2012 CSA Sign ups have begun!
Sign up by March 1, 2012 for an Early Bird discount & payment plan option

Cedar Circle Farm & Education Center is a certified organic farm on conserved land along the Connecticut River in East Thetford, Vermont, just minutes from Norwich, Vermont, and Hanover, New Hampshire. Farmstand and Hello Café are open May-October.

With a farmstand, CSA, and internet Hello Café, we also offer gardening and cooking classes, harvest festivals, Dinners in the Field, and farm tours and activities. Farm tours are available year-round by appointment.

Get directions to the farm in Thetford, Vermont!

Our farmstand is open two Saturdays this fall, Nov 19 & Dec 17, otherwise closed for the rest of the season. Come visit us at the Lebanon & Norwich winter markets!
Hello Café is closed for the season. Stay warm & we’ll see you next year.

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  Fresh from the Field

  Look for us at Lebanon and Norwich Farmers markets throughout the winter! or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) to order the following storage crops
  Our own . . . carrots, celeriac, dried beans - pinto, kidney, King of the Early, black turtle - garlic, red & yellow onions, potatoes, rutabaga, winter squash, wheat berries, whole wheat flour & cracked grain cereal, & an assortment of farm-made preserves and pickles.

  photo: Karen Rogers

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  CSA: Share the harvest!

  2012 will be our ninth year! Community-supported agriculture: a partnership between neighbors and farmers to share the bounty (and risks) of farming.
  Those who sign up for a CSA by March 1, 2012 receive an Early Bird discount and can choose our payment plan. Learn more
  

  If you’re curious, view the most recent message to CSA members to see what our CSA or newsletters are all about.

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  Education Center

  We grow wonderful organic vegetables and make them available to our neighbors; we are also committed to our four-fold educational mission with a variety of educational programs: classes in gardening and cooking, farm events like our Dinners in the Field and Tomato Tastings, a Father’s Day Organic Berry Breakfast, and strawberry and pumpkin harvest festivals. Take a self-guided tour of the farm any time or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) for a guided tour for individuals and school groups.

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  Harvest Festivals

  2012 will be our 10th Annual Strawberry and Pumpkin Harvest Festivals! These family events are rain-or-shine harvest celebrations. This year Strawberry Festival is Sunday, June 24 and Pumpkin Festival is Sunday, October 7. Expect live music; excellent farm-made food plus NOFA’s wood-fired pizza oven; horse-drawn wagon rides to and from the berry or pumpkin patch, educational displays, children’s activities, & more! $5 per car. Low waste event!

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  Pick Your Own

  PYO Crops
  We’ll have organic strawberries in June, organic blueberries in July, a cut-your-own flower patch in August & September, and organic pumpkins in October.

  We update this box regularly in PYO seasons.

  
  Updated: Tuesday Dec 20, 1:35pm

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  Farmstand and coffee shop

  Farmstand is closed for the season.
  Hello Café is closed for the season
  In the farmstand we support a wide variety of other local food producers and we make our own jams, salsas, pickles and more: your visit to the farm can save a trip to the grocery store. You’ll find dairy, cheeses, frozen local and organic meats, ice cream, yogurt, pizza and pasta, organic farm T-shirts, garden tools, books, seeds, Mexican pottery, annuals, perennials, and vegetable bedding plants.
  Hello Café  Organic fair-trade coffee, farm-baked goods, wireless internet

Farm news and field notes

• Winter News from the farm: 2012 CSA, winter farmers’ markets… and more!

  

  Winter markets  Local, organic food is increasingly available in winter in the Upper Valley. Look for us at the Norwich  and Lebanon winter farmers’ markets on Saturday Jan. 14, and Saturday Feb. 11.

  2012 CSA shares  Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a partnership between community members and farmers, who agree to share in the bounty and the risks of farming. To join a CSA, members invest in the spring — when farming output costs are high — in exchange for a weekly share of the season’s harvest at a reduced price. It’s like a subscription to fresh food!

  Register for a Cedar Circle Farm CSA: choose from Summer,  Fall,
  or Bouquet CSA Shares, or a CSA Farmstand Dollars Account.

  Early Bird by March 1   To take advantage of our Early Bird Rewards, sign up by March 1. Save money by registering early! New this year, buy more than one type of CSA Share by March 1 and receive an additional discount. Payments can be divided into three installments at no extra charge when you sign up on or before March 1. To register, fill out the sign up form on our brochure which you should receive in the mail in the coming weeks, download a brochure, or Learn more.

  New! CSAs delivered to DHMC   New this year! Now DHMC employees and volunteers can have their Summer CSA shares delivered to DHMC on Fridays. Learn more or use our DHMC sign up form to register.

  Subsidized CSA shares  We are pleased to be part of a program that makes half-priced CSA shares available to limited-income Vermonters. Thanks for helping us to make fresh organic foods more affordable to local families in need! Last year four families received fresh veggies all summer long because of donations from CSA members like you. Thanks! We’d love to do even better in 2012. Anyone can donate to the Farmshare Program, in any amount. Find out how to donate.

  Thanks for your feedback  We had a good response to our CSA survey. More than 20% of our total mailing list, including more than half of our CSA members, responded with overwhelmingly positive feedback. We can always improve, and your suggestions will guide us forward. Thanks so much! Congratulations to Claudia Kern, the winner of the farm t-shirt; about seventy people requested entry in to the drawing for our popular carrot fist logo organic t-shirt.

  Now hiring for 2012 growing season  We look for people who are hard-working, fun-loving, and who want to make a contribution to a healthier planet. Learn more.

  Farm-to-School  Cedar Circle is one of a few area farms that have been working to get locally grown food in to school cafeterias. It can be tricky to get entry in to the somewhat closed commercial food system that supports our school lunch programs. We are pleased to report that we’ve made some progress in connecting with school cafeterias, opening the door for future local food purchases; just this past week we sold 1900 lb of potatoes to eight different schools in the Upper Valley: Mascoma, Hanover, Springfield, Windsor, Newport, Woodsville, Lebanon, and Cornish. Way to go team!

  Your favorite recipe  We’d like to hear your favorite fall or winter veggie recipe. If you created a dish that was well-received or maybe even a family favorite, we’d love it if you shared it with us. With your permission, we’ll add it to the recipes section of our website. Send recipes to Cat.

  Apple Celeriac Potato Soup  Cat found the root of this recipe for Apple Celeriac Potato Soup on a site called Tiny Urban Kitchen. She changed it a little as she usually does. It is super delicious.

  Healthy Eating Team  Do you like to cook? The Upper Valley Haven is looking for some volunteers to help with their Healthy Eating Program. Anna, our farmstand manager, helps out with this fun project. The job entails visiting the Haven one morning per week (or when you can) and creating a simple meal and accompanying recipe using the Haven’s kitchen and ingredients that are in stock at the food shelf. As folks visit the food shelf, they are invited to sample the meal, take a recipe card, and, ideally, get inspired to recreate the healthy meal at home. The purpose of the program is to encourage the use of the increasing donations of fresh foods coming in to the Haven through Willing Hands and the area farms.

  [ 2012 January 13 ]

• Final hurrah of 2011: special farmstand opening this Saturday 12/17

  

  We are bedded down for winter. May 2012 be bountiful!

  Farmstand Saturday!  This Saturday, December 17, we’ll open the farmstand for the final hurrah of 2011 from 10 to 5. We’ll be stocked with an array of fresh, organic foods to compliment your holiday meal planning — potatoes, squash, carrots, celeriac, beets, rutabaga, turnip, onion, garlic, cabbage, and kale; a new batch of this year’s dry beans, a variety of preserves, take-n-bake cookies, and frozen soup from the farm kitchen; and a selection of beautiful, fair-trade Mexican pottery to round out your holiday gifts. Email Cat if you have any advance questions, and we look forward to seeing you. 

  You can have a say!  We have a created short survey on the 2011 season to collect your thoughts on how we are doing and what we should focus on for 2012. Enter a drawing to win an organic Cedar Circle Farm T-shirt with our new edgy carrot-in-fist logo!

  2012 CSAs at Cedar Circle Farm  We’ll be taking sign ups for 2012 CSA members within the next week or so. Look for an email from the farm in the coming week. If you have any questions, contact Cat.

  Winter Markets  Look for us at the Norwich and Lebanon winter farmers’ markets on the following dates: Dec. 17, Jan. 14, and Feb. 11.

  Your favorite recipe  Throughout the winter we’ll send out periodic News from the Farm and will continue suggesting our favorite recipes like this vegetarian Black Bean Chili which is John’s favorite bean recipe. We’d like to know what your favorite recipes are. If you’ve created a dish that was perhaps well-received at a holiday feast or is a family favorite, we’d love it if you’d share it with us. If we agree that the recipe is delicious, with your permission we’ll give you credit and add it to the recipes section of our website. Send your favorite recipe to Cat.

  24-carrot gold!  Cat found this sweet recipe for Baked Stuffed Carrots on a website called Just Vegetable Recipes which lists hundreds of simple vegetable recipes. She says, “other than the annoying and plentiful ads, I found this website to be very useful and full of creative ideas for incorporating more vegetables in to the meal plan.” We hope you find it useful too.

  [ 2011 December 15 ]

• Going under cover for the winter . . .

  

  Putting the berry plants under winter cover: a bale chopper cuts strawbales
  while the crew distributes the mulch evenly over our berry patch.

  Wheat to Bread  We have a new video called Wheat to Bread. It’s on our very own YouTube channel. We have started collecting favorites and making our own videos so that we can share our message promoting sustainable and organic agriculture to a wider audience. You’ll see a few other videos we made as well. There are several more in the works. Our friend Rori Kelleher is our videographer. Have a look and tell us what you think!

  Field notes  The fields are all put to bed now and we have begun greenhouse repairs and upgrades. We are still working on threshing, winnowing, and sorting the beans and have a few varieties ready for sale now. They’ll be available during our second and final Farmstand Saturday on December 17 and at area winter farmers’ markets (see next news item).

  Winter Markets  Look for us at the Norwich  and Lebanon winter farmer’s markets on the following dates: Dec. 17, Jan. 14, and Feb. 11.

  Feed the Movement  We are so pleased to see the national conversation changing a bit due to the actions of the Occupy Movement. We have connected with other Northeast farmers through an organization called Feed the Movement, which like the Occupy Movement is a leaderless effort with horizontal governance, we are all in charge and decisions are made by consensus. The goal is twofold: to bring light to the problems Big Ag has caused our food system and to promote sustainable alternatives, and to send New England produced food to the Occupy kitchens in NYC and Boston.

  Cedar Circle Farm will donate some food, make some new videos promoting the message of sustainable food systems, and help to raise awareness of the efforts of Feed the Movement. A PayPal account is being used to raise money to pay farmers for the food they produced and to pay for some basic organizational and distribution needs. Two New England distributors, Black River Produce and Deep Root Cooperative, have offered a reduced rate on shipping OWS food donations and the OWS kitchens are paying those fees. You can watch the video put out by Feed the Movement. Their website can help you to learn more and to donate.

  Recipe: Potato-Beet Galette  I found this recipe at homegrown.org, a really cool website started by the folks who founded Farm Aid. Homegrown.org is “a gathering place for folks who celebrate the ‘culture’ in agriculture and share skills like growing, cooking, and food preservation.’ I often use this as my go-to source for all things homegrown, and so can you!

  [ 2011 November 30 ]

• Sharing Thanksgiving with you this year . . .

  

  The farmstand will be open from 10 to 5 this Saturday, Nov. 19.
  We’ll have amazing veggies and more!

  ¡NEW! Farmstand Saturdays  The farmstand is open two Saturdays this fall, timed to coincide with the two seasonal feasts: this Saturday, Nov. 19, from 10-5, and again on Dec. 17. Fill your upcoming Thanksgiving feast with the local flavors of Cedar Circle Farm! We have an amazing selection of fall veggies . . . carrots, potatoes, turnips, squash, beets, daikon, rutabaga, celeriac, cabbage, fresh greens, and more! We’ll have brandied pumpkin pie made from our own pumpkins! Take-n-bake café cookies, and farm-kitchen preserves to compliment your meal and get you started on holiday gifts!

  Winter Markets  Look for us at the Norwich  and Lebanon winter farmer’s markets on the following dates: Nov. 19, Dec. 17, Jan. 14, and Feb. 11.

  Field notes    Will, Jim, John, and some of our dedicated volunteers have been threshing, winnowing, and sorting beans for days. The crop looks very promising! When the beans have finished drying off we’ll have them for sale. Some varieties will be available at our Farmstand Saturdays this Saturday, Nov. 19, and others will be available at the winter farmers markets we’ll be attending.

  Sharing the wealth  Like most small farmers, we donate a lot of food to our neighbors. This year we were delighted to give a good bounty to Willing Hands in the form of over 6,000 lb of freshly harvested food grown at our volunteer-operated Willing Hands Garden. We are participating in the NOFA winter storage share which will be delivered in time for Thanksgiving to farmers who lost their crops due to flooding from Hurricane Irene. We’ll also be joining other Vermont farmers in sending food and warm clothing items to the Occupy Wall Street encampments in Boston, NYC, and others too if we can. Thanks to our wonderful food storage areas and generous CSA members we have been able to deliver super fresh fall veggies to the Haven every other week. 

  Get in on the giving  If you’d like to get in on all this giving, we will match your donation as best we can. Easy ways to donate: Look for the Haven donation box in the farmstand on Farmstand Saturdays or email Cat to make other arrangements.

  Stellar sides   These side dishes will highlight the season, brighten your table, and deepen the flavors of your harvest feast. Try these cranberry beets and honey-glazed carrots.

  [ 2011 November 16 ]

• More news…