Northeast Kingdom Garlic

The Special
This week we are pleased to feature certified organic garlic from Northeast Kingdom Garlic, located in Newport Center, VT. All this week, Chef Casey Graham will use Northeast Kingdom Garlic products in main dishes, appetizers, soups, and salads. Be sure to ask your server about tonight’s Farm to Table Special!

The Farm
Northeast Kingdom Garlic is a certified organic garlic farm located in Newport Center, VT in the shadow of Jay Peak on Clark Mountain Road. Northeast Kingdom Garlic sells most of its product to local Vermont customers in addition to clients as far as Boston, MA. Northeast Kingdom Garlic is a registered trademark and a member of the Garlic Seed Foundation of Rose, NY.

A Tribute to Garlic

Garlic, all powerful
marvelous seasoning,
you are the essence,
the incense which
revives and exhilarates.
You are the spur that
excites, stimulates.
Garlic, you stir up,
you impel, you cheer;
you are the only
condiment, you are
the glorious one,
the sovereign extract
of the Earth.

-G. Coquiot

Mr. Coquiot obviously really liked garlic. We really like garlic, too, here at Juniper’s Restaurant at the Wildflower Inn. So does Zachary Hart of Northeast Kingdom Garlic in Newport Center, Vermont. He has been raising organic garlic for six years, and this week we are pleased to feature it in a variety of our regular and special offerings.

I saw Mr. Coquiot’s poem hanging on the wall in Zack’s off-the-grid homestead, and thought that it spoke beautifully and passionately about the endless possibilities of garlic. “It’s almost hard to find a recipe that doesn’t use garlic,” Zack points out. "It’s almost like a spice or a condiment. I use it in everything, aside from maybe dessert.” He is working to create a local source for this most essential of bulbs in northern Vermont.


Zack is a native of Coventry, Vermont and a 1997 graduate of North Country High School in Newport. He attended college in Boston and Syracuse, New York, obtaining a degree in environmental and forest biology. Zack returned to the Northeast Kingdom several years ago after spending time in various other parts of the country, including in Alaska where he worked for one of the premier birch syrup producers in the state. An opportunity to work full-time for Landvest, a real estate company in Newport where he is a field forester specializing in GIS (digital mapping) technology, brought Zack back to his home turf.

Northeast Kingdom Garlic is a side endeavor, though it is nearly is a full-time job in itself. Zack currently raises around 600 pounds of certified organic music garlic (a popular variety from Germany) per year, and he would like to increase that number in the future. He also keeps bees (Z’s Bees) and raises chickens and vegetables for his own consumption. Zack and his single employee/accomplice, his partner Emily Dehoff, will sell most of their garlic this year to local Vermont customers in addition to clients as far as Boston.


Most garlic used in Vermont is imported from places like China, Mexico, and Argentina. Zack thinks it makes more sense to create a reliable local source for this crop that grows so well in Vermont’s cool climate. “I want to be the go-to garlic guy,” he says. He sees great potential for Vermonters to grow and distribute many crops locally, and his foray into garlic farming is a response to local demand for naturally produced food. “I think Vermont is lucky in that we already have a strong agricultural base intact,” he says. “People want to know where their food is coming from, and that knowledge is hard to put a price on. I’ve always farmed naturally. It makes sense for our health and the health of the soil.”

“I got into garlic because I love to cook,” Zack says. “It is a great crop. Good for the circulatory system, immune system boosting, and a natural antibiotic.” He is hard-pressed to choose a favorite way of preparing his garlic, but stresses that, “The most important thing you can do is to get a good garlic press.”

nekgarlic[at]gmail.com