Now that we have downsized we have been enjoying a couple of Saturdays meandering the back roads. Today, we explored the Brattleboro Area Farmer’s Market in Vermont. They have been around for 45 years, have lots of vendors and they bought the land. It was a weedy, overgrown area along the river and they cleaned it up and called it home. They jury their vendors. What a fabulous place. Spent lots of money too.
So apparently we parked in the wrong parking lot as there was no bridge to cross this stream.
I crossed it with my sandals and let me tell you – 90 degrees outside and that was very refreshing. Keith found a bridge and used that as he had boots on.
Our first stop was this small little booth where this young lady did a lot of wildcraft harvesting. This beautiful collection of harvested flower petals makes a great cold tea which we sampled. We currently have some brewing in the sun.
Next up, wine tasting at 10:30 in the morning.
We bought two kinds pictures above. Actually, we went back and bought two more bottles of the ginger liqueur. Boy was that one good. I will be enjoying this over ice tonight. Keith tasted their blueberry wine and said his tasted better!
Over 50 vendors and lots of neat things to see. Some vendors had harvested their early garlic and we bought some huge bulbs. We picked up 4 honker ones. They had wood fired bread bakers there and some nice looking focaccia. Oops there goods the paleo diet, grabbed some basil, pesto and red pepper. Sorry, forgot to take a picture. It’s gone!
Another awesome vendor, High Goose Farm. They have 1,000 black currant plants!! They were selling shaved ice flavored with black currant concentrate and some black currant soda which was made with seltzer water and black currant concentrate flavored with maple syrup. We have 2 mature plants and just purchased 12 more this spring for our wine making. Lots of powerful goodness in these berries. Research it.
It took us 1 3/4 hours to get there but worth it.
Should stop here but after we left there we headed up Route 5 north and stopped at Walker Farm. Pretty impressive farm right off busy Route 5. Nice farm store with lots of things to purchase. Lots of greenhouses and lots of things growing in the fields. They had one huge greenhouse strictly full of tomatoes which had been growing for a while.
After our stroll, we continued on Route 5 until we came across Harlow Farmstand and Cafe. We enjoyed a light lunch made out of fresh greens.
We continued driving around in our air conditioned Jeep. Thought it was a great way to spend the day as we certainly were not working outside in the fields or in the greenhouse on this day.
Our final stop on our field trip was in Bradford, NH at The Sweet Beet Market. They are doing something very similar to what we are doing at Gilmanton’s Own. We had a nice chat with Bea there and it was a great place to visit and very successful as that.
Well, we hope you enjoyed reading about our day. We certainly enjoyed living it. Stay cool everyone. Michelle and Keith
Stillseekingfarm's Blog 