June 29, 2026
By Clementina Verge
Photograph by Kip Finch
This august, linen-draped tables set across the lawn at Kent Falls Brewing Company will welcome guests to an open-air dinner prepared by local chefs using ingredients sourced just a few miles away. Meats and artisanal cheeses from neighboring farms. Vegetables harvested from local fields. Flowers cut fresh from nearby gardens.
This is The Farmer’s Table, an annual gathering that has become an anticipated summer tradition. Beneath the idyllic setting, however, is an urgent concern: Connecticut farmers are experiencing the mounting pressures that reflect agricultural challenges across the country. Shortages of seasonal laborers. Rising land costs that limit purchases or expansions. Weather patterns that have become more unpredictable. And an uncertain generational continuity as fewer young people are choosing to carry the work forward.
The average age of a Connecticut farmer is 58, and many approaching retirement have no successor. As a result, hundreds of farms have succumbed to development in recent years, a loss measured not only in acres, but in diminished local food security.
This reality inspired Warren resident Howard Rosenfeld to launch The Smithy Market in New Preston—a shop devoted exclusively to products sourced within a 70-mile radius. Though he sold the business a few years later, his commitment to supporting local agriculture did not waver.
He believed that farmers, chefs, residents, and local institutions needed opportunities to gather around the same table and engage in conversations about sustainability. With a small group of friends, he launched The Farmer’s Table around a deceptively simple idea: those who feed the community should feel a valued part of it.
“Farmers are very much part of the community,” says Rosenfeld. “But many people in the area don’t really sense that.”
What began in 2011 as an intimate meal on a working farm in Warren has evolved into a seasonal fixture, drawing more than 200 guests every August. From Arethusa to Averill and Sunny Meadow, each year the location changes to a different farm in Litchfield County, but the purpose remains constant—celebrate the land and support the people working it.
In an area where rolling pastures and weathered barns are trademark scenery, agriculture remains deeply woven into daily life. Nearly one in five of Connecticut’s 5,000 farms is located here, giving the region the state’s highest concentration of working farmland. The 2020 pandemic especially underscored how essential local farmers are, Rosenfeld reflects. When national supply chains faltered, many stepped in “resiliently and on short notice” to help sustain their communities.
That reality sharpened the mission of The Farmer’s Table: sustain those who are sustaining the community. The nonprofit supports farmers by providing financial assistance during emergencies, creating educational resources and grant-writing support, and facilitating opportunities to connect with one another and with state agencies.
“Buy local. Shop at farmers markets. Know your neighbors,” Rosenfeld says. “No farmer goes into farming to become rich. Farmers do it for the love of the land and to share with the community.”
For the farmers who show up season after season—and for the communities that depend on them—the work of The Farmer’s Table is far from finished.
—farmers-table.org
