Meet Laughing Child Farm
Did you know that you can get local sweet potatoes year-round at the Co-op? Recently, we took a winter road trip to Pawlet, VT to meet Brooke and Tim of Laughing Child Farm. Laughing Child is the only Vermont grower offering year-round organic sweet potatoes – and we’ve been working with them since just about their first harvest. When we arrived, Tim was attempting to convince his four youngest farmhands (their children) to help with chopping wood.
“City Market was very willing to work with us. Buyers at City Market - I’m thinking of Mary Manghis. She was able to offer us some advice about size and quality control early on. And then it’s been a pretty dramatic increase from there,” Tim explained as we chatted about our 13-year shared history inside the Laughing Child farmstand building. “It’s exciting to us to see all the Vermonters and all the folks throughout the state and region eating sweet potatoes that are grown here.”
Inside the farmhouse, the Laughing Child farm cat immediately adopted our photographer, and this writer immediately adopted a sweet potato pie.
Looking to cook up some tasty sweet potato goodness? Our absolute favorite sweet potato dish right now is this Sweet Potato & Ricotta Gnocchi with pancetta, sage and brown butter. The supremely satisfying combination of sweet and savory flavors makes for a perfect cozy winter dinner. You can try it with Laughing Child sweet potatoes – we’ve got three varieties available right now! This Vermont Root Vegetable Gratin is another ooey-gooey winter fave – we love it because you can use whatever local root veggies are available to you, and change it up to suit your tastes.