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Once upon a time, before private equity & investors went looking for quick returns in the food space, seasonal produce was a wonderful thing. We would get excited for the shifts in available produce tied to the four seasons & the geographic connections to growing regions. Alas, changes came.

However! There is still seasonality. Let's just say it is different. Our regional produce distributors get excited when Connecticut strawberries hit the market. The berries provide opportunity to shift the flavor profiles available to stores & shoppers notice the varietal difference. Regional berries taste better than the ones shipped thousands of miles. It is not only berries coming on in June, so many wonderful crops become available from within New England. Some are greenhouse grown, some field grown, but all mark excitement in produce departments.

Read on for Vermont's seasonal touch points including Vermont's celebration of June as dairy month. With rising production costs at every turn, this is proving a tough year, not only for dairy farmers but for all the farmers growing field crops that are integral to feeding herds. Of course field crop rotation is a large part of Vermont agriculture. Expect continued price increases across the full agriculural landscape.

Caledonia Food Coop

on the Home Stretch

With a target open date of July 8th workers are in the mad dash to get vendors in place & products on shelves. They have many local farms & vendors lined up covering a range of products.

The Jones Farm, Crooked Mile Cheese, Roots Too Farm, Inch By Inch Permaculture, Joe's Brook Farm, Too Little Farm, & Firefly Farm are just a few amazing local producers at the St. Johnsbury Farmer's Market and/or the Lyndonville Farmers Market. Soon, many will be on the shelves at Vermont’s newest coop, the Caledonia Food Co-op in Saint J.

Interested in being a vendor? Fill out this form.

June is Dairy Month

How yay for Vermont. June is not just "new fresh produce season", it is Dairy Month, & when animals go out to green pastures.

Fresh milk & tons of award winning value added products are our bread & butter. We have large scale operations utilizing the immigrant workforce supported by Migrant Justice on end of the scale of operations to small scale 'single-source creameries on the other.

Our legacy farms include Butterworks Farm, with over 40 years of organic soil building & premium cow genetics producing consistent quality yogurt. We have strong partnerships between dairies & value added produces utilizing processed milk from local farms. Sisters of Anarchy uses Kingdom Creamery milk & Champlain Valley Creamery purchases milk from Severy Farm to make VT Way Cheese.

So a big YAY for our dairy farms, the green pastures, our value-added producers, & the strength of our relationships across the state.

Speaking of Dairies

& Green Pastures

Larson Farm in the green rolling hills of Wells, Vermont produces nutritious dairy products supplying local & regional markets while being good stewards of the land & caring for their sweet Jersey dairy cows. 100% grass-fed & the cows are 100% A2A2. The organic whole milk cream-line yogurt captures a market segment attentive to regenerative & healthy choices.

Well-tended organically managed soils mean healthy cattle who produce nutrient-rich foods free of artificial chemicals & pesticides. The land, cattle, & dairy products are certified organic. Farmstands often find these attributes favorable. Chandler Farm in Wheelock sells the grass fed based A2A2 yogurt from Larson as it aligns with their values which they highlight in emails to customers.

Larson Farms premium yogurt is available widely through Black River Produce & Myers Produce.

Creemees: Seasonally & Widely Available

It is officially "creemee season" or is it creamee season? Either way, in Vermont, our dairies produce the base for the creemee stands.

Kingdom Creamery in East Hardwick are proud producers of dairy products. All of their products are made with Vermont milk from their farm. They produce premium hard ice cream, yogurt, fresh milk, creemee/soft serve & milkshake mixes. Made with no artificial flavors or colors, & they are rBST free. Every mix starts from scratch from original recipes, & each flavor combination is unique. It is a family operation, with three different generations involved in both the farm & the creamery.

Across the state, creemee stands & farmstands love working with Kingdom Creamery.

Cheese with Dignity:

Vermont Way Foods

A member of the VT Food Hub Network, Farm Direct is proudly distributing a pioneering new product: Vermont Way Foods’ “Cheese with Dignity”. This organic farmer cheese is produced locally with organic milk & approved by the Migrant Justice’s Milk with Dignity program, which supports fair wages & safe working conditions for dairy workers.

Shoppers can find this cheese at stores throughout the state, including the Brattleboro Food Coop, Craftsbury General Store, Rail City Market, Plainfield & Morrisville Coops.

Sisters of Anarchy

Nothing says "let's not think about the state of the world" like ice cream. And with a name like the Sisters of Anarchy let's just eat the refreshing wonders of this cool business which grows its own berries, utilizes Kingdom Creamery milk for its ice cream base, AND ships through Myers Produce.

Ice cream is available in 16 oz pints or 4 oz single serves in select flavors

They also grow wine grapes, blueberries, blackberries, red raspberries, yellow raspberries, aronia berries, elderberry & peppermint available for wholesale.

Reach out to The Sisters for details & distribution options.

Where the Pavement Ends, Friendship Begin

When the going gets tough, the tough visit their community stores to refresh the meaning of life. OK that sounds hokey but when out & about roaming around Vermont & one stumbles upon the store at Maple Corner you know you have discovered something special. The pavement really does end & a community of great people walk into the store.

Buying various sundries, keeping the deli humming, & buying Whammy Bar (THE music venue), the store pulses with good vibes. The ice cream will flow, the giant cookies will fly, & all good things will prevail in this tight knit community that welcomes its seasonal visitors.

Strawberries are in the pipeline

It is June that means strawberries are available in Connecticut, soon in Massachusetts & finally by the end of the month in Vermont. Delicious & ready to service with fresh Vermont cream!

Birch Hill Expands

Birch Hill English Muffins are made in small batches in their new bakery in Colchester. If your store or farmstand is looking for an alternative ‘bread’ & to cross promote with Vermont dairy products such as cream cheese (!), eggs, jams, or burgers reach out to Eric. They have three primary flavors Original, Breakfast in Italy, & Garlic & Herb, along with seasonal ones too.

They currently operate routes in Burlington, Jeffersonville, Morrisville, Stowe, & Waterbury. They are considering Route 7 as a key area for expanding distribution.

Woodlawn Creamery in West Pawlet, VT produced a 2026 Good Food Award winner. "Emerson" is a luxuriously rich cultured cream cheese made from Vermont farmstead milk. It is celebrated for its clean dairy flavor, silky texture, & remarkable versatility. Impossibly creamy, tangy, & luscious, it has the rich cultured flavor that elevates everything from bagels to Birch Hill English Muffins, to cheesecakes.

Now available through Provisions International in 8 oz. retail & NEW 32 oz. foodservice tubs.

Meeting the Makers

Provisions International continues to provide in-person gatherings to educate stores about the products they sell. Recently folks joined together to learn from the makers about specialty meat & charcuterie products. As always, products are tasted & stores engage in sharing among themselves. It is always win-win. Provisions has an extensive distribution area, interested in becoming a customer?

Customers at Woodstock Farmers Market can meet makers too! This creates summer BBQ fun where cold bevies, hot burgers, & frozen ice cream says "Taste the flavors of Summer".

Lotty from Farm Connex & CAE along with Emma from Farm Direct took a road trip to meet up with their accounts. Here they are in Waitsfield in front of 5th Quarter after a great in-person meeting talking shop.

Steps to Regional Food Sales

Myers Produce, operating since 2013, is a distributor of regionally sourced fresh produce, value-added pantry & perishable products, grains, eggs, meat from Northeast producers. With hubs in Northern Vermont, Western Massachusetts, & Brooklyn, New York the fleet of trucks delivers to wholesale customers in New York City, Boston, Connecticut, Massachusetts, & Vermont.

As they grow, they continue to expand services offering a range of warehouse storage & inventory management solutions for food businesses. The Hatfield, Mass facility can provide short term storage of dry, refrigerated or frozen for a monthly per pallet fee.

The inventory management system can help businesses grow sales while minimizing shrink. The system can be accessed online, in real-time allowing vendors to know exactly how many SKU’s are available for sale. Their facility has other services such as loading docks & office space access to support your food business expansion goals. Interested in the services? Contact Annie Myers.

Things We Like:

A Young Farmer’s Journey

This school year, Farm Direct was fortunate to host a high school senior as a Food Systems Intern. Ephraim Elmer, a second-generation farmer from Lowell, VT, grew up participating in Farm-to-School programs & has come full circle as a member of the Green Mountain Farm Direct team. Over the past year, Ephraim contributed to many aspects of the organization but especially stood out in his work supporting the distribution through work at the Farm Connex warehouse in Hardwick.

Distribution requires systematic thinking & organization, key elements in understanding the daily puzzle of getting food in, then out of the warehouse onto trucks. His warehouse experience is tantamount to a semester in a college business course! 

Farmer as Retailer

As part of the many things to navigate -think of the values like organic, grass fed, free range, regenerative there is the "value" of technology & how it plays into the promotion of businesses. Some farms have given up on Meta as a social media promotional tool, instead they are leaning more on direct emails to their customers.

Tech companies are simply data mining companies that "harvest" & exploit personal information. For some, this does not align with their values. Instead, gaining visibility with their existing customers through email communications feels a little bit better than the direct link to social media's targeted surveillance advertising.

Emails are helping customers engage in a different way, maybe one that is not as insidious as ongoing attachment to phones. “This Week at the Farm Store” updates, shared by email can be an effective alternative way to engage. But then, it might also just be another option in addition to Meta's products.

Retail Displays:

What We Like

Farmers market or retail farmstand displays require considerations including but not limited to scaled for anticipated sales, color breaks, & texture contrasts, which all make for an ‘easy to shop' experience. The Old Athens Farm farmers market set up pictured above showcases some of those variables. With a specialty on early season harvesting, all crops are soil grown & organic. Soil-grown is a

an operating value of the farm.

In addition to the Brattleboro & Londonderry Farmers Market, they sell wholesale to coops including Brattleboro, Hunger Mountain, & Monadnock (NH) & the Harlow Farmstand in Westminster.

Much of the drive to allow hydroponics in organic agriculture comes from two or three international corporate growers. Beware of organic tomatoes & strawberries that are not locally grown. -Old Athens Farm

Every Penny Matters

Oh wait the current administration has stopped producing pennies. But that doesn't mean they don't still add up.

Understanding how your business is making money is dependent on a number of factors. For farmers with retail operations, it requires knowing your production costs, but also the entwining variables of purchase costs, losses, & a grasp of 'standard' product category margins.

There are many variables & ways to price your food at the retail level. While there is no "one size fits all" when it comes to a successful operation, consider these percentages a guideline. Know what shrink is & ways to reduce it at your farmstand.

There's A Lot Going On

Food costs are rising. Stating the obvious here. It is not only the oil war, tariffs & labor issues impacting the cost getting products to market.

Food distribution as a market segment is built on extractive models. Pricing at the wholesale level is an insidious structure bound by corporate relationships, federal policies & the impact of 'Citizens United', B2B contracts, & financing that is hard to dissect.

There are predatory finance structures in place. One Vermont farmer shared outrage when their primary distributor demands "all suppliers pay an outrageous additional fee for the privilege of being a supplier & is also requiring 3rd party food safety certifications which will of course come with added fees. The large publicly held distributor is already charging $199/month for the privilege of sending them an invoice."

(The farm will pass along these costs in their wholesale prices, which may reduce overall sales).

Policies Matter: From Civil Eats

During Joe Biden’s presidency, Lisa Held of Civil Eats talked to policymakers & farmers regularly about the post-pandemic influx of cash flowing toward local food systems as a result of renewed attention to the fragility of global supply chains.

Once President Donald Trump took over, she showed us, for the first time in history, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) paused payments to farmers with signed contracts & then cancelled both individual contracts & entire programs.

They have a new series—Losing Ground: Local Food and Farming Under Trump. Lisa has set out to determine the impact of that entire sequence of events on small farms & their local food systems. 

Please support Civil Eats to stay in touch with these egregious impacts affecting us all. Read the latest on small farm setbacks

"Small, regenerative farms are struggling, efforts to build & expand local food infrastructure are stalled, & it is now harder for farms to directly feed their communities."- CE

Capital Readiness

Training

A free online training session

June 19th from 10-12:00

The Business Sense: Capital & Readiness to Help Grow Your Business Register Today

Designed for established businesses beyond the start‑up phase, the Capital & Readiness session will help you better understand equity, debt, grants, & how to prepare for financing decisions as your business evolves.

Vermont Specialty Food Association members are also welcome to register for additional upcoming sessions in the series focused on marketing, product development, financial planning, & leadership.

Presented by the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund's Business Coaching Program. Register Today!

Get more info on the offerings here

Local Food in Practice:

Meet Ups

Folks building food community in these times of many uncertainties is valuable. An in-person series of producers & chefs in partnership with the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets runs to September 1. The meet up series explores real-world connections for the restaurant market channel through farm tours, & restaurant visits. All events are FREE. Registration is required. For dates & all the details visit https://shorturl.at/nKq28 

Attention VSFA Members! Upcoming

Makers Market

An inaugural VSFA Makers Market will take place on Sunday, July 19, from 11:00 AM–2:00 PM at King Arthur Baking Co in Norwich, VT. This is an opportunity to sample & sell products directly to King Arthur visitors. Vendors will be selected to create a diverse mix of product categories and product offerings. Apply here

Sale & Acquistion

In May, The Vermont Packing House (VPH) was sold in two transactions to a new ownership group. Walden Local Meat sold VPH processing facility to Galt Foods. Separately the building owner, Mark Curran, sold the North Springfield meat processing facility to a new ownership group.

Galt Foods is a Pittsburgh, PA based wholesale grocery distributor. The processing facility, once owned by Curran, a founder of Black River Produce, processes Vermont Family Farms branded meat. The sale of both the Walden brand & the building created a new business Vermont Packing & Trading. The transition caused a brief controversy & included a WARN notice & severance layoffs for about 53 employees at the Vermont plant. At least 23 employees have been rehired, per a story reported by WCAX.  

Headquartered in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, Walden Local Meats is a stand-alone direct-to-consumer meat subscription company with sales to over 23,000 households in the northeast. It sources pork & beef from several family farms under the Vermont Family Farms brand & will continue to be processed in Springfield, Vermont. 

Who is up to join a conversation around creating a regional distributor trade group or shop-talk distribution for smaller businesses?

Let Small Bites know!

Apologies for any oversights & errors. It's a little rough out here

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this issue

All info is subject to change (including distributor product lines) .



Created with gratitude for the support from the Canaday Family Charitable Trust

Small Bites directly supports the New England State Food System Planners Partnership effort to strengthen the regional food economy.

Contact: Annie Harlow

smallbites802 @ gmail.com

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