Monadnock Localvore E-Newsletter
Late Summer 2015
This month's tour:
CHEESE !
Monadnock Region and some Friends across the Connecticut 

Sawyer's Artisanal Cheese

Walpole, NH

(603)756-4314 

Their cheese is made using certified organic milk from a small herd of Holstein and Brown Swiss cows. Each wheel of cheese is handcrafted and aged for four to six months or longer in their cheese cellar. 

Available at: Monadnock Food Coop, Hannah Grimes Marketplace, Keene, Brattleboro and Bellows Falls Farmers Markets


13 Boggy Meadow Lane Walpole, NH 03608 
Tel: 603-756-3300
The Dairy Farm has been in operation for over 100 years and producing cheese for over 20 years. Boggy Meadow Farm is an artisanal cheese maker making raw milk Alpine cheeses such as Boggy Meadow Baby Swiss, Smoked Swiss, Farmstead Jack, Fiddlehead Tomme and others.
Available at: The Boggy Meadow Farm Stand, Monadnock Food Coop, Hannah Grimes Marketplace, etc.

242 Chesterfield Rd, Keene, NH 03431
603-357-7278
A collaboration with Grafton Village Cheese, they age the herd's raw milk into a cheddar cheese. Yogurt and Ice Cream also.
Available at: Their Farm Store, Hannah Grimes Marketplace, Monadnock Food Co-op.

Bickford Homestead Cheese

1322 NH Rt 10 Orford, NH, 03777

Hal & Rebecca of Peaked Moon Farm & Bickford Homestead are making Feta and Mozzarella and a few other styles to come.

Available at: on the menu at Ariana's Restaurant in Orford, Peaked Moon Farmstand in Piermont and Lincoln Market

 

281 Patch Farm Road Putney, Vermont 05346
802-387-4473
Vermont Shepherd is owned and run by the Major and Ielpi family, with active shepherds currently ranging in age from 7 to 53. Vermont Shepherd (once known as Major Farm) is one of the oldest sheep farms in Vermont and it is the oldest sheep dairy farm in the United States. The Vermont Shepherd Cheese Cave is home to over 20,000 lbs a year of artisan farmhouse cheeses. The supply of Vermont Shepherd Cheese is limited. Invierno is available most of the year, while Verano is available from late August until the year's supply runs out in the spring.

Parish Hill Creamery

Westminster West, Westminster, VT 05346

802-324-4201
Parish Hill Creamery is the culmination of over 30 years of making cheese, working with cheesemakers, teaching classes, solving  problems, and imagining possibilities. The cows graze the pastures of the Elm Lea Farm at the Putney School, just south of the Cheese House. Parish Hill cheeses are produced seasonally,  when the cows are grazing pasture. Cheeses: Suffolk Punch, West West Blue, VT Herdsman, Humble, Reverie, Kashar and Idyll. 

You can find the cheeses across the US and locally: Burdick's, Brattleboro and Putney Co-op, and The Gleanery. Westminster Artisan Cheesemaking classes offered - see website for schedule.


Grafton Village Cheese

400 Linden Street, Brattleboro, VT 05301

 802.246.2221

A fire destroyed the original factory. Several decades later, the nonprofit Windham Foundation restored the company in the mid 1960s with two production plants: The original in Grafton and a newer facility in nearby Brattleboro, VT. Each has a retail store, as well as viewing windows to watch cheesemaking and to taste the final product. Aged Cheddars, Cave-aged and Specialty cheeses available on site and Hannafords, Market Basket, the Brattleboro, Putney and Monadnock Food Co-ops, Hannah Grimes Marketplace and Blueberry Fields.

 

 Main Street Cheese

37 Main St. Hancock, NH 03449

603-525-3300

A small-scale, woman-owned, licensed goat dairy committed to the craft of cheesemaking. It is inspired by both a devotion to artisanal production as well as a conviction that local, sustainable agriculture can help to usher in a new, life-centered, generative economy through consumer and citizen action. A herd of 21 Alpine live at the former Peabody Farm, where they have pasture, less than a mile from the Main Street cheesemaking center. After kidding season, the kids are raised on Main Street, where people are welcome to visit them.

Fresh and aged cheeses are sold directly to people at its honor-system shop on Main Street in Hancock, New Hampshire.


 

 12 Meadow Rd. Harrisville, NH 03450 

(603) 847-3579

Children's book illustrator and author turned Artisanal Cheese Maker Sue O'Dwyer. Farmstead Artisan cheeses;  Brie, Chesham Cheddar, Baby Swiss, Canestrato,  Mozzarella, Provolone, and others as well as Homemade Butter. Available at their Farm Stand in Harrisville.


 


Next TOUR  -  Bakeries!

Join us, as we look to put together simple, tasty Localvore tours of the region. Forward your suggested topics or tours via email, Facebook , and Twitter.  

 

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Featured Events:
                                 August is NH Eat Local Month
and we've got 18 days remaining to celebrate! 
All month long, you can find new ways to support New Hampshire farmers and local agriculture.
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Monadnock Farm and Community Coalition
Enjoy a night out, and support the work of the Coalition in building 
a strong, effective and sustainable local food system, and delight in an al fresco dinner on the picturesque grounds of Mayfair Farm. 
The menu features locally sourced, sustainably grown 
and ethically harvested cuisine! 
All proceeds benefit MFCC programming and overhead costs.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Mayfair Farm  -  Harrisville, NH

Conversations about Local, State and Federal, 
Policies Affecting Agriculture
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
5:30pm - 7:30pm   Stonewall Farm, Keene
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Alyson's Orchard farm stand is now open for the season. The hours are 10am-6pm, 7 days a week. They offer Pick Your Own Blueberries, Pre-Picked Blueberries, Santa Rosa Plums, Early Yellow Golden Plums, Shiro Plums, Methley Plums and Apricots which are available at the farm stand as well. PYO Apple season begins with Paula Reds on August 15th. Stop by and take home a fresh baked Apple, Peach or Blueberry Pie for dessert. Visit the farm stand and see lots of new locally made products, sit on the porch & relax while playing a game of checkers or try your hand at Ladder Golf on the lawn.
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Stonewall Farm  -  Keene, NH
Annual Barnyard BBQ
357-7278
Sunday, August 16, 12 -3 pm 
with Charcoal Charlie BBQ and new this year-a family concert with Jay Mankita! Ice cream, hay rides, farm animals, 
and cotton candy too!
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Friday, August 14, 2015    Ljova and The Kontraband  
Saturday, August 22, 2015    Karen & The Sorrows
both shows 7-9 PM at the Sumner Knight Chapel
 
Virginia Eskin
  
137 Court St Keene, NH

The 2015 Keene Music Festival
Downtown Keene

Now in its 15th year, the Keene Music Festival is a unique event in the New England area. Featuring over seventy bands at fourteen performance areas, the Keene Music Festival is one of the largest free music festivals around. The event features a wide array of musical styles, allowing the audience to walk around the downtown Keene area and listen to a wide variety of musical styles. It is truly a special day of music in a special town.  The Festival is an all volunteer effort; with all of the organizing staff, performers and local merchants contributing to create the event. Performers are a mix of local and regional performers; both up and coming artists and "alumni" acts who enjoy coming back to be part of the event.

NH Farms Network

The mission of the New Hampshire Farms Network, a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation, is to strengthen the connection between New Hampshire farmers, businesses, and consumers by developing a greater public understanding of the importance of farming for food security, community health, economic development, and land conservation. The Network's goal is the education of citizens about the important role that farms play in the preservation of New Hampshire's financial health and of the rural landscape which draws visitors to travel and enjoy our state.

Every farm has a story to tell - its history, its farming methods, its beliefs, and its goals for the future. New Hampshire Farms Network (NHFN) was established in 2008, first to tell their stories, and then to communicate their importance to the state's food security, community health, economic development, and land conservation efforts.  There are no membership requirements. Their audience  is the NH community and any visitor who has an interest in and desire to visit the state and buy the food these farms produce. The website is impartial in its outlook and is supported by donations, grants, and sponsorships.

NHFN was established after a book, New Hampshire: From Farm to Kitchen, was published in 2004. The book was well received but it was able to profile only 30 of the state's over 4,000 farms. With the help of a volunteer webmaster, the New Hampshire Farms Network and www.newhampshirefarms.net were born to continue uncovering farm stories. As more farms were profiled, and visitorship grew, requests came in urging additional information - where to buy the farm's foods, recipes, a calendar, and links to educational organizations and social media.

The NHFN farm profile program currently enlists professional writers and college students to be farm profile writers. In New London, NH, Colby-Sawyer College included the visiting of farms and profile writing as part of their 2014-15 environmental study curriculum. Plymouth State University, through its Center for Rural Partnerships, and St. Anselm College are also participating and we are looking forward to participation by other colleges and universities.
Recently, they looked to businesses to support the farm profile effort through our Farm-Business program.
Their social network volunteers publish a monthly newsletter and update Facebook and Twitter at least once a day
As for the future efforts of NHFN, now that their farm profile program is well under way, they are researching a grant for a program manager, and the board is investigating ways to tackle other parts of our mission - farms and "food security, community health, economic development, and land conservation".

Recipe 

 

Killer Mac & Cheese with Bacon

Recipe adapted from Chef Ann Burrell

Serves 6-8

 

Ingredients
Extra-virgin olive oil
6 slices North Country Smokehouse bacon, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch pieces
3 tablespoons unsalted Cabot butter
1 onion, cut into 1/4 inch dice
Kosher salt
1/2 cup all-purpose King Arthur Flour
1 quart Manning Hill Farm milk, plus more as needed
1/4 cup Ruth's Hot & Sweet mustard
VT Maple Sriracha or other local hot sauce
1 pound VT Fresh Pasta fusilli other short pasta
2 cups grated Stonewall Farm cheddar (about 8 ounces)
2 cups grated Sawyer's Ver-Hampshire cheese (about 8 ounces)
1 cup grated Blythedale Farm Grana cheese (about 4 ounces)
 

Drizzle a bit of olive oil in a large saucepan. Add the bacon and set the pan over medium heat; cook, stirring occasionally, until brown and crisp, 8 to 10 minutes. Remove from the pan and drain on paper towels. Do not discard the bacon fat: Reserve that deliciousness!

Add the butter and onion to the pan with the bacon fat; season with salt and cook until the onion is soft and aromatic, 4 to 6 minutes. Add the flour and cook, stirring frequently, until the mixture looks like wet sand, about 3 minutes.

Slowly whisk in the milk, mustard and a few shakes of Sriracha. Season with salt and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low. Simmer until the mixture is slightly thicker than heavy cream, 6 to 8 more minutes.

Meanwhile, bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook 1 minute less than the instructions on the package suggest. Taste it: It should be toothsome, with just a little nugget of hard pasta still in the center-this is al dente. Drain the pasta.

Add the cheddar, Ver-Hampshire and Grana cheeses to the milk mixture and whisk to combine. Taste and adjust the seasoning, if needed, adding a little more milk if the mixture seems too thick. Stir in the cooked bacon and pasta. The mixture should be very creamy and flavorful. Serve immediately. (If making ahead, transfer to a baking dish or ramekins, then reheat in a 375 degree oven.)

Photograph by Steve Giralt

Recipe courtesy of Anne Burrell for Food Network Magazine

Additional Ingredient sourcing: 
Onions: Stonewall Farm, Tracie's Community Farm, Monadnock Food Co-op, Your local Farmer's Market
Classifieds*

 

Need Egg Cartons?

Hannah Grimes Marketplace regularly has empty eggs cartons that are available for FREE to those that need/want them.  Please contact the Marketplace at 603-352-6862 if you can use gently recycled egg cartons for re-use. 

 

Save the trees  -  FREE Trees

Two Red Pine trees. Approx. 7ft tall - in need of a new home. Adopter will be responsible for removing the trees from the ground. To adopt or have questions, please contact Donna Weldon at donna@hannahgrimes or 352-5063


 

More produce than you can use?

Gleaning Program now available in the Monadnock Region - please contact tckgleaner@gmail.com for more information and to get involved.


 

*Hannah Grimes Marketplace will post classifieds as a service to readers and does not imply endorsement.  Add a classified ad: Send a 20-30 word description of your service or product that is directly supporting Localvores to 
Make sure to include the best way to contact you.   
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In This Issue
Cheese Tour!
Featured Events & Notices
Monadnock Menus
Recipe
Classifieds