for help in the food area, all the great volunteers from SlowFood UNH, Hannah, Wilma, and Jonah for morning help, and last but certainly not least, to Lindsay, Mark, Phil, Maria, Peter, Pat, and Jameson, who gave of their incredibly limited free time to run Cow-Pie Bingo, oversee  massive parking operations, paint signs, lead hayrides, hustle raffle tickets, compose original music, and make us a big old breakfast.

We also want to send our humble thanks out to all the masterful chefs who generously donated their time and resources to showcase all that’s delicious about quark. Elizabeth from Black Bean Cafe, Amelia from Blue Moon Evolution, Chris from Flatbread, Ana Gabriela from Henry’s Market, Lisa from Squash Blossom Farm, and Michelle from Street all taught us a thing or two about a subject we thought we knew very well – thank you!

And the musicians who played at our event were not only excellent, but they also came together to cover a hole in the schedule which happened just a few days before the event. If you ever get a chance to hear Deep Hole Road or the Fiddling Thomsons, you should go! You’ll be really glad you did.

And the day would not have been complete without all the community groups who came out and showed us what’s really great about where we live. Thank you all for coming out and sharing a great day with us at Quarkfest! (read more…)

We’re a week away from our harvest festival, and all of us at Brookford Farm are busy making preparations to welcome everyone out to the farm – putting down new gravel, silkscreening festival T-shirts, renting tents and setting them up, drawing up menus and prepping ingredients, coaching all the animals on proper guest etiquette and carefully rehearsing our farmer-drama – not to mention all the normal business of regular farming in high harvest season.

Despite all our best efforts, we could never have pulled together a festival of this size without the help of a dedicated group of volunteers and a core group of community organizations and businesses which have helped us to cover the huge costs of putting on this event. A few specific thanks are in order:

A Market of Manchester and Dr. Dan’s Natural Healing Center of Newburyport got us a couple of big-top tents in which to house the musicians, the quark cook-off, and the dining area.

Farm Credit East paid for event facilities like portable toilets.

Valicenti Organico and Cutter Family Properties funded the printing of promotional materials like posters and flyers.

Thompson Finishing (207) 408-4799 painted our street signs for around town.

Dover Agway bought the T-shirts we’re making for our volunteers, and Aubuchon Hardware paid for the ink and screens to print the design.

Slow Food Seacoast got us the cake boxes we’re using to send home prize-winning cakes from the Cake Walk, as well as the little plates and forks for Quark Cook-off samples.

Green Alliance, The Wire, and WUNH all donated publicity.

Through the generosity of these donors, we’ve been able to cover about half of the total cost of putting on this event, so we’ve decided not to ask for admission at the door. But we still have a ways to go, so the money that we raise from the raffling of gift certificates and prizes in hourly raffles as well as games like Cow Pie Bingo and the Cake Walk will help pay for all the entertainers, power the grills, get screening rights for the barn movie, and buy us all a lot of paper plates and mustard.

So consider bringing some spending money with you to QuarkFEST – you could win hundreds of dollars in prizes from the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire, Red Rover Coffee, Beach Pea Baking Company, Black Bean Cafe,  High Mowing Organic Seeds, Flatbread, Noggin Factory Toys, Blue Moon Evolution, StreetFood 36o, Durham Marketplace, Strawbery Banke Museum, and of course, Brookford Farm. If the festival does end up generating any profits for the farm in the end, we’ll donate 10% of them to our CSA financial aid program.

Festival volunteers will be wearing bright T-shirts with a chicken design. Please help us pass the thanks to them as well – they are hometown heroes! (read more…)

QuarkFEST, our big fall festival, is just a couple of weeks away, and we can’t hardly wait. Here’s the full schedule, and below that you can find more details on the morning’s food workshops.  Use the CONTACT US link at the bottom of any page in this website to register for a cooking workshop.

Also, we’re looking for volunteers to bake Quark Cakes for our cake walk fundraiser. Just drop us a line and we’ll get you the quark!

To read our latest newsletter – and all the details about QuarkFEST – click here.

 

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