Shaker Shed

This review is going to be a bit all over the place, as we have three distinct types of business here: a greenhouse/​nursery specializing in vegetables and flowers; a craft store and farm stand; and a counter-​service sandwich place. They’re all pretty decent.
The setting: this is an actual former Shaker farm. You can see the Shaker buildings to the rear of the farm stand; they’re among a handful of surviving structures from the once-​extensive Shaker settlements stretching from what is now the airport to the Mohawk north of Niska Isle. Even better, unlike the «official» Shaker historical site, you can sort of get a sense for the relationship of the buildings to actual agriculture.
The café: it’s counter service, where you order in the main store, pay, take your ticket over to the window in the adjoining eating space, and they bring your sandwich or salad out to you. The sandwiches are fresh, tasty, and use a lot of the fresh vegetable ingredients grown on the farm. They have home-​made iced tea and lemonade. The café section has country-​style décor around a dozen or so tables, and there are both picnic tables out front and metal café tables on the side if you want to eat al fresco.
The store: they have a nice selection of vegetables, nothing exotic, and the lettuce always seems to be particularly scrumptious. There’s some knick-​knacky gifts, sort of a miscellaneous collections of gifts for your Aunt Marge ranging from jellies to little crafty things and country-​kitchen art. There’s local honey and a few other local products from nearby purveyors.
The greenhouse: this time of year they have a great abundance of stuff, I suspect they locally source almost everything in their own greenhouses and farm because it’s far more sparse in winter. There are herbs and lots of vegetable starters, and small garden ornamentals and perennials up to the large rose bush size. It’s not a full-​on nursery or landscaping place but if you’re picking up some small things for the side garden, you can do a lot worse. Herbs seem a little pricey but the tomato plants with pots seem cheaper than elsewhere for the same size/​quality. They don’t have a ton of varieties but what they have is healthy-​looking.
Four stars for the package, and the constituent parts, particularly the little café, are four star range on their own anyway. A pretty decent diversion into the countryside not too far from the chaos of Central and Wolf and the airport.

This review is based on the café at the Shaker Shed.
The Shaker Shed is a roadside farm market and café in Colonie located on Route 155 just west of Albany International Airport. The Shaker Shed has several greenhouses and stocks a good selection of potted plants, mums, and flowers.
The indoor farm market offers fresh produce, pottery, homemade jams & jellies, honey, scented candles, Amish goods, fresh bakery goods, and more. The onsite café is open for breakfast and lunch serving up breakfast sandwiches, deli sandwiches, grilled sandwiches, burgers, salads, soups, coffee, and cold drinks (bottled and self serve fountain). The prices for most sandwiches (with a small deli salad & pickle) are $ 4.95-$ 7.25. There are several small tables in the café dining room.
I thought I would post a brief review of the Shaker Shed since I’ve been here several times for lunch takeout with my former coworkers when I worked in Colonie over 13 years ago. I’ve enjoyed the chicken salad wraps, turkey & bacon sandwiches and steak & cheese sandwiches (no longer on the menu) at the Shaker Shed.
I did stop back in here again for lunch takeout very recently, but I got here around 2:50PM, 10 minutes before the café closed up. The grill had already been shut down, so my choices were limited to deli sandwiches and salads.
For lunch takeout, I decided on a Turkey & Bacon Sandwich ($ 6.95 plus tax) with mayo on a croissant, served with a small cup of pasta salad and a dill pickle spear. The food was made quickly to order in the back kitchen. The sandwich was pretty decent and average size which had plenty of thin sliced deli turkey breast with crispy bacon strips on a butter croissant. The pasta salad in a small cup had firm tri-​color rotini with chopped green peppers, carrots, red onions & cheese in Italian dressing, a tasty cold side! The crunchy dill pickle was big and longer than the sandwich.
I would very likely return here again for lunch as I did recently, but I’d try to arrive here earlier so I can order a grilled tuna melt and soup too!