A few years ago, there was a pop-up donut bakery, Farmer and the bell, that was making French-style cruller donuts in the back of the Angkor Wat Cambodian restaurant in Woodstock, VT each weekend. After getting quite a following (they’d regularly sell out after only a few hours), they first moved to doing a slightly larger bakery space in the Parker House in Quechee, VT, serving up donuts on weekends in 2022, and still selling out quickly. In 2023, as the owners were starting their family, they put the business on pause, raised capital, and leased a spot in east Woodstock where an old former gas station had been a perennial eyesore, and built their own store, opening in early October 2025. We’d been meaning to go for several weeks, but most times we were passing through Woodstock, their parking lot was completely full, and we figured we’d come another time. But during early January, we finally had a chance to stop by and check them out.
The building itself is surprisingly nice. Built by local builder Geobarns, the structure nicely blends in with the surrounding buildings (indeed, better than the former gas station did). While the parking lot is almost always filled, when you get inside, the place is surprisingly spacious, with an enclosed patio, vaulted ceilings, and an upstairs level of seating. So while parking may be difficult (although note that the usually quite plentiful parking of East End Park is just down the street), there’s ample room inside for dine-in seating even when the patio is too cold for eating, especially once you go up to the mezzanine where you can get a table looking down over the open kitchen.
Compared to the offerings when they were in the back of Angkor Wat, when they’d usually have four varieties each weekend, they’ve expanded their menu. Focusing on ready-to-serve donuts and pastries (both sweet and savory), they’ve got a large bakery display with the current donuts (a rotating selection of six different varieties depending on what is in season), croissants, focaccia, Danishes, and hand pies. They’ve also got some nice-looking sandwiches in a nearby cooler case. After looking things over, we decided to mix up sweet and savory, getting two donuts (cranberry and double-chocolate), and two croissants (a Farmer’s Croissant and a Ham and Cheese croissant).
Let’s start with the donuts. I started with the cranberry donut (we switched half-way to try both flavors). This is a French cruller donut, made with a very eggy pâte à choux, and you can tell that they are using fresh eggs, since when we were ordering you could see one of the owners, Ben, deftly cracking literally dozens of fresh eggs into a mixing container. The pâte à choux is piped out from a pastry bag, fried up into a wonderful, light and crunchy consistency, and then dipped in a cranberry icing (with just a hint of rosemary in it). Finally, a little dried cranberry and small sprig of rosemary to complete it. While a French cruller isn’t my regular choice for a donut… this is pretty much a perfectly done cruller. Light. Crispy. Flavorful. And a very flavorful and not-too-sugary glaze. I’d definitely get this again.
Our second shared donut was a double chocolate donut, which was the same great cruller, but dipped in chocolate frosting, and then dusted with shaved chocolate. I rather liked this donut, the chocolate frosting adding one nice level of chocolate flavor, and the dusted chocolate giving it a bit of extra texture.
I usually like my breakfasts to have a savory component, so I also had a Farmer’s Croissant. More of a “laminated dough wrap” than an actual croissant, this had bacon and Billings Farm Cheddar (from the Billings Farm just down the road). This was a well-composed filling, and worked well with the laminate dough, and one of the better savory pastries in the area, but to be honest, not quite in the same class as the donuts.
Carol, meanwhile, did similar, getting the ham and cheese croissant, which was a lot closer to a classic French croissant in presentation, with reasonably good ham and cheese in the interior, and melted, crackling cheese on top. Again, one of the better savory pastries in the area.
Really, I enjoyed Farmer and the bell. While I’m not always in the mood for French crullers, these are outstandingly well done, and certainly worth checking out. And I really love seeing a local business go from “pop-up” to an actual restaurant, and happy to see that the place is popular with both locals and the ever-present Woodstock tourists and skiers. I’ll definitely come back, especially to try the focaccia or the sandwiches.
