Push to Eat Local Food is Hampered by Shortage

…not necessarily by a shortage of food, but of slaughterhouses.  Read the NY Times article here.

Local Fame

Some of you might recognize the “Bird Lady” from down at Pete’s.  Deb Rosewolf recently became the subject of local fame in Vermont’s Seven Days newspaper.   Take a look.

Introducing Greenfield Highland Beef

Tuesday’s lunch will feature beef from a Vermont-based operation that is new to Sterling College.  With farms in Plainfield and Greensboro, Greenfield Highland Beef offers grass-fed/grass-finished, humanely raised beef straight from the Northeast Kingdom.  In fact, it’s close enough that our kitchen manager was able to drive over to Greensboro the other day to check out the farm… and he learned that in stark contrast to most commercial beef operations, co-owner Ray Shatney apparently knows each of his 80 animals by name.  With respect to social responsibility, Greenfield Highland Beef donates a portion of every animal butchered to the VT Foodbank and is a member of Hardwick’s Center for an Agricultural Economy.  Mr. Shatney and partner Janet Steward claim that their beef is “low in cholesterol, high in omega 3, free of chemical pesticides, free of antibiotics, free of artificial hormones, free of animal biproducts, and is USDA certified.”  On top of all that, it only traveled to St. Johnsbury for butchering.  (Some of you may wonder why it even went that far and wasn’t slaughtered on-farm… we looked into it, and regulations require colleges to have beef sent to USDA-inspected facilities).

Sterling is proud to support yet another quality Vermont farm.  If you’d like to learn more about Greenfield Highland Beef, take a look at their website: www.greenfieldhighlandbeef.com.

Help the VT Foodbank win a truckload of food!

If you take just 15 seconds to go to the link below, you can help the Vermont Foodbank win a free semi-truck load of protein rich foods from Feeding America paired with Tyson Foods and others. Protein is in critical need across the state, which is why this is such a great opportunity for the Foodbank.

Only ten Foodbanks have the opportunity to win this donation – a full semi-truck load of food for their Foodbank – but we have to have enough virtual can donations! As of Wednesday we are in second place, and we would love to keep it that way until the contest ends on March 18^th.

Here’s what to do: click on the link (below), then where it says “I Promise to” to the left, click on SHARE. Then choose VERMONT for your digital cans destination. Finally, fill in your name and email (and you can un-click the x for future mailings) and click submit. Then watch our number of cans go up!

http://wecanendthis.com/

Sap’s Running

From VPR yesterday morning:

Numbers Of Backyard Maple Sugar Operations On Rise
Monday, 03/01/10 6:06am
– IRA, VT. (AP)

The sap is flowing in northern New England and officials say a spike in prices has encouraged more people to set up backyard maple syrup operations.
Henry Marckres is a maple specialist with the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, and says the state has seen a tremendous increase in recent years in the number of people who have a few maples on their property and want to produce syrup.
Two years ago, a syrup shortage caused prices to soar to $60 a gallon. Now, the average retail price is about $48 a gallon.
Marckres says the economy and an interest in producing local food are also driving the syrup-making.
He estimates there are about 2,000 small producers in Vermont.