Cold-hardy heirloom vegetables, herbs, and flowers — bred, grown, and hand-saved on our own ground in the Green Mountains. Every variety is proven through a real Vermont season, not a catalog photo.
Many of these are Northeast originals — turnips, flint corn, and beans that were bred here generations before us and would have been lost otherwise.
Vermont's official state vegetable. Sweet, creamy, and best after a hard frost — mild enough to eat raw.
One of the earliest-maturing flint corns in North America, kept alive in Calais for over a century. Deep gold, ground for johnnycake.
A colonial New England classic — maroon-splashed pods, rich and meaty dried. Reliable even in a cool, wet August.
Plant one, harvest a cluster. A multiplier onion that overwinters in the ground and returns every spring on its own.
Warty, sea-green, and unforgettable. Dense sweet flesh that stores in the root cellar clear through to March.
High-resin petals for salves and dye, blooming from June until the snow flies. Self-sows gently, feeds the bees late.
Most catalog seed is grown somewhere warm and mild, then shipped north to a climate it has never met. Ours is different. Every variety on this page is selected, roughed, and hand-cleaned on our own beds in Calais — chosen from the plants that shrugged off a late-May frost and still finished before the first hard one in September.
What that means for you: seed with a memory of cold in it. It comes up faster in chilly soil, sizes up in a short window, and doesn't sulk when a Vermont summer forgets to show up.
A working calendar for our own frost dates — last frost around May 25, first around September 20. Shift a week earlier or later for your own microclimate.
| Crop | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct |
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Forty-odd pages of variety notes, our own growing dates, and the stories behind the seed. Sign up and we'll send the next printing plus first pick before spring sells through.
No shop tricks — a few emails a year, mostly about when to sow.