Grocery

Healthy Living is your springboard to better health! Our aisles offer a cornucopia of whole, natural and delicious foods, with a plethora of organic and local selections. From beans to baking soda, soup to spices, and pasta to peanut butter, we offer healthy and tasty foods to meet every customer’s needs. We have the largest selection of gluten-free items in the state of Vermont! Our bulk section is chock full of grains, beans, rice, nuts, trail mixes, granolas, a huge collection of spices and the best baking ingredients you can find — buy as much or as little as you need! Looking for a product you can’t find? Let us know and we can special order it for you. Who knows, it may just find a permanent home on our shelves. We believe the products you want are the products we should carry. Since day one, customer feedback has been our guiding light!

Department News

Healthy Living Loves Local: Strafford Organic Creamery

By Grocery Manager  •  Thursday, June 13th, 2013

Strafford Organic Creamery is the product of Earl Ransom and his wife, Amy Huyffer at Rockbottom Farm in Strafford, VT.  Together they produce delicious organic milk and ice cream the old fashioned way – in small batches, sustainably and ethically.  Their motto? “Real people working real hard to bring you the best milk and ice cream on the planet.”  And we couldn’t agree more.

From their website:

“Earl Ransom grew up milking cows on this 600-acre farm.  He and his wife, Amy Huyffer, carry on his family’s tradition of managing the land organically, with no herbicides, pesticides or chemical fertilizers. 

Our herd of 50 mostly-Guernsey cows grazes on rotational pastures for the entire growing season. Guernsey cows are known for their rich, yellow cream; their butterfat carries the color and flavor of their feed better than that of other breeds. Everything we do, from the crops we grow for them to the gentle routines of milking, is focused on their comfort and well-being, and helping them produce super-tasty milk and cream.

We process our milk into reusable glass bottles, using HTST (High Temperature, Short Time) pasteurization which we feel best preserves the flavor and texture of the milk. Our milk is available at natural foods stores and coops throughout Vermont and Western New Hampshire in skim, 1%, 2% and whole, chocolate and half-and-half, as well as a non-homogenized, old-fashioned cream-line milk. 

We make our ice cream in small batches, one day each week.  We wouldn’t dream of blending our cows’ cream with anything but the highest-quality organic ingredients. We separate fresh eggs by hand, handpick the mint and black raspberries, grind the coffee just before we brew it into the milk and basically work our tails off to make the best ice cream on the planet.”

You can find Strafford milk, half and half and ice cream (and, when in season, arguably the best eggnog in the universe) in our Dairy/Frozen department every day!

For more information about Strafford Organic Creamery, visit their website here.

- Leo Zambrano, Grocery Manager

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