Foodies - Article in NY Times

[Karen Robinson]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/dining/08verm.html?ei=5070&emc=eta1&pagewanted=all 




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October 8, 2008
Uniting Around Food to Save an Ailing Town
By MARIAN BURROS
HARDWICK, Vt.

THIS town’s granite companies shut down years ago
and even the rowdy bars and porno theater that
once inspired the nickname “Little Chicago” have gone.

Facing a Main Street dotted with vacant stores,
residents of this hardscrabble community of 3,000
are reaching into its past to secure its future,
betting on farming to make Hardwick the town that was saved by food.

With the fervor of Internet pioneers, young
artisans and agricultural entrepreneurs are
expanding aggressively, reaching out to investors
and working together to create a collective
strength never before seen in this seedbed of Yankee individualism.

Rob Lewis, the town manager, said these
enterprises have added 75 to 100 jobs to the area in the past few years.

Rian Fried, an owner of Clean Yield Asset
Management in nearby Greensboro, which has
invested with local agricultural entrepreneurs,
said he’s never seen such cooperative effort.

“Across the country a lot of people are doing it
individually but it’s rare when you see the kind
of collective they are pursuing,” said Mr. Fried,
whose firm considers social and environmental
issues when investing. “The bottom line is they
are providing jobs and making it possible for
others to have their own business.”

In January, Andrew Meyer’s company, Vermont Soy,
was selling tofu from locally grown beans to five
customers; today he has 350. Jasper Hill Farm has
built a $3.2-million aging cave to finish not
only its own cheeses but also those from other cheesemakers.

Pete Johnson, owner of Pete’s Greens, is working
with 30 local farmers to market their goods in an
evolving community supported agriculture program.

“We have something unique here: a strong sense of
community, connections to the working landscape
and a great work ethic,” said Mr. Meyer, who was
instrumental in moving many of these efforts forward.

He helped start the Center for an Agricultural
Economy, a nonprofit operation that is planning
an industrial park for agricultural businesses.

Next year the Vermont Food Venture Center, where
producers can rent kitchen space and get business
advice for adding value to raw ingredients, is
moving to Hardwick from Fairfax, 40 miles west,
because, Mr. Meyer said, “it sees the benefit of
being part of the healthy food system.” He
expects it to assist 15 to 20 entrepreneurs next year.

“All of us have realized that by working together
we will be more successful as businesses,” said
Tom Stearns, owner of High Mowing Organic Seeds.
“At the same time we will advance our mission to
help rebuild the food system, conserve farmland
and make it economically viable to farm in a sustainable way.”

Cooperation takes many forms. Vermont Soy stores
and cleans its beans at High Mowing, which also
lends tractors to High Fields, a local
compositing company. Byproducts of High Mowing’s
operation — pumpkins and squash that have been
smashed to extract seeds — are now being
purchased by Pete’s Greens and turned into soup.
Along with 40,000 pounds of squash and pumpkin,
Pete’s bought 2,000 pounds of High Mowing’s
cucumbers this year and turned them into pickles

For the past two years, many of these farmers and
businessmen have met informally once a month to
share experiences for business planning and
marketing or pass on information about, say, a
graphic designer who did good work on promotional
materials or government officials who’ve been
particularly helpful. They promote one another’s
products at trade fairs and buy equipment at
auctions that they know their colleagues need.

More important, they share capital. They’ve lent
each other about $300,000 in short-term loans.
When investors visited Mr. Stearns over the
summer, he took them on a tour of his neighbors’ farms and businesses.

To expand these enterprises further, the Center
for an Agricultural Economy recently bought a
15-acre property to start a center for
agricultural education. There will also be a
year-round farmers’ market (from what began about
20 years ago as one farmer selling from the trunk
of his car on Main Street) and a community
garden, which started with one plot and now has
22, with a greenhouse and a paid gardening specialist.

Last month the center signed an agreement with
the University of Vermont for faculty and
students to work with farmers and food producers
on marketing, research, even transportation
problems. Already, Mr. Meyer has licensed a
university patent to make his Vermont Natural
Coatings, an environmentally friendly wood
finish, from whey, a byproduct of cheesemaking.

These entrepreneurs, mostly well educated
children of baby boomers who have added business
acumen to the idealism of the area’s long
established hippies and homesteaders, are in the
right place at the right time. The growing
local-food movement, with its concerns about
energy usage, food safety and support for
neighbors, was already strong in Vermont, a state
that the National Organic Farmers’ Association
said had more certified organic acreage per capita than any other.

Mr. Meyer grew up on a dairy farm in Hardwick and
worked in Washington as an agricultural aide to
former Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont. “From my
time in Washington,” Mr. Meyer said, “I recognize
that if Vermont is going to have a future in
agriculture we need to look at what works in
Vermont, and that is not commodity agriculture.”

The brothers Mateo and Andy Kehler have found
something that works quite well at their Jasper
Hill Farm in nearby Greensboro. At first they
aged their award-winning cheeses in a basement.
Then they began aging for other cheesemakers.
Earlier this month they opened their new caves,
with space for 2 million pounds of cheese, which
they buy young from other producers.

The Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese at the
University of Vermont is helping producers
develop safety and quality programs, with costs
split by Jasper Hill and the producers. “Suddenly
being a cheesemaker in Vermont becomes viable,” Mateo Kehler said.

Pete Johnson began a garden when he was a boy on
his family’s land. Now his company, Pete’s
Greens, grows organic crops on 50 acres in
Craftsbury, about 10 miles north of here. He has
four moveable greenhouses, extending the growing
season to nine months, and he has installed a
commercial kitchen that can make everything from
frozen prepared foods and soup stocks to baked
goods and sausages. In addition he has enlarged
the concept of the C.S.A. by including 30 farmers
and food producers rather than just a single farm.

“We have 200 C.S.A. participants so we’ve become
a fairly substantial customer of some of these
businesses,” he said. “The local beef supplier
got an order for $700 this week; that’s pretty
significant around here. We’ve encouraged the
apple producer who makes apple pies to use local
flour, local butter, local eggs, maple sugar as
well as the apples so now we have a locavore apple pie.”

“Twelve years ago the market for local food was
lukewarm,” Mr. Johnson added. “Now this state is
primed for anything that is local. It’s a way to
preserve our villages and rebuild them.”

Like Mr. Johnson, Mr. Stearns of High Mowing
Organic Seeds in Wolcott, who is president of the
Center, knew he wanted to get into agriculture
when he was a boy. His company, which grew from
his hobby of collecting seeds, began in 2000 with
a two-page catalog that generated $36,000 in
sales. Today he has a million-dollar business,
selling seeds all over the United States.

Woody Tasch, chairman of Investors Circle, a
nonprofit network of investors and foundations
dedicated to sustainability, said: “What the
Hardwick guys are doing is the first wave of what
could be a major social transformation, the
swinging back of the pendulum from industrialization and globalization.”

Mr. Tasch is having a meeting in nearby Grafton
next month with investors, entrepreneurs,
nonprofit groups, philanthropists and officials
to discuss investing in Vermont agriculture.

Here in Hardwick, Claire’s restaurant, sort of a
clubhouse for farmers, began with investments
from its neighbors. It is a Community Supported
Restaurant. Fifty investors who put in $1,000
each will have the money repaid through
discounted meals at the restaurant over four years.

“Local ingredients, open to the world,” is the
motto on restaurant’s floor-to-ceiling windows.
“There’s Charlie who made the bread tonight,”
Kristina Michelsen, one of four partners, said in
a running commentary one night, identifying
farmers and producers at various tables. “That’s
Pete from Pete’s Greens. You’re eating his tomatoes.”

Rosy as it all seems, some worry that as
businesses grow larger the owners will be tempted
to sell out to companies that would not have
Hardwick’s best interests at heart.

But the participants have reason to be
optimistic: Mr. Stearns said that within one week
six businesses wanted to meet with him to talk
about moving to the Hardwick area.

“Things that seemed totally impossible not so
long ago are now going to happen,” said Mr.
Kehler. “In the next few years a new wave of
businesses will come in behind us. So many things
are possible with collaboration.”



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