Meet Misha and Taylor—the newest producers to join the Food Connects family. They are two artist/farmers with a passion for growing, eating, and sharing delicious and nourishing food and herbs, who created Free Verse Farm in 2012 after traveling the world and studying art. Taylor is a poet and Misha is a photographer, and they love creating farm-related giveaways that combine both of these talents.
Their vision is one that combines their love of farming with their natural impulses to create art and connect with the earth. It is their dream to grow a wide variety of herbs, to grow food for themselves and their neighbors, and to cultivate a meaningful relationship with their community and with the land from which they both derive nourishment, pleasure, and peace.
They are a small herb farm and apothecary in Chelsea, Vermont specializing in naturally-grown tisanes (herbal teas), culinary herbs, medicinals, and herbal remedies. What makes their products unique is that they design their recipes around what they can grow on their farm. This means that all of their products contain a majority of their own, farm-grown ingredients. This makes their products place-based, sustainable, and high-quality, as they have very high standards for they herbal ingredients. You can notice the freshness of the herbs when you open up a tin of their tea, which is bursting with color, scent, body, and flavor!
Taylor continues to be enamored with their culinary blend, Dress It Up, a sweetly herbaceous vinaigrette blend. It's amazing on potato salad, in a slaw, and even as a marinade on fish. Her favorite of their teas is Ode to Vermont, a delicious blend that tastes like nothing else you've had before, made with herbs that love to grow in Vermont: lemon balm, catnip, anise-hyssop, and red clover blossoms. It's bold but floral; it's complex but smooth. You can drink it hot or iced and is perfect served any time of day!
Want to visit them farm? This will be the fifth year Free Verse Farm will participate in Vermont's Open Farm Week. This year, they will be holding their annual "Farm Tour and Tea Party," where they walk guests around the farm and explain their growing practices, methods, ethos, and then end the afternoon with a tasting of a wide variety of their teas, plus delicious snacks.
The will also be hosting two great workshops: one is a natural dye workshop (also during Open Farm Week), and one is a basket weaving workshop. They love having events on their farm and hope to see you there!