HARDWICK – On Friday afternoon, Oct. 31, Buffalo Mountain Market’s general manager, Emily Hershberger, contacted community leaders to see how they could work together to help fill the need for food left by the freeze of SNAP benefits.
Hardwick Area Food Pantry (HAFP) Director, Stella James, told her that fresh soups and stews in to-go containers, ready for families and individuals, would be the most helpful offering. From there a team quickly mobilized.
photo by Kelly Bogel Stokes.
By the next day, a team at the Center for an Agricultural Economy (CAE), had secured donations of local meat from Snug Valley Farm and Saw Mill Brook Farm.
On Monday, there was a plan, with CAE’s Human Advocacy Director, Kate O’Neil, coordinating logistics.
On Wednesday, a team of volunteers and staff members from those convening organizations and businesses were working in the Community Room at the CAE Food Hub in Hardwick, making gallons of soup.
In stone soup style, where everyone brings an ingredient they have to make soup, local businesses and nonprofits shared what they had available. Front Seat Coffee owner, Tobin Porter, donated food, supplies and equipment.
CAE’s Community Program Manager, Bethany Dunbar, couldn’t over-emphasize Porter’s generosity: “I went over to Front Seat and had to make three trips back to the car to get all the stuff that Tobin donated or lent us.”
Pete’s Greens donated carrots and vegetables. Salvation Farms came up with gleaned vegetables and extras from their freezer. Almost everything for the project, from ingredients to containers, was donated.
photo by Kelly Bogel Stokes.
The Hardwick area has a decades-long history of community organizing, which has gotten stronger in recent years through intentional collaborations. “In my mind whether it’s this or something in the future, the more we work on these networks, the more we have them during challenging times” says Hershberger.
Examples of neighbors in the area coming together to support each other include Everyone Eats; a resurgence of Hardwick community meals during the pandemic; the formation of a mutual aid group, Hardwick Neighbor to Neighbor and other community support through the floods of 2023 and 2024.
Buffalo Mountain Market Cafe Manager, Jessie Ziegler, took the lead on planning the soups. She started with the donations and worked backward to figure out what could and would be made.
photo by Reeve Basom.
Ziegler first laid out all of the donations on the table and sorted them into soups. “That was the planning phase,” she said, “and it is how I work at the co-op as well.”
Dunbar added, “We are so lucky to have Jessie because she said ‘we are going to do this and this and this’ and it’s perfect.“
Buffalo Mountain Market has a long history of feeding the community beyond operating a grocery store. she mused, “It’s so great that the co-op was leading the charge because 30 years ago Robin Cappuccino, at the co-op, would make soup from whatever was around for free for the community. He was instrumental in the early days of the community meal, which still happens at the United Church in Hardwick.”
photo by Reeve Basom.
The Community Room at the CAE’s new Food Hub, finished this June, was created with activities like this in mind. The multipurpose room was designed with a robust home kitchen in order to host CAE’s and the HAFP’s Grow Your Own Classes, meals and other activities. The idea was for it to be a flexible space to support the community, and as Dunbar puts it, “This is exactly what we hoped this room would be used for.”
Salvation Farms’ Vermont Commodity Manager, Martha Machia, jumped at the opportunity to cook in the new facility. “I get to work in that kitchen? I was so excited…[especially by the] brand new knives and cutting boards.“
Ziegler agreed, adding her appreciation, “Thank you to all the people who have built this kind of infrastructure for the community.”
The first day of soup making, November 5, a team of six people made 50 quarts of beef stew and 40 quarts of squash soup. 60 quarts of lentil soup were started. Chili, carrot soup and hamburger soup were made later in the week.
By the end of the day Thursday, the team had made, packaged and labelled 354 quarts of soup.
CAE’s Meryl Friets, Farm Connex Logistic Manager, and CAE’s Farm Connex team are storing the soups in the Food Hub walk-in coolers and providing logistics support.
Hill Farmstead Brewery provided a contribution to support this round of soup making and another in the future.
On Thursday and Friday, Nov. 6 and 7, soup was distributed through the three Hardwick Area Food Pantries in Hardwick, Crafsbury and Albanty, and the team is working to have them available at other pantries throughout the area.
The team will keep making soup as long as there are ingredients and a need. Stay tuned for more details as it all comes together.
The group doesn’t know exactly what kind of help they need yet, but they know they will need help. If you want to donate food, time or money, email [email protected].
