2022 in Review
Food Connects Executive Director Appointed to Governor Phil Scott’s Future of Agriculture Commission
The Evolution of a Food Hub: Celebrating the Growth of the Food Connects Food Hub, Part I
Meet our Farm to School Program Manager—Kris Nelson
Growing Gardens Throughout Windham Southeast Supervisory District
Food Connects Is Celebrating 10 Years!
Harvest Dinner Returns to Newbrook Elementary School
A Day in the Life at the Food Connects Food Hub Part VI: Sales Trips!
Vermont Way Foods: A Catalyst for Change
Welcoming our New Afghan Neighbors with Culturally Relevant Foods
2022 Monadnock Earth Day Festival
Crafting a Local Lunch: How Windsor High School is Shifting School Meals
For the second half of 2021, the Food Connects staff chose the Cheshire County Conservation District’s Monadnock Localvores Jeffery P. Smith Farm Scholarship as the beneficiary of their employee charitable giving initiative. Our team raised $754 for the scholarship program, which “aims to send children to an area farm camp to discover the inherent rewards that come from cultivating with one’s hands and heart.” At Food Connects, we believe that all students should have access to hands-on outdoor farming and gardening activities and we were delighted to support this important program last year. One $250 donation covers, in full, one week of farm camp for a deserving child and we are excited to see our impact go to good use this upcoming summer.
The Jeffrey P. Smith Farm Scholarship endeavors to connect young people with agriculture and the natural world. Through this scholarship, the Monadnock Localvores hope to inspire the next generation of local farmers and local food supporters, by giving regional children an opportunity, through summer camp, after-school programs, or membership to the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Hampshire, to experience sustainable farming practices first-hand & watch their efforts bear fruit. The number of scholarships disbursed continues to increase as more and more community supporters realize the value of farm education. They offered 44 scholarships in 2021 and had previously offered 24 scholarships in 2019!
Do you know a young person who wants to connect with the agricultural world? Applications for the 2022 scholarships are due March 31, 2022.
Food Connects and the Vision of New England Food Systems
Our Farm to School Team is Growing
2021 Thank You!
Driving is more than getting us from point A to point B
The Taste of Food Connects is Back!
Farm to School Impact Report
Summertime Success
The Recipe Box
Happy Farm to School Month!
FTS Thank You
2020 Annual Report
Sustaining Donor Challenge
Farm to School Reflections
New England Cheese Hits the Road
Employee Giving Success
Round up For Food Connects
The Monadnock Restaurant Project Receives Praise
In January of 2021, Food Connects launched its first employee charitable giving initiative. After a round of nominations and voting, our staff chose SUSU commUNITY Farm to be the beneficiary of this initiative. 13 of our employees participated in this new giving program, totaling $1,222.00 for SUSU. Our team is inspired by SUSU’s grassroots, local efforts to address food and racial justice in our community. And we are excited to continue working with them, as both of our organizations grow.
SUSU commUNITY Farm is a Black and Indigenous stewarded farm in Southern Vermont. They offer life-affirming spaces for Black, Indigenous, People of color to thrive and experience safety while healing from the intergenerational trauma of systemic oppression. They are committed to bringing multiracial commUNITY together to build sustainable relationships based in reciprocity. They do this by supporting our people in connecting back to their traditional lineages and foodways, being guided by the wisdom of our ancestors, centering global majority-led and peer-supported culturally relevant programming, and building a statewide culture of liberation in Vermont.
Strategic Planning
Sprouting in the Classroom
20 New Producers from 2020
Vermont Food Ways
Monadnock Restaurant Project
VT Harvest of the Month
Food Connects is engaging in a strategic planning process with consultant Claire Wheeler. Claire helped write the organization’s current Strategic Plan, which is due to expire in June this year.
In light of our rapid growth and uncertainty with COVID-19, we are focused more on “planning” and less on having a “plan.” This planning includes building our internal capacity to engage in strategic thinking while focusing on a shorter 12-18 month timeframe. How do you plan beyond that time frame with all the changes and uncertainties?
We have also had a lot of catch-up work on internal conversations and systems due to doubling revenue during a pandemic! Additionally, some changes in the external environment (understatement of the year?) have caused us to slow down and think strategically about what Food Connects should or should not do. We are excited to be a part of several new initiatives with a wide range of partners and a lot of potential impact. Its been a fun challenge discussing how to continue growing while adapting to changes sustainably.
Of course, doing this virtually has its pros and cons. We hope to have an organizational-wide gathering (including staff, board, and food!) during the summer as a culmination of our work. Who knows, maybe we will all be vaccinated? We added several new staff and many of us don’t know what each other looks like without a mask!
Throughout the planning, it’s clear that our work is valuable and relevant to a wide variety of stakeholders in schools, fields, and throughout the community. We need to continue growing and maturing as an organization to be prepared to take on the increasing challenges and opportunities that are to come. We are all grateful to have such meaningful work during such challenging times. And we are thankful for all our stakeholders, from donors to farmers and farm workers to teachers and the school cafeteria staff.
Families in the Windham Northeast Supervisory Union (WNESU) received three free food boxes over the holiday break thanks to the tireless efforts of the Farm to School Cafe staff and farmers throughout the region. The food boxes contained a week’s worth of bulk meal ingredients for breakfast and lunch to help stretch families’ grocery budgets and keep students nourished over the long break. The Farm to School Cafe reached out to Food Connects to fill those boxes as much as possible with high-quality foods from local producers, including fresh NH-made bread, VT cheese and produce, and fresh fruit.
Thanks to numerous USDA waivers in response to COVID-19, universal free meals have been in effect nationwide since last March and schools have been operating under the Summer Food Service Program—which provides higher reimbursement rates per meal for schools. These two changes combined translate to easy to access meals for all students and a reliable revenue stream for school nutrition programs. The holiday food boxes extended that support through the break, all students qualified for this program—each family simply filled out a form for each student so the Farm to School Cafe team knew how much food to order.
“We were inspired by the Burlington School Food Project who blazed the trail on these meal kits,” says Harley Sterling, School Nutrition Director for the WNESU. “And grateful to the Vermont Agency of Education who has been incredibly supportive in developing this program.”
“Many students rely on school meal programs for both nutritious breakfasts and lunches each day during school,” says Conor Floyd, Food Connects Farm to School Program Manager. “When school is not in session, however, a gap in access to nutritious and filling food appears. Programs like the holiday food boxes allow all students in the supervisory union to have the same access to meals throughout school breaks, no matter their family’s income level.”
With increased meal flexibility as a result of the USDA waivers mentioned above, school nutrition programs have piloted new programs, including sending bulk ingredients home with students over extended breaks. These pilots often involve quick turnaround times and last-minute requests. Food Connects’ short supply chain and strong relationships with its producers helped the Farm to School Cafe access source-identified products from VT, NH, and MA on short notice.
"We're just thrilled that these universal meals programs allowed us to give kids and families in our community a little boost, especially this time of year,” says Sterling. “Making sure every kid has access to the great food grown and made in our area has always been our goal, and Food Connects makes it easy by letting us know what products are available and bringing them right to our kitchens."
With less than two weeks between the initial phone call from Sterling and the first delivery, the newly expanded Food Hub team sprang into action. The Food Connects Sales and Procurement Teams worked with Harley to brainstorm and source a variety of food products that:
families would eat but also inspire fun and new cooking ideas,
fell within the required price range,
were kid-friendly and easy for parents to cook, and
were hyper-local—the farthest items traveled only 87 miles while 7 of the 10 farms that provided food are located within 25 miles of Bellows Falls Union High School.
Once the orders were placed, the Food Connects Operations Team activated their network of dedicated drivers and expanded delivery fleet to pick up and deliver these orders—all while navigating their regular order and sales cycle to customers and capping off a record-breaking year in sales with Food Connects’ largest pre-Christmas delivery weeks ever. Although the Food Hub was closed for regular sales during the week of Christmas, the Food Hub staff generously volunteered to pick up extra shifts to ensure the orders made it to Bellows Falls Union High School in time for the Holiday Meal box distribution.
As the Farm to Cafe team kept families fed throughout the holiday season, they also bolstered the local food economy—buying food from 10 Food Connects farms and food producers: Basin Farm, Champlain Orchards, Dutton Berry Farm, Grafton Village Cheese, Green Mountain Orchards, Harlow Farm, Mi Tierra Tortillas, The Bread Shed, Valley Veg, and Yalla Vermont. Over $19,000 was spent at these local food businesses. “This is money that is going straight back into the community,” says McKenna Hayes, Food Connects Food Hub Co-Director, “being paid out to area producers and distribution staff, who in turn use those funds at other local businesses.”
So what did families actually receive? 2,100 pounds of potatoes, 852 quarts of yogurt, about 6,000 apples, 600 pints of cider, 180 bunches of kale, 1,100 loaves of bread, 600 bags of frozen blueberries, 1,416 pounds of carrots, 300 tubs of hummus, 400 blocks of cheese, and 300 tortilla packets.
Every box contained food as well as ideas for how to use it—providing students and families with educational tools to make easy, wholesome meals. “We sent out little educational activity sheets with simple recipes that anyone can do with just water and a microwave,” says Sterling. “From kale chips and cheese ("Mayan sandwich") quesadillas to baked potatoes and English muffin pizzas.”
“This is a great example of how our organization can collaboratively problem-solve to help our community,” says Hayes. “Harley relied on his partnership with our Farm to School and Food Hub teams and we leveraged our community-based networks and short supply chains to respond to the request quickly. It truly shows the successful ability to pivot school lunch services in the COVID-19 era.”
2020 Reflections from the Executive Director
What's Been Cooking in 2020?
Growing Markets for Local Dairy
Wow! What a year behind us, and who knows what is in store for 2021. What we do know at Food Connects is that we are all grateful to have jobs and meaningful work and that our community needs us more than ever during this pandemic and with the disruption to the food system.
We are excited to share and celebrate with the community that we nearly doubled revenue in 2020, including $1 million of local food sales! That means more dollars in the hands of farmers in our communities in VT, NH, and MA and more dollars recirculating back into the local economy. We extend our deepest thanks to our farmers, food producers, wholesale customers, and our community for their widespread support!
I am so grateful to the Food Connects team, which grew from 12 employees at the start of 2020 to 21 employees! I am so impressed with both the current staff in how they onboarded and trained the new team while doing their jobs, as well as the new team in adapting and getting up to speed quickly during the challenging times of COVID-19.
We continue to push hard on using our aggregation and distribution Food Hub to transform the regional food system. During the winter months, we are looking forward to bringing in source-identified food from real farms that may not fit everyone’s definition of local. What might be considered provocative, we see value in supporting local farms and supply chains that share our values of transparency, caring for the environment and people. Many of us are asking ourselves, “Would you rather eat broccoli from a family farm in North Carolina or a corporate farm in California?” and many of us are answering the former. Now it’s our job to figure out the logistics of making that happen and how that fits into our work ahead!
We continue to play a leadership role in strengthening the entire food system, knowing that a larger effort is needed outside of our current programming. Our strong, sector-spanning relationships have proved crucial to the success of many of these conversations, and our ability to connect schools, farms, local businesses, and charitable food organizations has been a keystone in the region’s response to COVID-19. Programs we were involved with sprung up quickly; ranging from small, focused efforts such as the Weekend Food Boxes, to statewide initiatives like Everyone Eats! which first piloted in Brattleboro. As we head into the new year, reflection and thoughtful planning is a priority. We plan to convene a community dialogue, providing the space to breathe and think collectively about how to capitalize on and improve the new partnerships and systems which have sprung up over the past year.
Our Farm to School program has developed a larger emphasis on food security in response to the pandemic, while still ensuring that robust farm, food, and nutrition education is supported in our schools. In the spring, we focused on ensuring gardens were planted and fully utilized as a refuge for families and students. This fall, we worked closely with administrators and food service directors applying for Coronavirus Relief Funding, maximizing the resources our local schools received.
This all of this means is that we are starting off 2021 with a bang and a clear focus on doing more of what is important towards our vision of Healthy Families, Thriving Farms, and Connected Communities.
- Richard Berkfield, Executive Director
Our New Look
Food Connects Gives Starts Today
Food Hub Receives Expansion Grants
Taste of Food Connects
Everyone Eats! Extended
COVID Can’t Get Us Down!
Farm to School Annual Report
Building an Alternative Food Supply
New Chapter’s Impact on Local Food Systems
New Chapter®, a Brattleboro-based wellness company, is leaving a lasting impact on the local food systems by being Food Connects highest-level corporate sponsor. New Chapter’s® donations in 2019 have paved the way for the most successful first half of the year in Food Connects’ history.
New Chapter® was founded over 35 years ago to bring natural wellness to others. New Chapter® believes in the healing power of nature, and that’s why they are committed to using whole-food and quality ingredients to make their supplements. As environmental stewards focused on human health, New Chapter® works to increase accessibility to organic food, farming, and traditional herbal medicine. And as a Certified B Corp, they strive to use business resources to help solve social and environmental problems—in communities around the world where their ingredients originate from as well as locally right in Vermont.
New Chapter® generously granted Food Connects $15,000 in 2019 to go towards the Food Connects Cooler Campaign. This successful campaign focused on the build of a new 1,000 square foot cooler and freezer space at Food Connects’ location at the Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation business park. With the help of New Chapter®, Food Connects’ was able to successfully complete this campaign and have a fully operational cooler and freezer going into 2020.
New Chapter® and Food Connects have a strong history of partnership. New Chapter® has a history of philanthropic support of Food Connects, helping the organization through its infancy and into a thriving organization. New Chapter® is not only an incredible source of financial support for Food Connects but, it has also provided volunteer support over the years including event support and a New Chapter® employee sitting on the Food Connects Board of Directors. Additionally, New Chapter® supports the food hub by purchasing food for its employee cafeteria and snack programs.
“Supporting Food Connects’ in their cooler campaign was an easy decision for us (New Chapter®) to make. Their mission of bringing fresh local food to those in need, right here in Southern VT, aligns holistically with our own mission and is something that we are proud to be a part of,” says Amerigo Pennoni, Director of Sustainability at New Chapter®.
The cooler and freezer that New Chapter® helped bring to life is supporting Food Connects through one of its busiest periods yet. The demand for fresh, local food due to the COVID-19 outbreak increased dramatically. Food Connects saw an over 200% year-over-year increase in sales in April alone, typically the slowest month for the organization. Without this additional space, the organization would not have kept up with the growing demand. The additional space ensured that Food Connects could continue to provide food for local co-ops, newly thriving farm stores and buying clubs, and students, through innovative meals programs, while also supporting local farmers and food producers a consistent and secure source to sell their food.
“Food Connects is so grateful for the generosity of New Chapter® over the years,” says Richard Berkfield, Food Connects Executive Director. “Their continued commitment to Food Connects and our mission lifts up and strengthens our local food economy. Their partnership is vital to our work.”
Food Connects plans to expand its refrigeration space even further in the coming weeks to keep up with the increasing demand for local food during COVID-19. If you are interested in becoming a corporate sponsor, learn more on their website: https://www.foodconnects.org/sponsorship.
COVID-19, undoubtedly, impacts all of us—our communities, our businesses, our families, our farms, our schools. Our team at Food Connects is fortunate enough to still be in full operation, albeit under very challenging circumstances. We’re telecommuting, leveraging community partnerships to feed families, and hitting local food sales records.
But what does it look like with our boots on the ground? And how is our team coping with this new reality? This is your opportunity to get to know our staff, professionally and personally, and find out how COVID-19 has changed our lives.
In April our work with schools took a brief pause while teachers and administrations figured out what the rest of the year would look like. In the meantime, community collaborations quickly sprung up and our work with the Hunger Council intensified. By the end of April, most school FTS teams were meeting virtually as well, so things got fairly busy. We're continuing to support schools but also have a larger community organizing role now. I'm looking forward to a little bit less screen time this summer!
We've been working with the Windham Southeast School District (WSESD), the Vermont Foodbank, and Foodworks on the weekend foodbox program through the schools. We're also a part of the team piloting a new aid program in Brattleboro before it goes statewide. It focuses on putting restaurants to work feeding the food insecure in our community. Both are really exciting, but also true collaborations with all the messiness that accompanies them.
There's been a big emphasis on community and a collective reevaluation of what matters most. While not all our new habits and collaborations will continue beyond the pandemic, I'm hoping that the most important and strongest ones will stick.
I've picked up mountain biking which has gotten me outside a lot more! I've been reading a lot more and have an ambitious stack of books queued up as well. My partner and I recently went on a camping trip where we did nothing but hammock, read, and swim.
I'm grateful to be able to work for an organization that has a direct role to play in our collective response to the pandemic.
We are focused on supporting school nutrition professionals in adapting to the many changes that have occurred in school meals due to school closures, coming up with creative ways to address increased food insecurity for families in our community like the food box program, supporting Farm to School teams with garden planning this spring, and writing lots of articles to help tell the story of all the amazing work that is happening in our schools during these unusual times.
My hope is that our communities will come out of this experience stronger and with a better sense of what it takes to care for each other and nourish families in our community. I think people are more aware than ever of the important role that school nutrition professionals play in feeding our youth, and of the importance of a thriving local food system that is accessible to all.
I've been working from home rather than going into the office and balancing work with supporting my 12-year-old daughter with remote learning. It feels like a lot to manage! In my spare time, I am cooking a lot and spending lots of time with my husband, my daughter, and our 2 cats. I have become even more devoted to long daily walks and my circus classes (now online), and I am strengthening my meditation practice.
I have been actively seeking out beauty during my daily walks and photographing what I see, I am journaling more often, and my daughter and I are gathering rocks from the river and painting them with messages of hope and healing and scattering them on the hiking trails near our home.
I'm grateful for my health, my family, the opportunity to do meaningful work at Food Connects, and the joy that I find from spending time outside in nature and listening to music that I love.
Since the COVID-19 epidemic hit the United States and New England, our sales volume has increased significantly at the Food Hub. This gave us the opportunity to hire more drivers and staff to help the Food Hub operate more efficiently and smoothly—a hugely positive thing for us. In terms of safety, we are implementing many new precautions—adding a bit of time to some of our routines.
Currently, I'm researching information about another vehicle to add to our fleet. Our sales and delivery volume has gone up greatly over the past year, and even faster during the COVID 19 period, and we are running out of capacity to move local products. We're looking at a medium-sized truck to add to our fleet—something in between the Sprinter and the Freightliner sizes.
The pandemic gave the Food Hub a new opportunity to tangibly help our local community—whether that be the farms that we purchase from or the people who end up consuming the food we deliver. COVID-19 has really highlighted why short supply chains are so critical for food supply safety and continuity. I believe some of the upswings in sales we experienced will stick, even after the pandemic subsides. People appreciate what we do and the service we provide. In addition to these things, I believe our community has come together during this tough time to support each other.
I've been busier than ever at Food Connects. We've hired a few new drivers and employees in the past few months, which allowed me to step away from some of the driving duties and focus on some other Operations tasks and projects, which is fun. My family lost our child care option for the spring and summer, which makes running our own small farm incredibly challenging. It's been stressful, but we're doing what we can to continue growing and selling local veggies for our community. It certainly feels more important than ever to continue doing so.
I've been taking a few more hikes with my son, who is now getting old enough for such things. And of course, catching up on some house and farm work.
I'm so grateful for my wonderful wife and family, who have supported me through all of this change at the Food Hub, and are proud to see me out there supporting local farms and the community. I'm grateful for my Food Hub colleagues who are, without exception, amazing to work with through this challenging time. A weaker organization might struggle with this kind of new pressure, but I feel it provides us a way to come together and collectively figure out a way to meet each challenge on a day to day basis. It's truly an amazing place to work.
I'm so thankful for Food Connects and glad to be an integral part of the local food system. It's truly an honor and feels like a meaningful pursuit. Not all people are fortunate enough to have such meaningful work. Hopefully, if anything positive comes out of this situation, it will be to highlight meaningful work for everyone and potentially shake up the system to allow more people to have these kinds of opportunities.
As one of Food Connects newest hires for the summer season, I wouldn't be working for this organization if it weren't for COVID-19. As a result of the global pandemic I, along with all of Peace Corps 7,200+ volunteers, was evacuated halfway through my two-year service with the Peace Corps in Jamaica. Although a big change I am thrilled to be working for such an impactful community organization here in Southern VT!
I am grateful every day for my health, the health of my friends and family, the opportunity to be back in VT, and enjoying the state's gorgeous outdoors and to be working on such a wonderful team here at Food Connects!
I’m almost entirely focused on simply keeping up! As someone recently told us, the COVID-19 emergency has "lubricated" the wheels of the local food system, including at Food Connects. Local foods are in greater demand than ever for a lot of reasons, I think, including the fact that local and regional supply chains are able to bounce back and adapt relatively fast. Our sales of local foods are up, on average, between 2 and 3 times what they were last year at this time. For those of us working behind the scenes to interact with customers, maintain supply chains, and physically move the food from points A to B to C, all that means we have our work cut out for us to keep the wheels turning.
This means fewer projects and more daily responses. But, though we're behind as a result of the shift in attention, we're still pressing forward with updating our distribution and sales software system. We're also working on putting together export programs for Vermont cheeses and other specialty goods. Other food hubs around New England and the East Coast are in a similar situation—scrambling to keep up, scrambling to find supply, and introducing new products for their rapidly expanding customer base. We're trying to figure out how to help Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts products make it into those broader supply chains.
This state of emergency is the best chance that we've had to prove what local and regional food systems can do, and it's a kick in the pants for us and others to "grow up," and grow up fast.
Working from home has blurred a lot of lines, but often in a good way—my 18-month old son is a bigger part of my weekdays than he was before COVID-19, even if that means just listening to him talking up a storm downstairs. And. after years of neglect, I've gotten back into cycling, to the point of mild addiction. We're also really enjoying spending a lot of energy on preparing memorable meals at home.
I'm grateful for the Food Connects team who've given so much of themselves to the work of boosting local foods over the last few months. It's been a difficult time in many, many ways, but I'm very happy to see that Food Connects and the food system will, hopefully, emerge stronger than ever.
My work as the Operations Manager with the Food Hub is much more intense; the stakes are higher both in terms of sales and customer expectations, but more importantly to me, in regards to keeping our staff safe and advocating for their needs to do this important work. We didn't stop during COVID-19, and continue to work hard to support our community. This requires our operations team to come into the warehouse everyday and for our drivers to be out and about picking up products and making deliveries even through the most intense periods of COVID-19. We implemented much stricter sanitation and safety protocols, and figured out how to adjust and manage immense growth on the fly, a hard enough task on its own, while also in the midst of the pandemic.
We hired three new employees to help us keep up, and will probably need to hire more as the busy season approaches. I am working on systems development to help ease hiring and training burdens as well as organizational development as our team continues to grow. We quickly developed more efficient operational systems, both in our cooler and vehicles, to increase the capacity of products that we can handle and safely distribute. We only moved into our new cooler space in November, and are quickly learning the best ways to utilize it most effectively—we are not afraid to test out new ideas and adjust in real time.
In a very strange way, the universe gave us a chance to step up and serve our community— to put our money where our mouth is and really prove the importance of our work. We always talk about the importance of local food and regional food and community systems, but this experience is putting that to the test. We provided food to our customers when larger, broadline distribution systems were struggling or focusing on serving their bigger, urban customers and we helped our producers pivot to access new markets. The pandemic has shone a very bright spotlight on the importance of resilient community and regional systems, especially food systems.
My personal life has slowed down and become much more intentional. The weeks are high intensity, so I use the weekends to really decompress and hang out. It has been nice not having plans every single weekend and is a habit I will take with me into post COVID life-19.
I recently purchased my first home and it has been fun working on house projects and setting up our gardens. We also recently rescued a dog—his name is Timer, he is 8 months old and loves to lounge in the sun just like me!
I'm so grateful to live in Vermont and belong to this community! I am also grateful for the incredible team I get to work with here at Food Connects, I continue to be amazed and inspired by each and every one of my coworkers.
My parting thought: Local Food is an Essential Service!
It’s been a strange few months since we received “stay-at-home” orders. I’ve transitioned telecommuting from my home in Keene, NH. I am fortunate to have the ability to do so with my work. As the COVID-19 pandemic was hitting our region, we were midway through a fundraising campaign focusing on improving food safety and market access for farmers. Thanks to the immense support of our community, we were able to exceed our goal.
And our communications work is now a mix of “business-as-usual” and new storytelling opportunities. We always share content supporting our local businesses and food access. Now we are in overdrive making sure we promote these programs and businesses, ensuring that the community has access to these resources and these businesses continue to flourish. We’ve pivoted some of our fundraising efforts to support unique challenges each program faces, we’ve worked to implement and promote a curbside pickup program for individual households, and I even did a stint working on sales for the Food Hub!
The pandemic is impacting our local food system in many ways. While there are more restrictions on farmers’ markets and restaurants are closing, we are seeing buying clubs form and farmstands and CSAs thrive. I hope that the support for local food and businesses, home gardening, and self resiliency continues after life gets back to “normal,” it’s actually been inspiring to see. Another silver lining? My work-life balance has significantly improved!
Transitioning to working from home was hard. I am extremely active in the local theater community and all 5 shows I was involved with were canceled or postponed. Since I’m home all day I’ve had a lot of time to recenter and focus on self-care. My gardens are thriving and I’m already working on preservation for the fall. I’m continuing to work out and have taken up boxing. And, I added two kittens to my home, Basil and Jenkins, courtesy of Karen!
As an extrovert, I’ve had to find new ways to stay connected and I’m grateful for those opportunities. I’ve had socially distanced BBQ’s, participated in virtual Lions Club meetings, written letters to friends, and continue to reach out and stay connected. I’m also extremely grateful for the flexibility of my team while I, virtually, teach culinary and theater classes at a local summer arts camp.
Like my colleagues mentioned, our sales continue to increase. For me, that means the number of receivables and payables increase. I am working towards a bigger push towards ACH payments for our customers to easily make their payments. I’m educating myself to understand the restrictions and guidelines for business operations. It’s a lot of work keeping up with Government COVID-19 funding and protocols. And mostly, I miss seeing ALL of my co-workers in person and our chats in the hallways.
I believe that because of COVID-19 there is now an increase in awareness of where food and other durable products come from. I hope this continues.
Although my part-time work for Food Connects was not impacted in a negative way, my farmstand/retail sugarhouse business was closed and the financial impact was and will continue to be substantial until the country re-opens and people feel comfortable.
Because the farmstand was closed, I actually decreased the amount of baking (my biggest hobby) as the outlet for the sales was unavailable. Living on a farm, I am just spending more time cleaning and caring for the animals.
I am grateful that I live in an area that was not greatly impacted and my family and friends are all healthy.
And I want to congratulate ALL Food Connects staff. The Food Hub Team for working hard through this pandemic with positive attitudes as we increased our customer base and our local food producers. The Farm to School team for continuing to build strong relationships with local schools as they moved to bag lunches versus cafeteria lunches. Marketing and Communications for creating a continuous line of communication with the public in regards to the great work Food Connects is involved in with the pandemic. And our Executive Director, Richard, for leading us through this and continuing to find additional revenue sources, so that we may continue to grow and strengthen.
- Growing Local Food Markets in the Monadnock Region
- Taking Action in the Era of COVID-19
- Farm to School Professional Development
- Food Hub Annual Report