BUTTER CHAT: TAYLOR + MISHA OF FREE VERSE FARM
When we started planning our holiday season, we knew we wanted to develop special flavors for our Butter Lover subscribers that brought warmth and versatility to cooking, baking, and eating. Ploughgate founder Marisa Mauro immediately thought of fellow Vermont farm and small business, Free Verse Farm. And oh how delicious their herbs would be folded in our cultured butter! We ended up using their Herbes de Vermont. This aromatic mix—crafted as a tribute to Vermont—combines basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme, and savory. Earthy, balanced, and full of flavor! It's proving to be one of our favorites to date.
Free Verse Farm is a small organic farm & apothecary in the hills of central Vermont offering farmgrown & handcrafted teas, spices, bulk herbs, herbal remedies, body care products, and CSA subscriptions. Founded by Taylor Katz and Misha Johnson, two artist/farmers with a passion for growing, eating, and sharing delicious and nourishing food and herbs. They also opened the Free Verse Farm Shop—an apothecary, provisions, and cafe bakery—in downtown Chelsea in 2020.
Misha and Taylor's story and journey to Free Verse Farm resonated with Ploughgate founder Marisa Mauro. From similar travels and detours developing her craft to coming back home to build her own brand here in Vermont.
We had the pleasure of talking with Misha and Taylor to learn about their journey and what's on the horizon for Free Verse Farm!
Ploughgate: As two artists—Misha as a photographer & herbalist and Taylor as a poet—what brought you to farming? And how did that journey bring you to Vermont?
Free Verse Farm: Misha grew up in rural Vermont on an old farm and was therefore surrounded by a working agricultural landscape. At Connecticut College, where Taylor and Misha met, Misha ran the on-campus organic garden and majored in Environmental Studies. Taylor got her first taste of farming during a summer internship. where she and Misha worked on an agroecological farm in Costa Rica. After college, we moved out to San Diego, where Taylor pursued her MFA in Creative Writing, and we both worked on farms and began hatching our plans to move back to Vermont and start our own!
Ploughgate: What are some of the joys and challenges you've experienced farming in Vermont?
Free Verse Farm: We farm high up in the hills, and therefore get to enjoy a truly stunning vista of green mountains and our village's beautiful river valley. We are held, sustained, and fed by this landscape that we are lucky to call home. We also take great joy in the physical work of farming, and care deeply about providing a healthy workplace for the folks we work with in the fields. Working alongside others in the common goal of producing beautiful food and medicine provides endless opportunities for connections, collaborations, belly laughs, and insights. Community is at the heart of our work.
In terms of challenges, there is no greater one than climate change. Working with the weather has always been a farmer's task, but the unpredictability and long stretches of drought and intense rainy periods are difficult to navigate. However, we've always felt passionate about working with nature, not against her, so we're always evolving how we work with the land by listening and learning its rhythms and ways, so that we may smooth out the extremes and cultivate a more resilient landscape, and thus community. Each year we are here on this land, we feel more deeply rooted, not only to this physical place, but also to the community that gathers here and is nourished by this land.
Ploughgate: Do you still practice your creative endeavors outside of farming (which is creative in itself!)?
Free Verse Farm: Yes, all the time! Both of us practice art forms that are easy to fit into everyday life. Misha often captures photographs while working or walking the land, and Taylor can be found reading or writing poems in those little in-between times of day or night, even after a long day farming. Especially during the growing season, the rich abundance of the landscape (and the work involved!) offers so much beauty and complexity to contemplate and capture.
Our creative instincts are also infused into the way we work. With the land, this means co-creating with the land in whimsical and spontaneous ways that generate health and abundance. With our products, that means everything from thinking deeply about recipes for herbal remedies, to coming up with fun names for tea blends, to designing product labels and marketing materials.
Ploughgate: You opened the Free Verse Farm Shop, a community-centered grocery, in downtown Chelsea. Can you share the inspiration behind opening this new branch of your business? Any surprises, good or challenging, since opening?
Free Verse Farm: We opened our shop in September 2020 due to our community's need for access to fresh, local food. Before that, our town of Chelsea was essentially a food desert, with residents having to drive 25 miles to the nearest grocery store. Opening our shop has allowed us to connect with our neighbors as well as our food-producer friends in a new and ongoing way, which brings us great joy and satisfaction. We are both passionate about good food and good ingredients, and take great pride in the efforts we make to source the very best ingredients for our shop, while also providing a welcoming space for all to enjoy a cup of tea, lunch with a friend, or just a spot to bump into neighbors and catch up.
We have been delightfully surprised by how much our shop has taken off — we opened during the depths of COVID, not knowing if the project would resonate with the community. But from the very first week, people have been walking into our store! We are now open five days a week and offer not only an ever-expanding selection of local products like meat and dairy, but also pantry staples, wine and beer, coffee and tea and frothy herbal drinks, and a variety of delicious baked goods and lunch offerings.
We have learned from our customers that what they need the most is a shop where they can get their weekly staples. But what they also enjoy is the experience of our shop, which is more has become more than just a store — it's become an important part of people's social lives. We are so honored and inspired by this venture!
Photos courtesy of Free Verse Farm.
