2019 Champlain Valley Local Food & Farm Guide YOUR GUIDE TO MORE THAN 200 FREE LOCAL FOOD PRODUCERS! NEW FARMACY PROGRAM PRESCRIBES GOOD FOOD VERMONT’S GROWING CBD BOOM ORB WEAVER: PASSING THE FARM TO THE NEXT GENERATION Published In partnership with by the Addison Independent Page 2 2019 Champlain Valley Local Food & Farm Guide T I E R F I E C D O R G A N I C We grow crops... Last Resort Farm That feed the cows... 2246 TYLER BRIDGE RD That make the milk... MONKTON, VERMONT That we bottle fresh for Family-owned organic farm, you everyday! proudly serving Vermont communities. Local Milk at ORGANIC BERRIES, VEGGIES, & HAY its very Best! 802-453-2847 Monument Farms Dairy • 2107 James Road LastResortFarm.com Weybridge, VT • 545-2119 2019 Champlain Valley Local Food & Farm Guide Page 3 Welcome I welcome you to the 2019 edition of the Champlain Valley Local will find an article Food and Farm Guide. The Guide is produced and distributed to inside describing 21,000 readers each year via the combined efforts of the Addison the Addison County County Relocalization Network, ACORN, and The Addison Farmacy Project. Independent. This project will ACORN is a grassroots organization whose mission is to promote be launched during the growth and health of the local food and agriculture system in the the summer of Champlain Valley. 2019 and will bring Chef Pierre Thiam, formally of Senegal, and now a chef in New together numerous York, spoke at a recent conference in Paris, sponsored by the World community agencies, Wide Fund for Nature and Knorr Foods. He spoke of the need to organizations, diversify our diets (read more in the booklet “Future 50 Foods: 50 and farmers to Foods for Healthier People and a Healthier Planet,” which you can provide fresh fruits read online at tinyurl.com/Future50Foods). One part to the solution and vegetables to that he mentioned was an ancient grain called fonio. Fonio is widely Addison County respected in sub-Sahara Africa not only for its high nutritional value residents experiencing diet-related health issues. but also for its ability to grow in and replenish substandard soils. Another story you will find describes a partnership with local Thiam says that farmers are the backbone of the African economy providers of early childhood learning that connects our youngest and that boosting their ability to make a living would lift up the entire residents to local foods and the farmers that produce that food. You continent. He has created a non-profit company to help farmers will hear the stories of the dedicated teachers and administrators produce, process, and market fonio to developed nations. This is that combine their passion for local food with their passion for early important work. It is done to create food justice and sustainable childhood education. jobs in the part of the world producing the single largest numbers of You will read other stories, as well, about producers, processors, migrant people fleeing poverty and starvation. and distributors all working to sustain a robust farming economy in An obstacle in the way of Chef Thiam’s goals is the difficult and Addison County and the Champlain Valley. Those stories will cover labor-intensive system of processing fonio into usable human food. everything from hemp cultivation to organic vegetables and farmhouse Although we are operating on a much smaller scale, ACORN is cheese. All are interesting and exciting stories. Many are written by similarly concerned with issues of processing, markets, and food ACORN board members. I would like to thank Jonathan Corcoran, security. Susan Smiley, and Lindsey Berk of ACORN for their work on this We at ACORN are excited about the work we do and proud of year’s guide and the staff of the Addison Independent for their dedication the part we play in keeping a working landscape in our beautiful and support of local farms and farmers in the Champlain Valley. Champlain Valley. Our work plan for this year has a focus on the — Lynn Coale, Executive Director equity and food security of some of our most vulnerable citizens. You of Addison County Relocalization Network Project Contributors: The Map: Project editor-Jonathan Corcoran Please visit www.acornvt.org for a NEW interactive map of all the 2019 Farm listings found in this year’s guide. Contributing writers-Susan Smiley, Lindsey Berk, Netaka White, Charlie Mitchell & Miyo McGinn, Christopher Ross and John Flowers Directory-Susan Smiley and Lindsey Berk Table of Contents Ad Production-Todd Warnock, Sue Miller, Sue Leggett and Alexis Caswell, the Addison Independent All about ACORN ........................................ Page 4 The next Orb Weaver .................................... Page 7 Design- Sue Leggett and Elsie Lynn Parini, the Addison Independent Rx: Locally grown food ................................Page 11 Publishers-ACORN and the Addison Independent Directory of local foods and farms ............. Pages 14-36 Connecting farmers and preschoolers ...............Page 37 Artisanal hemp farming ................................Page 41 Clemmons Family Farm ................................Page 44 The Cover: Recipes for every season ...............................Page 46 Farmers’ markets ........................................Page 47 Marjorie Susman and Marian Pollack of Orb Weaver Farm. Photo Community meals and local food shelves ..........Pages 48 by Caleb Kenna Photography Index of food products .................................Page 51 Page 4 2019 Champlain Valley Local Food & Farm Guide 2019 Champlain Valley Local Food & Farm Guide Page 5 We look forward to providing you with all of your gardening and landscaping needs. Trees, Shrubs & Vines Perennials & Annuals Vegetables & Herbs Seeds & Houseplants Pottery & Gifts Mulch, Topsoil & Compost greenhavengardensandnursery.com 2638 Ethan Allen Highway • New Haven, VT 802-453-5382 Page 6 2019 Champlain Valley Local Food & Farm Guide SALVATION FARMS Increasing resilience in Vermont’s food system through agricultural surplus management Addison County Home Health & Hospice supports healthy living and work/life balance. Engaging and Feeding Our Come grow with us! Community by Collecting and Distributing Hiring for full-time and part-time RN’s What Farmers Can’t Sell Flexible schedules available and sign-on bonus. 802-888-4360 802-388-7259 salvationfarms.org www.achhh.org [email protected] email [email protected] 2725 2019 Champlain Valley Local Food & Farm Guide Page 7 The next Orb Weavers: Cheese legends are passing the torch in New Haven BY CHARLIE MITCHELL & MIYO MCGINN In the late 1970s, two women moved to Vermont looking for land. All they wanted was to grow food for themselves and their neighbors, and for 40 years, they did just that, selling milk, veg- etables, and a unique farmhouse cheese that became somewhat legendary. As of this past winter, they’ve stopped milking and making cheese. Instead, they are taking walks in afternoon light they’ve never seen before on their farm on Lime Kiln Road in New Haven. “We can take a walk, at like three o’clock in the afternoon, and there’s a whole world out there!” marvels Marjorie Susman. She and her longtime partner, Marian Pollack, have owned Orb Weaver Farm since 1981. “I mean, not everybody milks cows: it’s astounding.” Cheesemaker Kate Turcotte, left, and livestock breeding specialist Zack Munzer are Making cheese in the cave, milking morning and night, and proud to assume the Orb Weaver Farm legacy of longtime local foods producers Marjorie rotating the pasture are responsibilities that now belong to Kate Susman and Marian Pollack. Caleb Kenna Photography Turcotte and Zack Munzer, a couple in their early thirties. Kate is an experienced cheesemaking alumnus of Shelburne Farms and and finding ways to support farmers young and old in keeping Consider Bardwell Farm; Zack has years of experience breeding land in use is of primary concern for those around the state look- livestock. ing to Vermont’s economic and social future. After three years of “dating,” the two parties signed an agree- Marian Pollack explains that passing the farm down wasn’t al- ment last November that transferred the Orb Weaver name, ways part of the plan. “We thought we were just going to stop brand, business, and eventually property to the next generation. farming, sell the cows, watch the pastures grow up and the barn Pollack and Susman will still run the market garden and live in the fall down,” she said. “That would have been really sad.” But as the house they have occupied since the early ’80s. couple grew older and friends began to encourage them to think Having secured a retirement and succession plan puts Orb ahead, they became open to a new chapter for Orb Weaver, what- Weaver Farm in the minority of aging New England farmers, 92 ever it was. percent of whom have no young successor for their land or busi- “We had great faith that something would become apparent,” ness. Dairy farming’s decades-long nightmare of foreclosure and consolidation has been punctuated by a historic year for farm loss, (See Orb Weavers, page 8) YOUR PLACE FOR ALL YOUR FARM AND GARDEN NEEDS! Brands you Trust, People You Know! STARTER VEGETABLE AND FLOWER PLANTS CLOTHING Annuals, Perennials, BAGGED FEED Shrubs, Fruit/Shade Trees MUCK FENCING, GATES EQUINE SUPPLIES, LONG HANDLED TOOLS BOOTS LIVESTOCK ANIMAL HEALTH SEEDS, SOILS & BULK/BAGGED MULCH MIDDLEBURY AGWAY FARM & GARDEN Open 338 Exchange Street, Middlebury VT • 388-4937 7 Days Mon - Fri 8-6, Sat 8-5, Sun 9-4. YOUR YARD, GARDEN and PET PLACE™ Page 8 2019 Champlain Valley Local Food & Farm Guide Orb Weavers continued from page 7 Susman adds. That faith landed them the property in the first place. When the couple arrived to work as dairy hands in the late ’70s, “we thought it was just going to be a stop along the way,” describing the house as a “falling down hovel.” But then their landlords, Jim and Margaret Morse, decided to relocate to Virginia, and offered to mortgage the land to Susman and Pollack.