Last month, we told you about our collaboration with up-and-coming food hub Vermont Farmers Food Center (VFFC) to bring local food boxes to Killington Grand Resort Hotel (KGRH) employees. We talked to Heidi Lynch, Executive Director of the VFFC, about their work and the value and impact of this collaboration. We also spoke to Greg Lang, Executive Chef at KGRH, about the impetus and impact of this project at the hotel. Check out the conversation.
Collaboration Brings Local Food Boxes to Killington Grand Resort Hotel Employees: Part I
Producer Spotlight: Wellness Croft
Food Connects Reflects on the First Vermont Cheese Summit
This past June, Andrew Graham, Direct Markets Coordinator at the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont, reached out to Food Connects about an exciting opportunity. Killington Grand Resort Hotel (KGRH) was looking to set up a CSA (community-supported agriculture) program offering local food boxes to their employees. This project promised an exciting collaboration with partners across Vermont.
The diversity of Vermont cheese and the resiliency of its makers were both on display at the first Vermont Cheese Summit, held this August at Shelburne Farms on the shore of Lake Champlain.
Hosted by the Vermont Cheese Council, the event was a trial run for what could potentially become an annual gathering of cheesemakers, buyers, and distributors. Food Connects was on the scene for a day of behind-the-scenes farm, creamery, and cave tours, followed by a mini-conference and trade show.
This year we were thrilled to onboard Plymouth, MA-based Wellness Croft as a mission-aligned food producer, making tasty and nutritious snacks. Like Food Connects, Wellness Croft works to create new sources of income for farmers in the Northeast and to ensure their products are source-identified. They are a veteran-owned freeze-dried producer that works with sustainable, local, and Fair-Trade growers.
We reached out to the owner, Tim O’Neil, to learn more about how Wellness Croft is lifting up regional producers by creating delicious value-added products.
A Partnership in Action
Producer Spotlight: American Vinegar Works
Vermont Farms Feeding Vermont Students
Customer Referrals
Food Connects onboarded an exceptional group of new producers this past year. Each is doing something different to contribute to our growing regional food system. Rodrigo Vargas, Founder and Owner of American Vinegar Works in Worcester, MA, looked at the American craft alcohol scene and saw an opportunity to use these brews to create truly unique and delicious vinegars in a way that would benefit his community. We had a chance to learn from Rodrigo about American Vinegar Works’ story, values, and the process of making artisanal, small-batch vinegar.
At the end of July, we took a road trip to visit some of the Vermont Farms that we’re partnering with to feed Vermont schools this year. While Clare Barboza snapped some amazing photos for us, our Marketing Coordinator, Kristen Thompson, took the opportunity to ask the farmers (and co-op) about their work and why feeding Vermont kids with Vermont food is so important.
A Day in the Life at the Food Connects Food Hub Part III: Deliveries
Producer Spotlight: Jack’s Crackers
NH Eats Local Month
We're Hiring
Customer Referrals
About a week after following Emma Bliss and Raymond Johnston through the process of picking up orders and staging deliveries for the Food Connects Food Hub, I wander back down the hall from Food Connects’ administrative offices to the Food Hub. It’s around 8:00 AM when I arrive. Long-time Food Hub Driver Tracy Lake is already loading Van 1 with Raymond and Food Hub Warehouse Coordinator Scott Berzofsky.
Today, I’m joining Tracy for the Food Connects Monadnock Delivery Route in New Hampshire. It’s the very end of March, and with the school year still in full swing, we have a busy route ahead.
August is New Hampshire Eats Local month, and who better to talk to about local food than New Hampshire Magazine’s Best of New Hampshire Editor’s Choice awardee, Jack’s Crackers! We reached out to Kevin Dremmel, creator of these superb crackers, to learn more about what makes these crackers so special and why the local food movement is so important.
A Food Connects Cheese and Charcuterie Board
Producer Spotlight: Simple Gifts Farm
Join Us for A Film Viewing and Discussion of GATHER
New Producers of 2021 and 2022
We're Hiring
Food Connects is thrilled to share the increased growth of our Food Hub family. As our team has established more partnerships with food hubs across New England, we’ve onboarded 35 producers over the past 18 months. These new producers represent an increase our diversity in products, ensuring our wholesale customers see Food Connects as a one-stop-shop.
Food Connects has been supplying the Simple Gifts Farm store with regionally-produced products since March of 2021. The partnership expanded this April when Food Connects began distributing fresh produce grown by Simple Gifts to other buyers in the area. We’re thrilled about this new, mutually-beneficial partnership centered around a love for fresh, local food.
We had a chance to talk to Jeremy Barker Plotkin, Founder of Simple Gifts Farm, about the farm’s unique story and inspiring approach to working with their animals, land, and community.
How was Simple Gifts Farm started? What was its inspiration?
Simple Gifts Farm started in 1999 when I moved to Massachusetts from Maine. I had just finished graduate school (in agriculture) and wanted to produce something more tangible. I started farming at the New England Small Farm Institute and bootstrapped the business from a half-acre up to 5 acres of vegetable production. In 2006, I moved the operation to Amherst and was joined by my business partner, Dave Tepfer. We took on the stewardship of the newly preserved North Amherst Community Farm. We met as interns at the Land Institute and have always been motivated by a desire to incorporate ecological principles into an integrated farm system (I run the vegetable cropping, and he raises livestock.). The North Amherst Community Farm property was the perfect site to also add a strong sense of community to our operation, as it is located within a residential area about a mile from UMass and was preserved by a tremendous effort from the community.
What makes your products unique?
My initial main marketing outlet was farmer's markets, so I have always been motivated to produce beautiful and flavorful vegetables that stand out amongst the other vendors. Salad greens and heirloom tomatoes are particular specialties of ours and really represent both a visual and culinary feast.
Can you tell us more about your approach to farming?
Our partnership was founded on the idea of rotating our land into pasture and using livestock to dramatically improve our soil health. Since 2019, we have taken our soil health program to another level as we are transitioning into organic no-till production. We are now at about 70% of our cropland in no-till production and are seeing definite improvements in the tilth of the soil. We are hopeful that this change will help us to adapt to increasing climate disruption by making our soils more resilient to extreme weather.
What is your favorite part of farming?
I love harvesting the produce; it is the moment that all of our hard work leads up to.
What is one of your favorite recipes you make with your produce?
During tomato season, I make a tomato-bread salad whenever I'm invited to a potluck or party. I typically use somewhat stale bread, broken up into pieces and then mixed with chopped heirloom tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, olives, garlic, and basil. The bread soaks up all the juice, and it is delicious.
Why is buying and selling locally and the local food movement important to you?
I love the idea of keeping our food and our economy as localized as possible for sustainability reasons. Over the last couple of years, the value of a shorter supply chain has been made clear as local businesses really stepped up to keep their communities fed during the pandemic. I see this need as likely to increase in the years to come.
How does working with Food Connects help your business/what are you excited about in this partnership?
We mostly produce food for sale through our farm store, but we also enjoy doing a larger quantity of a few crops to round out our business. We have sold some of that extra produce to Whole Foods Market, but their corporate structure has become increasingly hard to deal with, and we increasingly feel that that outlet is at odds with our values. Working with Food Connects gives us the opportunity to provide crops that will strengthen the local food system. We are also using Food Connects to supply our farm store with products that we don't produce ourselves, so it feels like we are completing a circle.
Any events coming up or fun facts about your business/products?
We do a Front Porch Jam every month at our farm store and will be doing a Harvest Festival in September.
Anything else you would like me to feature? Anything that you are doing to respond to the COVID-19 crisis?
Our Farm Store became a real fixture locally during the early days of the pandemic. We brought in a lot of produce from other local farmers, went to online ordering only, and really felt moved by the huge level of support that we had during that time.
Warehouse Behind the Scenes
Frisky Cow Gelato Certifies as a B Corporation
We're Hiring
Eat Indie Local: Call for Partners
Join Us for A Film Viewing and Discussion of GATHER
Food Connects Brings Regional Food to MA Schools
How New Hampshire’s Food Hubs Working Better Together Means More Local Food on Your Plate
Food Connects, a non-profit Food Hub in Brattleboro, VT, is excited to share its newest partnerships with schools across the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts.
Food Connects is a catalyst for food systems change—centering food consumption, education, and distribution around community-based food systems. The organization delivers source-identified foods to schools throughout the Connecticut River Valley. With a strong foothold in Vermont and New Hampshire, Food Connects has looked towards Massachusetts for ways to provide more value to school nutrition programs through regionally-grown and made foods.
And Massachusetts schools are literally eating it up! In the 2021-2022 school year alone, Food Connects has delivered more than $30,000 in regional products to Massachusetts schools. From beef, pork, and chicken to granola, yogurt, and gelato—the variety of regionally grown and made foods now on students’ plates is tremendous.
Both public and private schools throughout Massachusetts are shifting to regionally sourced food. Food Connects is thrilled to see the diversity of locations and types of schools—ensuring that all students have access to the same great food.
Private Schools
Northfield Mount Hermon (NMH) is a private boarding school and one of the leaders in the local food movement. When D.L. Moody founded the girls’ and boys’ schools, the schools’ farms were at their core, feeding the student body. And though the farm isn’t the only source of food for the school, it is still a core part of its culture and heritage.
On Friday, May 6th, 2022, NMH hosted its first Food Systems Teach-In since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was a day when the high school curriculum centered on food and food systems. And the classrooms weren’t the only thing full of food systems thinking—the dining hall menu for the day centered on regionally sourced foods.
Food Connects offered many regional products from regional producers, including:
Tom Brewton, Food Connects Institutional Sales Associate, tabled at the event during lunch hours and was able to share with students and faculty about the regional products featured on the menu. Laura Carbonneau, Food Connects Marketing and Outreach Manager and NMH alumnae, joined students in the classroom, speaking about the Farm Bill, climate resiliency, food, and food systems. The response from students in the dining hall and the classroom was enthusiastic and engaged—lots of “yums.”
Deerfield Academy (DA), located in Deerfield, MA, is another boarding school for high school students in the Pioneer Valley. DA is proud to boast a Farm Team, a group of students who help out at two local farms with harvesting and garlic preparation projects. Working with DA for the first time this school year, Food Connects has delivered various products, including strip loins from Big Picture Beef and burger patties from Robie Farm.
Eaglebrook School is a 6th through 9th grade all-boys boarding and day school also located in Deerfield, MA. This year alone, the school has purchased 3,672 pounds of ground beef from both Big Picture Beef and Boyden Beef.
Public Schools
Food Connects has a history of working with public schools throughout Vermont and New Hampshire, providing high-quality, regionally-sourced foods. The Food Connects team takes pride in extending those same products and services to public schools throughout Massachusetts’s Pioneer Valley.
Greta Shwachman, Food Service Director for Greenfield Public Schools (GPS), is passionate about integrating local products into her menus. This is no surprise, as she was previously the Farm to School Program Coordinator for the Chicopee Public Schools. Her passion for Farm to School has made adding regionally sourced foods to her menu seamless.
“Institutions like K-12 schools hold a lot of purchasing power,” says Greta. “I prioritize buying regionally-sourced foods to ensure that this power is used to support the local food economy. I enjoy the opportunity to meet farmers and producers, and help local food businesses grow and scale to have more success in the institutional market.”
Food Connects has supplied the GPS, which consists of 6 different schools, with ground beef from Big Picture Beef, bulk yogurt from Narragansett Creamery, and granola from True North Granola Company. And not just food but also promotional marketing materials, so students can connect with their food and the farmers.
“I believe that students should know where their food comes from,” says Greta. “And I enjoy working with Food Connects because they understand the importance of putting a face and a name with a product. I have appreciated the signage they have sent us, which includes background on the producer, and even the number of miles the product traveled to reach our cafeterias.”
Earlier this year, Tom met with Michael Onorato, Food Service Director of the Pioneer Valley Regional School District (PVRSD). Coincidentally, Michael was already familiar with Food Connects—he was previously the Food Service Director for Conval Regional School District, another school district Food Connects serves. To date, Food Connects has supplied the PVRSD with various products, including apples, potatoes, carrots, and eggs.
Food Connects is also working with Massachusetts Farm to School, whose mission is to “strengthen local farms and fisheries and promote healthy communities by increasing local food purchasing and education at schools.” The organization, aligned with both the Vermont and New Hampshire Farm to School programs, serves as a vital lifeline for Massachusetts schools to access support, curriculum, and other resources to develop Farm to School programming.
Food Connects will participate in the Local Food Networking Session on Thursday, June 16, from 3:00 to 4:30 PM in Greenfield at the John Olver Transit Center. This event will be a spring get-together for K-12 school nutrition professionals in Franklin County. The event will include vendor displays, sampling, presentations, and discussions. And while the focus will be on local food procurement, there will be discussions on other topics. The event is being co-organized by the Partnership for Youth at FRCOG (Franklin Regional Council of Governments), Greenfield Public Schools, and Western Mass Food Processing Center at the Franklin County Community Development Corporation. If you are a school nutrition professional and want to learn more, you can register for the event today.
If you are a food service director, work in a school, and would like to integrate more local foods into your menus, Food Connects would love to support you! At this time, their customer routes go from Brattleboro, VT, down I-91 as far south as Northampton, MA. Know that our routes are quickly expanding so we would be happy to hear from you even if you don’t fall within our existing geographic reach in MA. Please reach out to their sales team at sales@foodconnects.org.
Our Food Hub Warehouse Specialist extraordinaire, Raymond Johnston, finds me in the staff kitchen at the end of my lunch break. I’m going to shadow Raymond as he prepares for tomorrow’s deliveries.
Raymond picks up a stack of printed stickers with customers’ orders in the warehouse, checking for any missing stickers or mistakes by comparing them to the invoices. Then, we walk over to Cooler 1, which is, unsurprisingly, pretty chilly.
(Left to right) Food Hub Warehouse Specialist Raymond Johnston and Marketing Coordinator Kristen Thompson are your guides on this “day in the life” doing picking, sorting, and staging in the Food Connects Food Hub warehouse.
This afternoon we’re preparing orders for Friday morning deliveries, which often include stops in the Brattleboro area and up towards Rutland. Some of the customers we’re preparing orders for today include Loaves & Fishes, The Putney Town School District, and Mountain Energy Market.
I’m eager to keep my feet moving and follow Raymond around the warehouse as he picks, sorts, and then stages the orders.
So, what is picking? Picking is the first stage of organizing orders. Raymond and the other Warehouse Staff take printed stickers of ordered items and sticker products in our warehouse.
A few decisions go into what inventory items Raymond picks. First, of course, only safe food in good condition is kept for delivery. He picks the items with earlier sell dates first so they can make it to our customers before they’re too old to sell.
While Raymond is busy picking, I ask him about his journey to Food Connects. Raymond tells me he’s been working in food distribution for years, but he didn’t always feel like the distributors he worked for supported the sustainable and ethical food system he wanted to help build.
“In the training videos [for my previous employer], they were picking up from small local farmers and producers. By the time I was working with them, they’d gotten too big for that kind of work. I thought, ‘I wish I were doing that.’”
Raymond reads over the inventories for a delivery.
At Food Connects, Raymond finally gets to support local farmers and producers. He feels good about the work he does. And with the knowledge and experience he brings from his years working for larger distributors, Raymond has brought important insights to our warehouse operations.
Raymond has done a lot of work to improve the warehouse’s internal recordkeeping and organizational processes.
“If Scott [our Food Hub Warehouse Coordinator] and I had to leave suddenly and someone had to walk into the warehouse and pick up where we left off, you want them to be able to see what has been done and what to do next.”
One of the ways the warehouse team keeps organized is by labeling items consistently during the picking process. On bagged products, like bulk beets, carrots, and potatoes, we put the stickers next to the labels producers have stuck onto the bags with general product information. We attach stickers to the short end of the boxes on boxed products. These little details save the team time later in the process, whether they’re sorting products or pulling them out of a delivery truck.
Raymond also goes over the products that aren’t in Cooler 1 with a highlighter on the invoices. We come back to those items at the end.
When we’ve stickered all the items in Cooler 1, we walk over to Cooler 2, where we have Basin Farm potatoes stored in an area kept cool but not cold—the ideal conditions for potato storage. These items come back to Cooler 1, where we’re ready to start sorting.
Raymond brings potatoes to Cooler 1 for sorting.
To sort, we begin to pull out and group stickered products by type on a big set of pallets. Emma Bliss, Food Hub Operations Coordinator, joins us in the sorting process and sets up a Bluetooth speaker with music.
Raymond sets out pallets and sorts stickered products.
Some of the items we’re sorting are the same items Emma and I picked up from producers earlier that day on the Westminster Pick-ups Route. Harlow Farm carrots are piling up on the pallets. Other items have been waiting in inventory in the warehouse, like the Basin Farm potatoes.
Once we’ve pulled and sorted all the items, it’s time for the final and most complicated step in the process—staging.
Deliveries are staged on pallets, organized by which route and, therefore, which vehicle the team will load them into.
A pallet of sorted produce in Cooler 1.
Staging is a bit counterintuitive if, like me, you’ve never thought about the logistics of unloading a delivery truck before. Raymond attempts to explain the logic of how we stage at Food Connects, and I do my best to follow.
“We actually sort in the opposite order of the delivery list so that the last stops will be in the very front of the truck, and the first stops will be in the back. It makes it easier for the drivers to unload.”
A pallet of staged products ready to be loaded onto a delivery truck.
So, each pallet is organized in the opposite order that deliveries will be unloaded. Each pallet has a clipboard with an invoice placed on top, so drivers know what they’re looking at when they pick up the pallets in the morning. The organization gets quite detailed here. Raymond fills out a form with information about which deliveries are on the left or right side of the pallet to make it easier for drivers to find them once they’re loaded into the truck. Most vehicles will have multiple pallets, so he writes numbers on the invoices that indicate where to pack each pallet in the truck.
What Raymond and his teammates do in the warehouse is all about making it as easy as possible for the next person in the process to shepherd our food towards its final destination successfully.
At the end of my time shadowing Raymond, I’ve concluded that the warehouse is where a lot of the hidden food distribution magic happens. Most people in our supply chain won’t ever see inside this process, but the efficiency and accuracy of our deliveries are all dependent on diligent and transparent warehouse operations. Moreover, the warehouse is where our food has a home until it’s ready to be delivered. The warehouse team keeps our food in fresh and delicious condition and ensures only safe, high-quality food ends up in our delivery trucks.
I’ve had an eye-opening look into the Food Connects Food Hub’s daily operations, with still more to come! Next week, I’m driving with Tracy Lake on our Monadnock Delivery Route, where I’ll see how our local and regional food finally makes it to our customers.
