Gazy Brothers Farm is going on its fourth generation of farming. Established in 1918, Grandma and
Grandpa Gazsi purchased their farm in oxford. At that time, they raised the freshest vegetables sold
at local grocery stores and delis in the Naugatuck Valley Area. The Gazsi cousins owned a butcher
shop and would sell Grandma Gazsi's homeade pickles and sauerkraut from the cucumbers and
cabbage raised on the farm.
Today, Ed Gazy runs the 80 acre farm with the help of his wife, Alexis, his brothers, Pete and Tony,
and his four children, Dominic, Roseanne, Nicholas, and Albert. Neighbors tend to give a helping
hand during the busy hay season, too. Ed's father, Joe, owns the farm and runs the small stand at
the farm.
The Gazys currently produce approximately 25 acres of vegetables, herbs, flowers, and plants on
the farm and on neighboring properties. Ed and the family also keep busy by working up to 200
acres of hay each year. Besides the farm stand, the Gazys sell our produce at a roadside stand on
Route 67 in Oxford, several farmer's markets, and a few grocery stores when extra produce is
available. Our latest project is a CSA, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture.
Our produce is not organic, however, it is raised with an integrated pest management program,
which reduces the amount of pesticides, fertilizers, and other chemicals to ensure healthy plants
and flavorful produce.
  Laurel Ridge Farm 66 Wigwam Road Litchfield, CT 06759 860-567-8122 john@lrgfb.com
About Laurel Ridge Grass Fed Beef from John Morosani: My father may have immigrated to this country to teach skiing, but his first job was caring for the cows on the Morosani family's small plot of land in the mountain hamlet of Brusio, Switzerland. Twenty three later years he returned to raising cattle, this time at Laurel Ridge, our farm in Litchfield, CT. In 1953, his Brown Swiss cow, Tcherva, won the World Championship for Brown Swiss Milk production. The next year, convinced he could never top this achievement and sensing the changes that were taking place in the dairy industry, he began to sell off his herd, and our dairy farm's operations shut down soon thereafter.
Having cows around must somehow be in our blood, because after almost fifty years of our family leasing the land to other farmers, I brought cattle back to Laurel Ridge. Prompted by an article that Marian Burros wrote for The New York Times , I started to learn about grass fed beef, and when my friend Jim Abbott expressed an interest in going along with me in the venture, we decided to fence off an old pasture that had become overgrown with multi flora and other invasive species. Starting with seven calves purchased from a local farmer in May, 2003, we slowly learned first hand about raising cows (I had been all of 2 when my father exited the dairy business).
In early 2004 I applied for and received a grant from the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), an agency of the US Department of Agriculture. The grant was under the Environmental Quality Improvement Program (EQIP), and it helped pay our cost of converting fields into fenced pastures with drinking water. We bought fifteen more cows the following Spring, and before we knew it, we were full fledged cattle barons. We slaughtered our first cows in 2005, sampled our own product and sold some to local buyers. In the Spring of 2006, I applied for and received a farm viability grant from the State of Connecticut's Ag department that enabled me to start up a retail operation from a windmill that my father built back in the early 1970's. We opened for business on Labor Day weekend of 2006 and have been overwhelmed by the response from customers ever since. Our herd has grown to 80 Black Angus and BlackAngus/Devon, and we have over 200 acres of fields and pastures where we graze the cows and produce our own hay. Along with my business partner Jim Abbott and a motivated squad of farmhands, I run the daily operations of the farm.
Our cattle subsist entirely on grass and, during the winter, hay. We also feed them kelp as a mineral supplement. We don't inject them with hormones or antibiotics. We do not massage them, feed them beer, or house them in climate-controlled stalls. Our cows live exactly as they evolved to live: outdoors, roaming free, eating grass.
Starberry Farm Starberry Farm
47 Kielwasser Road
Washington, CT 06793
860-868-2963
starberry@snet.net
Starberry Farm is owned and operated by Bob and Sally Futh. All the produce they sell is grown on their farm, including:
Peaches- 33 varieties through mid-Sept.;
Plums- 4 varieties, July and August
Apricots- 4 varieties, July and August
Pears- 3 varieties, August/Sept.
Nectarines- 2 varieties, August-Sept.
Apples- 15 varieties, August-October.
We also may have:
Free range natural eggs, starting in July
Raspberries, blackberries - August
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Waldingfield Farm Waldingfield Farm
24 East Street
Washington, CT 06793
860-868-7270
Patrick@waldingfieldfarm.com quincy@waldingfieldfarm.com
Waldingfield Farm was purchased by our great-grandfather, Mr. C.B Smith, at the beginning of the last century and was for many years a working dairy farm. The onset of World War II, and the declining dairy industry in New England put an end to the farm's milking operation. For the next fifty years the land was worked by neighboring farmers.
In 1990 Daniel Horan, great-grandson of C.B. Smith, began the process of reclaiming Waldingfield as a working farm - except with a difference. Waldingfield was to farm organic vegetables. Armed with a degree in History and a voracious reading appetite, Dan began his quest. He started on a small, half acre plot and recruited his younger brother Quincy to help with the daily work. The following summer Patrick, Quincy's twin brother, came aboard, and since then Waldingfield has been a family affair.
As the new century begins Waldingfield Farm is one of the largest certified organic operations (Baystate Organic Certifiers.) in Connecticut. We currently cultivate on over 20 acres and have an active CSA program (community supported agriculture), which we believe is the wave of the future for small vegetable farms like ours. We have numerous restaurant clients, participate in three farmer's markets, have a wholesale distribition, and a thriving roadside stand!
Quincy now manages the daily workings of the farm while Patrick and Daniel assist him on weekends. All of us at the farm thank our supporters for believing in the goals of organic farming. It remains our passion and we will work as hard as we can to bring the highest quality produce to our customers. See you in the fields!
Bantam Bread Company Bantam Bread Company
853 Bantam Rd. (Route 202)
Bantam, CT
860-567-2737
bantambread@optonline.net
Bantam is a charming little village in upstate Connecticut with a world class bakery. Since Niles Golovin opened it in the summer of 1997 the Bantam Bread Company has set a spectacular standard of artisan breads that are the equal of – if not better than – anything we have eaten in the great-bread cities of San Francisco and New York: tawny-crusted peasant bread, rugged multi-grain, chewy rye with caraway seeds, and rosemary-perfumed Kalamata olive sourdough. A “holiday loaf,” created for the bakery’s first Christmas season and studded with toasted walnuts, golden raisins, and sour cherries, has proven so popular that it is now available year around.
“There is a tremendous amount of mystique attached to sourdough, But it isn’t so mysterious, really. What we are doing here is capturing wild yeast. We propagate it by feeding it three times daily. When I come in a little before two in the morning, I've got a full bucket of sourdough, and as I progress through the bake, I use sourdough in each batch and by the end of the bake I'm left with just a small amount in the bucket. Then we feed it whole wheat flour and well water. Three times, on schedule, we feed it until the bucket is refilled again. And it grows, it really grows!
What’s happening when you put the flour and water in that bucket is that the yeast is screaming out, ‘There's a party going on!’ and all the airborne yeast in my bakery sort of migrates to the bucket to join in. So in effect what we are doing is taking a sourdough culture, which is a natural yeast culture, and inviting all the yeast in the neighborhood to join in.” Niles Golovin, Bantam Bread Company
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