The Rooted Exchange

OCTOBER 2026 BROADSHEET

OCTOBER: PUTTING THE FARM TO BED

The mornings have stopped asking for a sweater and started insisting on one. First frost has silvered the pasture, the leaves crunch underfoot and the Presidentials have pulled on their first white caps of the season.

We’ve been tucking the fields and beds in for winter: scattering cover crop seed by the fistful, working compost and amendments into the beds, and blanketing everything in chopped leaves and straw so the soil stays fed and cozy under the snow. In between, we’ve been pressing spring bulbs and garlic into the cold ground, a little stash of color, hope, and sustenance we plant now in efforts to make our long springs feel joyful. October feels like the farming equivalent of laying out your clothes, setting the coffee pot, and making your lunch the night before. Unglamorous but satisfying, and future-us will be grateful.

THE TAP ROOT:

The Long Way Around

There’s a running joke on this farm that nothing we do is the fast way, or even the most direct way.

If there’s a shortcut, we’ve looked at it, nodded politely, and walked right past it. Not because we love extra work (we don’t), but because the slow way is almost always the one that gives something back.

This old homestead has been here since 1773, and it has a way of reminding us that good things used to take time on purpose. We like to think of what we do as progressive stewardship with a healthy dose of old-time goodness: modern regenerative thinking, predominantly female driven, practiced with the patience of a people and time who didn’t have another option. All of it always comes back to the same place. The soil.

Take putting the farm to bed. It would be faster to till everything under, walk away, and deal with it in spring. Instead, we’re trimming plants down to the soil but leaving the root system undisturbed, seeding cover crops, feeding the beds with compost and manure, and tucking them under thick blankets of chopped leaves and straw. It’s hours of hauling and spreading that nobody will ever see….

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THE SIDE SHOOTS

Look Ma! We made the news!

We had the honor of spending an early fall morning with Tim Linehan, a Northeast Kingdom writer, storyteller, and photographer. Over a cup of coffee and a stroll through the pastures, we talked about our farm and how we got here. Tim turned that conversation into a feature in our regional paper, The North Star Monthly, and shared it on the latest episode of his podcast. Check out both below!

*photo credit: Tim Linehan, North Star Monthly

Read our feature in the North Star Monthly

Listen to our conversation on Northern Voices

THE SEEDBED

Fresh from the farm, now just a click away

Our pasture-raised meats are now available through our newly rebuilt website, with convenient drop locations in Guildhall, Lyndonville, and Burke. Browse, order, and pick up close to home.

Sourdough CSA: 3 spots left!

Our Sourdough CSA has officially opened, and it’s nearly sold out with just three spots remaining. Even though the doors have “closed”, I love you and I would never say no to someone who wanted good bread. If you or someone you know has been eyeing a regular loaf habit, now’s the time. Send them my way as soon as possible so I can get them onboarded before bread starts rolling out the first week of November!

Shop Pasture Raised Protein and Sourdough Here

THE ROOT SYSTEM

Community Impact. Check.

Last Thursday, Tom, Madison, & her rooster (no I’m not kidding) took the stage at Catamount Arts for Do North’s Rumble in the Kingdom to pitch Farm to Porch, our early-stage farm product distribution idea.

Unsurprisingly…they crushed it.

Farm to Porch isn’t a brand-new concept, but it is new to the NEK.

Out here, one of the hardest parts of eating local isn’t finding a farmer. It’s the distance between us. So instead of asking folks to drive across the Kingdom for a pickup, we’re building drop points at the places our community already gathers: the hospital, a church, a daycare, a Grange Hall.

This is about more than getting from point A to point B. It means building the infrastructure, the systems, and the means to carry it all. It means creating jobs here. It means keeping your hard-earned dollars where they matter most: in your own community. And it means getting sustainable, high-quality, fresh protein, bread, and produce to your table with ease.

And once those roads are paved, we’re not planning on traveling them alone. We’ll be able to add other local farmers’ product that we know, love, and trust to our menu and route, so the whole community rises together. Plus, with every order, we’ll donate a loaf of fresh sourdough from our microbakery to one of our well-established Vermont Food Bank partners.

We walked away with second place and $5,000 to get this idea off the ground. But the part that has us a little teary? We won the Community Impact Award, meaning the judges saw Farm to Porch as the project with the biggest potential impact on the Northeast Kingdom.

Huge thanks to the Rumble organizers, the judges, and everyone who cheered us on both near and far.

Madison and Tom, you were incredible. We are so proud of you!

UNTIL NEXT TIME,

LIZZIE,TOM, AND OUR WEE LASSIES