By next summer, the family that runs Roo’s hope to be topping their pies with mozzarella made with the milk from their goats. All photos © Corin Hirsch
As the seasons change, so does the hanging sign for Roo’s Farm on Route 106 in Perkinsville, VT: Organic pork, poultry, eggs, produce, sometimes even jam and scones, all sold from a store in a weathered red barn.
On Fridays and Saturdays, at least over the summer, another sign has sprouted in the grass: Pizza. Live Music.
It’s enticed scores of passerby to trek up the curved driveway, where a rolling steel-and-brick pizza oven churns out pies every Friday and Saturday evening, rain or shine, as musicians belt out bluegrass and other tunes from a makeshift stage in front of the garage. (Note: Except for this Friday, Sept. 18, when there’ll be a private event.) Noshing on hot pizza on one of the picnic tables sprinkled in a grove of trees feels a bit like eating in someone’s outdoor living room. That’s deliberate.
“At one point, there were 55 people on my little lawn,” said Paula Boyle, who took over this 95-acre farm with her family in 2022, and sometimes performs for visitors on her electric cello.
Farm pizza nights are a hallmark of Vermont summer, and in the Upper Valley, it seems like there may never be enough of them: Events at Crossmolina Farm in Corinth and Orchard Hill Breadworks in Alstead, N.H., sell out regularly. It’s only been a few months since Boyle and her family first lit their Bella pizza oven for the public, but they regularly sell all of the 60-odd pies prepared each week.
The handwritten menu always includes Margherita and sausage pies ($10 and $12, respectively) as well as rotating specials that riff on seasonal produce from the farm: Apple pie pizza, potato au gratin pizza, even taco pizza topped with the farm’s goat chorizo and fresh pico de gallo.
A sausage pizza is scored by a double mezzaluna at Roo’s Farm in Perkinsville.
Other members of Paula’s family take turns minding the 800-degree oven, where foot-wide pies emerge charred and burbling before being sliced with a double-handed mezzaluna. “The fire gets really hot, really fast,” said Boyle. Sometimes the logs inside are apple wood, sometimes a little more exotic. “We were gifted some great wood from our furniture maker, so sometimes we’re burning mahogany.”
Thin-crusted and molten, a sausage pizza comes dotted with Roo’s own organic pork sausage, hints of garlic and fennel hiding in the crumbles. “People keep asking if they can buy the sausage, but I say, ‘this is my pizza sausage,’” said Boyle. She makes the sausage weekly and also ferments the pizza dough anywhere from 24 to 48 hours ahead of time. “If it’s a 90-degree day, it’s going to ferment much faster.”
Paula Boyle, right, plays her electric cello as part of the Black River Band trio during a Saturday “farm-to-fire” pizza night at Roo’s Farm in Perkinsville.
Those 90-degree days are behind us; Roo’s pizza oven will flicker until late October, and the family has strung up lights for earlier dusks. While they can’t legally serve their own mozzarella this year, they’re working toward certification as a class A dairy and by next summer, hope to use their own milk to produce goat mozzarella for the pies.
“You want a dry mozzarella so it doesn’t mess with the flash, quick cooking of Neapolitan-style pizza,” she said. “Goat mozzarella tends to be dry by nature, and I’ve been using it on my own pizza for years.”
After supper, visitors can meander further into the fields to visit the chickens, pigs, and goats the family painstakingly moved from western Massachusetts when they took over the farm four years ago, when they began the two-year process of transitioning to organic. Now certified, Paula Boyle stocks the farm store with organic meat, eggs, and produce, plus jams, goat soaps, and sometimes scones that she also sells at the Ludlow Farmers Market on Sundays.
She sees the “farm to fire” nights not just as revenue, but as nourishment: Pizza for the body, music for the soul. “A lot of farmers can grow food and don’t get to see the result. You make the product, ship it and you’re done. It’s really important to us to be part of feeding the community directly,” she said.
Pizza nights at Roo’s Farm happen every Friday and Saturday from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. until October 24 at 1465 Route 106 in Perkinsville, except for Friday, Sept. 18, when Roo’s is closed for a special event. Pizza can be pre-ordered for pick-up at roosfarm.com. And it’s not unusual for guests to bring their own salads or wine and beer.
Corin Hirsch has been a staff food critic and drinks writer at Newsday and Seven Days, and contributes to The Guardian, Yankee, Wine Enthusiast and other publications. She can be found on Instagram @latesupper.
