By Tom Ayres, Senior Staff Writer
The nearly five-year-long regulatory and legal battle over a proposed restaurant at Peace Field Farm on Pomfret Road in Woodstock has come to an end with a whimper rather than a bang, with the opening date of the long-awaited “farm-to-fork” eatery still uncertain.
Judge Thomas Walsh of the Vermont Superior Court, Environmental Division — commonly known as the Environmental Court — issued a decision on April 23 dismissing the final appeal of the permitting process “with prejudice,” which means the issue cannot be brought back before the court for consideration. Counsel for Peace Field opponents Tom Meyerhoff and Cynthia Volk, who’d engaged in a long-term legal fight before local, regional, and state regulatory bodies and the Environmental Court to prevent the Peace Field farm-to-fork eatery from opening its doors, withdrew the couple’s final appeal in the restaurant case last month, just before Walsh was to hold yet another hearing on the matter.
The exterior of Peace Field Farm.
In the last appeal by Meyerhoff and Volk, filed last July, challenged a June 2025 decision by the Woodstock Town Development Review Board (TDRB) to issue site plan approval and a conditional use permit to the Peace Field farm-to-fork restaurant project, contending it conformed with town zoning regulations and thus qualified as an accessory-on-farm-business (AOFB) under state statute, making it exempt from the Act 250 land-use permitting process in which it had lingered since 2021. A previous ruling by Walsh last August upheld the contention of Peace Field Farm developer John Holland and Woodstock native and tenant farmer/restauranteur Matt Lombard that the on-farm restaurant proposal was exempt from any further Act 250 oversight because it qualified as an AOFB under the “principally produced” standard of state law, which holds that 50% or more of the product served at an on-farm restaurant must be produced on site.
Replying via email on Monday to an inquiry from the Standard about Judge Walsh’s dismissal of the final Meyerhoff/Volk appeal in the Peace Field case, Meyerhoff, who lives next door to the farm along Pomfret Road near the Woodstock/Pomfret town line, was forthright.
“In response to your request for a comment regarding our dismissal of 25-ENV-00044, there are two separate issues to address,” Meyerhoff wrote. “First, our appeal of the permit issued by the Town was driven overwhelmingly by our opinion that the town’s amendment of its On-Farm Restaurant regulations was a case of spot-zoning and thus a gross violation of our and our neighbors’ constitutional rights. Despite numerous requests from various parties, both the Planning Commission and the Select Board refused to discuss any changes to the existing amendment other than the 2,800 sq. ft. issue, which was proposed solely for the benefit of Peace Field Farm. After months of the town’s refusal to share requested materials and correspondence in discovery, we concluded that the town had not only violated our rights but were also determined to stonewall and drag on what should have been a rather quick adjudication,” Meyerhoff added.
“When the former Select Board chairman, a central force behind this amendment, resigned from the board and moved out of state, we decided we no longer felt the need to go through this process, which would likely have gone on for many more months, perhaps causing further ill will among people in the town where, unlike Mr. Holland, we live,” he continued, referencing former Woodstock Town Selectboard chair Ray Bourgeois. “On a side note, we would like to condemn the former chairman for his selfish decision to wait until after Town Meeting Day to hand in his resignation, instead of doing so in a timely fashion as to have a successor voted on by the citizens of Woodstock during that election period.
“Second, as to your query about a ‘finale for any further legal proceedings relative to the on-farm restaurant at Peace Field,’ we believe that they have had all the approvals necessary to open for many months now, a fact noted on December 12, 2025, by John Holland, who told us that ‘Peace Field Farm has the go-ahead from the court to open its restaurant,’ implying that the opening would happen in the near future,” the email from Meyerhoff concluded. The Peace Field co-litigant and appellant copied Meyerhoff/Volk joint counsels David Gracyk of Montpelier and Christopher Boyle of Lincoln with his email to the Standard.
There is, however, still some uncertainty in the path forward for Boston-based developer Holland and his partner Lombard: the pair haven’t yet agreed on a date when the much-anticipated on-farm restaurant on Pomfret Road will open its doors to the public, despite the fact that both entrepreneurs projected in late January that the Peace Field restaurant would open in time for summer.
“I don’t mean to be evasive on this, because I’ve been forthright with you about this the whole way along,” Holland said during a phone conversation with the Standard from his Boston office last Friday. “I was responsible [for] getting the thing built. Ultimately, my responsibility was to get the permits right, because that was sort of part of a lease agreement [with Lombard] and everything. All those permits are in place. And it’s like this: I don’t carry food, nor should I. I don’t operate restaurants and farms — I’m a good architect and never mind a developer down here in Boston, [but I’m not] serving anybody food anywhere in this world. That’s where Matt picks up and goes with it. He’s certainly busy coordinating staff and things like that, and I just stay out of his hair.”
For his part, Lombard previously told the Standard in late January that he hoped to host the first “themed dinner” at the on-farm restaurant in late February or early March. “We would do something small — I envision it being mostly for community members who are interested,” Lombard noted then. “I just want to ease into it, dependent upon the liquor license,” adding, “The staffing efforts that are taking place now are focused on developing a growing team, a garden team to more effectively manage that aspect of things.” The themed dinners in February and March, however, never materialized.
In a series of text exchanges on Monday, Lombard was much more guarded about projecting any official opening date for the Peace Field restaurant, ultimately offering a terse, “No comment,” when he was asked about the status of the restaurant’s occupancy permit from the Woodstock Fire Department, license from the Vermont Department of Liquor Control, and staffing plans for the eatery. “I choose to keep my head down, keep working hard, and mind my own business,” Lombard concluded in his text to the Standard this week.