Summer Salvation
In the season of abundant farmers markets, fairs, and events surrounding food and fresh produce, the gleaning season is underway and busy as ever! From our summer newsletter, a few updates as to what Salvation Farms has been up to. Including content from our supporters and thoughts from our partners, who inspire and encourage us in this work. Happy reading!
Grounded Supporters
Providing Vermonters with wholesome food that might otherwise be left in the fields of local farms is a fundamental goal of Salvation Farms, as Bill and I learned when we were introduced to the organization’s work, which is now 18 years old. Gleaning, an ancient tradition, is a cornerstone of their work, relying on a steady supply of volunteers not just at harvest time but year-round. The picture that stays with me, from the first Salvation Farms’ presentation I attended, is of lush rows of crops extending as far as the eye could see with bent figures harvesting the largesse. The cheering take-away, for this ‘waste not/want not’ person, was that here was an effective organization with a community-based approach to gathering up farmers’ surplus food and delivering it to those who might not otherwise be able to afford it, with the further benefit that it is all nutritious, locally grown plant food, something that can be expensive to include in an American diet based on cheap fatty, sugary, processed food.
As Salvation Farms has grown over the years, they have become a vital link in the Vermont food supply chain, offering unique contributions to create more sophisticated infrastructure and delivery systems for local food to reach schools, prisons, senior housing and other community food programs. Salvation Farms makes more healthy food accessible to more people, proactively strengthening Vermont’s food system. To learn about the work of Salvation Farms is to learn about the complex world of farming and food systems, to think about resilience and our essential needs, to understand the increasing need for food self-sufficiency amid food supply vulnerability and climate instability, as well as and where far too many are food insecure. We are galvanized to support Salvation Farms for all these reasons and more—their collaborations are many and they remain committed to grow their and Vermont’s capacity to process, store, and distribute local food.
- Kate and Bill Schubart
Partners in Prep
Each month hundreds of pounds of carrots, potatoes and winter squash - that otherwise would have never made it off of farms - are brought by way of Salvations Farms’ gleaners to the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson. What would have been the end for these twisty carrots and blemished potatoes is now a new beginning.
The Studio Center team takes a break from their normal production of tasty meals for resident artists to quality assess, clean, peel, dice, steam, blanch and freeze Vermont’s nutritious and precious produce. A knobby carrot is washed, peeled, and sent through our Robot Coupe machine to create a clean coin. Bruises are removed from a potato and a consistent diced product is created. Slight rot is culled from butternut squash, and once cooked, a smooth and delicious puree is born, so irresistible that we have caught our chefs sneaking a serving for themselves. Product is frozen in an individual quick freeze method and packaged, creating a consistent, quality product, week after week. Each production week, finished product is offered to local food shelves in the Lamoille Valley. Small family servings are offered at food shelves and larger bags to meal sites. Recently, Meals on Wheels received a box of our frozen potatoes that they turned into potato salad. The pre-diced product saves their busy kitchen staff time and energy.
Jacob Farber, chef at the Vermont Studio Center, captured the scope of the work:
It’s impressive how much surplus vegetables we are able to help process and save. The Salvation Farms staff ’s connection with the farms they work with and their connection with the community is stellar as well. We get people coming in off the street wanting to see the kitchen where they hear the food is processed. It’s a real community operation.
Salvation Farms’ Vermont Commodity team is awaiting the installment of a large walk-in freezer in Johnson that will allow us to store and offer frozen produce year-round, but for now we are supplying fresh orders on a first come-first-serve basis. Bringing healthy food into our community through local partnerships.
This is Salvation Farms mission in action.
Salvation Farms to the Rescue - New Trucks!
This spring, Salvation Farms invested grant funds and unrestricted assets to purchase two new-to-us trucks. Most of the time these trucks will be out and about in Vermont’s four most northeast counties supporting our gleaning and food distribution work. After nearly ten years of serving our mission, we retired our trusty Toyota for two, slightly used Fords.
Kayleigh Boyle, our Gleaning Coordinator says:
Driving the new truck is such a breeze. It is a comfortable, smooth ride in eye-catching red that always gets a comment from farmers and volunteers.
Keep watch for us in your community! Give us a honk or wave to let us know you see us and support our work helping farmers feed more of their neighbors.
To the Kingdom we come...
It’s early May and the sun is shining on the first high tunnel glean of the season for Salvation Farms’ newest gleaning region, Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. The high tunnel is warm and slightly humid as a gentle morning breeze rustles through the lettuce we are gleaning at McDonald Farmstand in Danville. This is our very first glean at this farm and we are so excited about the budding potential of this partnership. Our gleaner fills box after box with green and red lettuce mix. We weigh and label each box before loading them all into a new-to-us truck purchased this spring to support our Northeast Kingdom work.
Excited to support the development of this gleaning effort last year, in partnership with the Northeast Kingdom Waste Management District, we are honored to be taking this effort on as our own this year. This furthers our desire to increase access to farm fresh, hyper-local produce for residents throughout the Northeast Kingdom. Did you know this region consists of the three most rural counties in the state and covers the most northeastern edge, boarding Canada and New Hampshire?
After McDonald Farmstand’s nutritious greens are gleaned and loaded into our truck, we take a second to thank the farmers before heading out. Greens abundant, we deliver them immediately to our partners - community food programs throughout the region including meal sites and food shelves affiliated with Kingdom Community Services and Northeast Kingdom Community Action.
Our Gleaning Manager, Hillary Bailey, has spent months meeting with community partners and local farms to continue forging relationships within the Northeast Kingdom. Given the newness of our gleaning effort in this region we don’t yet have cold storage to hold the produce we glean. But the months of outreach and building partnerships has yielded the opportunities of finding a home for the soon-to-be-placed Northeast Kingdom gleaning walk-in cooler at Northeast Kingdom Community Action’s southern headquarters in Saint Johnsbury.
Our new partnerships have also allowed us to distribute almost 1 ton, that’s nearly 6,000 servings, of produce in the first six months of 2022. The excited, shocked responses to hundreds of pounds of fresh lettuce, and more than 1,600 pounds of local potatoes has been so inspiring! Not to mention the excitement of the community when we dropped off seed potatoes from High Mowing Organic Seeds. Can anyone say food sovereignty?
While we can be found working in farm fields, gleaning at farmers’ markets, and delivering produce around the Northeast Kingdom, we are looking for a place to land. The next venture for our gleaning in this region is to find an office space in the Saint Johnsbury area. Salvation Farms is searching for a place where our team can take respite from the field and attend to tasks like emailing with partners and printing needed documents. We look forward to finding this space, further anchoring ourselves in Vermont’s northeast, and furthering our mission of strengthening the local food system through creative, responsible management of our agricultural resources.