•Farm to Plate Initiative

Help Shape the Farm to Plate Initiative!

The Farm to Plate (F2P) Initiative, approved at the end of the last legislative session, directs the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, working in collaboration with the Sustainable Agriculture Council and other stakeholder groups, to develop a 10-year strategic plan to strengthen Vermont’s farm and food sector.

F2P will identify critical bottlenecks and priority investment areas that will help increase economic development activity to achieve a diversified and appropriately-scaled farm and food sector which serves both in-state and regional consumer markets to stimulate economic development in Vermont’s farm and food sector.

The strategic plan is due to be complete by June 30, 2010, so we need your feedback today! Please take a moment to fill out an online version of the F2P Survey.

The Farm to Plate Initiative will be seeking community input through a series of regional Local Food Summits in November. These plans are newly in the works and F2P staff are scurrying to contact regional food centers and other local groups to help host and arrange dates, locations, and logistics for these meetings. If you’d like to join the F2P mailing list and stay informed about progress, please send an email to heather@vsjf.org.

For more information, please visit the Farm to Plate website.

•One Local Summer, Week Twelve

Week twelve? Already?? Yes indeed; one of my kids has started school already, and in spite of the sweltering muggy days we had all last week, the forecast is calling for temperatures in the 30s later this week (gasp! My tomatoes!).

This week I made a crustless quiche.

Veggies included leek, onion, chive, and chard, in a base of egg, milk, and cheddar. I’ve lost track of exactly who I bought the ingredients from, but everything except the cheddar came from within my county, and Cabot is just outside the county line (although Cabot Creamery’s milk comes from all over Vermont, and perhaps out of state?). Although I have made many regular quiches, this was my first attempt at a crustless one. It came out good, but a bit watery; I think I should have squeezed some liquid out of the chard. I served it with steamed beets on the side.

•One Local Summer, Meal Eleven

I was on vacation last week and missed Week Ten’s all-local meal o’ the week. But I’m back in full force now; in fact, my wonderful husband had an all-local supper waiting for me when I got home after many hours of bravely battling traffic and highway construction. I gratefully chowed down on salad, grilled veggies, and a burger made with ground lamb.

The salad was from our garden, as were the grilled green beans and scallions. The grilled shallots, garlic, and green peppers were from various farmer’s market vendors. The lamb was purchased at the St. Johnsbury food co-op, and came from a local farm. That’s about as specific as I can get in post-vacation mode; sorry to be so sketchy on details!

•One Local Summer, Meal Nine

I’ve been eating lots of meals which are mostly-but-not-completely local, but one of my meals which is most consistently all-local is breakfast. Omelets have been in heavy rotation this past month, and I never seem to get tired of them. They make a great lunch too. The breakfast I’m profiling consisted of an omelet with cheddar cheese and a mix of greens from my garden, with sausage on the side. Yum!

• Eggs from our neighbor
• Cheese from Cabot Creamery
• Greens (senposai, tatsoi, & kale) from my garden
• Sausage from the Wardens in Barnet (this is some of the best sausage I’ve ever had!)
• Coffee (well, I guess I cheated) from Vermont Coffee Company in Middlebury, with…
• Raw milk from Tamarlane Farm in Lyndon

•One Local Summer: Meal Eight

This weeks meal was a venture into the unknown. You would never guess by looking at my meals for the One Local Summer challenge, but I was a vegetarian for many years. After reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I began adding grass-fed beef to my diet. A hamburger was easy enough to figure out, but it was a steep learning curve when it came to fancier cuts of meat. I needed a cookbook entitled The Vegetarian’s Guide to Meat, but I don’t think such a thing exists. I was able to make a pot roast recently with great success, and this week we tried minute steak. For those who don’t know, minute steak is a very very thin steak and literally cooks in about a minute, as Paul from Meadow View Farm explained to me at the farmer’s market. I think we overcooked it, but it was still quite good. We rounded out the meal with potatoes and grilled green beans, zucchini, and garlic.

• Steak from Meadow View Farm in Lyndon
• Potatoes from Speedwell Farm in Lyndon
• Butter from Cabot Creamery
• Zucchini and green beans from Chandler Pond Farm in South Wheelock
• Garlic from Biz-z-Bee Farm in Lunenberg

•Local Food in Vermont

I feel so lucky to live in Vermont. Locally grown, high-quality food is so easy to find. I can stop on my way home from work and pick up organic raw milk for half the price of organic milk in the store. A co-worker raises sheep, pigs, and cattle, and she brings grass-fed beef and bacon to the freezer at work for me. I haven’t bought supermarket eggs in many months; there are many sources of backyard eggs. In the summer and fall, farm stands and farmer’s markets offer vegetables, berries, honey, eggs, meat, cheese, and bread. Many cities have wonderful farmer’s markets, but I bet prices are much higher than what I pay. And there are lots of places in America where your only option is the supermarket, or worse, an inner city corner store.

A very exciting piece of legislation was passed in Vermont this year, which should make local foods even more widely available. It’s known as the Farm to Plate Initiative, and its goals are:

• Increase economic development in Vermont’s food and farm sector.
• Create jobs in the food and farm economy.
• Improve access to healthy local foods.

Here is the website to learn more about this initiative, and here is an article about it.

Even though Vermonters tend to eat more locally produced foods than the average American, we still import 97% of our food. According to Vermont Representative Christopher Bray, one of the sponsors of the Farm to Plate bill, if we increased our consumption to local food from 3% to 20% over the next decade, we could add $800 million to Vermont’s economy!

Vermont has a long way to go. I would like to see:

• more locally produced food in our local markets, restaurants, schools, and hospitals
• more jobs available in sustainable agriculture
• more people eating fresh, healthy, locally grown food
• more land in agricultural use
• more local food available year-round

I have been involved in a brand new organization devoted to achieving these goals: The St. Johnsbury Area Local Food Alliance. We are just starting out, and our goals are very similar to those outlined in the Farm to Plate bill, except with a focus on the Caledonia County area instead of the whole state. Most areas of Vermont have similar groups dedicated to increasing local food production and availability; here is an article about the amazing happenings in tiny, rural Hardwick.

This post is proud to be part of Fight Back Fridays and Real Food Wednesdays!

•One Local Summer: Meal Seven

This week’s meal for the One Local Summer challenge was a sausage-and-veggie frittata, with steamed beets, carrots, and beet greens on the side. No cheats this week; everything was strictly local except for the salt and pepper. Every ingredient except two came from within my county, and those two (cheese, carrots, and beets) came from just a few miles outside the county line.

The ingredient list:

• Eggs from Too Little Farm in Barnet
• Sausage from Speedwell Farm in Lyndon
• Cheddar cheese from Cabot Creamery
• Milk from Tamarlane Farm in Lyndon
• Broccoli from Chandler Pond Farm in South Wheelock
• Garlic scapes from Mountain Foot Farm in Wheelock
• Beets and carrots from Pete’s Greens in Craftsbury

•One Local Summer: Meal Six

No sacrifices here for the One Local Summer challenge: I just ate one of the best pizzas in the history of pizza-making. Unfortunately, the local-ness of it was less than perfect.

The crust was made with one-third white flour, which we can’t get locally. However, it is from King Arthur Flour, a local company, so it’s at least locally produced. The rest of the flour, two-thirds, was whole wheat flour from Butterworks Farm in Westfield. I also used baking yeast in the crust; who knows where that’s from?

For the pizza sauce, I used the last of my frozen tomatoes from last summer, scallions (since I had no local onions), and garlic scapes, with some oregano and basil.

Pizza toppings included fresh tomato slices, fresh spring garlic, mozzarella, and – the big no-no of the meal – pepperoni. Here’s the story: a few days ago, I found some Vermont pepperoni from Vermont Smoke & Cure in Barre and snatched it up with glee, a pizza forming in my mind. It wasn’t until the pepperoni was on the pizza and the pizza in the oven that I read the package more carefully and saw the words “Made in Vermont with beef and pork purchased from the USA and Canada”. My heart sank. I had even foresworn onions, my favorite food, to make the pizza as local as possible, only to find the the pepperoni was from all over the continent. Oh well; I vow to be a more careful label-reader in the future. But damn, it sure tasted great!

We also had steamed beets with beet greens, purchased this morning at the St. Johnsbury farmer’s market, and a beer from Trout River, a brewery twelve miles down the road. To be honest, I’m sure the beer ingredients aren’t local either – although Trout River does have hops growing outside the brewpub. For dessert: strawberries with whipped cream. What a splendid summer meal!

The local bounty:

• Cherry tomatoes from my garden
• Scallions from the East Burke Cooperative Farm Stand
• Garlic scapes from Mountain Foot Farm in Wheelock
• Whole wheat flour and heavy cream from Butterworks Farm in Westfield
• Mozzarella cheese from Cabot Creamery
• Tomato from Chandler Pond Farm in South Wheelock
• Garlic from Biz-z-Bee Farm in Lunenberg
• Pepperoni from Vermont Smoke & Cure in Barre
• Beets from Harvest Hill Farm in Walden
• Beer from Trout River Brewing in Lyndonville
• Strawberries from Too Little Farm in Barnet

•Berrypalooza!

This morning I took advantage of a rare sunny day and took my family strawberry picking at Too Little Farm in Barnet. It was great to be out in the sunshine for a change, and, amazingly, there were no bugs to bite us! We picked fifteen pounds of organic strawberries in a little less than an hour. As much as I adore fresh strawberries, most of them are destined for the freezer. I like to de-stem them and freeze them whole. If they are initially frozen on a cookie sheet, they can be transferred into a ziplock bag and they won’t freeze in one solid block.

Tonight for dessert: fresh strawberries with whipped cream from Butterworks Farm! What could be yummier? And all winter we can enjoy strawberry pancakes, smoothies, muffins……. mmmmm. Frozen strawberries briefly nuked in the microwave and then whirled in the blender makes a fantastic sauce to put on pancakes or waffles – no other ingredients necessary!

•One Local Summer: Meal Five

This week’s all-local meal was less interesting and inspiring than most of the previous ones. Oh well – we can’t be interesting and inspiring all of the time. At least it was local. I’ll try to do better next week.

• Spinach-and-cheddar omelet: eggs from our neighbor, spinach from our garden, Cabot cheddar
• Pork sausage from Speedwell Farm in Lyndon
• Fried potatoes from the farmer’s market, can’t remember which vendor
• Snow peas from our garden
• Salad (not in the photo) from our garden