Red Shirt Farm Market Is Open for Business on Route 7 in Lanesborough

Originally published by The Berkshire Eagle, July 28, 2025. By Jane Kaufman.

LANESBOROUGH — More than five years after drawing up plans, Red Shirt Farm Store is open for business, selling produce grown on the farm and a range of groceries originating primarily from within a 100-mile radius.

The store at 60 Williamstown Road, Route 7, opened May 17. The store isn’t just a farmstand: Look past the counter and you’ll see a gleaming commercial kitchen with space to host workshops and classes on food preservation and cooking.

The commercial kitchen is available for workshops on such topics as health, cooking and food preservation, and it is available for rent. It has an anchor tenant, Hexagon Bagels, which is using the kitchen until it opens in space of its own on Main Street in North Adams later this year.

Local chef Michael Moreno is consulting and creating recipes for the market’s value-added products. Betsy Kyle is baking on site for the market.

Jim Schultz, founder of Red Shirt Farm, has turned over the farming lead to his wife, Sarah Schultz. He is focusing most of his time and effort on ramping up the store.

Now that the store is open, Red Shirt Farm will scale back its presence at farmers markets in Pittsfield and North Adams.

“So now we’re still at the North Adams Farmers Market through the summer,” Sarah Schultz said. “Most likely in the winter, because we can’t grow as much, we’ll probably step back from that market.”

Sarah Schultz said she knows there are people who shop at those winter markets who can’t get to Lanesborough.

“So, we’re glad we’re still there,” she said. “But in the winter, there’s just less growing, so we’ll probably be able to move everything we grow through here.”

The Schultzes talked about produce on Red Shirt Farm Store’s shelves that may be new to customers, such as early spring options like garlic scapes (the curly, green flower stalk that grows from a garlic plant) and scallions (a young onion), which can substitute for garlic and onion, respectively.

“We’ll be having a workshop on breaking down a chicken,” Jim Schultz said. “Grandmothers all knew how to take a chicken and break it down into parts, but most people don’t know.”

People who take part in Red Shirt Farm’s longstanding community-supported agriculture, or CSA, model will be using a spend-down card for their vegetables, which they can pick up any time the store is open.

Jim Schultz said the prepaid model for Red Shirt Farm is critical support for the operation.

“It’s about building that connection between the consumer and the farmer,” he said. “So they’re pre-paying, which allows us to have cash flow in the middle of the winter to buy seeds and potting soil and to pay for labor to grow their stuff. So without their support, we’d be hard-pressed to have money to do all that stuff.”

CSA members also have the option of picking flowers in a picking garden behind the store.

Design and construction of the store cost $840,282. Partly due to backlogs following the COVID-19 shutdown, it has taken more than two years and double the amount of time anticipated. The project received several grants, with the Schultzes ultimately adding $30,000 in personal funds to finish the job.

While it’s now open, there are a few punch list items remaining. Solar panels are still to come as well.

The farm serves as a host site for Roots Rising once a week, with a teenage crew helping with mulching, weeding, compost spreading and other large jobs.

Red Shirt Farm uses no pesticides or herbicides on its two acres of vegetable plots, exceeding the United States Department of Agriculture’s criteria for certified organic.

It uses animal manure to improve the soil in a type of farming known as regenerative agriculture, where the aim is to improve the soil. Cover crops and mulch also play key roles.

“Sustainable never was a great word to begin with, because everything was so degraded to begin with,” Jim Schultz said. “Do you want to sustain a degraded system?”

Sarah Schultz spoke of the aim of regenerative agriculture as “leaving it better than we found it hopefully for future generations.”

Jim Schultz hopes the Red Shirt Farm Market becomes a focal point.

“We’re hoping for this to be just a real community resource that allows people to reconnect with their food to see that there’s an alternative to the conventional food system,” he said. “To build that sustainable food system that’s based on local, based on seasonal and improves people’s health and makes the community a more vibrant place.”