Farm Tour

On a warm and sunny Friday afternoon, with the landscape speckled in hues of red and orange, 14 City Market Members and staff jumped on a bus, and hit Route 7 to make our way south to Addison County. The area is known for many farms and food producers, and our group was excitedly headed to visit goats, a creamery, an orchard, and a cidery. It’s no secret that cheese and apples go together, and we got to see them both at their sources.

Every summer, City Market hosts farm tours open to community members where we visit local farms and learn about agriculture in our home state. In June, we visited Pine Island Community Farm and Riverberry Farm and earlier in July we visited Green Mountain Bee Farm. Farm tours are part of our summer education programming, where community members and visitors can sign up for a day of meeting farmers and learning about where our food comes from. It really makes the “know your farmer” effort easy—we bring you right to them!

I had the pleasure of joining our Meat and Seafood Manager, Jamie, and our Meat and Seafood Buyer, Nick, on a visit to LaPlatte River Angus Farm’s new inspected livestock processing facility in Milton, VT.  Considering we get 1,600 - 2,000 pounds of beef from LaPlatte River Angus Farm each week (that’s 4 sides of beef per week, averaging between 400 and 500 pounds each), we were appreciative of the opportunity to check out the new facility and to see how the process works. 

A couple of us from the Co-op had the opportunity to visit Ploughgate Creamery at Bragg Hill Farm in Fayston, VT the other week. 

Some City Market staff members recently organized a bike ride out to Colchester to visit Amir Hebib’s mushroom house to visit with Amir and learn more about the mushrooms and plants he cultivates.  Before moving to Vermont from Bosnia in 1996, Amir managed one of the largest mushroom operations in Europe.