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It's Spring, an uplifting season of possibilities. However, with a war raging impacting global energy sources that support supply chains across all systems, farmers & retailers are having a bout of trepidation around costs of production & distribution. While that is in their mind, so is the possibility of super strong local sales, ala 2020-2021. Community sourced food may likely hit high sales thresholds again with strong direct to consumer & locally distributed to stores, food hubs, & regional distributors. We shall see.

Economic indicators, ala Paul Krugman & others, are worrying about the lack of or costs of fertilizers & other farm & food manufacturing inputs that relay on the vast resources that are sourced in the Middle East. Food costs were already high, even before February 28. Further increases threaten business viability & the efficacy of our network of mutual aid organizations.

But, we are uplifted at sugarhouses & in the sugar-showroom at Sugar Bob's in Chester, the music played by visitors to lifts everyone higher. Piano players get even more special treatment. All ages & experience levels are welcome to play their custom Steinway model B, made out of, you guessed it—maple!

Read on for goings on here in Vermont along with touch points across our farm to retail network. And consider joining us March 26th with the farm & warehouse tour for growers & buyers- details below.

Conversations: Produce Distribution

Through a USDA grant in partnership with the VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets & the Vermont Vegetable & Berry Growers Association a series of information exchanges took place in March.

Geared to helping growers learn how to meet retail & distributor buyer expectations the series wraps up March 26th. Two online webinars tackled food safety considerations & distribution costs to better assess the viability of selling through wholesale market channels.

There is one more gathering this week- Thursday March 26th at Deep Root Coop with two farm stops. See the blue box link for details & to register. With uncertainty ahead for the 2026 season, based on increased costs of inputs & uncertain buyer demand, the decisions being made for the season ahead will be the best that can be made at any given moment.

Displays Matter

Vermont cheese is highly regarded. Staples & premium brands are merchandised differently. The higher price cheeses necessitate handling & displays that feature them while protecting their fragility. Smaller sized displays with demarcating baskets or other containers protect the quality & differentiate the value proposition, elucidating value & flavor profile.



At Woodstock Farmers Market, they have made a history of displaying their high-valued selections with “white tablecloth” messaging. This helps shoppers select premium cheeses that reinforce quality, flavor, & uniqueness. The cheese stands out & the store often has a sampling table nearby, also draped in white.



Stores & farm stands can differentiate their cheeses with various display props & provide the bright, clean appearance with a white case lines, such as this or use butcher paper.

Packaging to extend the life of a product can help drive sales. As business grows they learn from store buyers, receivers, & stockers.

Funj Shrooming has been shifting their product lines & their packaging to help sustain their business & to make their products more appealing to retail accounts. Owner Kevin joined in the March Madness conversation with buyers & growers. This basket of dried mushrooms pops in the Produce Department at Woodstock Farmers market.

Ferment or Foment?

We say Ferments! Since 1996 Flack Family Farm has been producers of traditional lacto-fermented organic vegetables & 100% grass-fed American Milking Devon cattle, & Icelandic sheep on the rolling hills of Fairfield, Vermont.

That’s how they bring to market amazing, bright & tangy sauerkraut & kimchi made every fall. Vegetables are grown in rotating plots in pastures where animals have grazed, creating a diverse soil biome that produces nutrient dense vegetables & grass-fed meats. They harvest the vegetables at the peak of their season & traditionally ferment them, creating nutritious krauts.

The Flacks were ‘early adopters’ to building the ferment marketplace. Flack stands out not only for their history in Vermont agriculture, but also for the continuation of the operation with a successful transition in ownership to keep the supply flowing.

Pumpkin Village Foods is one of the distributor options to stock your store or farmstand. 

"I have been eating Flack Family Farm organic sauerkraut since they began in 1996. The world is finally realizing the connections to a healthy biome; linking soil health and personal health. Flack Family Farm’s Real Organic Project krauts are key to my health.” —Davey Miskell, Real Organic Project Advisory Board

Plastic or Pulp Paper?

Store Buyers can have a huge say in how a product lands on a shelf.

They can suggest pack sizes that can encourage sales with their customers.

In some of the March supply-chain discussions this topic came up across product categories. It can help produces drive their own sales when they take advice from their current or prospective accounts.

For produce, creating a mixed pack of cherry tomatoes is working for increased sales from Dog River Farm to Whole Foods. And instead of a plastic clamshell package, utilizing 'old school' open pulp pint containers drives sales for the "local" appearance the buyers were seeking. This package helps differentiate across the season.

Open flats ship well, the open pints showcase the tomatoes, allows for the senses to be experienced, & they can be case-stacked in stores too!

Nudging Sales

Retailers of all types love a good angle to engage their shoppers. Around food it can, in various ways, indulge the five senses.

There are demos to taste, the sensation of touch to determine ripeness or even viscosity of various grades of maple, smells of freshly baked maple goods, the beautiful & bountiful perfectly arranged display of products, & the sounds of the environment.

At Sugar Bob’s Finest Kind in Chester, VT the sounds of customers playing music on their maple grand piano is one of Vermont’s singularly unique shopping experiences. March Maple Weekend had customers of all ages playing thrilling the shoppers intent on a filly-maple experience!

What a glorious state we live in, where in these rough times, music wafts as all things maple delight our five senses! Listen in & enjoy some Vermonting. 

March Maple

Harvest of the Month provides farmstands & stores useful culinary & cultural material to enhance sales. The materials are used by Produce departments to help round out staff training too. Dig into the HoM monthly features for use to support customer & staff info.Vermont.

802 Frozen Vermont Pizza

802 Frozen based out of Derby Line is another frozen pizza brand that has hit the shelves & is being well-stocked at stores via AGNE. They are doing the good work of making pizza available.

Many coops & natural food stores across the state & in our ski valleys have strong sales. Plainfield Coop

is soon to undergo some significant redesigns in their hardware section & some retooling in grocery. Likely the 802 Frozen will come in handy for the staff & laborers!

802 Frozen are easy to enjoy, full of flavor & made right here in Vermont! Mehuron's Supermarket in Waitsfield has a full line of the frozen pizza for apres ski & March Madness.

Around the Table: Let's Talk

Shared by Annie Myers of Myers Produce with the Small bites readers:

"When Hannah Goldfield, staff writer at the New Yorker, reached out regarding the food scene in the Northeast Kingdom, my instinct was to gush about the scrappy, hard-working people who grow food, raise animals, make cheese, and tap trees here. I told her how I’d moved to Vermont in 2010 to work on a single vegetable farm, but the broader community of farmers and food producers is the reason I stayed, and ultimately the reason I started Myers Produce.

Hannah was familiar with the all-stars, like Jasper Hill and Pete’s Greens, and she knew of Parker Pie and The Genny. As she talked about plans to visit those spots, I hoped she might meet a broader group of the farmers and foodmakers in our community. I invited her to a dinner party at my house, as a way to make as many introductions as I could.

One of the fun things about bringing Hannah to a table full of friends and neighbors was showing her the range of personalities, origin stories, scales, and distribution options involved in the food businesses that each of us run. I wanted her to witness a mix of people, products, and paths to customers. Read the article from the March 9th issue.

Farmers Ready for the

Season Ahead

This is the time to be slow,

Lie low to the wall

Until the bitter weather passes.

Try, as best you can, not to let

The wire brush of doubt

Scrape from your heart

All sense of yourself

And your hesitant light.

If you remain generous,

Time will come good;

And you will find your feet

Again on fresh pastures of promise,

Where the air will be kind

And blushed with beginning.

-John O’Donohue

& shared by Trillium Hill Farm

Count Down to Get Counted! Regional Local Food

The  2025 Local Food Count is a regional effort measuring how much food is sourced locally by stores, distributors, schools, hospitals, dining services & other organizations.

Late April is our target deadline for your participation, then it is on to the analysis of the economic viability of NE producers & sellers.



New England Feeding New England's initiative utilizes the data to strengthen the region’s food system & increase local food sourcing. All data submitted is kept confidential & presented only in aggregate to show regional trends.

Thanks to all the folks who have

filled out the survey!

Haven't yet? Grab it here:

Local Food Survey

Happy Spring!

Milk & maple are flowing!

March Madness Final!

Growers & Distribution

Learn the ins & outs of wholesaling produce with the final conversation among growers & buyers. March 26th in Johnson, VT a warehouse visit at Deep Root Organic Growers, Foote Brook Farm & West Farm is a chance to talk shop before the year gets super busy for growers.



This is a great few hours for smaller-scaled limited resource growers aiming to build or improve their understanding of distribution variables. Learn from multi-channel growers how they navigate the expectations of buyers.

Store buyers are welcome to join in the conversation! A few spots are still open. grab a spot for a multi-sensation day of peer to peer sharing.

In Memorial: Jane Pomykala

It is with much sadness that we share Jane Pomykala's passing. She left us on Thursday evening, surrounded by family. She died peacefully & in no pain.

Jane was a big part of the local food scene in Vermont, going back to the start of Pomykala Farm in 1977 when farm-to-table was just beginning. She will forever be in our hearts as a leader of the generation building the local food economy suppling top quality produce & flowers. 

Jane was one of the brightest forces I have ever had the pleasure of working with. In a ‘man’s world’ of produce she helped support other women to be a force of joy while working hard physically. As a woman working at the highest level of produce growing & selling, she inspired me personally when I was a buyer & manager at Onion River Coop/City Market. She was forever-positive, with a smile that always delighted me as she delivered, & I received, the farm’s perfectly perfect produce across the full season. The Sweet William cut flowers & amazing early asparagus were my favorites for a long time! (AND, they were great for my sales!).

Jane & Bob began Pomykala Farm in 1977. Jane was the beating heart of the operation, keeping restaurants supplied & delivering to stores on her route. Jane’s love of flowers was pivotal to the farm’s success; she enjoyed harvesting blooms & crafting bouquets all the way through this past autumn. She found joy in helping customers at the farmers’ market & home farm stand.

She was extremely proud to share her farming knowledge with the numerous young people who came every spring to work at Pomykala Farm. Her patience & teachings inspired the next generation of farmers, a legacy that continues to endure.

To all her family & friends, we will carry forth Jane in spirit. A memorial service will be held at Grand Isle Elementary School on April 4, 2026 at 11 a.m. followed by a 12 p.m. reception and lunch for sharing stories & remembrances of Jane. All are welcome to attend. Please read her full obituary here.

 Just plant some seeds. 

That is how you start! 

Vermont farmers have stature, professionally & personally.

The Natural Farmer featured a column written by David Fried of Elmore Roots about Bruce Kaufman, his childhood friend & partner in developing Vermont's organic scene some 40 years ago. It turns out sharing the tribute exemplified the close relationships farmers have among themselves & the reverence they have for the hard work of building a growers coop. It wasn’t just about sales; it was about building a team based on honoring the business & personal challenges to succeed. 

Words of love were quickly shared among New England's organic farming community & those who have sold wholesale through Deep Root Organic Growers Coop.

David Marchant of River Berry Farm: Bruce was a mentor & friend that I miss so every day. We would talk weekly about all things farming and family. Bruce led by example and just did things, like making Deep Root Coop exist.

Tony of Foote Brook Farm: Bruce kept Deep Root going through plenty of turmoil over his forty years. He should be known as one of the main reasons Deep Root has survived over the first 40 years. The mentor. The mediator.



Join farmers & buyers this Thursday March 26^th from 10-2:00 at Deep Root to learn more about the power of envisioning positive relationships & building legacies across the agricultural landscape. 

Also in March

Provisions International hosted a gathering of curd nerds to learn directly from organic cheese producers.

Stores from many New England & New York states attended. Both the talks & tasting of cheese were exceptional learning opportunities to increase knowledge that leads to sales. An added bonus was a tour of the warehouse. As they say, "always catch a Sunday show", has an allegory with food, "always catch a warehouse tour!"

Enduring Darkness

In the many conversations this month growers, cheesemakers, farmers, distributors, store buyers, & technical business advisers discussed the intricacies of food, & the many details to allow all to have access to eat from & within our communities.

We have the on-going forever-topics of cold chains, buyer expectations, unique business relationships. But we also dove into the global economic variables during a war, that’s not really a war. (Or is it?) The global energy supply chains, force majeure, & the impact on all aspects from soil fertility to fuel service charges are suddenly really-real.

As one farmer said, "prices are nuts” & that was only 18 days in. Now, like the unchartered territory of only six years ago, costs of production, distribution, & sales through retail there is an nervousness as food prices were already off the charts. Perhaps, as some are projecting, local sales will be strong in sales this year.



Yet. This is where all businesses will embark on deep analysis for the highest levels of efficiency possible. It can also mean fees & baseline costs are increased such as minimum orders at distributors & where credits will be highly monitored throughout the supply chain of all food manufacturers. Farmers who are busy in their greenhouses will be looking at farm-level efficiencies. They will also be looking closely at their accounts receivable column, because cash will be tight with the increased costs. 

"The farmer is the start

of the cold chain"

It is a fact whether you grow an acre or 50 acres of crops. From the field through to your retail stand -or wholesale- you are the first touch point to pull field heat & properly uphold the integrity of the produce you are selling. Small Axe Farm in Barnet manages their cold chain with fine-tuned rotation of stock & well labeled boxes.

Farmer as Retailer:

Farmers, there are resources for you to better understand the use of SNAP / 3 Squares VT at your farmstand. Johana Doren at NOFA has a suite of resources including an application guideline to help navigate enrollment & trouble shoot tendering sales to meet your community's needs.

A recent webinar with Johanna, Jamie Lombardo of VT Food Bank & Jeremy Tonachel-Read of Birdsong Farm helped folks navigate how to begin the process to sell your food products via SNAP. A huge thank you to all the farmers who contributed to the conversation sponsored by Farm to Plate's Grocers Project.

In Stockbridge, Jeremy at Birdsong Farm is looking ahead to new opportunities to meet his communities needs. They are a community farm growing a diversity of vegetables, herbs, & flowers. They also rotationally graze hens, cows, & sheep on ancestral territory of the Abenaki people. They are proud to produce food that is kindly grown, community minded

for all to access.

All Good Stuff!

Farmer Resources

Fruit & veg growers have access to a huge range of Wednesday noon webinars that land as You Tube videos. The VVBGA has loads of operational topics. In 2026 the series includes food safety & wholesale distribution costs from part of the March Madness series mentioned above.

Nomad Farm together with Hillside Botanicals is taking part in a farmer-led initiative to develop the potential for a state-wide network of commercial herb growers. They look to expand the availability of VT grown herbs by hosting meet-ups centered around production & manufacturing to wider regional market access, including to retail food stores. Growers are encouraged to reach out about this herb grower initiative.

FACT advances a vision that all food-producing animals are raised in a humane & healthy manner. They offer a number of resources to help farmers embrace the mission of healthy animals, healthy food, & an improved environment. Check out the grants to farmers.

Another business training option is offered through VSJF coaching. Their support is geared to Vermont entrepreneurs seeking growth. The advisers work closely for successful long-term success.

Who is up to join a conversation around creating a regional distributor trade group? 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.

Photo & Illustration New Yorker:  Jason Fulford & Tamara Shopsin;

Photo credit UAE Oil Fields: Altaf Qadri for AP



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

Commentaries, cartoons, & songs, are 100% my own perspective.

They do not necessarily reflect the Small Bites sponsors.