Thank you for a wonderful 2009 season. Sign up for our email list to receive early notification of our CSA, farm events calendar, and educational programs for 2010!

Cedar Circle Farm & Education Center is a 50-acre certified organic farm on conserved land along the Connecticut River in East Thetford, Vermont, just minutes from Norwich, Vermont, and Hanover, New Hampshire. The farmstand and the Hello Café are open late April through October.

• 

  Farmstand, greenhouses, and coffeehouse

  Closed for 2009. See you in the spring!
  Farmstand  Seasonal & farm-grown fruits & vegetables, local cheeses & dairy, farm-fresh eggs, annuals & perennials, vegetable starts, gardening supplies, hand-made Mexican pottery, unique gifts.
  Hello Café  Fair-trade coffee, farm-baked goods, wireless internet!

• 

  Community-supported agriculture

  Cedar Circle is a community-supported agriculture (CSA) farm—we supply families and individuals in the Upper Valley with weekly shares of organic vegetables, berries, & fresh flowers, June through October.

• 

  Annual harvest festivals

  Our annual Strawberry Festival in late June and Pumpkin Festival in October draw hundreds of visitors from around New England for family fun, horse-drawn wagon rides, strawberry and pumpkin picking, children’s activities, live music, guided farm tours, and farm-fresh food. Check the dates for this year’s festivals.

• 

  Education Center

  Our education center offers Dinners in the Field and various classes. We run new farmer workshops, a farmer outreach program, & farm tours for schools. The staff also works with local schools to raise awareness about the importance of local and organic food, and to increase the use of fresh local foods in school cafeterias.

Latest updates

• Cedar CIrcle Farm Education Programs in 2009 - Recap!

  2009 was a successful year for our educational programs here at the farm. Here is a summary of our accomplishments:
  . . . we held six well-attended classes focused on teaching home-gardening and cooking, in addition to the many home and school gardening classes that Cat taught around the Upper Valley.
  . . . in May we held an On-Farm Compost workshop for farmers and aspiring farmers.
  . . . both Thetford schools began collecting compost at school, held celebratory local meals served in their cafeterias, and increased the amount of food their cafeterias purchase from local farms.
  . . . Thetford Elementary completed their second full year of growing food and flowers and we developed K-2 curriculum to tie into the school gardens.
  . . . we had about 1,000 students, campers, and scouts from all over the Upper Valley visit the farm this year for educational farm tours, agricultural games and activities, pumpkin picking, harvesting, planting, and working in the fields.
  . . . to conduct outreach and to develop educational programs, Cat collaborates with and is a member of community groups: Pompanoosuc Agriculture Society (PAS), Thetford Community Garden Committee, Upper Valley Food Co-op Education Committee, Valley Food Council, Upper Valley Farm to School.
  . . . all of our festivals and Dinners in the Field were successful and well-attended.

  We’re looking forward to growing on these successful programs in 2010.
  —Cat Buxton, Education Coordinator
  11/07/09

• Help for cleaning up your garden this year

  Wendy Sue Harper, Ph.D., NOFA Vermont’s Vegetable and Fruit Technical Assistance Advisor, wrote up this helpful article for gardeners with notes about how to clean up this year’s blighted plants and avoid late blight next year (PDFs):

  Here is the link to the article.
  Here is a link to a chart of varieties that have shown resistance to the late blight. 11/05/09

• Over 1,100 visitors for our 7th Annual Pumpkin Festival

  We had beautiful fall weather for our 7th Annual Pumpkin Festival, held at the farm on Sunday, October 11. Over 1,100 people enjoyed the festivities which included a children’s play, live bluegrass music by the Crunchy Western Boys of Warren, NH, a cider-pressing demonstration, horse-drawn wagon rides, pumpkin picking, boat rides on the river, and a variety of educational displays and children’s arts and crafts activities.

  Our Waste Recovery Area — designed to minimize festival waste through composting, recycling, and reuse, collected only 2.5 bags of trash . . . mostly hot drink cups. The cups we’ve been using, while paper, don’t compost because of a plastic liner. We know this because after six months in the compost after last year’s festival, all that was left of them was a pile of plastic sacks. We are continually trying to improve our planning to help to minimize waste. This winter we’ll follow some leads to a pure paper hot drink cup. 10/26/09

• Fall Farm Tours: Kids on the farm

  About 500 students, with their siblings, teachers, and parents, from over a dozen schools and day cares centers in the Upper Valley visited the farm over the past two weeks to participate in our Fall Farm Tours. Tours include a tractor or horse-driven wagon ride to the pumpkin patch and a visit to the chickens and horses. Students from Thetford Elementary, Marion Cross, Lebanon and Hanover Street Schools opted for additional farm-related educational activities with Cat after their tour. This year’s activities included a Sensory Treasure Hunt, a Seed Safari, Three-Sisters Tag, and a Sensory Writing Project. 10/23/09

• Fields are in cover crops

  Nearly all of our fields are now planted in cover crops of peas, oats, or rye to protect the soil from erosion over the course of the winter. These crops help to build organic matter in the soil which enhances soil structure and provides some nutrients and food for next year’s crops and beneficial soil organisms. 10/23/09

• More news…