Root Words

A Local Food Future

Welcome back to our fifth episode of a five-part miniseries exploring how a focus on local food builds relationships with people and the environment.  If you haven’t followed this miniseries, you may want to go back and listen from episode 26, Localizing the Regional Food System.

In this episode of Root Words, we’ll explore how Vermont Farmers Food Center’s reopening will help usher in, not only regenerative agriculture, but a regenerative way of life for the region.  And we’ll wrap up the series by hearing how a vibrant and well supported community food web creates a more circular, localized economy where we all thrive together. 

Let’s start by checking back in with the Vermont Farmers Food Center.  

In 2019 VFFC completed a USDA Funded feasibility study and business plan for the campus with the purpose of developing the additional buildings into infrastructure that supports small food business access and creates local jobs.  In 2021, VFFC received federal grants to renovate its buildings so it can fully implement its business plan. However, one of the initial requirements in this process was an environmental review, which revealed harmful contamination from the site's industrial past that would need to be addressed before any renovation could begin. Unfortunately, in January 2022, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, VFFC had to close Farmers Hall, the central gathering space for the local food community.  While these dual challenges were a temporary setback, it has not deterred VFFC.  

After two years, the doors will be reopening.  VFFC board member Phillip Ackerman-Leist says that two years of pandemic challenges, remediation, and expansion efforts have provided a wealth of lessons learned, and he is excited to see the organization continue to grow. 

Relocalizing our economies creates a future of thriving communities.  A future full of potential and opportunity.  A future of community and civic engagement, and environmental and physical well-being.  

It has taken generations for us to arrive at the unaccountable global system that we have.  It is not an easy road back and we’ll all have to actively center local food and businesses to push back against the entrenched centralized power of global corporations.  

It seems like a lot, and it is.  The good news is that there’s a lot of ways to work for change, and everyone is needed and can find purpose in this work.  

Do what you can to support your local farmers and organizations like Vermont Farmers Food Center.  If you’re in Vermont consider joining your local hunger council.  We’ve compiled localization resources from this mini series on VFFC’s website at vermontfarmersfoodcenter.org/local  

This miniseries was produced by Stephen Abatiell and Julia Anderson.

Special thanks to Philip Ackerman-Leist, Heidi Lynch, Greg Cox, Steve Gorelick, Shane Rogers, and Lyle Jepsen, as well as all of the folks who spoke with us throughout this series.

Root Words is produced in the heart of Rutland County Vermont and is made possible by generous support from listeners like you.  You can support Root Words by visiting us Online

The Making of an Urban Food Center

Welcome back to our fourth episode of a five-part miniseries exploring how a focus on local food builds relationships with people and the environment.  If you haven’t followed this miniseries, you may want to go back and listen from episode 26, Localizing the Regional Food System.

In our last episode we explored some relationships that people have with their foodways and some of the impacts that are felt when these relationships are damaged.  And we heard how some folks are restoring their communities’ relationships with the land and with each other.

If the community food web relationships are strong and vibrant, it may become possible to create a physical space that can be an active center to the web, providing enough general use attributes for the entire web to thrive.   

In this episode, we’ll explore Vermont Farmers Food Center's plans to rejuvenate the historic buildings at 251 West Street in downtown Rutland, Vermont and build an urban food center on the site of the former Lincoln Iron Works.

Buildings aren’t usually what comes to mind when we envision a vibrant local food system.  We may picture a densely cultivated field or perhaps a farmer chatting up customers at market, but like many background players, buildings- physical spaces to work, gather, warehouse, and create- play a vital role in our food system.  

 In a globalized food system, buildings like this are often faraway and out-of-sight, increasing energy demands for transportation while decreasing accountability to the community of consumers.

Likewise, our own towns and cities often have “out-of-sight” spaces that fall into decay after their initial era of usefulness has waned, sometimes even becoming dangerous liabilities for the community if left inactive for too long.

 251 West Street in Rutland, Vermont is just this sort of site.  The 2.9 acre industrial site hosted many forms of manufacturing over the past 170 years.  Notably, the Lincoln Iron Works centered a thriving community that anchored families and adjacent businesses to Rutland, but like many manufacturing centers in the U.S. the gears eventually ground to a halt when the globalizing economy shifted this work elsewhere.   Local historian, Jack Crowther, has researched this site’s rise to prominence and subsequent fall into disuse. 

Adaptation and reuse of aging infrastructure provides a path forward that revitalizes neglected, once-thriving areas, and protects open spaces from unnecessary sprawl.  

Lyssa Papazian has been working for 30 years in historic preservation and is now based in Putney, Vermont. Vermont Farmers Food Center brought her in to assess the eligibility of the buildings at the 251 West St. site for listing on the national historic register.

Lyssa says that historic preservation and adaptive reuse are starkly different.  Preservation is important in some instances, but its use is narrowly appropriate.

Today in Rutland, a local food movement is reigniting the community and the people that fill the historic architecture with purpose will adapt it to further use, ultimately keeping the spaces relevant.  

My grandfather Peter worked in the Lincoln Ironworks during its last great phase of output for the war effort.  My great grandfather Pasquale worked in the Lincoln ironworks even before that in the 20’s.  During Pasquale’s days at the Iron Works, the factory workers unionized and joined the American Steel Workers to push back against the power dynamics of that day’s economy.  

Farmer and Vermont Food Center founder, Greg Cox, has shown similar determination that those fellas would have respected by having the audacity to revive an aging factory through a driven community effort, ultimately pushing back against the centralized power of today’s global food system. In 2012, when area farmers and food producers needed more space, Greg saw the potential of 251 West Street.  

Farmer, author, and VFFC board member, Philip Ackerman-Leist, has learned that providing opportunity in the middle of the food system is a critical component to overall food system resiliency, and that a large former factory might be an ideal location for a community food web hub.

In many ways 251 West Street is the ideal location.  Unfortunately, sometimes our past catches up to us, and we are faced with confronting it.  Before Vermont’s farmers ever created organic food guidelines that pushed back against conventional chemical agriculture, that industrial chemical legacy was already entombed at 251 West Street from a long history of manufacturing and subsequent neglect.

In 2021, as VFFC was furthering the reuse efforts of the site, an environmental assessment of the property revealed trichloroethylene or TCE contamination. TCE is a known carcinogen, and was likely left behind from industrial degreasers used in the mid 20th century.  

After the contamination was discovered VFFC shut down the old Iron Works building, now called Farmers Hall, on the 251 West Street site.  This forced the winter farmers’ market to relocate in the middle of the season and caused disruptions to the pandemic-era prepared meals program.  

The plan to adapt this piece of the city’s industrial past to create new local food opportunities, seemed to be in jeopardy.  

The board and staff of Vermont Farmers Food Center had their work cut out for them.  

The folks at VFFC are addressing more challenges left over from an outdated globalized economy than they initially set out to, utilizing state money and grant money to do so.  Lyle Jepsen, Executive Director at the Chamber and Economic Development for the Rutland Region is optimistic about the effect a food hub will bring to county wide redevelopment efforts.

This time around the site’s closure didn’t stop all momentum and lead to further decay, this time there was a network built around the continual use of this space. Today’s community food web was strong enough to overcome the weight of the site’s history.  

On the next Root Words we’ll hear how Vermont Farmers Food Center’s remediation and adaptive renovation efforts are set to support the community food web and create a more circular, localized economy where we all thrive together.  

This episode was produced by Stephen Abatiell and Julia Anderson.

Special thanks to Jack Crowther, Lyssa Papazian, Philip Ackerman-Leist, Greg Cox, Lyle Jepsen, and all of the people who have brought life to 251 West Street over the years. 

If you would like to learn more about the history of the Lincoln Iron Works in Rutland you can find a link to Jack Crowther’s Rutland Historical Society report on Vermont Farmers Food Center’s website, under the “About” tab.  You can also see VFFC’s building renovation plans, visit their website at www.vermontfarmersfoodcenter.org 

Root Words is produced in the heart of Rutland County Vermont and is made possible by generous support from listeners like you.  You can support Root Words by visiting us Online

Restoring Relationships

Welcome back to our third episode of a five-part miniseries exploring how a focus on local food builds relationships with people and the environment.  If you haven’t followed this miniseries, you may want to go back and listen from episode 26, Localizing the Regional Food System.

 

In our last episode we explored the community food web, a local alternative to the globalized food system that centers our relationships with our communities and with the land. 

 

In this episode, we look at some relationships that people have with their foodways and some of the impacts that are felt when these relationships are damaged.  Then we’ll hear how some folks are restoring their communities’ relationships with the land and with each other. At the end, we’ll hear what Vermont Farmers Food Center is doing to help build back those community relationships in Rutland.

 

Steve Gorelick, Managing and Programs Director for Local Futures, believes that the globalized accumulation economy has isolated us from true community.  Steve says that before globalization, our agriculturally based communities were inherently more interconnected, and that this isolation has many serious effects.

 

Farmer and Vermont Farmers Food Center founder, Greg Cox, believes that global agribusiness’ goal is yield, and that individual and community health has suffered in the wake of this approach.  

 

Shane Rogers of Food Solutions New England, believes that social inequities have been exacerbated by an unaccountable global food system, and that communities are their own best experts for rebalancing the power dynamic that a globalized system creates.

 

Many communities that have been marginalized by the global yield-based economy are rebuilding their relationships with their foodways and creating more just systems while doing so.  We have explored many of these stories on Root Words over the past few years.

 

In episode 4, Sugaring in Vermont, Vermont Abenaki chef Jessee Lawyer describes his experience practicing traditional indigenous maple sugaring.  In episodes 10, 11, 15, and 16, We explore the Vermont Abenaki’s quest for food sovereignty and preservation of their cultural food traditions, and hear from some allies in these efforts.  

 

In episode 18 Taking Space, Vermont RELEAF Collective, I spoke with Olivia Pena, founder of Vermont RELEAF Collective, a network by Black Indigenous, & People of Color advancing Racial Equity in Land, Environment, Agriculture, & Foodways.  This Vermont BIPOC network amplifies and lifts marginalized voices, while building community and sharing opportunities around foodways and land stewardship.  

 

If you haven’t listened to our older episodes, they show some real depth to our communities’ cultural and social practices around food, and they are worth a listen.

 

Instead of replaying a segment from one of these earlier episodes, I’d like to play a piece from an unaired interview I did with Rich Holshuh in October of 2021.  Rich is a citizen of the Elnu Abenaki Tribe, and working on the Atowi project that hopes to create balance with communities and with place.  Forced removal separated indigenous people from their land and foodways abruptly.  This and the cultural genocide that followed makes it very difficult for indigenous people to maintain their relationship with place and with their food system.  Rich’s Atowi project is doing some really amazing work in partnership with the Brattleboro Retreat Farm and SuSu ComUNITY farm to address this reality.  Stay tuned for more on this work in future episodes of Root Words.

 

Many BIPOC organizations and networks are leading the way to reestablish relationships between communities and with place. 

 

To learn about the work of Atowi and of SuSu CommUNITY Farm, check out atowi.org, and susucommunityfarm.org.  

 

Here in Rutland, farmer and VFFC board president, Greg Cox feels that most people no longer know where our food comes from and we’ve been detached from our connection to place and to seasonal change because of it, resulting in poor mental and physical health for us as individuals and for our communities as a whole.  Greg feels that communities can be saved by rebuilding economic viability, beginning with a local food economy.  This belief led Greg and others to create the Vermont Farmers Food Center in 2012.  

 

By focusing on seasonal community gathering around food, VFFC creates the space for authentic community connections and empathetic relationships between people and sets the stage for healing and restoration while reconnecting people to their home’s natural cycles and rhythms.  By using local food as common ground, VFFC facilitates a place-based culture that engages the community.

 

Heidi Lynch is the executive director for Vermont Farmers Food Center.  Under Heidi’s guidance, VFFC leads a grassroots effort to become more connected to community and place by gathering around local food. 

 

A built awareness around our connections to nature and community through a local food web creates space for dialog, understanding, and healing.  We are all connected to place by our food and to each other through our community food web.  When you become a supporter of VFFC, you establish a local relationship with farmers, food producers, and community members.  You establish a relationship with place.  For more information on becoming a member of the community at VFFC, visit VFFC’s website at vermontfarmersfoodcenter.org. 

 

Food is the heart of one of our most intimate relationships with nature. We have the opportunity to connect with the land, the farmers, and our community when we restore relationships through the foods we choose to eat. Through a shared sense of place we can build trust and start healing our relationships with each other.

 

Rebuilding trust and our relationships with each other and with the land we occupy creates a strong foundation for food web resilience, but in order to bring the food system home you need a physical place, and it needs to be big and accessible. On the next Root Words we’ll hear how a grassroots community effort worked to rescue an aging piece of the community’s industrial past.  

 

This episode was produced by Stephen Abatiell and Julia Anderson.

 

Special thanks to Steve Gorelick, Shane Rogers, Rich Holshuh, Greg Cox, and Heidi Lynch.

 

To learn more, check out the Atowi project at atowi.org, and SuSu CommUNITY Farm at susucommunityfarm.org.  

 

For more information on the community at VFFC, visit vermontfarmersfoodcenter.org. 

This Root Words series has been underwritten by Windswept Farm and Rutland Fluoride Action. 

 

Barry Cohen of Windswept Farm strongly supports VFFC and is very encouraged with the Food Hub plan. Barry says, “My farm as well as my partner, The Squier Family Farm, expect to use the food hub facilities with it benefiting our process and profit.”

 

The folks at Rutland Fluoride Action are dedicated to ending fluoridation of the Rutland City water supply, learn more at RutlandFluorideAction.org.

Root Words is produced in the heart of Rutland County Vermont and is made possible by generous support from listeners like you.  You can support Root Words by visiting us Online

To Build a Community Food Web

In our last episode we explored the challenges that a global food system can have for local communities.  On this episode of Root Words we’ll talk with Ken Meter, president of Crossroads Resource Center and Philip Ackerman-Leist farmer, author, and Vermont Farmers Food Center board member, as we explore the concept of a community Food Web and the benefits of this local alternative.

To start us off, let’s go back to our conversation from the last episode with Ellen Kahler, Executive Director with Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, and member of the Governor’s Commission on the Future of Vermont Agriculture, where she helped create Vermont Farm to Plate, the state’s food systems development plan.  

Ellen says that the Covid-19 pandemic caused major disruptions in the fragile global food system. 

Creating an alternative supply chain will need to be a community effort played out region by region, but communities don’t need to feel isolated while doing this work.  Food systems analysts like Ken Meter can help provide perspective.  In 2019, Ken conducted and wrote VFFC’s Market Study which helped guide its strategic planning in 2020.

Ken Meter is the president of Crossroads Resource Center, a non-profit organization that works with communities to foster democracy and local self-determination. His local economic analyses have promoted local food networks in 140 regions, 40 states, two provinces, and three tribal nations.  His recent book, Building Community Food Webs, is an inspiring collection of stories about how communities transformed their food systems and local economies.   

A community food web builds health, wealth, connection, and capacity within the local community.  

Ken believes that a community food web is largely a relational network, and that the strength of these relationships relies on trust. 

Philip Ackerman-Leist is a farmer, former food systems professor, VFFC board member, and author of Rebuilding the Foodshed: How to Create Local, Sustainable, and Secure Food Systems.

While working with partners in the food web, Philip puts his faith in trust.

Tension between available resources and the vision for recreating a relational food web can create slow, stable, and resilient change, but tension between communities of people in a food web can increase inequity and erode trust.  

Ken Meter feels that the food system we have now creates wealth for some at the expense of others, but a relocalized community food web can be a vehicle for restoring trust and addressing injustice.   

On the next episode of Root Words we’ll take a closer look at the filaments that bind a community food web as we explore Restoring Relationships. 

This episode was produced by Stephen Abatiell and Julia Anderson. 

Special thanks to Ellen Kahler, Ken Meter, and Philip Ackerman-Leist.

To learn more about Ken Meter’s work check out Crossroads Resource Center at www.crcworks.org 

This Root Words series has been underwritten by Windswept Farm and Rutland Fluoride Action. 

 

Barry Cohen of Windswept Farm strongly supports VFFC and is very encouraged with the Food Hub plan. Barry says, “My farm as well as my partner, The Squier Family Farm, expect to use the food hub facilities with it benefiting our process and profit.”

 

The folks at Rutland Fluoride Action are dedicated to ending fluoridation of the Rutland City water supply, learn more at RutlandFluorideAction.org.

Root Words is produced in the heart of Rutland County Vermont and is made possible by generous support from listeners like you.  You can support Root Words by visiting us Online

Localizing the Regional Food System

Root Words returns with a special five-part series to take a closer look at the growing effort to localize our food system. Localized food systems are gaining regional and national attention for the benefits that go beyond food production and consumption. Rural and urban communities across the United States and the world are building local food networks for greater resilience, stronger local economies, better health, and social well being.

Vermont Farmers Food Center is a food hub that’s creating an alternative to the existing food system by rooting food production and access in a particular place. In this series we’re going to explore how a focus on local food builds relationships with people and the environment, and we’ll discuss how a local food center can contribute to the regional and global impact that localization may have on our economic and environmental sustainability. 

Localizing the regional food system is the Vermont Farmers Food Center’s stated mission. In our first episode in this special series, we are taking a deeper dive into why localizing the food system is important and why it’s so important now.

The Cambridge English Dictionary defines localization as, “the process of organizing a business or industry so that its main activities happen in local areas rather than nationally or internationally.” Today’s guests will help us understand why localization is needed now and how it creates change to the existing nationalized food system. 

A localized food system, built at the community level that balances the strengths and needs of the community creates more economic autonomy, empowered civic participation, and community well-being.  On the next episode of Root Words we’ll explore a local alternative to global consolidation, the community food web. 

This episode was produced by Stephen Abatiell and Julia Anderson. 

Special thanks to Steve Gorelick, Shane Rogers, and Ellen Kahler. 

To learn more, check out Steve Gorelick’s films and books at Local Futures, www.localfutures.org/ 

This Root Words series has been underwritten by Windswept Farm and Rutland Fluoride Action. 

 

Barry Cohen of Windswept Farm strongly supports VFFC and is very encouraged with the Food Hub plan. Barry says, “My farm as well as my partner, The Squier Family Farm, expect to use the food hub facilities with it benefiting our process and profit.”

 

The folks at Rutland Fluoride Action are dedicated to ending fluoridation of the Rutland City water supply, learn more at RutlandFluorideAction.org.

Root Words is produced in the heart of Rutland County Vermont and is made possible by generous support from listeners like you.  You can support Root Words by visiting us Online

Food Hub Mini Series Trailer

Root Words is coming back with a special 5-part mini series this October.  We’ll talk with some folks that have dedicated themselves to rejuvenating the food system and community infrastructure as we dig a little deeper into why local food hubs, like Vermont Farmers Food Center in Rutland, Vermont, are so important to the future of our communities.

Rural and urban communities across the United States and the world are building local food webs for greater resilience, stronger local economies, better health, and social well being.

We hope you enjoy this upcoming mini series from Root Words.

Root Words is produced in the heart of Rutland County Vermont and is made possible by generous support from listeners like you.  You can support Root Words by visiting us Online

Forestry for the Climate

The green mountains are a forested landscape and many folks interact with forests for work and recreation.  While about 6.5% of Vemont’s land area is human development, around 78% of the state is forested.  Human activities and forests play different roles in the natural cycling of carbon.  During photosynthesis Vermont forests take in about 45% of the state’s annual carbon emissions.  

As atmospheric carbon builds up and creates uncertain conditions for Vermont’s future landscape, some folks are working to elevate the forest’s role in the carbon cycle, with the hope that more Vermonters will not just see our forests as peaceful sanctuaries, wildlife habitat, and timber resource, but as a key element in mitigating some of the worst effects of climate change.  

For this episode I visited Tim Stout on his family land on a rainy summer morning in Shrewsbury.  Tim’s family has owned this mountainside property for generations, and he’s managed the forest with intention for decades.  

Vermont’s Use Value Appraisal program (widely known as current use) provides a tax benefit by enabling eligible private landowners who practice long-term forestry or agriculture to have their land appraised based on the property’s value of production of wood or food rather than its residential or commercial development value. As of January 2021, there were nearly 16,000 forestland parcels enrolled, more than half of Vermont’s total privately-owned forestland.

Carbon credit markets are an emerging resource for private landowners.  In these markets a carbon credit is equal to the equivalent of one metric ton of CO2.  Tim is enrolled in the Family Forest Carbon Program.  Developed by the American Forest Foundation and The Nature Conservancy, the Family Forest Carbon Program enables family forest owners to access carbon markets and earn income from their land.  

The American Forest Foundation sells verified carbon credits to companies and pays landowners to implement new carbon-minded management practices. 

Tim’s passion to create a more resilient forest and a better future for his grandchildren has connected him to his neighbors, academic experts, and to the land he stewards.  

This episode was produced by Stephen Abatiell.

Special thanks to Tim Stout and Northam Forest Carbon. 

To learn more about Tim’s work to connect landowners with climate conscious management resources visit northamforestcarbon.com  To find your county forester or learn more about Vermont’s Use Value Appraisal program visit fpr.vermont.gov. 

Root Words is produced in the heart of Rutland County Vermont and is made possible by generous support from listeners like you.  You can support Root Words by visiting us Online

Universal School Meals- VT Legislative Update

At the start of this year’s legislative session in Vermont we took a closer look at the campaign to make school meals universal.  It’s one of the really important food access issues that the state house took on this year and with the legislative session coming to a close we’ve decided to check back in with Teddy Waszazak, Hunger Free Vermont’s Universal School Meals campaign manager, for an update on what’s coming out of the legislature this session.  

We spoke with Teddy and school nutrition director Harley Sterling at length on this topic in Episode 19: Universal School Meals, and if you haven’t heard that episode it’s worth going back and giving it a listen before listening to this episode.  

This episode was produced by Stephen Abatiell.

Special thanks to Teddy Waszazak and Hunger Free Vermont. 

To learn more about Hunger Free Vermont’s work to support equitable access to nutrition visit www.hungerfreevt.org. 

Root Words is produced in the heart of Rutland County Vermont and is made possible by generous support from listeners like you.  You can support Root Words by visiting us Online

A Morning at the Farmer’s Market (Rebroadcast)

In this episode we go shopping, and explore some of the differences between shopping at the farmer's market and the supermarket, and of course we meet some farmers along the way. 

This episode was produced by Stephen Abatiell.

Special thanks to Greg Cox, Katie Stickney, NOFA-VT, Dr. David Conner, WEXP, and the Saltash Serenaders.

Root Words is produced in the heart of Rutland County Vermont and is made possible by generous support from listeners like you.  You can support Root Words by visiting us Online

 

Foraging (Rebroadcast)

Before there was home delivery, before there were supermarkets, before there was refrigeration, even before people cooked their food, people fed themselves and their families by foraging their landscape.  Collecting food, medicine, or provisions from our environment is perhaps the closest we can get to our food-source, and the places we live.  Much of the world continues a healthy relationship to their home though foraging, and even here in the US, foraging is having a re-emergence spurred by revivals of tradition and quests for self-sufficiency and connection to one’s landscape, even in urban environments.  

On this episode I head into the woods with my brother Pete, and connect with a few inspired foraging folks: Walter Collins and Tina Picz. 

This episode was produced by Stephen Abatiell

Special thanks to Walter Collins, Tina Picz, and the VT Foragers community for ID support and inspiration.  

To learn more, check out Vermont Foragers on Facebook and Tina Picz on Instagram at VermontFoodPhoto.  You can learn more about Vermont Releaf Collective at www.vtreleafcollective.org.  For a real treat, and this is highly recommended, check out Alexis Nikole Nelson Instagram or Facebook @blackforager. 

Root Words is produced in the heart of Rutland County Vermont and is made possible by generous support from listeners like you.  You can support Root Words by visiting us Online 

Note: I find a lot of rejuvenation, and food, from foraging, and would like to see the practice available to more people.  If you are a landowner, please consider allowing people to access the land for hunting, fishing, foraging, and recreation.  If someone comes to your door to ask permission please be open to the conversation.  There are some important things in life that cannot be found in a grocery store or pharmacy. And if you don’t have a necessary reason, consider not posting your land.