By Kristen Thompson

About a week after following Emma Bliss and Raymond Johnston through the process of picking up orders and staging deliveries for the Food Connects Food Hub, I wander back down the hall from Food Connects’ administrative offices to the Food Hub. It’s around 8:00 AM when I arrive. Long-time Food Hub Driver Tracy Lake is already loading Van 1 with Raymond and Food Hub Warehouse Coordinator Scott Berzofsky.

“Feel free to put your things in the van,” Tracy tells me.

Today, I’m joining Tracy for the Food Connects Monadnock Delivery Route in New Hampshire. It’s the very end of March, and with the school year still in full swing, we have a busy route ahead.

Our first stop is at Electronic Imaging Materials in Keene, where we’ll deliver food for their staff kitchen.

Once the van is fully loaded, we’re ready to take off. Tracy introduces me to Gillian Welch, and we set up her music on his phone.

As we drive over the Connecticut River into New Hampshire, I ask Tracy about his journey to Food Connects. He’s been working for the organization since the early days when the Food Hub worked out of Harlow Farm.

“I did a lot of different jobs for Food Connects, back then, not just driving.” 

Tracy’s watched the fast-paced growth of our little hub into one where we now have a whole team with specialized roles within Food Hub operations. Today, Tracy’s crucial role at Food Connects is focused on driving multiple distribution routes in Vermont and New Hampshire.    

When we arrive at Electronic Imaging Materials, the staff already know Tracy and open a door for us to drop off their deliveries in the kitchen.

With our first delivery complete, our journey turns towards Alstead and Gilsum, where we’ll deliver to LEAF Charter High School and Badger. We drive past large expanses of forest along the way, and the sky becomes a brilliant shade of blue.

Tracy tells me a little about the history of the LEAF Charter School, which finds itself in an old industrial building turned theater turned school on Mole Hill in Alstead.

“They’ve kept some of the old machinery in there, which is really neat. I’ll show you when we get there.”

LEAF is a small, innovative high school designed around a STEAM (Science-Technology-Engineering-Arts-Math) curriculum. It’s one among a variety of large and small public and private schools to which Food Connects delivers local food.

We arrive at the school and enter a busy sea of students and teachers. We drop off the food in an office at the front of the school, and Tracy shows me to a room where big, old machinery with giant gears is still displayed—now the backdrop of a classroom. But we can’t linger too long. We duck back outside into the chilly morning air and continue to Badger—a local skincare and sunscreen company.

Like some of our food producers, Badger is a certified B Corp, meaning they meet high social and environmental standards. I’m excited to see a network of good local businesses supporting each other through our Food Hub. Badger’s headquarters look like a summer camp, and we load delivery carts with food such as The Bread Shed pizza dough to bring into their cozy cafeteria. The whole building smells like yummy citrus oils that must be going into their products.

Our delivery route takes us past a lively brook and then up Pitcher Mountain. When the incline we’re driving up starts to level, Tracy pulls to the side of the road. It’s time for a snack break.

Our next few stops are a series of middle and high schools in Antrim and Peterborough—Great Brook School, ConVal Regional High School, and South Meadow School. These orders are for larger school cafeterias, so we drop off large quantities of carrots and other produce that their chefs will use in lunches. At ConVal, we greet the friendly chefs at work in the kitchen and pile their orders together by some shelves of food in the kitchen, being sure to leave a copy of their order sheet on top. At South Meadow, we load bags of food onto pallets in a large store room.

We often deliver to Dublin Christian Academy on this route, and Tracy theorizes that they might be on break. For today, our school deliveries are complete. 

I’m impressed by the variety of customers we’ve visited today, but our next stop is unique. Most of our deliveries are to businesses and institutions, but we drive off the main road to a co-housing community called Nubanusit Neighborhood and Farm for our next stop. They have several houses, a farm, a common house, and horses on the idyllic property. Neighbors buy from Food Connects together and distribute the products through a community shop. Tracy introduces me to the man who coordinates these orders, and he checks over the order sheet while we unload the van.

Our last stop in Peterborough is Nature’s Green Grocer. Tracy invites me to poke around the store, where I admire some fresh flowers while he drops off the deliveries. I walk down the aisles, trying to spot our producers’ products on the shelves.

I find Tracy back outside talking to another delivery driver he’s befriended. This driver is busy unloading boxes from his truck and tells me about the differences between his work and Tracy’s. At Food Connects, we work to deliver food in a timely and efficient manner, but Tracy doesn’t have to worry that taking a pit stop or a snack break will anger his bosses or impact his pay for that day. His friend tells me that he’s under a lot of pressure. Our conversation leaves me with a lot to think about. The community-based food system Food Connects works to build and support is much more personal than our mainstream one, even down to the way a small food hub treats its drivers.

We head back out on the road and travel through more of rural Southern New Hampshire, past a series of beautiful ponds until we emerge from the woods into beautiful, historic Harrisville—an old mill town straddling the end of Harrisville Pond. On the drive over, Tracy and I bond over our love of knitting, and Tracy tells me I can poke my head into Harrisville Designs to check out their jaw-dropping fibercrafts shop before we leave town. But first, we pull up to the back of the Harrisville General Store, which has a sizeable order from Food Connects today. We step out of the van and shed some layers—it’s starting to warm up. While some of our customers have had large store rooms for us to unload into, the general store is a small community business with a little hallway in the back where we creatively stack boxes and bags of food until they’re ready to be processed by their staff.

Before our last leg of the journey, in Keene, we have a stop at Camp Glen Brook. We drive up a beautiful winding hill and pull up next to a house where a loud dog greets us. Tracy points out the beautiful view of Mount Monadnock from the top of this hill—the namesake of the region we’ve been exploring today.

The last leg of our journey brings us back to Keene. We first stop at the Monadnock Food Co-op, an important customer and partner for Food Connects. Then we find ourselves in a bit of a pickle on Main Street, where there’s no parking available in front of Hannah Grimes Marketplace. Hannah Grimes is another important partner for Food Connects, in addition to being a customer. Some of our producers, like Jack’s Crackers, have participated in their entrepreneurial programs.

In the absence of parking, Tracy finds a spot to stand the vehicle, and I watch the van while he runs in to deliver their orders.

We have more luck finding parking in the lot behind Country Life Vegetarian. Country Life is a small health food store and restaurant, and I’m delighted to arrive at the top of their back stairs to a cozy and delicious-smelling kitchen with a wonderful-looking soup cooking on the stove. Tracy tells me he likes talking to the people who work here, and they know each other by name.

When we’ve carried all of their deliveries up the stairs, Tracy and I head to our final stop—Archway Farm. Archway produces local meat but also buys local food from us for their farm store. When we arrive, an adorable collie dog runs out to greet us, but food safety comes first, so I resist petting him.

On the drive back, we talk about our families, hobbies, and Tracy’s favorite music as we pass the rolling hills between Keene and Brattleboro. This has been an especially exciting look behind the scenes for me. As a resident of Keene, the commute from Brattleboro to Southwest New Hampshire has become second nature. Some of my friends teach at the schools or work in the stores we deliver to. 

Tracy is a vital point of connection between Food Connects and the Monadnock Region, bringing New Hampshire and Vermont foods to our customers each week. I’ve learned more about the place I live and the work Food Connects does by following Tracy along his delivery route. I’ve learned more about the breadth of community businesses and institutions we serve. I’ve also been reminded that the local food movement is about building a better future for food producers, eaters, and all the people who shepherd our food from farm to fork. 

For me, this trip comes at the end of a series of trips shadowing the inner workings of our Food Hub. It’s been inspiring and energizing at every step! But there’s more to this series you haven’t seen yet. Just a couple of weeks before this deliveries trip, I took my first road trip with Food Connects and saw the work that goes into building connections with new customers. Next time, I’ll bring you back to where this series started for some delicious gelato and an adventure up towards Manchester, NH, with Food Hub Sales Associate Beth Lewand and Linda Rubin, the woman behind Frisky Cow Gelato.