By LYN DESMARAIS
I needed an extra-large wreath one year and found Jane. I reconnected with her recently at the Brandon Farmers Market where I snagged her last Vermonter Apple Pie. Absolutely delicious. I’m always curious about our farmers and producers who feed us here in Vermont, and how they feed us.
Jane Costello is a 9th-generation Vermonter on her mom’s side. No family member currently lives on their family farm.
“My mother’s family settled in Pittsford during the Revolutionary War and ended up in Cornwall,” she said. “Our family farm was built in 1803 there. Her family lived there continuously until 1986.”
Jane has always lived in the Champlain Valley. She has a farm in Sudbury which she has named The Stevens Farmstead.
“My mom was Dawn Stevens and she passed in 2012. She taught me 90% of everything I know about cooking and gardening. I named my farm after her, to honor my family. I was renting from Champlain Orchards for years while looking for places in Cornwall. I’d been seriously looking for a house for about a year. I kept looking and seeing this one, and saying oh, Sudbury it’s kind of far. Finally, I came and looked at it and I loved it. It was in much better shape, less money, and less taxes. I love it here. I bought it in January. When spring came, I learned that some of my land was not super useful. It’s very ledgy, so it can’t be tilled. But it could be good pasture. I was married my first year here and we raised some meat goats. I might go back to that, no, not my marriage, but possibly the meat goats.”
“I grew up in a little house on two acres on Route 116 in Middlebury. I went to school in Middlebury. I did a live-in internship after high school at Taproot Morgan Horse Farm in Hinesburg. I worked with horses for 20-odd years. I’ve been working in restaurants my whole life too, because you can’t live on horse-job wages. I was pretty much always working multiple jobs: teaching, working at a horse farm, working at a local restaurant. When I first moved to Shoreham, I was cooking at the Middlebury Co-Op, and I was bartending at Cattails in Brandon. Around 2010, I started the kitchen and created the first menu for Otter Creek Brewing Company and worked there for a year and a half. The summer before my mom passed, I left there and went to work at Champlain Orchards. I worked there on and off for eight years. I managed the pie bakery, and I helped them with events. For a while I sold their hard cider, so I traveled all over Vermont and New York. That was fun. I left Champlain Orchards in 2020 because my own business had become successful enough for me to do it full-time. I finally didn’t have time for two jobs.
I had started my catering business, very part-time, in 2014, selling my food at the Vergennes Farmers Market. My catering business slowly grew from that. Any vegetables or flowers that I grow supplement my catering business. I make meals for the Giving Fridge in Middlebury. The Giving Fridge was part of the ‘Everyone Eats’ Program established by FEMA in Vermont during Covid-19. The idea behind ‘Everyone Eats’ is to provide locally made meals, using a percentage of local produce for local families in need. I always include at least 50% local food in my meals. The ‘Everybody Eats’ federal program officially ended in March but has been continued by Bethanie Farrell and the Giving Fridge through fundraising.
I make meals for the Vermont Farmers Food Center in Rutland. It’s the ‘Everyone Eats.’ I make meals for the Rutland Online Farmers Market, and I provide vegetables for the Farmacy Program. Last week, I delivered 125 pounds of tomatoes to them, which I try to do every other week. I also grow peppers. My tomatoes and peppers were saved from the bad weather this year in my wonderful 100-foot greenhouse.
In addition to these programs, I do a 10-week meal share where anyone can order dinner for two once a week and I deliver it to your house on a Tuesday. Finally, from May through October, I provide baked goods to or cater food for various farmers markets, festivals, and events like the Bristol Harvest Festival and The Foot of The Mountain Snow Travelers annual dinner.
My passions are cooking, horses, working on my 1875 farmhouse, and hanging with my dogs.
I host the occasional dinner party with friends or take 4-mile walks with my dogs.
In November, I ‘take a break’ to become a wreath-making machine, binding together 400 wreaths. I sell wholesale and retail. My stand opens the weekend before Thanksgiving, and of course, I make pies, lots of pies.
To get on her email list for pies, wreaths or food email Jane at:
Thestevensfarmstead@gmail.com
