Nana’s Recipe Box

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December 5, 2025

This time of year is filled with family recipes. For my family, the star of the Thanksgiving table is my great-grandmother Hadley’s cranberry ice, a tangy and smooth sorbet. For CJ’s family, it’s Grandma Krantz’s perfect mashed potato recipe, which has to be made the day before so the flavors set in. Come Christmas season, I have to eat some chocolate crinkle cookies that my mom always makes or it doesn’t feel like Christmas yet.

Lately I’ve been going to my recipe box for some of my staples. The box was once my Nana’s and I’ve since added to her collection with my own assortment of handwritten cards. As I flipped through the box, something stood out to me about her recipes versus mine. So many of hers begin with someone’s name who she knew personally, such as…

Margaret’s Chocolate Crinkles
Aunt Beth’s Coffee Cake
Mildred’s Ouefs Enterallies
Molly Nelson’s Baked French Toast
Mary Cox Cheese Fondue
Karen Taylor’s Zucchini Bread

Whereas most of my recipes I scribbled down from some random person’s blog post after trying it a few times and considering it a keeper. No need to write their name, there’s no personal connection there. It made me remember once again how food embodies our relationships. And how the era of sharing recipes between friends is somewhat over.

Now I don’t want to overromanticize the past. After all, my grandma was somewhat limited in her culinary explorations by what she and her friends circulated between them, whereas I find myself making recipes from around the world because I have endless access to online food blogs and more niche items available at the grocery store.

But it made me want to add a few more of my own recipes to the box that start with a friend or family member’s name. So I thought, why not start with the community we’ve garnered around this farm.

Share one of your favorite family recipes by emailing us below! We’d love to gather inspiration from your household’s traditions and share them back out with this community in a future newsletter. What are the recipes you make that are tied to a certain person? What memories do they hold for you and yours?

Keep your eyes out for a special holiday recipe, made by Chef Zach Morgan, coming your way soon!

Before signing off, I had to share this picture. My Nana always had a good sense of humor. On the card that she labeled “Bread / Rolls,” she decided to tape a photo of herself as a paunchy toddler to represent the subject. This is one of the few photos I ever saw of her as a child, which now lives in my journal.

Warmly,
Molly

Expanding to Greener Pastures

We’ve got some exciting news to share! We are transitioning into being the new owners of the Shew Family Farm. This winter, we have been discussing the possibilities of a farm transition — as Pete & Marjie sought to create a plan for retirement, in hopes that their farm could be stewarded in a similar manner, and as we sought to expand our beef operation on our current limited land base. With guidance from our Uncle Jon Sowash, we devised a land contract to purchase the farm over the next many years in installments. In December, we also purchased the Shew’s brood cows and young calves. It’s no small feat to pass a farm from one generation to the next, particularly when it’s not to children. According to the American Farmland Trust, 2,000 acres of farmland are lost to non-agricultural uses every day. This has been a full circle moment, as Pete has been a mentor to us for several years. When I first started our farm in 2020, I cold-called him to see if I could visit and learn from him. I remember visiting one day to learn about handling cattle and to “help” as Pete brought a few steers down to the barn and loaded them into the trailer for the butcher. Over lunch, Marjie shared how they weren’t sure who would take over the farm when they retired and remarked, “maybe you’ll buy this place one day!” My eyes grew wide and I laughed, thinking to myself — me?! I have no idea how to farm. What does this mean for us and the Shews? We will continue to live and farm here in Athens County where we’ll run our pastured pork operation. During the growing season, we will run the cattle at the Shew farm where we’ll have the space to increase the herd size and maintain a breeding operation for the first time. As winter approaches, we will bring the herd back to our Athens farm to graze stockpiled forages — reducing the amount of hay we need to feed and making winter chores easier. Pete & Marjie will continue living in their home. They will be raising their butcher-ready steers and selling beef at the Athens Farmers Market this season before retiring in the fall. We are grateful that they will be staying on the property and advising us, as we get to know the farm and continue to learn as first-generation farmers. How does this enable us to raise our own calves? Until now, we have been purchasing weaned calves in the spring from other grass-fed farms and raising them to butcher weight. But we are getting squeezed by the cattle market, making it difficult to run a profitable enterprise. In spring 2021, we were purchasing calves for $1.62/lb or $680 for a 420 lb animal. Right now, the average price for the same calves is $5.25/lb or $2,205. People have often asked us — why don’t we raise our own calves? But on just 50 acres of pasture that we lease from family, we don’t have the space to maintain a herd of brood cows without having to really reduce our production. After all, a mama cow needs about 2 acres of pasture to live, so we’d have to free up space by reducing the number of steers we raise for beef. Last year we tried to expand our land base by leasing smaller, noncontiguous land near us. This involved hauling cattle to a different property every month or so, trucking water, and setting up temporary fencing. This opportunity to expand to the Shew property’s 115 acres of pasture means we can now run a “birth to butcher” operation in one centralized place. Better soils mean more beef! This also means we can increase beef production, as the soils have been so improved by the Shew’s managed grazing that they can support nearly twice the number of animals per acre as our Athens pastures. Pete told us that when they moved there in 1984, the organic matter of their soils was around 2-3%. In 2024, soil samples showed organic matter ranging from 4-6%! That is incredible improvement in soil health in a short amount of time. These productive soils will allow us to sustainably meet the growing demand for our grass-fed beef. More than anything, we are excited about the opportunity to invest in soils that have been improved for 42 years by sustainable grazing practices. That’s the best farm insurance policy we could ask for. We are honored to carry on the legacy of Pete & Marjie. We’ve got big Shews to fill.

The word that best defines 2025...

is community. And our community shows up in the pages of our newly released 2025 Annual Report — from photos of our events to this year’s Customers of the Year to our families who support our farming endeavors wholeheartedly.

Welcoming quiet & new life in the New Year

We’ve been absent from your inbox lately as the December holidays brought a flurry of travel and events to many of our lives. There’s something wonderful about January’s contrast to December, when the decorations come down and the weather gets colder and the world seems to stand a little more still. We are embracing this quieter pace of life, in a literal and figurative sense.

Nana’s Recipe Box

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