Will we see you tomorrow?

Last Amherst Farmers Market of 2022

Hello Friends of Leyden Glen Farm:

Tomorrow is a bittersweet day. It’s the last day of the Amherst Farmers Market of 2022. It’s the last time we will see most of you until mid April when the 2023 season starts. We feel so fortunate that we have been able to feed your family with our pasture raised lamb over the past 10 years. We have met many interesting folks, created friendships with customers and other vendors, and learned an untold amount of interesting things from all of you. We feel so much richer for the community that the market has given us. I will be honest though - I won’t miss getting up at 4:45 a.m. every Saturday.

We will be thoroughly stocked with all our cuts of our pasture raised lamb meat. If you would like to place a special order for me to set aside, email me with your list and I will have it ready for you. We will not be doing any winter markets this year but you will find our lamb at Simple Gifts Farm in Amherst and Greenfields Market in Greenfield.

Email me at kristinnicholas@gmail.com or respond to this email.

As always, the freezer in our Lamb Store is stocked with all the cuts. We were lucky this year to receive a grant from the Local Farmer Awards to help with the purchase of a new upright freezer. The Awards were started by the Harold Grinspoon Charitable Foundation and are also supported by Big Y, Baystate Health and many more businesses. You can learn more about it here.

So many folks have been asking whether we will be hosting our Annual Open House this year. We are sorry to disappoint everyone but sadly we do not feel that this year is the year to begin the event again because of the lingering pandemic. Maybe next year.

As we move towards the Thanksgiving holiday in the USA, my thoughts go towards past years’ holidays. We will be celebrating the holiday as we have for the past 22 years here at our farmhouse with Kristin’s extended family. As I scurry around making things ready, I think about my Dad who passed away in 2004. He was the son of immigrants who settled in Dover, New Jersey from Germany and Great Britain. He taught me about farming and growing things when I was a young child. He was a dedicated “super” gardener. I remember the stories of his youth spending summers on his grandparents’ farm in Denville. He learned from Albin and Klara how to grow vegetables and flowers and helped to raise pigs and chickens. As a kid, I was fascinated with stories of the Old Days. The seeds of my farm life began with those stories even if my young mind romanticized what farm life was. Daddy spoke about the day that the pigs were harvested….. the traveling butcher would come to the farm and slaughter the pig. It would hang in a tree for a few days. His grandparents processed every part of the animals they grew to eat throughout the year. During World War II, Daddy grew a Victory Garden to help feed his family and neighbors. That farm and land that my German immigrants cared for is now covered with black top and the local high school building as so much of NJ. But - those people - Anna Klara and Albin - have continued to live on here at our farm.

Kristin’s Dad Archie Nicholas in his Victory Garden in 1945

Although Mark’s parents have been gone for many, many years, they too live on in their three boys. David, Mark and Michael are involved in caring for the land that their great-grandfather Octave and grandfather George purchased in the early 1920’s. David is a dairy farmer, Mark raises sheep, and Michael makes maple syrup and cuts wood. You can read an excellent article by Richie Davis here. You could say that meeting Mark back in the late 70’s gave me the opportunity to make my childhood dreams of farm life come true. Although our lives aren’t at all like the lives of both Mark and my grandparents, the common thread of good food and caring and harvesting from the land has run through the generations.

George and Rosa Duprey - Mark’s French Canadian grandparents

As we celebrate Thanksgiving next week in the U.S., I hope you have time to think about where you came from and all the things that have made you become you. As my Dad frequently used to say to me “Don’t forget where you came from.” It was good advice and I miss him and those words of wisdom and his support every day.

I’ll end with thanks - thanks to you for your support of our farm and family. Thanks for your contribution to the larger farming community and thanks for being you.

With love and thanks,

Kristin, Mark and Julia