CAE Open House Features Food Hub

HARDWICK – On Saturday, Oct. 5, the Center for an Agricultural Economy (CAE) welcomed the community to a celebration of its 20 years building the local food system and a future promising to strengthen its ability to do that work as the new Food Hub is ready to be outfitted.

The CAE offered activities and tours at Atkins Field, the current Food Venture Center on Junction Road and the new Food Hub, next to the Cabot Creamery store in the historic Yellow Barn.

Visitors to Atkins Field had the chance to help with cider pressing, paint sections of a community mural and go on horse-drawn wagon rides. The CAE’s Community Programs Manager Bethany Dunbar gave a brief history walk at the former granite processing facility and others offered training in community organizing skills.

Tours at the Food Venture Center emphasized the connections being made between producers, processors and consumers. The organization’s mission has shifted as it’s found its way to supporting the agricultural economy in Vermont.

Jasper Hill Farm occupies about a third of the building where they create international award-winning soft cheeses. Three commercial kitchens are rented by small businesses producing a variety of products. Each kitchen meets a different need, with one designed to produce raw food products. There, roughly 175,000 pounds of vegetables are processed and packaged for the Just Cut program that delivers them to schools and hospitals, yielding over 400,000 portions each year.

Orleans Southwest Supervisory Union (OSSU) Food Service Director Valerie Hussey said the program has been a huge help to the seven schools she works with. Being able to obtain vegetables ready to use, whether the need is for them to be diced, sliced or shredded, is a big savings of time when many school meals need to be made, she said. Hussey said the program also allows the school kitchens to receive high quality local beef.

She said the CAE’s participation in programs supporting local foods has allowed OSSU school meals to contain 20% local foods in 2024.

The CAE’s Food Venture Center brings obvious benefits to the local food system, but the current facility is limited by its lack of storage to support both the Just Cut and Farm Connex programs.

Farm Connex provides small farms and food producers with reliable freight service and connects communities with local food. It long ago outgrew the Venture Center space and now operates out of a leased warehouse where a single loading dock handles the $13 million in local products being aggregated and distributed throughout Vermont.

Even with those limitations over 8,000 pallets of cold storage product was moved through the CAE’s current facilities.

The CAE’s new Food Hub will bring adequate warehouse shipping and receiving facilities and roughly double cold storage space to bring Farm Connex back in-house and allow Just Cut to increase its ability to meet the growing demand for local food products.

Tours of the Food Hub gave visitors a look at freezer, cooler and flexible root storage areas, the new loading docks and much-needed employee office space, according to CAE Executive Director Jon Ramsay. The facility includes a community room where a kitchen will allow groups to meet and add space for the CAE’s Food Justice education programs: Grow Your Own and food preparation workshops.

The Food Hub is built for a sustainable future, said Ramsay. It utilizes a net-zero-ready design with a very efficient refrigeration system having zero greenhouse gas emissions. As the cooling process generates heat, it will be captured and used as the primary heat source in the building. A solar array planned for the roof will help power electric heat pumps for office cooling and a wood pellet boiler will provide back up winter heat.

Ending the day of celebration, cheeses, crackers, bread, seltzers and several varieties of cupcake were laid out on tables outside the loading docks to celebrate what the CAE called a Grand Welcoming. Ramsay greeted everyone and introduced Ella Price of Hardwick’s Burdock Acres.

Price operates a cut flower farm and nursery. She shared how a CAE business builder loan and other support have helped her business, including making the connection that’s allowed her flowers to decorate the new Cabot Creamery Yellow Barn store and sell her bouquets there. Recently CAE assistance has helped Price receive a $20,000 grant to convert a barn into a greenhouse for winter production.

Ramsey returned to speak about the importance of the CAE’s partnerships with the Town of Hardwick, Jasper Hill, Cabot Creamery and others. He said he expects the new Food Hub facility to further increase market access and community connections for local agricultural businesses.

Vermont Natural Coatings’ Andrew Meyer shared stories about the CAE’s early years when he and Tom Stearns answered questions about why and how Hardwick was the right place for the CAE by saying “It’s people and their interest in living in and building a better community.”

Stearns, at one meeting, stood on a chair and said, “Why Hardwick? Because from Hardwick you can go anywhere,” and apparently he didn’t just mean the town is at the junction of Vermont Routes 14, 15 and 16.

Ramsay added that Meyer, a key player in the CAE’s origin story, once said, “Hardwick would be the center of Vermont’s agricultural renaissance.” It seems a prescient pronouncement in retrospect.

Ramsay noted it was five years and one week ago that the Atkins Field Pavilion opened, less than a year before the Covid-19 pandemic began. The period of the pandemic made the pavilion an important community asset, creating opportunities for community to gather that had not been envisioned when it was proposed.

Finally, Ramsay thanked the CAE’s partners, its network of suppliers, its board members and staff that now numbers close to 40 for their dedication, creativity and long hours.

ed. note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the amount of the grant Ella Price of Burdock Acres received to convert a barn into a greenhouse.