Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
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62 | NOVEMBER 2015 nshoremag.com Chicken potpie. Homemade baked beans. Canned brown bread. Rhu- barb pies—grandma's kind of cook- ing. That's Nason's Stone House. Named after the Nason family's 1845 stone house, which was built on the foundation of a house erected in 1710, the business flourishes 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, the Nasons ran a poultry farm in an an- nex—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 five Boxford farms to do so. Today, they are the last one standing, though the chickens are long gone. In 1957, the family started their famous chicken potpie business. "The chicken pie was our initial [specialty food] niche," says Jimmy, whose mother 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, replete 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…Boxford was having a Fruit pies and canned brown bread are Nason staples.