Stephanie Gates became the Food Service Director of the Bennington Rutland Supervisory Union (BRSU) in February 2021. She reached out to us in September 2021 with a strong interest in sourcing local foods for her students. We talked to Stephanie to learn more about her work to promote local food through BRSU meal programs in partnership with Food Connects.
It’s early March of 2022, and after a long hiatus during the height of COVID-19, the Food Connects Sales Team is finally hitting the road with producers. I meet Beth Lewand, Food Connects Food Hub Sales Associate, and Linda Rubin, the woman behind Frisky Cow Gelato, at Linda’s house in Keene, NH. We’re driving out to meet potential customers in the Bradford and Southeast New Hampshire service area—one of our Thursday delivery routes.
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.
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.
Food Connects has been supplying the Simple Gifts Farm store with regionally-produced products since March of 2021. The partnership expanded this April when Food Connects began distributing fresh produce grown by Simple Gifts to other buyers in the area. We’re thrilled about this new, mutually-beneficial partnership centered around a love for fresh, local food.
We had a chance to talk to Jeremy Barker Plotkin, Founder of Simple Gifts Farm, about the farm’s unique story and inspiring approach to working with their animals, land, and community.
How was Simple Gifts Farm started? What was its inspiration?
Simple Gifts Farm started in 1999 when I moved to Massachusetts from Maine. I had just finished graduate school (in agriculture) and wanted to produce something more tangible. I started farming at the New England Small Farm Institute and bootstrapped the business from a half-acre up to 5 acres of vegetable production. In 2006, I moved the operation to Amherst and was joined by my business partner, Dave Tepfer. We took on the stewardship of the newly preserved North Amherst Community Farm. We met as interns at the Land Institute and have always been motivated by a desire to incorporate ecological principles into an integrated farm system (I run the vegetable cropping, and he raises livestock.). The North Amherst Community Farm property was the perfect site to also add a strong sense of community to our operation, as it is located within a residential area about a mile from UMass and was preserved by a tremendous effort from the community.
What makes your products unique?
My initial main marketing outlet was farmer's markets, so I have always been motivated to produce beautiful and flavorful vegetables that stand out amongst the other vendors. Salad greens and heirloom tomatoes are particular specialties of ours and really represent both a visual and culinary feast.
Can you tell us more about your approach to farming?
Our partnership was founded on the idea of rotating our land into pasture and using livestock to dramatically improve our soil health. Since 2019, we have taken our soil health program to another level as we are transitioning into organic no-till production. We are now at about 70% of our cropland in no-till production and are seeing definite improvements in the tilth of the soil. We are hopeful that this change will help us to adapt to increasing climate disruption by making our soils more resilient to extreme weather.
What is your favorite part of farming?
I love harvesting the produce; it is the moment that all of our hard work leads up to.
What is one of your favorite recipes you make with your produce?
During tomato season, I make a tomato-bread salad whenever I'm invited to a potluck or party. I typically use somewhat stale bread, broken up into pieces and then mixed with chopped heirloom tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, olives, garlic, and basil. The bread soaks up all the juice, and it is delicious.
Why is buying and selling locally and the local food movement important to you?
I love the idea of keeping our food and our economy as localized as possible for sustainability reasons. Over the last couple of years, the value of a shorter supply chain has been made clear as local businesses really stepped up to keep their communities fed during the pandemic. I see this need as likely to increase in the years to come.
How does working with Food Connects help your business/what are you excited about in this partnership?
We mostly produce food for sale through our farm store, but we also enjoy doing a larger quantity of a few crops to round out our business. We have sold some of that extra produce to Whole Foods Market, but their corporate structure has become increasingly hard to deal with, and we increasingly feel that that outlet is at odds with our values. Working with Food Connects gives us the opportunity to provide crops that will strengthen the local food system. We are also using Food Connects to supply our farm store with products that we don't produce ourselves, so it feels like we are completing a circle.
Any events coming up or fun facts about your business/products?
We do a Front Porch Jam every month at our farm store and will be doing a Harvest Festival in September.
Anything else you would like me to feature? Anything that you are doing to respond to the COVID-19 crisis?
Our Farm Store became a real fixture locally during the early days of the pandemic. We brought in a lot of produce from other local farmers, went to online ordering only, and really felt moved by the huge level of support that we had during that time.
Food Connects, a non-profit Food Hub in Brattleboro, VT, is excited to share its newest partnerships with schools across the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts.
Food Connects is a catalyst for food systems change—centering food consumption, education, and distribution around community-based food systems. The organization delivers source-identified foods to schools throughout the Connecticut River Valley. With a strong foothold in Vermont and New Hampshire, Food Connects has looked towards Massachusetts for ways to provide more value to school nutrition programs through regionally-grown and made foods.
And Massachusetts schools are literally eating it up! In the 2021-2022 school year alone, Food Connects has delivered more than $30,000 in regional products to Massachusetts schools. From beef, pork, and chicken to granola, yogurt, and gelato—the variety of regionally grown and made foods now on students’ plates is tremendous.
Both public and private schools throughout Massachusetts are shifting to regionally sourced food. Food Connects is thrilled to see the diversity of locations and types of schools—ensuring that all students have access to the same great food.
Private Schools
Northfield Mount Hermon (NMH) is a private boarding school and one of the leaders in the local food movement. When D.L. Moody founded the girls’ and boys’ schools, the schools’ farms were at their core, feeding the student body. And though the farm isn’t the only source of food for the school, it is still a core part of its culture and heritage.
On Friday, May 6th, 2022, NMH hosted its first Food Systems Teach-In since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was a day when the high school curriculum centered on food and food systems. And the classrooms weren’t the only thing full of food systems thinking—the dining hall menu for the day centered on regionally sourced foods.
Food Connects offered many regional products from regional producers, including:
Tom Brewton, Food Connects Institutional Sales Associate, tabled at the event during lunch hours and was able to share with students and faculty about the regional products featured on the menu. Laura Carbonneau, Food Connects Marketing and Outreach Manager and NMH alumnae, joined students in the classroom, speaking about the Farm Bill, climate resiliency, food, and food systems. The response from students in the dining hall and the classroom was enthusiastic and engaged—lots of “yums.”
Deerfield Academy (DA), located in Deerfield, MA, is another boarding school for high school students in the Pioneer Valley. DA is proud to boast a Farm Team, a group of students who help out at two local farms with harvesting and garlic preparation projects. Working with DA for the first time this school year, Food Connects has delivered various products, including strip loins from Big Picture Beef and burger patties from Robie Farm.
Eaglebrook School is a 6th through 9th grade all-boys boarding and day school also located in Deerfield, MA. This year alone, the school has purchased 3,672 pounds of ground beef from both Big Picture Beef and Boyden Beef.
Public Schools
Food Connects has a history of working with public schools throughout Vermont and New Hampshire, providing high-quality, regionally-sourced foods. The Food Connects team takes pride in extending those same products and services to public schools throughout Massachusetts’s Pioneer Valley.
Greta Shwachman, Food Service Director for Greenfield Public Schools (GPS), is passionate about integrating local products into her menus. This is no surprise, as she was previously the Farm to School Program Coordinator for the Chicopee Public Schools. Her passion for Farm to School has made adding regionally sourced foods to her menu seamless.
“Institutions like K-12 schools hold a lot of purchasing power,” says Greta. “I prioritize buying regionally-sourced foods to ensure that this power is used to support the local food economy. I enjoy the opportunity to meet farmers and producers, and help local food businesses grow and scale to have more success in the institutional market.”
Food Connects has supplied the GPS, which consists of 6 different schools, with ground beef from Big Picture Beef, bulk yogurt from Narragansett Creamery, and granola from True North Granola Company. And not just food but also promotional marketing materials, so students can connect with their food and the farmers.
“I believe that students should know where their food comes from,” says Greta. “And I enjoy working with Food Connects because they understand the importance of putting a face and a name with a product. I have appreciated the signage they have sent us, which includes background on the producer, and even the number of miles the product traveled to reach our cafeterias.”
Earlier this year, Tom met with Michael Onorato, Food Service Director of the Pioneer Valley Regional School District (PVRSD). Coincidentally, Michael was already familiar with Food Connects—he was previously the Food Service Director for Conval Regional School District, another school district Food Connects serves. To date, Food Connects has supplied the PVRSD with various products, including apples, potatoes, carrots, and eggs.
Food Connects is also working with Massachusetts Farm to School, whose mission is to “strengthen local farms and fisheries and promote healthy communities by increasing local food purchasing and education at schools.” The organization, aligned with both the Vermont and New Hampshire Farm to School programs, serves as a vital lifeline for Massachusetts schools to access support, curriculum, and other resources to develop Farm to School programming.
Food Connects will participate in the Local Food Networking Session on Thursday, June 16, from 3:00 to 4:30 PM in Greenfield at the John Olver Transit Center. This event will be a spring get-together for K-12 school nutrition professionals in Franklin County. The event will include vendor displays, sampling, presentations, and discussions. And while the focus will be on local food procurement, there will be discussions on other topics. The event is being co-organized by the Partnership for Youth at FRCOG (Franklin Regional Council of Governments), Greenfield Public Schools, and Western Mass Food Processing Center at the Franklin County Community Development Corporation. If you are a school nutrition professional and want to learn more, you can register for the event today.
If you are a food service director, work in a school, and would like to integrate more local foods into your menus, Food Connects would love to support you! At this time, their customer routes go from Brattleboro, VT, down I-91 as far south as Northampton, MA. Know that our routes are quickly expanding so we would be happy to hear from you even if you don’t fall within our existing geographic reach in MA. Please reach out to their sales team at sales@foodconnects.org.
“90% of the cooking we do in our kitchen is from scratch,” Craig Locarno, Director of Food Services for the Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union (WSESU) told us. “I am lucky to have a great team. I’ve been in school food service for almost 19 years, and I have the strongest team that I’ve ever had.”
Food Connects began delivering to Windsor High School at the start of this school year. While Food Connects delivers to the high school, Craig distributes the product across all his schools. And you might be surprised to hear the impetus of this partnership was… bread.
With the closure of the Vermont Bread Company, Craig Locarno was looking for a way to continue providing the students in the WSESU with locally made bread. Although the food service program is independently run and does a lot of scratch cooking, baking bread isn’t part of their daily routine. Luckily, Food Connects already has a partnership with a great local bakery that makes delicious sliced bread—The Bread Shed, located in Keene, NH.
Since our partnership with the WSESU began, we have delivered more than 1,000 loaves of bread from The Bread Shed. Food Connects and The Bread Shed worked together to develop and offer an affordable, child-friendly bread loaf that meets the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) nutrition requirements for school lunches. Craig was one of the first school districts to jump on this opportunity. In the past few weeks, he has increased his standing bread order from 45 to 75 loaves per week as part of their new soup and sandwich day on Thursdays—which has been a hit!
Craig is always open to new products that could be integrated into his menus, so he didn’t just stop with bread. Throughout the school year, he has purchased eggs from Maple Meadow Farm located in Salisbury, VT, and potatoes from Szawlowski Potato Farms located in Hatfield, MA, among other producers (read the interview below to hear about more). We are also connecting Craig with Carissa Brewton, from Grateful Greens, to introduce him to their Food Access program—an initiative to make sunflower greens more accessible and affordable for schools.
We had the opportunity to talk to Craig about the WSESU nutrition program to learn more about what has been a success in schools and why increasing the students’ access to local food is important to him. Check out the interview!
Can you tell us more about WSESU's independently run food service?
I think what makes us different is that we emphasize supporting local and making that a priority. We’re creating a program around what we can purchase locally. Of course, we are still a public school, so we have to follow the rules of USDA, consider cost restraints when buying from food contractors—but making education and supporting local farmers a priority. And I think there are a lot more directors doing that. A lot of directors believe in the same story and the same mission. It’s still pretty new, so I think we need to push the envelope, show this story, and show what’s possible. I think it starts with the administration and board. Thankfully I’m in a school district that cares about Farm to School.
What made you decide to work with Food Connects?
You’re the closest to me in the Upper Valley. It is important that I connect with the biggest liaison between farmers and schools. And Food Connects can help me to continue to build and grow a quality program.
What products have been successful so far?
So, I think The Bread Shed bread is a big hit. It’s the only bread we offer! Our vision and mission are to support local producers. If we continue to always give them the local and the commercial options, they’ll probably choose the commercial because it’s familiar. But we’re here to educate kids and expose them to farmers and food producers in our larger community. We make maybe 600 sandwiches a week on The Bread Shed bread. And the kids are enjoying it and come back the next week and get the same sandwich.
The fish sticks from Red’s Best were a huge hit. We haven’t served fish sticks in a while since COVID-19 hit. It’s really good to hear the positive feedback about them compared to some of the more processed fish stick options. We also served Vermont Salumi’s sausage, and the kids really enjoyed it!
We hear you have an upcoming pilot of Grateful Greens. What interests you about this product for the kids?
Sprouts are a tough sell in school, but my schools are small enough that I think it will be a good fit for the two programs we’re testing it out in.
We’re going to have Carissa from Grateful Greens come up and do a sampling in April. We’ll probably introduce it that day when she comes in, and then we’ll probably run it in the fruit and veggie bar to get the kids used to it before working it into salads like our soup and salad days for our spring menu.
Why are you interested in having regionally-sourced foods in your cafeteria?
I think it’s a combination of supporting local agriculture and educating kids. They are our future, and we need to educate them about what sprouts from a local farm taste like, what fresh asparagus, and what green beans taste like and look like. I’m in school food service to show kids what local Vermont food tastes like.
It’s nice to be able to support the good things in the communities, and it’s important for kids to understand the importance of eating good local food. We still have a lot of work to do on educating kids. We’re looking for more promotional materials for the local farmers and producers for students to help them learn more.
Is there anything else you'd like to share with us?
We do Harvest of the Month taste tests, and we do a lot of other Harvest of the Month work. Plus, we’re in the middle of trying to get school compost up and running.
If you’re from New England and read the news often, you have probably caught wind of how dairy farms in the region are struggling. And they’ve recently hit an even deeper blow when Danone announced they would stop purchasing dairy from over 90 Northeast dairy farms. In our role as a food distributor, we have a responsibility to our farmers to help them find solutions to problems like these.
When Pete Miller of Miller Farm (you might remember reading about them last year) came to Food Connects looking for ways to get his Vermont dairy into schools as another market for his high-quality product, we were a bit stumped at first. Schools often have milk available for students in single-serving small bottles. For many public schools, purchasing local milk every week just wasn’t financially feasible—making it a tough sell for Pete to invest in the special bottling equipment needed.
Enter Dublin Christian Academy (DCA). DCA is a local pre-K through 12th-grade private school in Dublin, New Hampshire. And a staple of most private schools is their school nutrition programs are often independently run, are not limited by the same USDA purchasing standards, and have larger budgets. When we approached DCA about purchasing Miller Farm milk, it was a no-brainer—the school itself used to be a dairy farm. And now, they have a standing order which makes creating the 8 oz single-serving bottles more sustainable for Pete. Knowing that he will have a consistent buyer for the products makes it easier to sell to other schools with less frequent purchasing schedules.
And since August 2021, DCA has purchased more than 2,600 8 oz bottles of Miller Farm milk!
We chatted with Bethany Paquin, Director of Development, to learn more about the school. We wanted to get to know DCA a little bit better and why they’re on board to help local dairy farmers like Pete.
What made you decide to work with Food Connects?
In 2020-2021 we weren’t able to offer a foods service program to our students because of COVID-19—we provided food to dorm students, but not our normal mass lunches. This gave us the opportunity to look at how our meal service worked. We wanted to offer different food choices and responsibly grown and raised products.
Our values align with “community,” and we love to source our food from farms and local producers. The campus was originally Staghead Farm, before the lands and buildings were donated to become a Christian school in 1964. At first, students were running the farm, which wasn’t sustainable for the school, but our early experiences have left us with very nostalgic feelings about that part of the school’s heritage.
How has the students’ response been to the Miller Farm milk? Are they excited that it is sourced locally?
The students are really enjoying having the local milk available. The younger students are especially enthusiastic about the maple and chocolate milk, which they haven’t had in the past.
Is there any feedback from the field trip to Miller Farm? What did the students learn?
Our seventh, eighth, and ninth-grade classes visited. The students are at a point where they are thinking more about where their food comes from and how it is produced. The students said they had a lot of fun and enjoyed learning about the milk bottling process and seeing all the animals, especially the cows that produce the milk. Silas Paquin, an eight grade student, said he drank a whole pint of milk and it was really good. Seventh-grader Sarah Ryan was amused by watching the chickens jump on the cows!
How has this benefitted your students?
There are certainly all the nutritional benefits. But it also develops connections for them in the community. More and more, the students get to recognize the businesses in the community where they get their food from—deepening their sense of place.
Anything else that you would like to share?
This past fall, we had an alumni dinner and featured some Food Connects producers, like Grafton Village Cheese. And this is just another opportunity to build some connections between these farms and the extended DCA family which includes alumni, former faculty, and former parents and grandparents.
Our parents are also really glad to see this partnership—knowing that their kids are getting good quality food from farms and businesses in the community that they trust. It’s a win-win!
When you were in school, did you know where your food was coming from? Was your cafeteria sourcing from a local farm? Were you excited about food and learning more about it? Luckily, the answer to most of these questions for students throughout the Essex Westford School District is a resounding “yes!”
Essex High School, and the district at large, started purchasing local food from Food Connects in late 2021. The school nutrition program started with products like cheese from 5 Generations Creamery (over 80 lbs already!—that’s a lot of cheese!) and sparkling beverages from Samara. As they continue to experiment with more local foods, the students are the ones who will see the real benefits.
To learn more about the program and where they are heading with local foods, we chatted with Meghan Martin, the Child Nutrition Administrative Assistant.
What made you decide to work with Food Connects?
We were looking to expand our local food purchasing. Food Connects has direct connections with farms in Vermont and it makes it easier for us to put a name to the food that we’re serving our students. We have had that direct connection to farms in the past and we are excited to be able to continue highlighting a wider variety of local food producers. Starting slow but hoping to expand the local offerings in the future.
Parfaits made with Narragansett Creamery yogurt.
What products have been successful so far?
We purchased Narragansett yogurt and beef from Boyden Farm. Because the high school is a larger kitchen they can do more cooking with different local products and try out more recipes to see what works best. Those two items worked well!
Right now, the local food we are purchasing is just going to the high school and occasionally gets sent out to other schools. We tested out yogurt at the 3rd through 5th-grade school which was successful. With the larger kitchen size and student body at our high school, we find that it’s easier to start there with our scratch cooking products with the goal of then expanding our offerings into our other schools to the roughly 4,000 students district-wide.
Why are you interested in having regionally-sourced foods in your cafeteria?
The Farm to School movement is so prevalent right now. We have dabbled in it here and there. What we really want is to bring whole fresh foods into the district while supporting the local economy. As much as we are able, we want to close the gap between our students and the local food system and create a lasting connection between the two. It’s exciting that we are able to expand their horizons with their culinary palette and teach them what types of food we have available in our area.
Spaghetti and meat sauce made with Boyden Farm beef.
We saw that this year meals in the Essex Westford School district are free for all students 18 and under. How has this impacted your meal program?
This was through USDA waivers. With the help of these waivers, we have been able to put more focus and resources back into our meal program and we’ve seen that on average 67% more students are choosing school meals. That’s significantly more engagement and more bellies full with high quality and nutritious foods.
Additionally, Scott Fay, Senior Child Nutrition Manager, and Andrew Peet, Child Nutrition Site Manager, really wanted to work with Food Connects because of the Vermont Local Purchasing Incentive. Both this incentive and the USDA waiver put more funds back into the program and the food we provide, which allows us to get higher quality products.
How has this benefitted your students?
The students are able to access more food through the school. The more nutritious food the kids eat, the more they are ready to learn and be active throughout the day. There is already lots of positive feedback about the meals we serve—the students and staff are excited about the fresh, local food they are getting each day.
Anything else that you would like to share?
This year we have tried to revamp the menu, with the hope that it will bring in more participation and therefore revenue for the program. This includes more scratch cooking with fresh, whole produce and ingredients and so far, we are getting lots of positive feedback from changes especially when we can serve foods like Shepherd’s pie using beef from Boyden Farm. It has definitely been a process doing it on a large scale and district-wide but we have an amazing team and we’ve been working out all the details with staff over the years. We’re very excited about all the new menu changes.
Additionally, we have a Farm to School program and have done cooking activities with students and taste tests in the past. Most of that has put that on hold due to COVID-19 but we have started small again by doing more school-wide taste tests with the younger students. Our hope is that we can do these taste tests to gather feedback from students and update our menu with their input. We are also looking forward to the possibility of incorporating more Farm to School and nutrition content into the curriculum.
