Stade Farm gives nonprofits last pick of the field

When Vern Stade began growing produce on his McHenry County farm 30 years ago, it came to his attention there was a lot of waste in agriculture.

“You have to grow more than you can sell,” said Stade, the patriarch of Stade’s Farm and Market on Miller Road north of McHenry.

To help ensure everything he grows also sells, he added a “pick your own” business to the farm 15 years ago. The program allows customers to visit the farm to pick their own strawberries, apples, pumpkins, raspberries, sweet corn, and a host of other vegetables and berries when in season. Still, at the end of the growing seasons for each product, there was plenty of good, viable produce left, Stade said. “There is a lot of excess there.”

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Kasi Steinman, 16, hands a freshly picked apple to her sister, Ewa, 12, on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024, while picking apples for the La Grange Bible Church Food Pantry at Stade's Farm north of Johnsburg. Every year at the end of the season, Stade's Farm owner Vernon Stade invites nonprofits, food pantries and other organizations to come pick what's left in their fields for free. (Gregory Shaver/Gregory Shaver Shaw Media )

Instead of letting that produce go to rot, Stade invites area nonprofit groups and food pantries to visit the farm to at the end of the growing season to pick fruits and vegetables for clients to receive.

He started opening up his fields to the FISH of McHenry Food Pantry. “We donated to them constantly and spread out from there,” Stade said.

“There are local people who are not able to provide enough for their own families. It is very rewarding and I am blessed by doing it.”

—  Vern Stade of Stade's Farm & Market

The first week of November was the market’s last week of the season. The last harvest of the year was asking nonprofits to bring step ladders and buckets to harvest apples in the orchard, where they grow Honeycrisp, Gala, Yellow Delicious and Pixie Crunch apples.

Shirley Mullings, of the Casa de Vida food program in Crystal Lake, was one of the recipients of those apples. She estimated 40 or 50 of the families using the program would get a half-dozen of the fresh apples in their Thursday distribution.

“They are huge,” Mullings said of the fruit. “They are big like the Washington apples.”

She was able to taste some of the apples and found them to be “completely different” from apples they get from food programs because they were much sweeter, Mullings said.

Volunteers from the United Way of Greater McHenry County helped with the picking Thursday, with board member Shawna Kalamatas, two of her children and Ride United food pantry delivery program manager Becky Welter helping to pick. In addition to Casa De Vida, the United Way helped get apples for Family Health Partnership Clinic in Crystal Lake and Brown Bear Food pantry in Harvard, said United Way president Jamie Maravich.

The nonprofit groups – often food pantries – are not just invited in the fall, but year-round as different crops ripen.

The you-pick businesses, as well as harvest, is weather dependent, Stade said. Too much rain and mud means he and his family can’t get into the fields and the you-pick customers don’t show up either. Those times, they cannot get their produce picked before it starts going bad. That is when he starts calling charity groups “to let them take what they want,” Stade said.

“Every week in the summer, there are six or eight groups” that come in to pick for free, Stade said. “Whatever I have an excess of.”

It starts with strawberries — which have the shortest shelf life — in June, and runs until November.

“We grow lots of sweet corn. We have food pantries that come and you pick the sweet corn” after the first harvest, Stade said. “Not every ear is harvestable. The other 25% are too small, misshapen, overripe or underripe.”

Other you-pick fields that nonprofits can come get are squash, peppers, tomatoes, cabbage, onions and potatoes.

“Right now there is an excess or potatoes still underground. You have to get them harvested before it gets too cold or they will freeze and decay,” Stade said.

Stade says he asks the nonprofit groups to come in because he feels lucky to do what he does.

“I feel blessed that I am able to grow food, the most important product in the world,” he said.

As a self-proclaimed “people person,” he also enjoys meeting those who come to the farm.

“We deal with so many different nationalities. It is interesting and fun to connect with people who grew up somewhere else. We have lots from Poland, Germany, India and Asians, Russia, and Ukraine. They are all so grateful to be able to do this,” Stade said.

“There are local people who are not able to provide enough for their own families. It is very rewarding and I am blessed by doing it,” he added.