Ridgway Farm Store sprouts from deep roots

CORNWALL — Local produce has a new home on Town Street.

While the roadside farm stand remains at the entrance to Ridgway Farm, a larger assortment awaits at the recently constructed barn deeper into the property.

Guests were welcomed Sunday, Aug. 24, for the debut of the store and a soft opening continued throughout the week.

A bountiful harvest was on display including peaches, flowers, leafy greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, melons, root vegetables and garlic. Jayne Ridgway offered samples of the produce along with her homemade vinaigrette, pesto and lemonade.

The store stocks cheese and ice cream from Arethusa Farm in Litchfield. And more items are available through collaboration with the New York-based family farm aggregator Hudson Harvest.

“Everything here is probably produced within 20 miles of where we are right now,” said Gordon Ridgway.

Also growing on the farm are 475 apple trees. Orchard tours are offered at 3 p.m. on Sundays to highlight the wide range of heirloom apples that will one day be pressed into hard and soft cider.

“We have 47 varieties,” said Ian Ridgway. “A lot of these are heirloom varieties that have strong ties to cider making... My goal is for some time next summer to be selling cider.”

Some of the apple trees that were planted are called Burnham Sweet, a heritage apple that dates back to the 1800s and is native to Cornwall. The Ridgways worked with an apple expert to identify the unique variety and propagate the only known specimen. Several of the other apple strains are also Cornwall originals.

On the process of unearthing and replanting Cornwall’s rich apple history, Gordon Ridgway said, “There’s strong representation all the way back to the beginning of the town. We have a friend up in Maine who’s involved in apple preservation, he says nobody else is doing all this stuff in one place.”

In their research, the Ridgways found a record that documented 1,555 barrels of cider produced in Cornwall in the year 1800. “One per person,” said Gordon Ridgway, who also serves as Cornwall’s first selectman.

The store’s fall hours of operation are Sunday 1 to 6 p.m., Tuesday and Thursday 4 to 6 p.m.

Sunflowers are among the homegrown products available at the newly opened Ridgway Farm Store.Riley Klein