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(09/19/19 10:02am)
After six years of grocery delivery service, Middlebury Foods ran its final routes last weekend. Unable to financially support its business model, it will no longer continue as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Since the fall of 2013, Middlebury Foods has operated monthly deliveries of fresh and local foods to six locations around Addison County. Customers would place orders ahead of time, then student volunteers would pack and deliver groceries to the six sites.
Close to the beginning of every month, Middlebury Foods would conduct a ‘delivery weekend.’
“We would take all of the delivery food to our storage place in Shoreham, which had a big refrigeration house,” Middlebury Foods General Manager Kate Peters ’20 said.
Peters told The Campus that Middlebury Foods’ model worked due to volunteer work put in by students. The organization was entirely student-run, and was able to sell high-quality food at cheap prices because of its low fixed costs: a U-Haul rental, paying for refrigeration space, and buying the food itself.
Even with such low operating costs, the organization began to struggle to meet the needs of customers. This was not always the case. In March 2016, Middlebury Foods was featured in a Vermont Public Radio story that created a boom in orders from Middlebury residents.
Charlie Mitchell ’18, a current Middlebury Foods board member, was working with the organization at the time of the VPR piece. Following the 2016 VPR story, Mitchell said, the number of families buying Midd Foods orders ballooned to almost 300, from the 80 families who were placing orders when Mitchell started volunteering.
“We expanded our offerings beyond vegetables and meat to more of a full grocery service,” he said. “We started selling bread and pasta and cheese, a lot of it from local suppliers.”
While this growth in interest helped promote Middlebury Foods’ goal of providing locally sourced foods at a lower cost, Mitchell said that orders began to decrease slowly following their 2016 spike. Bea Lee ’20.5, a finance manager and one of Middlebury Foods’ 2019 summer managers, said that as orders fell, it became harder to sustain their delivery model, which relies on wholesale purchasing.
“The idea is to buy wholesale food or local products that we are able to resell close to the wholesale price,” she said. “That system works well as long as you know you can order in these wholesale block quantities.”
Lee explained that as fewer people placed orders, it became harder to meet the exact needs of customer orders while purchasing units of wholesale products. As orders dwindled, bulk ordering made less financial sense.
Lee said that ultimately, it didn’t make sense to continue the delivery service.
“The fewer orders we had per month, the less sense it made for us to continue purchasing in this manner of wholesale,” she said. “That made us think and pause and reevaluate the model that we were using.”
Lee, Mitchell and Matthew Sjogren ’20, an operations manager who worked alongside Lee this past summer as the other summer manager, all realized that the effort going into deliveries could be put elsewhere. Beyond being a retail operation for food delivery, Sjorgren said, Middlebury Foods presents an “alternative vision” for what a food system can look like.
“That vision, I think, is to connect people who are doing awesome agricultural work and to find a way to make that work more accessible to people who might not otherwise be a part of that system,” Sjorgren said.
Sjogren credited much of the success of Middlebury Foods to Mitchell, and said that the organization has lost the intensity introduced by the former general manager and board member.
For Mitchell, the decision to stop deliveries had to do more with the goals of the organization. He saw Middlebury Foods as an “anti-hunger organization” dedicated to alleviating food insecurity in Addison County, with Middlebury Foods’ wholesale buying, limited markups and volunteer work as the model for achieving that goal.
“It just turned out that the benefit was relatively marginal,” Mitchell said.
In addition, Mitchell said that the deliveries did not necessarily serve those experiencing food insecurity, as would be the aim of a traditional food bank.
“When we could take SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps), the use of SNAP among our customers was about proportional to the enrollment in our community,” he said.
Mitchell added that SNAP is not a reliable benchmark of food insecurity because many households that could benefit from the program might not be enrolled. He cited personal financial considerations and timing as reasons why some might not use Middlebury Foods.
Mitchell said that Middlebury Foods’ goals extended beyond addressing food insecurity. Rather, he saw it as an organization focused on creating a community around a better food system and provide food at low cost in the process.
Coupled with the high turnover rate of college students, the nonprofit, wholesale model under which Middlebury Foods operated became hard to sustain.
“It became more to juggle than we could handle,” Mitchell said. Many college organizations - including Middlebury Foods - struggle with leadership turnover and management changes, he said.
Peters estimated that between 50 and 60 customers placed orders for the final delivery. Though the organization won’t continue as a 501(c)(3), Peters hopes that Middlebury Foods buyers and student volunteers alike will seek to involve themselves in conversations about food systems and access in different, more effective ways.
“I think most of the people who bought from us [did so] because of the interaction with the students and interaction with the community,” she said. “I hope that we continue that in some other form, but it just doesn't really make sense to operate as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.”
Sjogren agreed that Middlebury Foods, though finished with deliveries, will continue to exist as an organization interacting with the local food system. After having conducted its final deliveries, the organization will donate its remaining financial assets to HOPE and John Graham Shelter.
“The physical retail operation is gone,” Sjogren said,“but I think that a broader vision very much remains and that the ethos of finding innovative ways to change the food system for the better is still there.”
Delivery teams and produce hauls: through the years
For six years, Middlebury Foods provided Addison County towns with a localand affordable food option. Let’s take a look.
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(04/18/19 10:32am)
For Aless and Matt Delia-Lôbo, making coffee has never been about the money.
“Working in coffee pays terrible because it’s minimum wage, but you’re also a craftsperson,” said Matt. “What I’m hoping to do with the cup of coffee we’re going to be serving is to help push the craft itself.”
The couple, who are planning on opening Royal Oak Coffee at 30 Seymour St. in Middlebury around May 1, hope to fill a void left by Cursive Coffee, a specialty coffee shop that closed its doors after nine short months of operation.
“Cursive Coffee was two guys: one person would work each day, and they would alternate,” explained Matt. “We would visit them as much as we could, and we saw the hole that their departure left — people saying, ‘oh, good coffee is gone.’”
In a time when coffee is one of the world’s leading commodities, Matt and Aless hope to brew a cup that tastes good, is ethical and draws the community together.
“I think that where the industry is going, you have people who are trying to make it so that anybody can get into coffee, work at one of these bigger companies, and then you can learn how to make it that way [...] in their stores,” said Matt, explaining that such companies tend not to cater to individual pallets. “Even when you’re trained to [make coffee] in a certain way, you’re going to do it differently because of all the physical variables that go into the making of a cup of coffee,” he described.
With years of barista-ing under their belts, Aless and Matt feel qualified and ready to pursue their dream of opening a shop. Aless, who started working as a barista seven years ago, met Matt while on the job.
“When we were working at the coffee shop where we met, we both got really into the drink creation side of the business and all the science around that,” Aless said. “Matt and I realized that coffee could be something way cooler than it was at the place where we were working back then.”
Over time, it became clear to the couple that opening a shop of their own was something that needed to happen.
“If your passion is being behind a bar, making coffee for people, your only option is to open your own shop,” said Matt. “Even being a lead barista, you’re only making a few bucks more than someone who started yesterday.”
While the coffee industry does not draw handsome wages for its baristas, the money made by growers is far lower. Aless and Matt hope to bring customers an ethical and delicious product while also maintaining an accessible reputation.
“Every consumer has the option and the right to be informed. We don’t want coffee to be some untouchable thing, but we also want people in the supply chain to be treated with respect and dignity,” Aless explained. “We have a huge sustainability mission with our own company, and we believe that agricultural and retail-driven industries should include a conscious consumer. I think it would be amiss to not get ahead on that.”
“I think that coffee can change how people view something,” added Matt. “The pricing of our coffee has an effect, and we want people to think about that, especially since in our culture people are buying coffee all the time. We want to be the coffee version of someplace like the Co-op, where you can read about the people who grow your food and know where your money is going.”
Beyond the ethics of the coffee itself, Aless and Matt hope to create a space that makes people feel welcome and at home.
“We want to make a space where people feel comfortable when they come in to see us,” Aless said. “We want to have good music, we want to have conversations with everyone. We want to be part of the community on a personal basis, and we want to make the shop a place that people want to be in.”
As part of the third wave coffee movement, which emphasizes the origins and ethical production of artisanal coffee, the two are working to deconstruct the stereotypes that tend to follow coffee culture in cities.
“We really want an unpretentious approach,” said Aless, “and I think that when you bring in terms like ‘specialty coffee’ and ‘third-wave coffee’ and that’s kind of the umbrella term, but our approach is much more universal.”
Matt addressed other concerns that have arisen in more urban spaces upon the arrival of more specialized coffee shops: “Coffee like what we’re bringing has been seen as a harbinger of gentrification. People see the coffee shop going in and think, ‘Oh, now rent is going to go up and all the weird hipsters are going to move in and crowd the space,’ but I feel that here, there’s no danger of that happening,” he said.
In a place where coffee’s reputation is less stigmatized, the couple is excited to share their craft with the world and is eager to have Middlebury residents sample their brews.
“I hope people trust us enough to try black coffee,” said Matt. “I hope people care a little bit about what the coffee itself tastes like, just to see and experiment. In terms of a place like this, it’s always fun to try a black coffee and see what it’s like.”
Regardless of the adventurousness of their future customers, Matt and Aless have already observed the community’s embrace of their future shop.
“The community here is incredible,” said Matt.
“Yes,” added Aless, “I don’t think I’ve ever gotten so many hugs from strangers in my life.”
(03/21/19 10:40am)
Thad Poulson and Angelo Lynn live 3,000 miles apart and have never met. As owners and publishers of independent newspapers, however, the two have experienced the recent decline in newspaper prosperity together.
“Until maybe ten years ago, we had no financial worries — we were on top of the world,” said Poulson, who has been running Daily Sitka Sentinel in Sitka, Alaska with his wife, Sandy, since 1969. “The newspaper had really hearty circulation and good advertisers, and we didn’t have any trouble finding staff.”
The glory days of print journalism have since ended, however.
“Things are much different now,” Poulson said. “The number of paying readers has peaked and we are on a slow, downward slope right now. Costs have outpaced the growth in earnings. The newspaper is not a prosperous operation anymore. We are holding our own, but it is nothing like it was in the old days.”
Lynn, owner of the Middlebury-based Addison Independent and other print publications, has also seen this decline, though he remains more optimistic than Poulson.
“The Addison Independent used to make more money than it does now, but whatever,” said Lynn. “Hopefully we can still make a living doing it. I think there is a way to make money in the newspaper business, but it won’t make as much money as it used to.”
Lynn, who has owned the Independent for the past 35 years, is not new to making changes in order to preserve the operation.
“We used to have a printing press here,” Lynn explained, “which was the reason the paper wasn’t making any money at the time. After we sold it and started printing at my brother’s press, we had more time to focus on the newspaper part and less on the printing part, so that solved that problem.”
For Poulson, though, sending his five-day-a-week paper off to a printer is not an option.
“If we were going to print less than a daily, we would sell our press and make a deal with a neighboring town to have it printed,” Poulson explained. “The press is a big expense for a small operation.”
Sitka, home of Poulson’s paper, however, is 92 miles from the nearest city and located on an island with no roads that lead out of town.
“We are so far away from everything we need to put the paper out,” he explained. “The paper that we print on comes from a paper mill three hundred miles from the coast of Washington State. We pay for a big van to be hauled empty three hundred miles to the paper mill, and then for the van full of paper to be hauled three hundred miles back to Seattle and shipped on the barge, eight hundred miles north to Sitka. Just the shipping costs over seven thousand dollars.”
Why keep paying such an immense price? For Poulson, the hefty price tag is worth it to keep the newspaper a daily.
“There are no other daily newspapers within a circulation area that would include Sitka. There are no other newspapers that can circulate in Sitka on the same day of publication,” he elaborated. “That isn’t the case in almost any other place you can name in the United States. We’re the only game in town if you want to have a print report of the world.”
Though the cost of running a newspaper is immense, the digital age has been even more taxing on the business. Sentinel reporter Shannon Haugland believes that a generation raised in an era of screens is to blame.
“The younger generation doesn’t want to pay for anything,” Haugland said in an interview. “They don’t want to pay for content. Younger people find ways to steal movies, steal TV, and use the free videos that are available. I just can’t imagine a younger person today buying a newspaper the way I did.”
Poulson agreed.
“Anything that people can get free, people are going to get free,” he said. “A newspaper costs money. There are circulation pressures on newspapers all over the place. With loss of advertising, newspapers make cuts to their news staff and they start to fail financially.”
Lynn has also felt the pressure of the digital revolution, here in Vermont.
“Digital is a huge challenge because it spreads the staff thin. You are at a point where you are trying to do a print edition along with digital and social media,” he said. “The website is one thing because you just take the printed news and put it on the website, but that doesn’t work to engage with the social community. Now, you have to do social media, which is like another business.”
This “other business” is not something that Poulson has the patience to entertain.
“The business is so much different now than it was years ago,” he said. “And when you get old like Sandy and me, it’s hard to keep up with all the things that we should be doing to keep ahead in this very different newspaper environment that we have now.”
While this digitization has played a huge role in the decline in paper sales, the struggles induced by social media go beyond the loss of interest in physical papers.
“I think the problem with social media is that on its own, it doesn’t have an editorial component,” said Lynn. “Newspapers get their reputation because they have editors and they put things into context and have reporters who have been doing things for a long time and they have some trust in the community. The problem with the Internet is that you don’t know where your news comes from, who the person is, what agenda they have, any of those things.”
Lynn is not alone in believing in the importance of newspapers as providing a filtered and analytical source. Poulson, too, believes that the reliability newspapers have provided for centuries is under attack by the immediacy of news received on screens.
“The digital communications revolution has changed the landscape all over the place,” Poulson said. “People get their information from the online sites that aggregate news from other sources. That’s the frustrating part— the news on those sites isn’t always from news sources. It’s been reconfigured and stolen and stitched together by anyone who feels like it.”
Old fashioned as newspapers may be, Haugland believes that they remain more than relics of a bygone age.
“I think people like having a newspaper, and I think a lot of people agree that when they move to a town and there’s a newspaper, it says something about the values of the community,” she said.
Without a paper, Haugland said, those values would be lost.
“I think newspapers are really important to communities because they hold people accountable,” she explained. “They hold decision makers, lawmakers, city officials, school officials, anyone working in the public sector, anyone working in the private sector— they hold all these people accountable in a way that isn’t reproduced anywhere online.”
Lynn agrees that papers are important. “There is still a role for community papers because they get everyone on the same page, so to speak,” he said, comparing this to the number of different sources that people can gather information from now. When the community reads from fifty different sources […] , what you’re reading isn’t what they’re reading.””
It is this sense of duty that has caused both men to keep to their newspapers for decades.
“I stay in the newspaper business for the love of the community and the role that the paper plays in the community,” Lynn said. “It’s worthwhile to think that your job is to inform the town in a way that makes it stronger. I don’t know what else you do. It’s like you just can’t quit, for some reason.”
Poulson’s response tapped into that same mentality. “There’s the notion that publishing a daily paper in a town this size is our calling,” he said, “just as someone feels called to praise the lord, to run a church, or to be a preacher. We’re the newspaper people.”
“You have to love it,” Lynn concluded. “If you don’t love it, it doesn’t work— it runs you ragged. But it’s a very worthwhile thing to do, or it seems very worthwhile. I don’t know what else I would do.”
(03/07/19 10:59am)
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The doorway that separates the lower level of Davis Family Library from Middlebury’s Special Collections is rather unassuming, considering it is the entrance to a space that contains some of the college’s most prized material belongings. It is rather like a certain pub in Harry Potter that is visible to witches and wizards while Muggles walk past every day without turning their heads.
“We often meet students in their senior year who have never come down here,” said Rebekah Irwin, the director of Special Collections. “This is a really secure space: it’s both a temple and a prison. We’re behind locked doors and we have special security systems, so that can be quite intimidating and can feel a bit privileged.”
Indeed, the hyper-secure space located under Wilson Café is a fascinating juxtaposition between temple and prison. In a space that contains two first editions of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and books written over 400 years ago, the intimidation of interacting with Special Collections is undoubtedly warranted. To enter the space and to engage with the materials, however, is a priceless experience that is available to anyone who asks.
“We try to be as open as possible,” Irwin said. “That’s one of our challenges — making sure that this feels like a space that students can come to.”
Though its closed-off appearance may be daunting, however, the discovery of Middlebury’s Special Collections and Archive feels like the discovery of an ancient ruin, an oasis tucked away in a desert of bleary eyes and blue recliners.
“In Special Collections, we adhere to the idea that an artifact itself can teach us something and speak to us in a way that a digitized copy cannot,” Irwin said. “Digitalization is great and can do all sorts of things like a keyword search, but we like to think that side-by-side, the two complement each other. When you see a book that was held by an antislavery activist in the United States in 1850, it gives you a sense of the experience and the lives lived at that time.”
To Irwin, Special Collections is an opportunity to learn about the past with the aid of physical objects. If nothing else, the collection is a space created to humor the visceral response humans have when holding documents and articles held by other humans centuries in the past. Its existence, furthermore, is a testament to the importance of history and the humanities at Middlebury College.
“Recently in the news there have been these stories of the catastrophic declines of humanities majors in colleges across the United States, and some people have worried that studying history has become an exclusive privilege,” explained Irwin. “But when you have a historical view, you can see that the fights we are still fighting today have been going on for decades, and you can learn from them and win battles that are still ongoing. We can see that through lenses of race, sexual identity and gender. Without that, you feel like the battles today have no historical precedence, and you try to fight them without any ammunition that’s been learned from the past.”
Though Special Collections exists to teach Middlebury students about the past, Irwin has been tasked with focusing on the preservation of the present for future students.
“We need to collect as much as possible to tell our stories,” she said. “How we preserve the past is changing, and we don’t exactly know what it will look like to study the history of Middlebury College fifty years from now. We just had a class in that was looking at when the first student organizations and clubs for LGBT life and African American life emerged. We had newspapers and some meeting notes, but no student organizations take meeting minutes anymore. We don’t know the answer to how history will be preserved going forward.”
Through the uncertainty, however, Irwin believes that people will continue to create physical items that can ultimately end up in the archive.
“We try to collect things off of bulletin boards. Students still make lots of posters,” she said. We try to actively collect those and other things that capture the events on campus. I don’t see a time when students will stop making posters.”
Even if they do, Irwin is confident that Special Collections will find a way around digital obstacles.
“I hope that it will always be important to express political and cultural ambitions physically, through t-shirts and water bottles, because we can collect all of that,” she said. “And though the physical material may slowly go away, we hope that something will take its place. We hope that a student will still be able to search on [the Special Collections] Instagram pages 25 years from now to get a sense of what student life was like.”
(02/28/19 11:36am)
MIDDLEBURY – Following three days of physical labor and over three months of planning, Middlebury’s Recreation Center at 154 Creek Road received a new dance floor last week. The brainchild of Christal Brown, Chair of the college’s Dance Department, the floor’s upgrade came to fruition after being a goal of hers for about a year and a half.
Brown directs and oversees Dance Xplorations, which has used the Rec Center space and will benefit from the newly installed floor. The group offers 10-week sessions in ballet, jazz, contemporary and hip-hop “designed to increase body awareness, technical trainings, confidence, and performance skills,” according to the organization’s Facebook page.
“Before last week’s installation, the floor was just a regular linoleum concrete floor,” said Brown. “It just wasn’t designed for dance.”
Dancing on concrete forces one’s bones and joints to absorb the energy exerted when they jump and move. The new floor installation aims to keep shin splints and other injuries and discomforts to a minimum.
“Dance floors are very particular,” explained Brown. “They are floors that are lifted off the ground, providing a certain level of buoyancy so that the shock absorption between joints over time is not harmful to the body. It’s the same way that a basketball court is designed for basketball.”
Brown had been hoping to update the floor since 2017 when she began working at a program at the Rec Center, but the idea became more concrete following her 40th birthday party on Nov. 17, 2018, a bash that she hosted at the Town Hall Theater.
“For my birthday I wanted to ask people to contribute to something different than the larger Facebook campaigns,” Brown said. “I wanted to make sure that the impact was felt immediately by the community that I am a part of and that I work with.”
Brown chose to gear her birthday party towards creating positive change in the community by making it a fundraiser for the project.
“I wanted to make sure that my party was not only fun for me and had a real celebratory mood, but that the impact of the giving could be felt by the community and not just in my life,” Brown said.
The party raised $2,500, and attracted the attention of Sean Flynn, President of Silver Maple Construction, who decided to involve his company as part of a larger effort to start more pro bono projects.
“At Silver Maple, we’re looking to start a backlog of pro bono projects,” Flynn said. “We’re hoping to do either a project every month or maybe a larger one every quarter moving forward from here.”
“Silver Maple Construction decided to donate their time and the materials,” Brown said. Now, she explained, the money raised at the Town Hall birthday bash will go to scholarships for residents to have greater access to dance classes.
The floor installation has been a resounding success for all parties involved.
“Our company is already strongly involved with the community, but we want to make our involvement more regimented and occurring on a regular basis,” said Flynn. “I think that the floor was a great fit in this particular case because it’s supportive of the arts but also supportive of people who may not be able to attend a regular dance school. I think it’s a win all the way through.”
Brown’s experience growing up in a smaller community partially inspired her project idea. “It feels great to give back to the community,” she said. “I come from a very small town in North Carolina where I know that the only reason I am who I am is because people invested in me when I was a young person.”
Brown recognized how hard it can be to fit giving and charitable acts into already full lives. She continued to say, however, “I think the more creative we are with the resources we do have, the more we can figure out ways to impact other people.”
Like Brown, Flynn’s decision to help with the dance floor went beyond directly supporting dance and the safety of dancers. He also cited a desire to give back to the Middlebury community as a major motivation for the project.
“Middlebury has been very good for this company,” Flynn said, “and I think that it can use a little boost. I think that it feels like we’re in a little rough patch lately with things closing and reopening, so having a cohesive community effort that builds community back up is important.”
The floor will do exactly that, with spring classes in session as of Monday. It will also provide a space where college students and people of the town of Middlebury can safely move together.
“I’m so excited about the floor,” said Dance Major Marquise Adeleye ’20. “I can’t wait to dance on it, to have my ankles feel great the next day.”
Though Flynn himself will not be taking classes anytime soon, Brown encourages anyone interested to try a class.
“Come check it out,” she said. “Come dance with us!”
For more information, visit www.facebook.com/dancexmidd or email Dancexplorations@gmail.com.
(02/14/19 10:56am)
Vermont’s winter weather is often harsh and unpredictable, but this doesn’t stop farmers throughout the state and nation from braving the conditions to produce crops year-round.
“We don’t ever stop producing,” said Justin Rich, owner of Burnt Rock Farm. Located in Huntington, Vt., Rich’s farm primarily produces storage crops, along with a few summer varieties. “We mostly grow potatoes, winter squash, sweet potatoes and onions,” Rich explained. “In the summertime, we grow some tomatoes and spinach as well.”
Burnt Rock Farm, which has been operating for nine years, began producing winter varieties out of necessity as Rich’s other commitments during the summer months left him with little growing time.
“When I started this farm, I was managing another farm, so I didn’t have much time,” Rich said. “I couldn’t go to farmers’ markets or start a CSA or anything, so I started growing storage crops, because I had more time in the winter.”
While Rich had no time to focus on a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), Denver farmer Yosef Camire did exactly that. After moving to the outskirts of the city to raise his family on a homestead, an over-seeded vegetable garden paved the way for his organic CSA, now the largest in El Paso County.
“We basically made a farm that was too big for us, so we sold the extras and had a small, teeny CSA with about twelve members,” Camire said. “The response was overwhelming: the right place at the right time. So we doubled the year after that, and the year after that we doubled again and now we’ve doubled about four times since we’ve started, in 2014.”
In 2019, Camire plans on harvesting around 100,000 pounds of handcrafted food.
“This year, we’re going to grow around eighty different crop varieties,” he said. “We don’t use any tractors, we don’t till and we don’t use any chemicals or pesticides or anything synthetic. All we use is stuff we can make on the farm.”
Like Camire, farmer Will Stevens believes consumers are after a product that is produced locally and grown sustainably.
“It comes down to providing good-quality food for people at affordable prices,” Stevens said. As the co-founder of Golden Russet Farm, Stevens, like Camire, has seen his farm expand since its conception in the early 1980s.
“We started the farm because it seemed like it was a good thing to do,” Stevens said. “It seemed as if there was a need for this type of thing and we wanted to be a part of it. It was pretty serendipitous, really — we were given the opportunity to grow some vegetables on a neighbor’s property and sell things at the Burlington Farmers’ Market, and it just grew from there.”
Though Golden Russet Farm does not produce winter crops, the winter months remain a busy time for Stevens and his family.
“Right now, my wife and daughter are sitting down, coming up with the plans for the cut flower production,” Stevens said. “That includes ordering seeds, spacing, deciding where we’re going to plant things, what dates we’re going to plant them, et cetera. We do a lot of work in January so we can easily implement what we’re going to grow later in the year.”
In addition to planning the upcoming season, Stevens allocates a portion of his winter to the business side of his farm. “We also spend a lot of time tying up the book work from the previous season, doing all the tax filings, reporting and the maintenance stuff that didn’t get done during the growing season,” he said.
Rich, whose growing season continues into the winter, attested to doing much of the same during winter months. “I spend all my time at my desk in the wintertime, ordering and crop planning and bookkeeping,” Rich said.
In addition to winter activities akin to Stevens’, Rich keeps busy with the growth and harvest of winter crops. “In the wintertime it’s all cold weather crops,” Rich explained. “Growing is way different. It’s much more difficult. You have shorter days, so you have less time to work, and in the morning and afternoon you have opening and closing procedures which take an hour and a half to two hours both in the morning and in the afternoon.”
Camire also commiserated with the difficulty of growing winter crops, which he does without the use of a greenhouse. “Diseases are more prominent in winter,” Camire said. “You can’t reseed, and if you do, you won’t get anything for six months. The timing has to be perfect: the crops have to be three quarters mature by the time Nov. 15 comes around, which is the ten-hour day. Nov. 13 was our ten-hour day. You have to make sure your crops are three-quarters grown by then because they keep growing throughout the winter, but very, very slowly, and it all depends on the winter.”
To add to the hostility of winter growing, Camire’s refusal to use greenhouse technology has made farming during Colorado’s winter months a gamble. “This year we are having a very cold winter. It’s the coldest on record, so our selection really stinks,” he said. “We’ve lost some crops.”
These risks are foreign to Dave Hartshorn, co-owner of Green Mountain Harvest Hydroponics, a greenhouse situated on Hartshorn’s organic farm in Waitsfield, Vt. “In the hydroponic, we have a protected environment where we can grow anything we want in the winters of Vermont,” Hartshorn said.
Hartshorn realizes that the greenhouse is particularly helpful in a place with rapid weather fluctuation. “Last week, we were fifteen below, yesterday we were fifty above, and tomorrow we’ll be back below zero. In the summer we are in the nineties a lot,” he said. “Because of recent new technologies, however, anything can be grown in Vermont because we have the ability to create any environment in the world in a greenhouse setting.”
While Hartshorn’s winter harvest of basil and watercress is wildly different from Stevens’ off-season winters, Rich’s storage crop production and Camire’s homestead all four men share the lessons farming has taught them.
“From a learning perspective, agriculture has a lot to offer,” Stevens said. “If you take a systems approach, you’re taking a seed and putting it in the ground and nurturing it and turning it into something that’s useful. That’s powerful. When folks come to work here, they get a lot of life lessons from experiencing what it takes to get from a little seed to a case full of a product that is going to be enjoyed by people.”
Hartshorn agreed: “Farming is everything. It’s math, science, chemistry, research, social interaction with people, marketing, financial, everything you can think of that you can incorporate into one occupation.”
(01/24/19 10:58am)
“This winter there just haven’t been birds at our feeder,” Nelson said. “I was curious whether other people in Middlebury had noticed the same thing, or if we were doing something wrong with our feeder.”
The post, which received numerous responses from members in and around the Middlebury community, sparked speculation among bird enthusiasts. While some asked if the use of old birdseed could be the issue, others wondered if the absence was the product of a declining bird population.
“In past years, we would have to refill our feeders at least once a week, sometimes twice a week,” Nelson recalled. “We would see all kinds of birds; lots of different species. In previous years we saw tons of birds, but this year we put the feeders out around Thanksgiving and we haven’t refilled it at all.”
“The statistics collected by the Christmas Bird Count reported 15,659 birds this year, which is down 300 from last year,” Nelson added. The 300 missing birds do not seem to be cause for astonishment, however, as numbers collected in December 2018 show the population change at less than two percent.
The presence of birds in Middlebury does not seem to have a positive effect on feeder visitations, however: an informal poll conducted by Nelson shows that, of 35 feeders in Middlebury and surrounding communities, 25 reported having few to no visitations from birds this winter.
“It is quite possible that some birds moved out of the Middlebury area in response to the lack of natural foods,” said Steve Faccio, a conservation biologist at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies. “With the lack of seeds and nuts, birds may have moved further south seeking more abundant food resources.”
This answer was consistent with the response Nelson received from Jim Andrews, the coordinator of the Middlebury Christmas Bird Count, an event under the umbrella of the Audubon Christmas Bird Count.
Nelson speculated that the presence of bears in Middlebury in the spring may have also had something to do with the lack of birds this winter.
“Bears were a big deal in Middlebury last spring,” she said. “A mother bear and her three cubs moved into town and began raiding garbage cans. Eventually Fish and Wildlife came up with the idea that if everybody took down their birdfeeders, the bears would eventually move out on their own and Fish and Wildlife wouldn’t have to shoot or relocate them.”
While the bears eventually moved on, many continued to keep their birdfeeders indoors until late fall to ensure the prevention of the bears’ return. Nelson’s hunch that the withdrawal of the feeders may have contributed to the absence of birds this winter was supported by Alexis Will, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
“All summer long certain birds — especially chickadees — collect seeds and stash them,” Will said. “They have a mental map of where all their caches are, and included in those mental maps are where those bird feeders are. If during the fall, when they are setting up their winter caches, those feeders aren’t present, those feeders are not cataloged as something to visit during the winter, when the birds are not doing a lot of exploration.”
Though Nelson put her feeder back up in November, the opportunity for birds such as chickadees to populate the feeder may not have come in time for the birds to store long-term “mental maps” of the food source.
This mental mapping may not explain the absence of all birds, but Faccio said that their scarcity is not something to worry about, for now.
“It is possible that the birds will return in future winters,” he said. “Many of our winter birds are fairly nomadic, moving to areas where they find food. So they may show up in our area in fall and stick around for a while, but then move on to other areas if food is scarce.”
(01/17/19 10:57am)
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BURLINGTON — The fifth annual Purrrses for Paws event is set to take place on Thursday, Feb. 7 at the Burlington International Airport. Hosted by the Humane Society of Chittenden County (HSCC), the event aims to raise funds for their animal shelter in South Burlington. New and ‘like-new’ purses, clutches and handbags will be auctioned off at the fundraiser, where ticket-holders can also purchase raffle tickets for a chance to win an emerald ring valued at $8,000. Tickets for the event are on sale for $30 and can be purchased through HSCC’s website, chittendenhumane.org.
Powered by over 200 volunteers and a small staff, HSCC was founded in 1901 by June and Herb Davis and has grown tremendously since. Today, HSCC serves Chittenden and Grand Isle counties, taking in and caring for 974 animals in 2018. The Purrrses for Paws event has reflected the shelter’s growth.
“Our first Purrrses for Paws raised around $18,000,” said Erin Alamed, Director of Volunteer and Community Outreach at HSCC. “In the last two years we have raised between $40,000 and $50,000 at the event. It has grown significantly in the way we’re executing the event, the event’s location and the purse options, and we are honing in on what’s working and what isn’t.”
As a nonprofit organization receiving no city, state or federal funding, HSCC depends entirely on donations from the community.
“We are constantly asking a lot from the community, and most of our donations come from one-on-one donor support,” said Diana Hill, director of development for HSCC. “We have our annual campaign fund that is always requiring gifts, but we also have specific funds that we always want to keep full so that we can do everything we do, both here at the shelter and in the community.”
Though a large percent of HSCC funds go toward veterinary bills, money is also needed to keep facilities in order and to provide food and other amenities for the shelter’s animals. The impact of Purrrses for Paws extends beyond monetary support, however.
“The events we host spread the word about our mission to people attending, people who might not be familiar with what we do,” Alamed said. “We try to incorporate an educational aspect into it and try to tie the event back to our mission.”
Right now, that mission is the accessible education of animal treatment. “If we educate people early on, hopefully we will put ourselves out of business,” said Alamed. “Hopefully we will soon turn into something different, but for now it’s about education and figuring out the best way to care for animals.”
The effects of this mission are seen in HSCC’s army of volunteers. Carrie Prat, a self-proclaimed animal lover, began volunteering in May 2018 after she and her husband adopted two cats from the shelter.
“I felt like working full-time didn’t allow me to express my volunteer self. I really wanted a consistent volunteering opportunity,” said Prat. “I have had such a great experience adopting animals from HSCC, and I wanted to help out even more.”
Volunteering in a facility that services 50 to 75 animals at any given time, Prat quickly observed the commitment of HSCC’s volunteers and staff. “I have learned how dedicated the staff and volunteers are,” she said. “Everyone works so hard to keep things going. It’s a 365-day job; it’s not something that ever stops.”
The importance of volunteers is not exclusive to the shelter’s daily runnings. Purrrses for Paws requires a massive volunteer effort as well.
“We don’t have a large expense for these events,” Alamed explained. “All of the people who will be working Purrrses for Paws are volunteers, except myself. We couldn’t do events like these without our volunteers.”
With the Feb. 7 event quickly approaching, the staff is busy planning the event and preparing the purses. “We have about 300 people come to bid on new and like-new purses,” said Hill. “I just sat through my first purse processing meeting.”
With excitement building as the date draws nearer, the shelter’s staff and volunteers look forward to another interaction with the people who allow HSCC’s goals to become reality. While preparing, however, the staff and volunteers at HSCC will continue to evolve their operation.
“Events have changed, staffing has changed, and [they] will continue to change over the next hundred and twenty years or so,” said Alamed. “We are always learning new things about how to enrich our animals, the processes that are working for some organizations and not for others, demographics, animals we’re taking in, adoption rates, all of that.”
(10/11/18 9:56am)
The crime statistics released in the college’s annual security and fire safety report reveals a sharp increase in incidences of rape, stalking and dating violence and a continued decline in discipline for liquor law violations compared to last year’s numbers.
The latest report, which was released on Oct. 1, covers incidents at the college campus, Bread Loaf and the Middlebury Language Schools. The report cannot tally crimes that go unreported and therefore does not represent the total number of crimes committed on campus.
The report includes statistics from the past three years. Looking specifically at the college campus and its immediate vicinity, the fluctuations in several of these crime categories are as follows.
There has been a steady decline in disciplinary referrals issued for liquor law violations. The number fell from 356 referrals in 2015 to 316 in 2016 and 233 in 2017. Reports of aggravated assault also declined from one in 2015 and 2016 to zero in 2017.
Reported rapes rose to 19 in 2017 from eight in 2016. The eight in 2016 marked a significant drop from from 21 in 2015.
Increases in reported crimes have occurred in several categories. In 2017 two hate crimes were reported, while in 2015 and 2016 there were zero reports. Reports of dating violence have risen from five in 2015 to 11 in 2017. Reports of stalking have increased from four in 2015 to 11 in 2017. Reports of fondling have increased from one in 2015 to six in 2017.
There was one report of arson in 2015, zero in 2016 and one in 2017.
The 129-page document also includes contact information for emergency situations, on-campus resources and health and advocacy services, including the student-led organization MiddSafe, which provides a 24-hour hotline run by student advocates.
Acting as a resource manual for students, the report also details procedures that can guide students through difficult situations. It includes policies, procedures, safety practices and fire systems at the college’s campus.
“I think it’s important to have these resources handy because we have a bigger sense of security,” Mariana Zamorano ’22 said.
“You never know when you’re going to be faced with certain situations,” Max Rye ’20 added. “It definitely doesn’t hurt to have access to these resources.”
Statistics provided in the reports are collected by the Middlebury College Department of Public Safety in accordance with the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act. The Clery Act, passed into law in 1990, requires that all colleges and universities receiving federal funding share information about crime on campus.
(10/04/18 9:56am)
VERMONT — As Middlebury works to accommodate a growing student body, colleges and universities across the state are struggling to draw students to their programs.
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reported that the total enrollment in Vermont has been steadily decreasing, from 60,872 students in the 2009-10 school year to 57,889 students in 2015-16.
The trend is also rampant at the national level, which witnessed a drop from 27.4 million total students enrolled to 26.96 million students enrolled between 2014 and 2015, a drastic plunge from the 29.5 million students attending colleges and universities in the fall of 2010.
[pullquote speaker="Barbara Brittingham" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]“When there are enrollment challenges, there are financial challenges.”[/pullquote]
Smaller schools, such as Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt., are taking the brunt of the issues brought on by under-enrollment. Between 2010 and 2018, Goddard’s enrollment has plummeted from 804 to 438, Goddard officials told VTDigger. They reported that this shift has had a direct effect on budgeting.
“Institutions that don’t have a big endowment or another source of significant income, tend to have their finances tied pretty closely to their enrollment,” Barbara Brittingham, the president of the New England Commission of Higher Education, told VTDigger. “So when there are enrollment challenges, there are financial challenges.”
It remains unclear why students choose to enroll heavily in some schools while turning down others, but the overall decline in enrollment has been largely attributed to two factors, said Jason DeWitt, a research manager at Clearinghouse Research Center.
“When the economy’s good, college enrollments tend to go down, at least for working adults,” DeWitt said in an interview with NPR this past May.
The second factor, according to interviewer Elissa Nadworny, is the shift of U.S. demographics. As shown in data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of college-aged citizens is on the decline, a factor that results in fewer prospective students.
Furthermore, many Vermont residents worry that local students are seeking degrees out-of-state, a claim, however, not supported by data collected by NCES. The data, though it shows a small decrease in in-state scholars over the years, does not appear significant enough to make the difference responsible for Goddard’s hardships.
Such a claim is further debunked by data reported by the University of Vermont, which saw its in-state first-year student body increase by 14.9 percent between the 2016 and 2017 school years.