North of Boston is a family farm in Boxford, Massachusetts that specializes in bringing exceptional food to everyone—absolutely everyone. We offer the state’s most flexible and customizable home delivery service. We sell at a wide range of Massachusetts farmers markets and we operate a farm store that’s inclusive, accessible, and fully stocked seven days a week. And we run a food access program that dependably brings fresh food to shelters and families that might otherwise go without.

We work hard every day to produce compelling and delicious food—we grow non-GMO crops, and we never use poisons to control pests or weeds—and we broaden our offerings by sourcing from local farms and cooperatives we know and trust. With nearly 350 years of family farming experience, we know how to grow and we know where to go.

Our mission: To cultivate relationships with local food.

Our vision: To grow a thriving local food culture that’s inclusive, accessible, and resilient as hell.

Our guarantee: If our food isn’t the best you’ve ever had, simply let us know and we’ll make it right.

  inclusive accessible resilient  
  Inclusive Accessible Resilient  

Delivery

From our farm to your home. No delivery fees. No commitments. No order minimums. No confusing schedules. Only exceptional quality and exceptional service. We’ll even carry your order inside and unpack it for you. Home delivery. Done better.

 

How Does Our Delivery Service Work?

  1. Open the order form and select your town from the dropdown list. A list of open delivery days will appear. Choose whichever day is best for you.
  2. Select what you want us to bring. Be as specific as you’d like, and share any delivery details too. How can we be helpful? Our drivers are trained and they care.
  3. Submit your order and receive a summary confirmation via email. No payment is submitted or accepted at time of order. (Please check your spam folder.)
  4. The day before delivery, we weigh and pack your order to your specifications. Then we send you an invoice via email, which includes an attached itemized pack list that details weights and sizes and totals.
  5. A 90 minute delivery window is emailed to you the evening before delivery, and then you’ll receive real-time updates via text message beginning 30 minutes before your order arrives.
  6. If you won’t be home, we can place your order in a cooler, pop it inside your door, leave it in a mailroom, or with a lobby attendant, or on a back porch, or whatever else you can imagine. Just let us know when you complete the order form.
 

   

More About our Delivery Process


Our trucks and our drivers; no 3rd-party
distribution service or cooperative.

Weather-resistant waxed produce boxes;
FDA-compliant bags; refrigerated vans.

Remote temperature monitoring.
Food safety is paramount.

Delivered, not shipped.
The distinction is great.

Exceptional food and exceptional service.
 
 

Service Area

We currently service 50 communities in the North Shore, Boston and its suburbs, Metro West, and the South Shore. As we grow into our new and improved delivery service, we add more and more communities to our service area. If you live near our service area and would like your community to be added, please contact us.

We offer the following delivery times:

  • Thursday delivery
  • Friday delivery
  • Saturday delivery
You can also currently find us at Farmer’s markets in Boxford, Gloucester, and Lowell*.
* Order pickup available at this market
 

Our Farm Store

Our new farm stand is located at 9 Ipswich Road in Boxford.

We are open every day 10:00am to 6:00pm. In addition to our full selection of produce, fruit, and meat, we carry products from local vendors including milk, eggs, and cheese.

 

Of course, you can place an order and it will be boxed up and ready to go on the date you choose.

Farmers Markets

We sell year-round at Massachusetts farmers markets and we offer convenient pre-ordering for smooth and simple pickup when you arrive. We do not charge any fees for this service and there is no order minimum.

How Does Market Pickup Work?

  1. Place your order via our online ordering form, selecting the farmers market you plan to attend.
  2. After weighing and packing your order to your specifications, we’ll send you an invoice via email the evening before market.
  3. You may pay the invoice or in-person at the market.
 

 

Currently you can find us at:

The Farm Market at Mill No. 5 in Lowell, Sunday 10-1pm: Year Round

The Farm Market at Mill No. 5 in Lowell, Sunday 10-1pm

Year Round

The Farm Market at Mill No. 5 in Lowell is open every Sunday from 10:00-1:00pm. We offer pre-order pickup for this market. Simply submit your order via this website and we'll have it boxed and ready for you.

Annisquam Farmers Market: Fridays, June 16 - August 25

Annisquam Farmers Market

Fridays, June 16 - August 25

The Annisquam Farmers Market is open Fridays from 9:00-12:00 at the Annisquam Village Hall (36 Leonard Street).

Farm Store: Every Day 10:00-6:00

Farm Store

Every Day 10:00-6:00

Our Farm Store is open every day from 10am to 6:00pm. 9 Ipswich Road, Boxford MA. (Rt 97 on the Boxford/Topsfield line)

How We Grow

North of Boston produces fresh food while maintaining a strong focus on soil health and natural resource conservation. We are USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Farm #1675

Here are a few examples of how we do things:

Pesticide-Free

We do not spray our crops. We have no pesticide licenses, and we don’t own a sprayer. We think it’s better to lose a crop and replant, than to deal with poisons and nonsense.

Non-GMO

All our seeds and plants are non-GMO and are sourced primarily from High Mowing Organics, Johnny’s Organics, and Holmes Seeds with preference always toward heirloom varieties, as well as those we’ve maintained in our family’s thirteen generations of farming in Massachusetts.

Fertilizers

We use cow manure, chicken manure, and commercially produced nitrogen-rich fertilizers.

Soil Health

We maintain year-round cover crops to increase soil health, to increase our farm’s biodiversity, and to attract pollinators while providing a valuable corridor to surrounding conservation lands.

Weed Control

We do not use chemical herbicides. We use straw mulch, hand tools, mechanical cultivators, and ground fabric for weed control.

How We Raise

We specialize in heritage breed animals. We never use antibiotics, growth hormones, or other shortcuts. Rather, we respect animals and raise them as our family has for generations–outdoors in the sun, on grass. We also co-raise animals the same way with our longtime friend, Farmer Tom of Sanford, Maine.

 
North of Boston is nothing like a factory farm and it shows in the quality of all our products.

Our Farmers

Justin Chase is a 12th-generation farmer. His favorite crops are those that epitomize the season in which they’re harvested: asparagus in spring; strawberries and rhubarb in early summer; tree fruits and raspberries later on, and then pork and apples, leeks and squash in the fall. But beets are his favorite of all, because they’re loaded with sugar and they taste of the particular soil in which they’re grown more than any other vegetable on Earth.
Justin advocates regularly for The Governor’s Food Policy Council and Massachusetts Food System Collaborative. Before founding North of Boston, Justin was a consultant for several states departments of agriculture and managed the farmer training program at Tufts University. He worked with his family on their historic farm in Newburyport and helped The National Farmers Union in Washington D.C. support farms throughout the country. Justin holds a BA in conservation biology, an MBA from Bentley University, and he’s an instructor for Cornell University and the United States Food & Drug Administration.
You can read more about Justin in the Bentley University Magazine.

 

Jamie Chase cares deeply about food equity and minimizing food waste. She grew up just a mile from Justin’s historic family farm and first worked there when she was a teen. Jamie’s relationship with the food system began with her earliest memories of standing in a crib at the back of her family’s restaurant. Jamie has worked in the food industry most of her life, from soil to table—including growing, wholesale food distribution, industry finance, event planning, working both front of house and in restaurant kitchens, and developing community coordination & volunteering efforts at local food pantries.
Today her food passions flourish in feeding her own family with from-scratch cooking and managing farm logistics. Jamie’s favorite moments on the farm are planting garlic, talking recipes, introducing folks to new foods, and creating safe spaces for all; she does not like raising chickens. Jamie holds a B.A. in Business Management and a M.S. in Organizational Psychology.
Justin and Jamie are raising their kids, DJ and Bradley, to respect the land, to appreciate the process of food—from earth to table, to understand the perils of food insecurity, and to generally appreciate the value of independent thought. DJ and Brad represent the 13th generation of family farmers to work Massachusetts soil.
Tobi is North of Boston’s newest farm hand. He enjoys digging random holes, running around, barking at squirrels, and performing other valuable farm-related tasks. He also manages our inventory control process and created this Web site. Good boy!

 

You can read more about North of Boston on the Boston area’s premiere food blog, Edible Boston.