Tangerini’s Farm to Host School Year End Bash

The last day of school in Millis has become a big event over on Spring Street. Each year, Tangerini’s Spring Street Farm hosts a year-end bash, featuring a concert by local musicians, The Phat Daddies. This year’s free event, the fourth of its kind, will take place on the evening of June 19th, at 6 p.m.
Tangerini’s just added an addition of a whole new retail area, and it opened The Farmer’s Porch at Tangerini Farm on May 4th. The location will be open each day from 11 a.m.- 4 p.m.
“We really felt strongly that we have this farm, and we have all these wonderful vegetables and fruits here, and we have so many other farmers we do farm markets with and producers,” says Laura Tangerini, who purchased the farm 23 years ago with her husband. The goal, she says, was to offer a menu inspired by the seasons. “From early May to the end of November, we’ll have six menus that are going to be changing about every month,” says Tangerini, who says working with other local purveyors is extremely important to her. Among the local partners on her current menu is Holliston’s Outpost Farm, Lilac Hedge, Carlson Orchards, Norse Farm, Narraganset Creameries, Mi Nina Tortilla and Nashoba Valley Bread, among others.
“Anything we can get locally is what we do,” says Tangerini. “Right now, for example, we offer a roast beef sandwich with roast beef from Lilac Hedge, with pickled ramps. That meat has been sauvied for 16 hours, the micro-grown greens were grown in our greenhouse, and someone took the time to pickle ramps, and we get delivery from a local bakery.”
Tangerini says offering the local menu is important, “because in order for the farms to thrive or the small business to thrive, they need to be able to move their products. When you’re up against big producers out of the Midwest, and you’re raising a pasture-raised cow or goat or pig, it’s much more expensive to raise them than the industrial farms. We want to support those people; we want them to stick around and have a voice, and also to remind people that there are local businesses around here, and they need our support or they won’t continue to exist. The Amazons of the world will take over.”
Still, Tangerini keeps her lunch prices are competitive. “I would rather spend my time and money here and have really good food than have a night out ordering pizza.”
The new kitchen is located in the basement of the new farmstand with a full farm kitchen, offices, coolers, walk-in freezers, ovens, char broilers, fryolaters and a tilt skillet, says Tangerini, who herself has a degree in nutrition and food service management. The farm is equipped to do catering, with three chefs and a baker.
She says the farm has grown to be a part of the community beyond her wildest dreams. “
She credits a zoning change, after some heartache, that allowed a sign to be placed on Route 109 with helping her farm thrive. “It was a bumpy beginning,” she says, but now she can get to do what she’s been wanting to do forever.
In fact, Tangerini will reproduce sweet, sticky buns from a family heirloom recipe from Henneigher’s Bakery, a bakery once run by her aunt and uncle. Those will be sold inside, with other to-go items, “and we also have plenty of outdoor seating, offering sandwiches, salads, flatbreads and some hummus and salsa platters,” says the farmer.
Tangerini says although her success has been driven by dreams, luck has also had a lot to do with it.
“(Tangerini’s) was always meant to be a community place. We wanted to be able to share it with other people. We wanted them to feel it was their farm,” says Tangerini. “And it still is to this day.”