Veggie of the Month

Building Sustainable Communities

Veggie of the Month

Richard Berkfield

 

As our communities continue to rebuild after Irene, it was a good reminder of how we need to be prepared if and when a similar event cuts us off from our food supply, most of which comes from across the country or over the seas. As we continue the clean up from the disaster, we need to support our local farmers and think about how our communities can be more food secure. Our local farms were hit particularly hard; some lost half to two-thirds of their crop, others lost everything.

 

One of the best ways for us to participate in the rebuilding process is by increasing our purchases of farm products and commit to buying more locally produced food in the months ahead.  Some of us already grow food to preserve, but we can also look to purchase more from farmers to preserve or store through the winter.  Their skills and efficiencies of scale allow them to easily grow a surplus. We can easily buy a 50 pound bag of potatoes to keep in a cool dry place. Our forefathers and mothers survived here by growing and preserving and storing food. Currently it isn’t a necessity, but with increased weather events, rising gas prices and questionable food safety, it seems like a good idea to relearn how to feed ourselves with what is relatively inexpensive and easy to grow here and store.

 

Post Oil Solutions, along with many others in the region and state, have been working hard to improve our local food system, especially through Farmers’ Markets, Farm to School programs and more. We are excited to launch a new collaborative marketing strategy: the Veggie of the Month! Join us in celebrating a vegetable every month: one that is in-season, delicious, and locally available. Whether you buy it directly from farmers weekly or at a supermarket once a month, we hope that everybody will celebrate the Veggie of the Month!
Some of the vegetables are common and we all know how to prepare and eat them, but do we know how we can preserve them for winter meals? Many of us don’t recognize some of the others and don’t know how to prepare them.  This is how the veggie of the month gets fun. Each month, we are preparing educational materials so that you can learn more about the featured vegetable including information about growing, storing, preparing, cooking, etc.  The winter months are usually when we stop thinking about fresh vegetables, but there is an abundance of delicious and nutritious food that our ancestors relied upon to survive the winter.

 

The Veggie of the month also presents an opportunity for all of us to improve our cooking skills and to learn how to prepare something new. Many of us are often perplexed when it comes time to plan and prepare yet another meal. The VOTM provides delicious recipes to make it easy and fun for all of us to use some locally produce as part of a meal. We encourage everybody to try something new just once a month. Some favorites from last winter include Chocolate Beet Cake, Rutabega Fries, and sauerkraut.

 

We are primarily focusing our outreach and efforts on school communities: teachers, parents, students, and food service.  We also want to make sure that families are able to access the vegetables in a variety of ways throughout the community, so we hope that gleaned vegetables will be available through the Vermont Foodbank and food shelves and pantries.

 

Kids are at the heart of the VOTM. It takes trying foods many times before we are sure we like it and ask for it consistently. And we need to make sure that all our kids in school are getting the nutrition needed to be good students. So, every month kids will be eating it in the cafeteria, trying it in taste tests, learning about them in school gardens and classrooms, and hopefully convincing their parents to prepare it at home. The Windham County Farm to School Program of Post Oil Solutions is supporting schools with VOTM activities. Check your school menus to see how the committed school food service providers are using the VOTM and be sure to try it!

 

Join us in celebrating the Veggies of the Month at our Brattleboro Winter Farmers’ Market every Saturday at the River Garden starting Nov. 4^th. Become a member of Post Oil Solutions and get a VOTM recipe in the member’s monthly newsletter, as well as other info about eating locally 12 months of the year.

VOTM are building blocks of sustainable communities. Broccoli is no exception!

 

Broccoli is the VOTM for October! Its high in vitamins, and proven to prevent diseases including some cancers. Not a fan? Try a nice fresh raw piece, or lightly steam it and add some butter! Kids like to dip it raw. Have abundance or know a farmer who does? Blanch it and freeze it for winter meals. It’s a great fall crop that can be planted mid-summer.

 

Help us support our local farmers by celebrating the Veggies of the Month! Visit windhamcountyfarmtoschool.org or postoilsolutions.org for more info.

 

 

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Local food for all

Post Oil Solutions’ farmers’ market continues to expand

By HOWARD WEISS-TISMAN / Reformer Staff

Posted: 06/25/2011 03:00:00 AM EDT

Farmers and customers fill the courtyard of the Samuel Elliot Apartments on Elliot Street in Brattleboro for the Neighborhood Market, Tuesday. (Zachary P. Stephens/Reformer)

Saturday June 25, 2011

BRATTLEBORO — Three years ago Post Oil Solutions started a farmers’ market at the Westgate Housing Community as a way to bring locally grown produce to low-income families.

Bringing together Post Oil’s organization and an agreement by farmers to sell their fruits and vegetables at wholesale prices, the 2009 market successfully provided fresh produce to more than 40 people during the summer.

The market moved into a second site last year, and this year Post Oil Solutions is holding its Neighborhood Market at three locations and has expanded to include both low-income customers along with those who pay full price.

“Too often the local food movement becomes an elite thing that is only for people who can afford it,” said Angela Berkfield, the community food security organizer at Post Oil Solutions. “But really good, local food should be for everyone and everyone should have access to it.”

This year the Neighborhood Market is being held at Westgate, on the lawn of the Samuel Elliot Apartments on Elliot Street and at the Townshend Farmers Market.

Along with accepting food stamps, the market this year is also selling full price memberships as a way to both subsidize the market and as a way to bring members of the community together who otherwise might not be shopping together at a farmers’ market.

“We wanted to do this to bring people together to make a statement,” said Berkfield. “Our goal is to build a community

across class and race divisions and the market is one way to do that.”

Mel Motel lives in Brattleboro, and she even works at a local farm. Still she was at the market at the Elliot apartment Tuesday to sign up for a season at full price.

“I appreciate the goal they have of making food accessible to all people,” Motel said as she signed a check and made her way around the tables of fresh produce. “It’s a great way to hang out in the neighborhood and by signing up I can support the long- and short-term goals.”

The Neighborhood Market is set up so customers who have paid can go from farmer to farmer and choose either three, five or nine pieces or bunches of produce.

The model is like a community supported agriculture, or CSA, share, except there is no risk to the customer.

With a CSA the customer pays for a season’s worth of produce, and has to accept what the farmer grows.

At the Post Oil Neighborhood Market the customer is guaranteed to receive the shares of produce.

A band played music at the market Tuesday and someone was there to explain what to do with some of the produce.

Meredith Wade, who is one of the education and outreach coordinators with the Brattleboro Food Co-op, is also working with members of the Brattleboro Boys and Girls Club to teach youth recipes and try new foods.

Elizabeth Wood, who runs New Leaf CSA in Dummerston, agreed to take part in the Neighborhood Market this year and was at the Sam Elliot Apartments Tuesday.

For Wood the market is a way to get off the farm and have her name out and introduced to potential customers.

But she also said she supported the work Post Oil was doing and saw it as a way to reach a customer base who otherwise might not be able to afford a full CSA membership.

“It is great to have farmers and food like this downtown, and to make it easier for everyone to get local produce,” she said. “It’s important that everyone have access to good, healthy food.”

The market runs for 15 weeks, from the last week in June through the end of September.

There is still space available for this year’s market.

For more information on the Neighborhood Market, e-mail Berkfield at angelaberkfield@gmail.com or call 802-348-9818.

Howard Weiss-Tisman can be reached at 802-254-2311 ext. 279 or hwtisman@reformer.com.

Board says ‘no’ to sustainability group – Brattleboro Reformer

Board says ‘no’ to sustainability group

By JAIME CONE / Reformer Staff

Posted: 06/08/2011 03:00:00 AM EDT

Wednesday June 8, 2011

BRATTLEBORO — In response to a request for the town to create a committee to look at the potential for a Brattleboro Sustainable Community Task Force, the Selectboard voted Tuesday to have the town planning commission hold a public meeting with all town committees and the public to discuss the issue of sustainability as it relates to the town plan.

The proposal for a new town committee was brought to the board by Tim Stevenson, founding director of Post Oil Solutions, a community organizing initiative whose mission is to develop sustainable, collaborative and socially just communities, leading to a self-sufficient post petroleum society.

About 30 members of the public attended the meeting; most appeared to be present to support Stevenson’s request.

Stevenson said following the meeting that he was skeptical about the motion the board voted through, made by Selectboard member Dora Bouboulis.

“I think Dora’s proposal could really lead to going nowhere,” Stevenson said.

He had asked that the board back a group of concerned residents who would begin to plan for the transition he said the community will have to make in the years ahead as it enters “an era of energy descent.”

“For at least 100 years we’ve been dependent upon abundant, cheap, accessible petroleum for our highly technological, post-industrial, consumer-oriented way of life. The problem, however, is that neither this life, nor the energy source that

has made it possible, are sustainable,” he said.According to Stevenson, a group dedicated solely to examining how to enter a post-oil world is necessary and currently lacking in Brattleboro’s town government. There are efforts in Montpelier and Northampton, Mass., that are similar to what he is proposing, he said.

“Such a body would be charged with the responsibility of analyzing, to the best of its ability, the town’s present dependency upon petroleum in such crucial areas of civic and economic life, as food, transportation, health care, municipal services, education, local economy, and so forth, and would begin to make plans on how the town could meet these needs as petroleum became increasingly expensive in the years ahead,” Stevenson said.

Joining Stevenson in his presentation to the board were Tom Jondernoa, who is a landscaper with Stevens & Associates, though the wasn’t there in that capacity, and Josiah Simpson, principal designer with Summit Ridge Regenerative Landscape Design and Site Planning.

Simpson said the initiative could begin with creating a report that strategizes ways to increase Brattleboro’s production and consumption of local food as a means by achieving food security. This would simultaneously provide an additional avenue for job growth and economic stimulation in Brattleboro, he said.

“Our job would be to assess the opportunities and constraints of Brattleboro’s landscape for agricultural production and report on the existing conditions of Brattleboro’s food system by identifying how the existing components, and the unrealized components of processing, distribution, etc., can be coordinated into a local food system specifically planned for Brattleboro,” added Jondernoa.

In his initial address to the board, Stevenson brought up the issue of Brattleboro’s other committees and the possibility that their efforts and the work of this potential new committee might be redundant.

“The good news is that, as a community, we’re not starting from square one,” Stevenson said. “There are citizen initiatives, for example, like Post Oil Solutions, as well as many people in this town — including many in this room, right now — who are engaged in helping make Brattleboro a more sustainable community.”

He mentioned Brattleboro Climate Protection and Energy Committee, citing it as a “perfect example” of what he was proposing and a natural fit for the Sustainable Community Task Force.

But Cameron and the Selectboard members did not see eye to eye on the topic, though most members said they agreed with many of the points Cameron made during his presentation.

“Not that I disagree with what you said here, but at the end of the day it’s going to come down to money … what I’m looking for is more on how you see your task force interacting with what’s already established in town and already doing good work,” said DeGray.

Selectboard member David Gartenstein pointed out that Brattleboro is currently going through the process of revising its town plan.

“Various interest groups have been bringing their input to the (town’s) planning commission, which will then channel the revised town plan back to the Selectboard,” Gartenstein said. “I’ve heard nothing about why going through existing channels isn’t fully sufficient to accomplish the goals set out here.”

“No one has got a post-oil perspective, and that is the perspective we need to have in order to have realistic planning for the future,” Stevenson replied.

Schneck said that it would make more sense to have a task force look at the possibilities for creating a committee, not the other way around. Task forces are generally temporary while committees are a more permanent addition to town government, he explained.

Stevenson said he would be fine with having the terms switched around.

Board members and town officials frequently brought up the idea of going through the proper channels in order to have a voice in the town plan, and several of them mentioned the revised draft of the chapter regarding agriculture.

“The language that is in this and much of what you just said is practically interchangeable,” said Christopher Chapman, Selectboard vice president.

About half a dozen members of the public spoke in favor Stevenson’s proposal.

“I think you should recognize that this recommendation comes from an organization that does have a lot of dirt under its fingernails,” said Kurt Daims of Brattleboro. “The size of the crowd here can be mostly attributed to the popularity of Post Oil’s recommendation, and people around here really feel that the issue deserves its own special committee.”

After the board made its decision to have the town address sustainability at a special meeting of the Brattleboro Planning Commission, Stevenson said he was worried.

“I’m concerned that they didn’t get it,” he said of the board members, adding that he has read the revised town plan chapter on agriculture.

“No one is looking at the fact that oil is at the heart of our existence and without it it’s going to become very problematic,” he said. “There’s a real disconnect.”

Board says ‘no’ to sustainability group – Brattleboro Reformer.