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(05/09/18 11:41pm)
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The Middlebury Farmers’ Market (MFM) started its summer market season last Saturday, May 5, featuring a variety of products including fresh produce, prepared foods and other Vermont crafts. This year’s outdoor summer market will run every Saturday and Wednesday morning from 9:00am to 12:30pm until Oct. 27. The Middlebury Farmers’ Market is especially known for its variety in organic vegetable and dairy items.
The summer market, unlike in the winter season, is held outdoors and offers a wider variety of different products. The summer season also brings musicians and special events such as the Grand Opening on May 26, Dairy Day on June 16, Red White and Blue Day on July 7, and the Harvest Festival on Oct. 13. This year’s summer market has also reached out to community partners for more special events like Homeward Bound’s meet and greet with dogs up for adoption this past Saturday.
While MFM was previously located at Marble Works, the ongoing rail bridge construction project led to a permanent relocation last summer to 530 Exchange Street, a less visible location from downtown Middlebury. “It’s a shame that there isn’t more interest from the city and downtown retailers to support a more centrally located Farmer’s Market,” said Laura Quill of Quill Hill Farms about the new location.
Though the past location was more easily accessible to pedestrians, the market has worked to make both parking and biking easier at the center for Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). “The VFW does have its advantages,” said MFM’s promotions and outreach liaison Elisabeth Woronzoff. “More space for more vendors, a beautiful green space to sit and enjoy the event, easy access to an ATM, a new and improved parking methodology and access to other great businesses located on Exchange Street.”
BENJY RENTON
Still, MFM remains a significant component of Middlebury’s community. “Addison County is so rich in resources that our market can offer an amazing assortment of fruits and vegetables, cheeses, meat, breads, crafts, and other products,” Woronzoff said. “The vendors are also creative and interested in experimentation, so you never really know what products are available until you stroll through their offerings.”
For instance, Quill Hill Farm tries to stand out in the market by offering a more unusual variety of vegetable products, including unique heirloom tomato starts, mixed purple green beans, spicy chili peppers, and distinctive garlic powders. “Our garlic powders are also unique in that they are a small batch made using a blend of eight varieties of garlic where some are spicier or sweeter,” said Quill. “We also dehydrate at lower temperature than traditional commercial garlic powders, which gives our powder a really deep, fresh flavor that you don’t get from garlic powder in the store.”
Woronzoff said that MFM is unique because “our vendors are also willing to collaborate with each other and other businesses in town. Having our vendors come together to show how their products work together is a key element to engaging customers.”
For some farms like Quill Hill Farm, MFM is crucial because restaurants and co-ops typically pay only 50 percent of the cost of the wholesale product, while the farm can sell to customers at full price at markets. Their sales at markets comprise half of their income. The market is also an opportunity for farms to expose tourists to their unique products, which can aid in progress toward online purchasing. However, selling at the farmer’s market does not come without its challenges.
BENJY RENTON
“One of the largest struggles we face here in Vermont with the Farmers’ Market is population size. Vermont just doesn’t have a lot of people, so while you as a farmer can produce tons of food, selling that food is difficult,” said Hill. “It’s also a struggle to figure out supply and demand of products/what customers will want that week. It’s often a guessing game which makes it especially challenging when your product is so perishable.”
Beyond the business, farms still consider the farmers’ market a rewarding venture. Hill said, “ I love talking to customers and sharing farming stories and educating people on growing organically.” The market provides an opportunity for vendors to interact directly with their customers and to share growing techniques and farming philosophies, Hill explained. “At the market we swap recipes with customers, see babies grow bigger, share in sadness and triumphs of life, learn all sorts of new things, and simply enjoy getting off the farm for a few hours a week being a part of a like-minded community.”
The MFM has also impacted individuals in the town of Middlebury beyond its farmers by bringing in many people from outside the town, who then stay for activities and events around town. “Essentially, the Middlebury Farmers’ Market contributes to the local economy and acts as a community hub,” said Woronzoff. “But the market also impacts more than the town, it has a huge impact on the county as well. Our vendors are from across the county, thereby creating an interconnection across sweeping farmland. That interconnection is an advantage for the town but then expands even further across the county. Our emphasis is on the local and that supports the individual and the collective.”
Woronzoff is also excited about the future of MFM and hopes to see it continue to expand and evolve. “Whether that means doing more outreach with community partners, hosting more vendors, or offering an even greater variety of products,” said Woronzoff, “the market must grow to ensure the success while contributing to our local economy.”
(04/26/18 12:48am)
Architecture students here are collaborating this spring and next fall semester with Addison County’s branch of Habitat for Humanity on a project to design two housing units. The houses will be built in spring 2019 on a single lot on Seymour Street.
Habitat for Humanity is an international and nonprofit organization dedicated to building affordable housing in order to address the housing issues that result from poverty. The local branch serves Addison County and is comprised of a 16 member board of directors made up of volunteers and over a hundred non-board volunteers
The Addison County branch was the result of collaboration between Margaret and Peter Carothers (co-founders of the chapter) and a Middlebury student’s interest in investigating the issues regarding affordable housing. The chapter built its first house in 1988, and has been building on a near-yearly basis since — it is currently finishing up its tenth house.
The average wage earners of Vermont aren’t able to keep up with the rising living costs, creating a need for organizations such as Habitat for Humanity. All Habitat houses are built by affiliates and volunteers using donated and discounted materials. An important function of the organization is its ability to sell houses without mortgage interests to families who cannot obtain traditionally mortgaged houses. Thus, Habitat is able to sell a complete three to four bedroom house including the mortgage tax and insurance costs for only around $125,000.
for Humanity going. “There’s no place to go but up,” he said. “We’re now a known entity in the county. And I think that the relationship we’ve had with the college is a very interesting one and that the administration is very supportive of experiential learning and this architecture class is a classic example of that. We already are certainly involved right now because we have a club at the college and student volunteers, like sports teams, along with others usually assisting in the building parts. So I see the chapter strengthening and look forward to the continued relationship with the college and college students.”
Prof. McLeod, too, concluded positively about the partnership between Middlebury and Habitat for Humanity. “This is an incredible opportunity for students to work on a ‘real project’ and everything that brings with it: real clients; permitting requirements; public opinion; budget limitations; construction issues; and the importance of making something thoughtful, respectful, optimistic and pleasing,” he said. “I think it’s incredibly important that everyone is working together to create affordable housing in Addison County—and energy-efficient, well designed houses at that—and I hope it continues.”
(03/15/18 12:05am)
MIDDLEBURY — The town of Middlebury received a $75,000 grant from the Vermont Agency of Transportation to support local businesses as the impacts of the construction of the Middlebury Bridge & Rail Project start to hit the town.
The construction is projected to cost $71 million, as VTrans works with the town to replace the two rail bridges downtown with a tunnel. The bridges are located on Main Street and Merchants Row. The two original bridges were almost 100 years old and rapidly deteriorating, leading the state to declare them unsafe and in “emergency condition” in March of 2017.
Temporary bridges were installed in August of 2017 to address the problem until summer 2020, when the new tunnels are projected to reach completion. However, the temporary bridge currently in place on Main Street has begun to show “alligator cracking,” due to heavy vehicles and the grade of the temporary bridge. VTrans anticipated these problems, and plans to repave the bridge deck and perform maintenance this summer.
The maintenance will require the temporary bridge to be shut down for at least several days. This year, the project will also involve creating a new drainage system, relocating key utilities and creating better access to the parking lot at Battell Block.
Unfortunately, local businesses have already begun to experience financial difficulties as a result of the construction project. For instance, according to the Addison County Independent, Carol’s Hungry Mind Café owner John Mealanson reported economic struggles starting with the shutdown of the original rail bridges.
“Business dropped off dramatically,” Mealanson said. “The summer tourist season is what carries us through the year, and being down just for that brief period, and then making it more inconvenient with parking and for pedestrians, has really cost us.”
The construction has led to the loss of nine parking spaces in front of Carol’s Hungry Mind Café, as well as five more spaces near the post office. In addition, the construction has made traffic flow in Merchants Row much more inconvenient for pedestrians, leading to an overall decrease in customer traffic in downtown Middlebury. This makes attracting customers difficult for local businesses fronting Main Street and Merchants Row, such as Carol’s Hungry Mind Café, that rely on foot traffic walk-ins.
Jim Gish, the rail bridge project’s community liaison, acknowledged the temporary financial hardships for the local business community and said that he is “doing everything we can to drive business during the summer of 2020.” He predicts that the most challenging impacts will hit that summer, as the rail bridge project comes to a close and construction will require shutting down Main Street and Merchants Row for an estimated ten weeks in order to finish building the tunnels. This is notable, as many local businesses earn significant parts of their revenue during the summer tourist seasons.
The $75,000 grant by VTrans is the first of three parts. Two more similarly sized grants will be given to the town in 2019 and 2020 respectively, as construction on the rail bridges continues. This grant is a response to Middlebury and the Bridge & Rail Project directly submitting a budget request to VTrans last December to help support local businesses and make up for the financial loss during construction. VTrans has previously given grants to other towns in Vermont for similar purposes to help local businesses during large scale construction projects.
This first grant will be used to supplement the marketing branch that can help out local businesses through 2018. According to Gish, the grant is divided into three parts “so we can gain experience in what works and what doesn’t to be best effective in supporting local businesses. The key focal point is the ambitious local shop campaign driven by both traditional and new social media advertising, and then go back to the state in 2019 and 2020 for more funding.”
The marketing branch is coordinated by Neighbors Together, a local community action forum at St. Stephen’s Church with Reverend Susan McGarry. Neighbors Together includes not only St. Stephen’s Church, but also the Local Project Management team, Better Middlebury Partnership, Addison County Chamber of Commerce, Downtown Improvement District Commission, Middlebury College, Town Hall Theater and Addison Central Supervisory Union. The partnership group’s goal is to create a solution-driven action plan and help Middlebury sustain and flourish its local businesses during the construction project. According to the Addison County Independent, current proposed plans for 2018 include, “shopping promotions, a loyalty rewards program, multi-media advertising campaigns, events, website infrastructure and improved signage and beautification efforts.”
However, while the short term impacts are harmful to local businesses, Gish says that the $71 million improvement in infrastructure will be a “long term significant improvement in streetscape and infrastructure downtown, driving business up. The project will rebuild rail tracks up to Elm Street and include a fully upgraded rail corridor to pave the way for Amtrak to start and allow opportunities for Middlebury to connect to New York’s Penn Station in 2021.”