After working the fields, a satisfying meal

TYNGSBOROUGH -- During the summer months at Bear Hill Farm, Mike Gagnon and his family resemble the proverbial cobbler's children. The farmer is so busy growing vegetables that he has little time to eat them. "We eat better in winter," he says, only half-jokingly.

Closer questioning reveals this isn't exactly the case. For one thing, Gagnon prepares a big midday meal every day throughout the season to feed his crew -- anywhere from three to nine people, plus his wife Anne, daughter Michalle Montgrain, and three young grandchildren, who all live on the farm. At these communal meals, he says , there are salads, stir-fries, and other vegetable dishes, made with the plentiful and varied fruits of their labors. For another, after a high-cholesterol scare a few years back, Gagnon, 52, made a concerted year-round effort to improve his diet .

On a rainy morning recently, as Anne and Michalle harvested the crops, Mike prepared lunch -- a dish of white beans, escarole, and turkey sausage -- in the farmhouse's kitchen. The 1853 house is a work in progress. Gagnon started to redo the kitchen a year ago, but he can only devote time to it during the off-season. Granite counters sit on cabinets without doors.

Still, it's clear Gagnon feels at home in the small, half-finished space -- all the more surprising because, unlike many good cooks, he didn't learn at his mother's knee. "My mom was a terrible cook," he says, who cooked everything to death. Nor did his parents farm. His grandfather bought the property in 1917, and his mother was born and raised here. Gagnon's grandfather ran the place as a dairy farm, and Gagnon recalls those days fondly. But, he says, "My parents worked in town, and they shipped off the cows the day my grandfather went to the nursing home."

The farming gene must have skipped a generation. Gagnon, who has lived here for all but four years of his life, was determined to make a go of it as a full-time farmer. The Gagnons became self-sustaining by going into community-supported agriculture nine years ago. In this system, shareholders -- mostly local families who enjoy farm-fresh produce -- pay a fee at the beginning of the season. From June to October, they stop at the farm once a week to pick up their share of lettuce, greens, herbs, squash, or whatever has been picked. Gagnon also sells pork from his own pigs, and eggs from his flock of 250 chickens. But the CSA shares really keep the place going.

As he talks, Gagnon prepares the simple dish that's a family favorite. The recipe originally called for pork sausage, but to lighten the dish, he started using turkey; he likes the spicy kind, but sweet will do as well. He's still able to use his own home-grown escarole, which is more tender and milder than most supermarket varieties.

As if on cue, the rain-soaked crew wanders in shortly before lunch. Kim Dahlberg, a CSA shareholder who helps out with the herb beds, has brought along a salad, enlivened with pears and red onion. Gagnon has put apples into the oven to bake for dessert. The sausage and white beans have cooked down into an almost creamy texture, which makes for a satisfying meal after a morning in the fields.

The unseasonable cold and torrential rains of last spring got Bear Hill Farm off to a rocky beginning. "It started as a horrible year, one of the worst," says Gagnon. But then the weather improved, and, he says, "all in all, it turned out all right." He shrugs off the struggles. His mind is already set on next spring.

Stating what could be the mantra of his profession, he says, "If you're not flexible, you shouldn't be farming."