Jams & jellies

About Nason's Stone House Farm

Chicken pie. Homemade baked beans. Canned brown bread. Rhubarb pies–grandma’s kind of cooking. That’s Nason’s Stone House Farm.

Named after the Nason family’s 1849 stone house, which was built on the foundation of a house erected in 1710, the business flourished despite its obscure location. Jimmy Nason, alongside his daughter, Jody, and son, Kevin, are the hands that tend the ovens, bake the bread, and stir the gravy on their Boxford property, where three generations have lived and worked.

Back in Jimmy’s father’s day, Henry Nason ran a poultry farm in an annex–the "brooder" house–off the main house. In it, they housed 15,000 chickens for hatching eggs that were sent south. They were one of the five Boxford farms to do so. Today, they are the last one standing, though the chickens are long gone.
Chicken pie
Today, they have narrowed their focus to strictly retail sales. Turkey, beef and chicken pies; haddock casseroles; baked beans and brown bread on Fridays and Saturdays; seasonal soups; pecan rolls and shortcake biscuits; apple crisp, turnovers and fruit pies–the list of New England favorites on offer at Nason’s is lengthy. And its appeal keeps generations of families coming back. “I have people come in who say, ‘I remember when my grandmother used to bring me your [chicken pies],” reflects Jimmy. In fact, people who grew up eating those pies and have since moved away return to stock up. “We had a family from Indiana come in with a huge cooler and they chocked it so full of chicken pies that we had to use duct tape to close it,” laughs Jody.

A lesser-known fact about Nason’s Stone House is that they cultivate 250 on-site high-bush blueberry shrubs planted by Jimmy’s father Henry in 1954. Picked fresh during the summer, the berries are used in muffins and dessert pies. Jimmy freezes them and makes them last for months, but he admits, “I still haven’t figured out why he needed 250 of them!” In addition to all of that sweetness, Nason's also boasts 2 rhubarb bushes that are cut in-season to provide an amazing assortment of rhubarb pie!
In 1957, the family started their famous chicken pie business. “The chicken pie was our initial (specialty food) niche,” says Jimmy, whose mother, Ruth, began making them in the kitchen of the stone house. A year later, she found a local girl to help her after school. Eventually, they moved into the cellar to cook for catering gigs, and in 1965 they moved the operation into the brooder house, which had been renovated to serve as a commercial kitchen, complete with antique ovens and countless stovetop burners. They were selling their chicken pies to 22 markets during their heyday, (You could buy three single-serving pies for a dollar. Now, they sell for $3.95 each.)

The catering business ran from 1961 through 1982, and primarily served Essex County. “We did the Topsfield Fair for 22 years–charcoal broiled chicken was our thing,” says Jimmy. “The biggest job we ever did was in 1976... North Andover was having a Fourth of July celebration–we did 2,000 barbecued chickens that day.”
Food
Honey
On the shelves sit sunny jars of local honey from beekeeper Ben Chadwick, who has hives all around Boxford as well as some located on site at Nason's, while R.E. Kimball and Company in Amesbury supplies them with jams and jellies. “They are a small little place like we are,” notes Jody. “They are a hidden gem…right on the Merrimack  River.” During Thanksgiving, the Nason’s sell 10 to 12 cases of R.E. Kimball’s cranberry sauce. “They probably have over 200 different flavors [of jams and jellies], and we carry about 20 of them,” notes Jody.

To capture the spirit of Nason’s Stone House, Jody shares one of her favorite memories of the place. A young girl requested that Santa bring her a gift certificate to Nason’s, where she wished to buy her own chicken pie. Having discreetly sold it to the child’s mother (signed Santa), Jody had the pleasure of seeing the girl return after the holidays to make her purchase. “It was what she wanted for Christmas–one of our chicken pies!”
Check out some of our old pictures and see how Nason's Stone House Farm grew up to be one of the best in West Boxford. You can also read through some of the news articles from various sources, which expresses our passion and talent!