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EAT YOUR LOCAL VEGETABLESThe Food & Farming Issue

Gleaning for the Vermont Foodbank.

• APRIL 18 – MAY 1, 2013 THE BR IDGE

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$4.00 off ½ gallons any grade

$3.00 off quarts

We have BULK SYRUP again at Morse Farm!

Our MAPLE CREEMEES are better!*excludes bulk syrup. Offer ends 5/10/13.

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Baby-in-a-bucket SALE!*

THE BR IDGE APRIL 18 – MAY 1, 2013 • PAGE 3

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HEARD ON THE

STREETAnnual Meeting of the Funeral Consumers Alliance:

Funeral Planning with Humor

Gail Rubin, cancer survivor, author of A Good Goodbye: Funeral Planning for Those Who Don’t Plan to Die and funeral-planning consultant, will address the 2013 annual meet-

ing of the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Vermont (FCA-VT), at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 4, at the Norwich Congregational Church (15 Church Street, Norwich). According to Mary Alice Bisbee, board member of both FCA-VT and the State Funeral Board, Rubin will “introduce death-planning for all those people who never plan to die!” Her presentation, “Laughing in the Face of Death: Funny Films to Start Serious Funeral Planning Conversa-tions,” will use clips from popular movies that have used humor to initiate and lighten talk about funeral planning. The May 4 Norwich meeting is free and open to the public. Bisbee urges people who might wish to car-pool to contact her at 223-8140 or vtfuneralconsumers [email protected]. The annual meeting is one of several meetings the alliance will hold in coming months, including two at Schulmaier Hall at the VCFA campus at 9 a.m. on May 14 and June 11. The FCA-VT is a volunteer-run, nonprofit association of “consumers from all walks of life who want a dignified alternative to the elaborate and increasingly ex-pensive funeral services promoted by the funeral industry.” The FCA-VT’s website is funerals .org/affiliates/vermont, and Rubin’s blog can be found at thefamilyplot.wordpress.com.

House Votes to Decriminalize Marijuana Possession

The Vermont House voted 98–44 on Friday, April 12, to make possession of less than one ounce of marijuana a civil offense instead of a crime. While the vote does not legal-

ize marijuana possession in the state, it makes the penalty for possession of a small amount of marijuana akin to a speeding ticket. Persons in possession could receive a $300 fine for a first or second offense and a 90-day suspension of their driver’s license. Persons smoking marijuana while driving could be fined up to $500. Representative Tom Koch of Barre Town voted for the bill after initially opposing it. “If you had told me a month ago that I’d be voting for this bill or particularly helping to report it,” Koch told Vermont Public Radio. “I would have looked you in the eye and told you that you’re out of your mind.” Chris Pearson and other representatives continue to hope for legalization. “I think there are a few of us in the legislature who support taxing and regulating marijuana,” he told VPR, “but it’s clearly not a consensus.”

Paid Sick Day Legislation Before the House

The Vermont Workers’ Center is launching an effort to pass the Earned Paid Sick Days bill (H.208) before the Vermont House Committee on General, Housing and Military

Affairs. According to the Workers’ Center, at least 100,000 workers in Vermont do not receive paid sick days as part of their employment, and the impact often goes beyond the employee, affecting children and other family members. “Not having paid sick days is a double whammy when you’re a parent,” St. Johnbury resident Meghan Achilles told the Workers’ Center. “It’s not just an issue if I get sick, but if my kids get sick, too.” Under H.208, all workers in the state would earn one hour of paid leave for every 30 hours worked, accruing up to seven sick days per year. The bill would also give time off for workers to care for sick family members and receive routine, diagnostic, preventive or therapeutic care. A public hearing on the bill will take place on Thursday, April 18, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., in room 11 of the State House, with over 100 supporters expected to attend.

Norwich Improvements Spur Economic Growth

A $41 million series of campus improvements underway at Norwich University constitutes the largest economic development activity currently taking place in central Vermont, ac-

cording to Vermont Business Magazine. “These projects are creating jobs in the construction sector, which hit its low in spring 2010 and has been slow to rebound,” according to Dave Magida, Norwich University’s chief administrative officer. About 400 people will be work-ing on the projects over the next year and a half. The projects include construction of a new dormitory and a biomass plant, improvements to Dodge Hall and Sabine Field (including installation of an all-weather playing surface), upgrades to electrical, phone and data wiring around campus and other miscellaneous projects. When completed, the projects should add six permanent full-time positions to the university payroll. Additionally, the biomass plant will use 13,000 tons of wood chips annually, which the school will purchase from loggers and processors within a hundred-mile range of the campus. Funding for the projects came via a low-interest loan from a “friend of the university” and from donations to the school’s Bearing the Torch campaign, which raised over $24 million. Most projects are expected to be completed by August, with the biomass plant going online in November and the new dorm completed in August 2014.

Calculate Your Home’s Energy Efficiency: A Formula

The East Montpelier Energy Committee has provided a formula to determine whether or not your home could be heated more efficiently. According to a release from the commit-

tee, you can calculate household energy use as follows: First, determine the square foot area of your home that is heated. Next, take the total amount of fuel that you used over the past 12 months and divide it by the number of square feet heated. Ideally, the number you get should be below the following numbers: wood heat equals less than 0.0018 cords per square foot; oil heat equals less than 0.29 gallons per square foot; propane equals less than 0.44 gallons per square foot; and wood pellets equal 0.0025 tons per square foot. For information on ways to increase heating efficiency, contact Dave Grundy, of the East Montpelier Energy Committee, at 476-4300 or e-mail [email protected].

—compiled by Max Shenk

P.O. Box 1143, Montpelier, VT 05601Phone: 802-223-5112 | Fax: 802-223-7852 montpelierbridge.com; facebook.com/montpelierbridge

Published every first and third Thursday

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Copyright 2013 by The Montpelier Bridge

Many birds are still coming through now, ahead of the big waves of hungry war-blers and so many others, timed to arrive with hatches of blackflies. For now, we

still have northbound fox sparrows, juncos and goldfinches. Many of the latter two will peel off to stay here and there along the way. And in our neighbor’s little pond today is a hooded merganser, here for the second year, just a stop on the way north. All the rain and these gray days, hard as they are for us, should charge the brooks and pools enough to satisfy salamanders, frogs and toads and provide conditions for that wealth of insect life, so troublesome to us, so nourishing for the masses of travel-weary birds.

—Nona Estrin

Nature Watch

Real Estate for Sale?ADVERTISE IT! We’ll be having a special section on real estate in our May 2 paper.

Contact Carolyn or Ivan for more information at 223-5112, ext. 11, [email protected] or ivan@montpelier bridge.com.


Bring in Summer!Montpelier Rec Department Open House and Pool Pass SaleWednesday, May 8 • 8:30 am–6 pm55 Barre Street • 225-8699

Ice Cream Social 4–6 pm10% OFF

pool passes!bring a nonperishable

item for the Montpelier

Food Pantry

by Lisa Masé

According to the Farm to Plate Net-work (vsjf.org), Vermonters currently consume approximately 5 percent of

the food our state produces. Hence, 95 per-cent of Vermont’s crops, from top exports such as dairy, beef and maple syrup to veg-etables, grains and other locally raised foods, are leaving the state. Local foods are being supplanted by imported ones. This disparity is due both to the overwhelming presence of mass-produced, processed food in our super-markets and to the lack of knowledge about the wide variety of foods available for local consumption.

Bo Muller-Moore’s Eat More Kale T-shirt business is exemplary of how national corpo-rations can dominate local businesses. When Muller-Moore started making T-shirts as a hobby, his friend Paul Betz, owner of High Ledge Farm in East Calais, asked for one that stated Eat More Kale. He explained that he had a bumper crop of kale that year, and he needed to sell more at the weekly farmers’ market.

After Betz and his family started wear-ing their T-shirts, he sold more kale, and the trend gained momentum. As more and more people started asking Muller-Moore for the signature shirt, the business grew. Now, Muller-Moore’s enterprise is forced to battle the corporate food system to maintain its name. His struggle highlights the need for all who are concerned about food security to take action by eating more local food. Learn

about the documentary that chronicles his journey at adefiantdude.com.

Strolling of the Heifers, a Vermont-based local food advocacy group, just released its second annual Locavore Index, ranking the 50 states in terms of their commitment to local foods.

According to Vermont Business Magazine, “the Index incorporates farmers markets, Community-Supported Agriculture opera-tions (CSAs) and food hubs in its per-capita comparison of consumers’ interest in eating locally-sourced foods.”

The Locavore Index is compiled using data from the USDA’s farmers’ markets database, the U.S. Census bureau of July 2012, and LocalHarvest, a local food resource directory. This year, it reveals that Vermont ranks first for local food consumption, followed by Maine, New Hampshire and Nevada. Yet, we are only eating about 5 percent of our own food.

Orly Munzing, executive director for Strolling of the Heifers, explains that the index works to encourage local food efforts in every state, such as “urging local hospitals and nursing homes to purchase local foods, asking supermarkets to buy from local farms, and, of course, celebrating and honoring our farmers whenever we can.”

Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Chuck Ross commented that “Vermont should be proud of its number one ranking. . . . All the states need to work together to support this critical transformation, which will determine our ability to feed ourselves in the future.”

Our state can serve as an example for others by fostering the localvore movement.

What is a localvore anyhow? The localvore movement started in 2005 to encourage local food consumption for the following reasons and more: It is healthy for people and the planet, uses less fossil fuel in transporta-tion, encourages diversification of food crops, maintains rich soil quality, connects people with their sources of nourishment, and sup-ports the local economy through job creation and agricultural tourism.

Here are some ways to be a localvore. Visit nearby farmers’ markets. Purchase a Com-munity Supported Agriculture (CSA) share. Buy more local food and choose Vermont-produced, value-added foods from businesses such as Vermont Salumi, Bee Haven Honey, Vermont Bean Crafters and Sky Earth Farm. Visit restaurants that display the Vermont Fresh Network sign, which means that they cook with local foods. Glean for those who cannot afford local food.

There are farmers’ markets starting in May: Waterbury on Thursdays from 3 to 7 p.m. and Montpelier and Waitsfield on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Others start in June, such as Barre on Wednesdays from 3 to 6 p.m. and Plainfield on Fridays from 4 to 7 p.m. North-field is currently seeking vendors to start a farmers’ market on Mondays from 3 to 6 p.m. Contact Verne DuClos for details: 728-3602

To learn more about CSA options such as Wellspring Farm and others, peruse NOFA Vermont’s article about CSA enterprises in

the area. Read labels on Vermont-made foods to see if the value-added product you are pur-chasing was crafted at one of Vermont’s food hubs. There are 12 in Vermont, and they range from a farm-to-business model, such as Black River Produce, to a farm-to-producer model, such as the Mad River Food Hub, and the farm-to-consumer variety, which is the case for the Central Vermont Food Hub. For a complete list, visit the USDA’s National Food Hub Index at ams.usda.gov.

Read this issue’s article about the Vermnt Foodbank’s Gleaning Program or visit Salva-tion Farms in Morrisville, a nonprofit dedi-cated to “building a systems based approach to managing Vermont’s agricultural surplus foods in tandem with our for profit food systems.” The organization’s director, Theresa Snow, ex-plains Salvation’s approach: “Gleaning is in its more traditional sense of direct harvest or capture of surplus from the farm by mobilizing citizens who understand the responsible stew-ardship of these valuable local food resources.” For details about food resilience and the glean-ing collective, visit salvationfarms.com.

To participate in the Stolling of the Heif-ers celebration of local food, all are welcome to visit Brattleboro on June 8 and enjoy a parade, Live Green Food Expo, music and educational booths.

Lisa Masé is a kitchen medicine educator, food writer and appreciator of global gastronomic traditions. Gain recipes and explore the health benefits of foods at harmonizedcookery.com.

Eat More Local Food: It MattersFood & Farming: Introduction


by Roger Allbee

It is being called the renaissance of the past, the renewed interest in agriculture and food systems within our state. It

manifests itself in many forms to include growth in Community-Supported Agricul-ture (CSAs), farmers’ markets and food hubs and in the further diversification of agricul-ture production with an array of products from the land and animals that are raised on the land. This rebirth or renaissance further reinforces Vermont’s past, its present and its future.

Vermont’s agriculture, forests and work-ing landscape have always defined the state. The early settlers who came to Vermont from southern New England after the French and Indian War were looking for productive soils. While they were subsistence farmers in the beginning—planting a few crops and keep-ing a few animals for their own use—increas-ingly many began raising items for sale or barter as towns and nearby cities grew in size. They found markets for grain, potatoes and livestock in Montreal, Quebec, Troy, Albany and Boston. In the early 1800s, significant cash-crop exports included potash, pearl ash, whiskey, pork, beef, wheat, flour, grain, but-ter, cheese, lumber and horses. In the Cham-plain Valley, before 1820, growing grains was a very important agriculture enterprise, and those grains were either distilled locally or hauled to markets in Albany or Troy.

Land and water transportation played inte-gral parts in the development of industry and trade in agriculture and other products. Road building began in the late 1700s, with private turnpikes chartered by the state legislature. Canal and water transportation became as important as overland routes. In Bellows Falls, located on the Connecticut River, the construction of the first canal built in the U.S. began in 1792. This canal made it pos-sible for our state’s producers to ship several tons of products to Hartford, Connecticut,

on flat-bottomed boats in three days. On the west side of the state, Burlington

became a flourishing center of commerce after the completion of the 64-mile Cham-plain Canal in 1823. The access provided by these transportation networks to new markets grew increasingly important to the economic health of Vermont farms as the farm economy evolved from subsistence and a barter economy to a cash basis. These new transportation networks also exposed products from the state to new competition. Railroads also proved to be a mixed blessing to Vermont farmers, who witnessed dire eco-nomic realities as competition from western wool, beef, butter and grain forced changes in the farm economy.

As agriculture continued to change in re-sponse to market conditions and competi-tion, specialization grew, and farmers focused on specialty crops, livestock and livestock products. In the early 1800s, when disease, pests and increased competition undermined grain production in the Champlain Valley, many farmers adapted by raising Merino sheep. Grass was king in the hills and valleys of Vermont, and this proved ideal for these sheep. Many towns had flocks of a thousand or more, and Vermont became known as the sheep capital of the world, home to over one and a half million. These sheep were envied for their fine wool and fleece and were in great demand worldwide. Nevertheless, Ver-mont and its Merino sheep fell captive to tar-iff regulations, international events and com-petition from the western U.S. and abroad.

While this specialization was taking place, other products continued to be produced. The 1850 agricultural statistics illustrate the following product diversification: butter, cheese, oats, beef, wheat, barley, rye, buck-wheat, field beans, potatoes, hay, orchard products, flax, hops, hemp, silk, maple sugar, maple syrup, honey and wool.

Vermont had already established itself as an important maple-producing state, and the

same was true for its apple production. Many farms produced maple syrup in the spring, providing important income diversity. Or-chard farming began as early as the 1810s on Isle La Motte. Beginning in the late 1800s, large-scale orchards were established along Lake Champlain, and Vermont shipped its maple and fruit products throughout the U.S. and abroad, enhancing Vermont’s agri-cultural diversity.

Following the decline of the Merino sheep industry, there was a slow migration to the specialization in butter and cheese produc-tion. These products had traditionally been made on the farm, with skills passed down from one generation to the next. As cities and towns grew in size, merchants reached out for these products, and demand outstripped the capacity and the uneven quality of on-farm production, leading to the development of creameries and cheese factories. St. Albans had the world’s largest commercial cream-ery, and Vermont butter became known for its quality; a product from the state won a gold medal for the best butter in the world. As demand for products grew, creameries sprang up in many towns and communities around the state. By 1900, 186 creameries and 66 cheese factories operated throughout Vermont. Whole industries sprang up to sup-port this production to include cheese- and butter-box production and specialty churns. This, too, changed, as cities farther south reached out for fluid milk, and the first milk train left Bellows Falls, Vermont, for Boston in 1890.

Commercialization of dairying and the interstate shipment of milk and milk prod-ucts created renewed economic challenges, and farmer cooperatives became important in bargaining for fair pricing for their members. Federal actions relative to dairy price sup-ports and parity pricing could not forestall the pressure for change and the eventual beginning of the deregulation of the dairy industry in the early 1980s. Many of the

early farm leaders, who had witnessed these changes in Vermont agriculture over time (loss of Merino sheep, butter markets, grain production, beef trade) and had been part of it, recognized the competitive advantages of farming in Vermont. An important advan-tage was being near emerging markets in the Northeast and growing and producing prod-ucts of the highest quality to meet changing consumer needs. Others saw the advantage in growing grass and raising animals that could convert grass to energy. All agreed that Ver-mont farmers could never compete with the West on a commodity-pricing basis.

Through the years, farmers have had to adapt to changes. Today, there is a renewed interest by consumers in local and regional foods. Vermont farmers are taking the lead in many areas, such as being known for organic and other locally produced food products. This renewed interest in local foods has resulted in the growth in farmers’ markets, food hubs, CSAs, farmstead cheese produc-tion, vineyards and pick-your-own fruit op-erations, along with farm-raised beef and many other products from the farm. Maple, however, is still considered the soul and dairy, the anchor of Vermont agriculture.

Vermont today is increasingly known for its food systems and connection to the land and the Vermont brand. This working landscape helps to support and define our state—its past, present and future. It helps support a vibrant tourist industry and con-nects people to places. National Geographic, just a few years ago, stated that Vermont was the number five place in the world to visit and the number one in the U.S. and that this was due to its working landscape and quaint villages. It is a true renaissance, reinforced by the many products now being produced on or from the land.

Roger Allbee, a former Vermont secretary of agriculture, food and markets, lives in Town-shend, Vermont.

Vermont’s Renaissance of the Past Understanding Past Agriculture Reinforces the Future

Food & Farming: Traditions


Tiny BitesOpening April 15 at 41 State Street, North Branch Tea and Wine Café is a gathering

space that aims to hone the palates of tea and wine drinkers. The café will serve 25 loose-leaf teas, arranged in sampling jars for optimal selection. It will also offer a rotating selection of eight wines from around the world. Each one will be served through Enomatic, an innovative system that offers and tracks choices, from a one-ounce tasting to a half-glass or full-glass sample. Owners Wes, Lauren and Becky Parker look forward to welcoming cus-tomers in the relaxed and refined atmosphere. Details at facebook.com/TheNorthBranch.

Healing Arts Press recently released The Wild Medicine Solution, a book by local clini-cal herbalist Guido Masé, who is the codirector of the Vermont Center for Integrative

Herbalism. This food-focused tome teaches readers to incorporate aromatic, bitter and tonic herbs into their everyday lives. Visit a local bookstore and peruse the recipes, stories and in-depth information about the healing power of plants. To learn more: innertraditions .com/wildmedicinesolution.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR) has just awarded over $340,000 in grant funding to 12 Vermont nonprofits that strive to create sustainable local food systems.

The Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund (VSJF) received the largest grant of $100,000 to grow its Farm to Plate Network. VSJF’s executive director Ellen Kahler says, “We are so pleased to receive this generous support. These funds will be used to support leadership training within the Farm to Plate Network and provide stipends to farmers, food producers and other key stakeholders. GMCR funding also allows us to make minigrants to support high-impact projects led by network members, which are reshaping the very nature of our food system in Vermont.”

On March 14, Governor Shumlin’s office announced the launch of a statewide work-place CSA for employees who wish to purchase local food. The governor explains that

“Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs are a way for Vermonters to support their local farmers and eat healthy.” Fifteen state buildings throughout Vermont have been identified as potential drop-off sites for producers to deliver and distribute local food. The state will sponsor Meet Your Farmer meetings statewide for employees who join the CSA. If you are a state employee who wishes to take advantage of this opportunity, contact Abbey Willard at 828-3829 or [email protected].

Vermont Restaurant Week will take place from April 26 to May 5. Choose from 103 participating restaurants across Vermont to enjoy unique dinners, ranging in price from

$15 to $35 per person. The week also features special events, such as the Sweet Start Smack-down, a competition between local pastry chefs to benefit the Vermont Foodbank. Sample exquisite pastry creations on April 24 at Higher Ground. For restaurant week details, visit vermontrestaurantweek.com.

—compiled by Lisa Masé; send food news to [email protected].

Food News You Can Use

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by Caitlin Gildrien

Spring is the time of year when many localvores start searching for a CSA for the summer. Community Supported

Agriculture, or CSA, works like a food sub-scription: Customers sign up at the begin-ning of the season and receive their produce over the course of several weeks or months. This model provides the farmer with stabil-ity, as well as an income when seeds and other supplies for the coming season must be purchased. It also provides the consumer with a consistent supply of fresh, local food throughout the summer (and sometimes the fall and winter as well), in addition to the peace of mind that comes with knowing ex-actly where your food comes from.

A CSA is an investment in your health and community, and as with any investment, it pays to do some research. Within the basic model, CSAs vary greatly from farm to farm. As you begin to explore CSA options, you will see that they are as diverse as Vermont’s farms themselves.

Some cost much more than others, but it

is very hard to compare CSAs based only on price: You must also consider how long the share lasts and how much food is included. Calculating a price per week is a good first step.

Next, find out how many people the share is intended to feed and consider what kinds of food are involved. Some CSAs are only veg-etables, while others include fruit, eggs, meat, dairy, baked goods or other items. These can increase the value—and the cost—of your share. If you think you won’t be able to eat all of the wonderful produce described in the CSA brochure, ask about half shares or find someone to split yours with. If you’re suffer-ing from sticker shock at the thought of pay-ing so much money at once, find out if your farm has a payment plan—many do.

Most CSA shares are picked up on the farm, but some also have alternative pickup locations. Find out when and where your CSA’s pickup will be, and remember that you will be going there every week. Many CSA members enjoy spending a few minutes or longer with “their” farmer every week, and some CSA pickups are their own social gath-

erings. Others might prefer the convenience of an in-town option. Only you know what will be best for your lifestyle.

Would you like an extra box of tomatoes or green beans to can in the summer? Do you have special dietary needs? What happens if you can’t pick up your box one week? Perhaps the greatest value of the CSA comes from the relationship between farmer and customer. Don’t be afraid to use that relationship to make your CSA work for you.

NOFA and CSAsThe Northeast Organic Farming Associa-

tion (NOFA) of Vermont supports CSAs in several ways. You can find a listing of CSA farms on our website, nofavt.org, and we help farmers with logistical and marketing sup-port for their CSAs. We also run a program called Vermont Farm Share, which provides limited-income Vermonters with financial support to participate in CSAs.

The Vermont Farm Share Program is available to Vermonters living at or below 185 percent of the federal poverty income limit. Participants receive up to a 50 percent

subsidy in the price of their share, which is paid by contributions from community members. The major fundraiser for Vermont Farm Share is the Share the Harvest event, which takes place the first Thursday of Oc-tober every year. During Share the Harvest, participating restaurants, co-ops and other establishments donate 15 percent of the day’s sales to the Vermont Farm Share Program. In 2012, Vermont Farm Share served over 1,500 limited-income Vermonters participating in the Vermont Farm Share Program, including over 500 adults and children and nearly 1,000 seniors. In addition to Share the Harvest, the program is funded through individual dona-tions, a grant from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and the USDA Senior Farmers’ Mar-ket Nutrition Program. To learn more, find a CSA near you or donate to the Vermont Farm Share fund; go to nofavt.org.

Caitlin Gildrien is outreach coordinator for Northeast Organic Farming Association of Ver-mont. A version of this article was originally pub-lished in the spring 2010 issue of NOFA Notes, the quarterly newsletter of NOFA Vermont.

Sharing the CSA Harvest

by Richard Sheir

Maple sap collection is as Vermont as maple syrup is. Maple tapping is something all Vermonters are

vaguely aware of but few really know. Vermont silver maple trees produce 65

percent of the maple syrup produced in the entire United States. What few realize is that Vermont maple syrup production is dwarfed by neighboring Canada, which produces 80 percent of the world crop. In other words, Vermont trees account for only 13 percent of the world’s production of maple.

Neighboring Quebec, on the other hand, produces 80 percent of Canada’s maple sap, which means Quebec is responsible for 60 percent of the world’s maple syrup in a given year. The price that Vermont maple produc-

ers get for their syrup is set north of the border in Quebec.

The maple season begins in mid-to-late February and ends in April. Southern Ver-mont sap might start and end a week or two earlier than central and northern Vermont. Vermont topography affects sap run as well. The sap runs when daytime temperatures ex-ceed freezing and nighttime temps are below. The maple season is not a day-by-day steady stream, but a series of strong flows that fol-low particularly favorable weather patterns, which involve cold freezes and large tempera-ture swings. Light color is early in the season and darker late, but this can be affected by weather patterns as well.

Commenting off the cuff on the quality of the maple season is a Vermont tradition for those who aren’t involved in the industry.

Those who said last season was bad were right. Last year’s weather featured a southern breeze of such duration that it brought bud-ding of all sorts very early and played havoc with silver maples. Even a cool spell late in the season wasn’t enough to save the season. Production in 2012 across New England was off by 27 percent from 2011, though this needs to be tempered because 2011 was a record year for New England maple produc-tion.

According to Mark Iffelharvt of the Uni-versity of Vermont Proctor Maple Research Center, the season that is ending shortly (depending where in Vermont you are) has been very good to excellent for maple syrup production. The number of days with the proper swing in temperature has been on the high end, and there were no prolonged spells

of high temperatures. There was a long freeze of a week and a half or so, after which there was a very strong run of sap.

Vermont maple production is also benefit-ing from extensive automation, which col-lects far more sap than the traditional buckets and processes the sap in a far more energy efficient manner. Had automated collection not been present in 2012, last year’s Vermont maple season, which was bad, would have bordered on disastrously bad.

Whether the maple season of 2013 exceeds 2011 is yet to be seen, but the combination of ideal weather with greater collection ef-ficiency gives this season the chance to be the best ever. Of course, this won’t be reflected in price, as that is controlled in Quebec.

How Is the Sap Running? 2013 Has Been a Good SeasonFood & Farming: Traditions

Food & Farming: Growing & Purchasing

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by Bob Nuner

Vermont has hosted grain-growing conferences for nearly a decade. Early gatherings of the Northern Grain

Growers Association (NGGA) took place in Bridport, where it hosted 15 or 20 farm-ers. The association then moved to Vermont Technical College in Randolph for several years, and for the last two, the NGGA has welcomed about 150 participants in Essex.

NGGA’s conference has drawn farm-ers from Maine, New York, Massachusetts, Quebec and Ontario. Early participants, says president and Randolph farmer Brent Beidler, were farmers with an interest in growing grains for cattle: “The initial group involved more dairy farmers looking to grow grain, and the first conferences brought farmers down from Maine as there was collabora-tive research happening there with UVM on growing feeding grains. There was a gradual awakening to the potential for food-grade grains as the local eating movement took hold . . . We knew the movement was growing. From the very start, the foundational partici-pants felt like our role was to be networking, education and research assistance. Jack Lazor [founder of Butterworks Farm] also likes to say that a major function of the group is the

camaraderie that we provide each other.” The NGGA website (northerngraingrow-

ers.org), developed in 2007, offers links to UVM’s and University of Maine’s ongoing grain-growing research efforts, conferences, photos of field days—even NGGA’s field trip to Denmark to see Northern European grain growing.

The conferences offer workshops and key-note speeches to farmers, bakers, brewers, malters, wholesalers, homesteaders and ven-dors, including equipment dealers. Master bakers from Red Hen Baking and King Ar-thur Flour offered baking workshops, and a salesman demonstrated a miniature ride-be-hind combine for harvesting grains.

The machine offered an option for small-scale growers whose choices for mechani-zation in this era of industrial agriculture would otherwise be decades-old combines trucked in from the back lots of Midwest farms—requiring significant mechanical skills to resurrect. The Chinese machine, costing about $5,000, fills an infrastructure niche for small producers, now that major manufacturers focus on towering combines with 30-foot harvesting heads, costing hun-dreds of thousands apiece.

Against that industrial ag trend, this NGGA conference presented developments

in smaller scale agriculture. Keynoter Ste-phen Jones, PhD, Washington state extension officer and grain breeder, opened with an exploration of where wheat and other grains (such as emmer, spelt, barley and rye) can be grown successfully. He spoke of “wheat out of place.” His slides portrayed locations ranging from vacant-lot farming in suburban Seattle to Vermont hillsides.

Jones’s argument: Grains can grow in plenty of places where we no longer see them, even though they were once regular landscape features. With the dominance of industrial agriculture and loss of farmland to develop-ment, local breeding, growing, harvesting and storing activities have fallen away. Along with the crops, we’ve lost the infrastructure (grain elevators, mills, harvesting equipment and storage) and, perhaps most challenging, the accumulated knowledge around these small-scale activities.

Justin O’Day, attending from Cornell Uni-versity, added to Jones’s observation, pointing out that with agriculture increasingly indus-trialized and invisible to average Americans, funding for research traditionally done by land grant colleges requires more attention. Americans no longer see the benefits that their tax dollars provide in agriculture. The research these institutions provide are no

longer clearly connected in the public’s mind with their own livelihoods.

Speaker Jones argued that the significance of land use change and decline of family farms includes a decline in previously com-mon infrastructure and a decline in memory of how to do things. Memory fades, skills aren’t passed along and knowledge must be reestablished along with the crops that we’re reintroducing to places where they were once common.

Even our heroes and the significance of their work has changed. Vermonters, Jones argued, should celebrate one of the leading wheat breeders of North America: UVM botanist Cyrus Pringle. Jones suggested that the NGGA urge Senator Leahy to nominate the Vermont Quaker (and Civil War con-scientious objector pardoned by Lincoln) as a fitting subject for a stamp celebrating his achievements in the world of plant breeding. Two of Pringle’s wheat varieties were major staples for the American diet for a couple of decades after the Civil War.

After the keynote speeches, participants broke into workshops discussing topics from baking to crop research, soil building, cattle grain rations, identity-preserved wheat, and flour marketing and homesteading tech-niques.

Growing Grain in VermontNorthern Grain Growers Association Meets to Discuss Production

Food & Farming: Growing & Purchasing


Hands-On Gardener

by Miriam Hansen

Despite a spring that has looked more like November than April, I still think we’ll be frost free by the third

week of May. I know it’s hard to believe, but a pair of bluebirds has been frequenting the house my husband just built, fresh crocuses keep springing up and the February Daphne is holding itself in readiness to bloom.

With mid-May in mind, I’m seeding the last of the quick-growing vegetables, herbs and flowers that I start indoors. This in-cludes many different kinds of basil, summer and winter squashes, sweet peas and the last of the zinnias. I’ve been using a germina-tion mat that maintains 80 to 85 degree temperatures for those plants that germinate quickest at high temperatures. It works well, but I don’t find it such a vast improvement over my old system where I just slipped the flats onto a high shelf until the first seeds germinated. Warm air rises. So if you don’t have a germination mat, place flats of heat-loving tomatoes, peppers, cucurbits, zinnias and basil on a high shelf or top of a refrig-erator until the first seeds germinate. With the exception of lettuce and celery, most vegetable seeds you’re going to start indoors germinate quickest at temperatures between 80 and 90.

This month, most of my time is spent “potting on,” which means transferring seed-lings from smaller containers to larger ones. Unless the plant grows from the crown like celery, cilantro and parsley, you can bury leggy stems to just below the first set of leaves. Many gardening books and sites will advise you to bury tomatoes when you trans-plant them. This is good advice since all the little hairs on a tomato stem will develop into roots when they are covered with soil, giving you a stockier, stronger plant.

But what many sites do not tell you is that this is also true for smooth stemmed vegetables like peppers, broccoli and cauli-flower, as well as most flowers—again with the proviso that they do not send out their new leaves from the plant’s crown. Make sure you don’t overwater. When plants get waterlogged, they can’t take up oxygen and roots will begin to die off.

When I transplant, I handle the seedlings very gently, trying to hold them by the leaves or root balls. If I do hold the stem, I do it very lightly so as not to crush this important transport system. A plant can readily do without a couple of leaves and losing some roots is not a death sentence, but if you crush a seedling’s stem, that is the end of its life.

In a normal spring, I’d be mixing in some

of last year’s sifted compost to stretch the sterile potting mix I’ve been using, but this year our compost piles are still frozen solid and very fibrous to boot. I could invest in a bag of Moo Doo or some of Vermont Com-posting’s premier mix, but for the moment, my worm slurry works fine. I just mine around the bottom edges of the worm bin, throw back any worms that are hiding and watch out for their golden eggs. I don’t want to drown the next generation of worms!

As you can see from this month’s photo, even with the cold and lack of sun, the let-tuce, spinach, claytonia and Asian cabbage greens have taken off in the greenhouse. What you see in the foreground are lettuce seedlings started March 1 and transplanted into the greenhouse April 1. The lettuces in the background were started last year at the end of September and went dormant at the end of November. Most lettuces I grow are about 40 to 55 days to maturity from germination. I start new flats about a month apart in late winter and early spring and increase that to every couple of weeks once the growing season is in full swing. I know growers who start chard, spinach and early beet greens indoors, but I’ve never bothered. I do start kale and Chinese cabbage and some of the small Chinese specialty crops like bok choy and pak choi. The trick to growing them successfully is to keep them covered with row cover for a month or more to protect them from flea beetles.

I’ve been slowly moving toward commer-cial production and am growing herbs, veg-etables, berries and flowers for sale at area restaurants and markets. I have mixed feel-ings about this direction. On the one hand, it is nice to be able to provide high-quality, organic food locally and make some money doing it. On the other hand, it is a very dif-ferent affair to grow food to sell than it is to grow food for yourself and your family or to share with neighbors on a meal train.

I recently went to a screening of Genetic Roulette about the health consequences of eating foods that have been genetically en-gineered. Right now, there is a bill going through the Vermont legislature to require companies to label foods that contain GMOs. I urge all my readers to get informed on this subject and keep on growing your own food! Happy gardening.

Miriam and her husband, David, live in East Montpelier, where they grow most of their own vegetables, berries and meat on less than one-quarter of an acre. Your questions and comments are welcome. You can reach Miriam at [email protected].

April 2013: Not for the Faint of Heart!

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Greenhouse seedlings taking off. Photo by Miriam Hansen.


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by Joe Bossen

The Mad River Food Hub (MRFH) played a big role in my deciding to move up to the Mad River Valley

from down in the Rutland area back in late 2010.

The Wallace Center defines a food hub as a “business or organization that actively manages the aggregation, distribution, and marketing of source-identified food products primarily from local and regional producers for the purpose of strengthening producer capacity and access to wholesale, retail, and institutional markets.”

My take on the definition might read: Food hubs help remove barriers and increase opportunities for folks looking to craft foods from nearby farms’ produce and sell these products primarily within that same food shed.

My company, Vermont Bean Crafters, uses the MRFH to aggregate locally grown or-ganic vegetables, beans and grains and turn them into products, such as our bean burgers, hummus and even catered meals, which we then distribute across our food shed, nour-ishing neighbors and the regional economy all the while.

We easily halve the distance the average bite of your meal has traveled through our

food-shed networks. The hub is the nexus of that network; the heart of that entity. At the crux of hubs is an assumption that folks using them have an intention to participate in their regional economy as a core part of their busi-ness model, that they prioritize depth in their enterprise over breadth.

Instead of growing our business by mak-ing widgets that industry research tells us are worth making based on how they resonate with emerging markets, and then going on to identify transnational markets where we can unload said widgets on a breadth-based model, our model asks deeper questions within our community, such as: What prod-ucts do local restaurants, retailers, schools and hospitals regularly use? Among these products, where do they value freshness and quality most? Of these products, can we reconstruct them with the local ingredients presented to us from our initial question? These inquiries have helped us get to a point where, instead of building a business out of putting inanimate products on distant store shelves we’ll never see, we can focus on in-creasing the extent to which we bring more nutritious food to our community.

As a testament to this point, 10 percent of our sales last year were to public schools in Vermont. Over three-quarters of both our suppliers and customers exist within 300

miles of our kitchen in Waitsfield as a result of asking these questions and listening to the answers. Because we go for depth rather than breadth, we can offer better service and can guarantee a level of freshness, authenticity and transparency that wouldn’t be available to us were we to just buy items from a com-pany like Sysco and sell products back into the same faceless food system, where every-thing arrives in the same eerie white boxes sans gusto.

But businesses need more than a model to be viable. We need infrastructure: the stuff that enables you to make other stuff. This is what’s vital. And this is where food hubs pick up—exactly where entrepreneurship leaves off, where bravado meets bricks and mortar.

Before the MRFH, I tried making a transi-tional home for Bean Crafters at the on-farm kitchen of Boardman Hill Farm in West Rutland, where I had worked on and off for a couple years. Working around the farm’s CSA pack schedule, crammed coolers and freezers and omnipresent sheepdogs proved trying and led to weekly through-the-night produc-tion sessions to keep up with demand.

I was beginning to question the long-term viability of my ambitions, when the MRFH got underway. With the food hub’s sup-port, the business was able to take off. We doubled our gross sales for the fourth year

in a row last year, buying over 79 percent of our ingredients from farms in Vermont and New York. We introduced new products and strengthened all three of our bottom lines in the process (people, planet, profit).

We are doing all the things I had hoped all along we’d be able to do. And it’s worth putting a point on this: We would not be in a position to grow our business to this point of viability without having access to the MRFH. Think about it: a several hundred thousand dollar facility that we can pay per day to use rather than going several hundred thousand dollars into debt to create.

We have been at the hub for two years now, and within another year or so, we will have grown beyond its bounds. A happy dilemma, and one that is the core of the hub’s business plan, a plan that brings thousands of pounds of locally grown organic produce to plates in homes, restaurants and institutions across the Northeast.

The key takeaway: It takes stuff to make stuff. Food hubs humbly provide the stuff we need to make the stuff we need, if we are up for prioritizing a food system of depth over breadth.

Joe Bossen is founder and president of Ver-mont Bean Crafters Co.

Value-Added Food at the Mad River Food Hub

Food & Farming: Economics & Accessibilty


by Dan Stein

Farm-to-Table (FTT), central Vermont’s mission-driven food hub, provides year-round delivery of fresh locally

grown and nutrient-dense foods to over 100 participating sites in Washington County. The mission of the program is to provide uni-versal access of locally grown foods through education, marketing and distribution. FTT is a program of Food Works at Two Rivers Center, a hands-on food and agricultural education center in Montpelier working to strengthen our local food system and to em-power children, families and seniors to grow, prepare, eat and preserve their own foods.

FTT works with 10 local farmers to re-build our local food system by planning crop production as a collective, identifying and developing new markets, public educa-

tion, and coordinated collection, storage and delivery of harvested produce. Each winter, the farmers gather to review prior crop plans, set goals and expectations for the new year, and create a collective growing plan for the upcoming season.

Over the years, FTT has seen a steady in-crease in the diversity and quantity of locally grown foods being purchased by participating meal sites. This translates to healthier meals being served to seniors, preschool children, public school students and other vulnerable populations who cannot afford fresh local foods. Additionally, increased production of local food advances our regional goal of rebuilding the local food system and support-ing local farmers.

“It feels like we are really grounding this program into a solid foundation. This is what being sustainable is about,” said Mimi

Arnstein, who operates Wellspring Farm in Marshfield.

As part of the 10th year of Farm-to-Table, these 10 farmers decided to do something a little different. This year, the farmers planted the seeds of sustainability for the program through 16 core principles. Among these principles are a commitment to cultivating new farmers, program and product brand-ing, taking steps toward financial sustain-ability, providing universal access, and work-ing toward a consensus-seeking process. Joey Klein, a lifetime steward of the land and FTT grower in central Vermont said, “It’s like we’re writing our own constitution.”

The goal of planning crop production as a collective is to ensure the most productive and sustainable use of the land in central Vermont, which ultimately lowers the cost of produce, gets more money into the hands

of farmers and ensures that food is grown each year that can be donated to local food shelves and free meal sites. This activity of collective crop planning is a growing trend in the national food hub movement. Food hubs around the country are beginning to realize the benefit of planning crops together for efficiency and productivity. You can learn more about the food hub movement by log-ging onto the National Good Food Network at ngfn.org/resources/food-hubs.

Daniel Stein is the manager of Farm-to-Table. To find out more about how you can purchase fresh local foods through FTT or how you can volunteer or donate to Food Works at Two Rivers Center, contact Dan via [email protected], phone 223-7700 or visit FTT’s website at farmtotable .foodworksvermont.org.

Local Farmers Plant Seeds for Sustainable Food Hub in Central Vermont

by Grace Meyer

For 17 years, the Vermont Fresh Net-work (VFN) has joined together farm-ers, chefs, food artisans, institutions

and distributors in a conversation about local food. While the challenges facing net-work members have evolved, the goal has not wavered—VFN is committed to growing Vermont’s local food economy by building re-lationships between agriculture and culinary professionals.

Our chef members have proven their com-mitment to local food. In 2012, the network increased its membership requirements for culinary establishments. The new criteria ne-cessitates that restaurants have at least four farm partnerships, that a minimum of 15 percent in annual food purchases be spent on Vermont-grown food, that three of the six USDA food groups be represented year-round on the menu, and that they participate in one network gathering per year. An amazing 70 percent of our members were able to meet or exceed these requirements. This year, we will award the new Golden Barn distinction to members with 15 or more farm partners who

also purchase over 30 percent of their food from Vermont.

Two Montpelier members who meet or exceed the Golden Barn standards are The Skinny Pancake and Salt, a café in Montpe-lier. Though these establishments are mark-edly different, both are built on the same principle: a commitment to locally produced ingredients. Chef/owners Jeremy Silansky (of The Skinny Pancake) and Suzanne Podhaizer (of Salt) spoke to VFN on the advantages and limitations of sourcing locally in 2013, and despite the differences in the two operations, their voices were unified on the topic.

The Skinny Pancake has worked hard to defy the myth that you can’t source locally while still providing a consistent, affordable meal at a large scale. Each Skinny Pancake location has a policy of supporting Vermont growers. While sourcing 10,000 pounds of Vermont-grown basil might be a challenge, the volume of product they require makes a prepurchase agreement a safe, sustainable and appealing option for farmers. Thomas Case of Arethusa Farm, at the Intervale in Burlington, has a strong relationship with The Skinny Pancake and sees the advantages

to partnering with restaurants—like focusing on fewer crops at that higher volume.

Case makes his own deliveries to his chef partners, which allows a good amount of face time and discussion about product and expectations. These one-on-one relationships can be fruitful, but when maintaining part-nerships with different personalities, it can lead to a more challenging job for the farmer. Case has worked with The Skinny Pancake for long enough now that a mutual under-standing has developed, which has helped them work through unexpected roadblocks. The flood of 2011 left Case unable to hold up his side of the prepurchase agreement for mesclun greens. Together, Case and The Skinny Pancake worked out adjustments to the agreement that suited both parties. Case urges restaurants to visit the farms they part-ner with. He credits his success with The Skinny Pancake to a mutual understand-ing of each others’ needs: he’s been in their kitchen and talked to their chefs, and they have walked his land and understand his farm.

Suzanne Podhaizer echoes this sentiment at her small café, where local food inspires Salt’s

ever-changing, inventive menu. Podhaizer’s relationships with her farmers allow her to adapt her menu on a whim to whatever is fresh and intriguing. While this is definitely an advantage, the flexibility needed to operate this way is not without its challenges. Com-petition for product among restaurants can leave chefs in a pickle, like when Podhaizer’s chicken farmer ran out of birds. Luckily, the farmer went to a neighboring farm to secure Podhaizer’s order and not leave her in a menu crisis—the responsible and thoughtful ges-ture reaffirmed her belief that when sourcing locally, we’re all in it together.

We encourage interested parties to know your farmer and chef, visit local farmers’ markets and restaurants to start a conversa-tion and consider joining the Vermont Fresh Network as a partner or community member, so we can continue to encourage, support and promote the flourishing partnerships that make up Vermont’s local food landscape.

To find Vermont Fresh Network members in your area, visit vermontfresh.net.

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by Nat Frothingham

A new $70,000 commercial kitchen will soon be up and running at the Mont-pelier Senior Activity Center. Starting

July 1, a number of food-related activities that have been in the planning stages will get started. The new programs are all part of a recent partnership established between the senior center and Just Basics, a nonprofit organization that manages Meals on Wheels, a program that delivers meals to seniors and qualified participants.

At a Montpelier City Council meeting at the end of March 2013, Janna Clar, director of the senior center, and Kimberley Lashua, executive director of Just Basics, won approval from the council to establish the partnership. At least three food-related programs will be offered out of the new kitchen beginning this summer: Meals on Wheels, a café, and a “a congregate (or group) meals program” at the center twice a week, anticipated to happen on on Tuesdays and Fridays at noon.

For the past several years, the New Eng-land Culinary Institute has prepared food for Meals on Wheels at the National Life cafeteria. However, the long-range plan has been to shift food preparation to the senior center, once work on the new commercial kitchen is completed and a new food prepa-ration contractor is identified. According to Clar and Lashua, discussions about shifting the Meals on Wheels program over to the senior center have been going on for a pretty long time. Making this shift and reestablish-ing other meal options have been largely on

pause since the fire at the senior center in December 2009.

Another new offering will be a café meal at the senior center on Thursdays. “We think there are a lot of people who might want to use the café before or after their senior center activities,” said Lashua. Food can be eaten at the café or taken home.

“It’s more of a take-out situation,” ex-plained Lashua. “Choose from two or three take-out options such as sandwiches or sal-ads.” Café patrons would pay a set price.

Until they have a sense of what the demand will be, the café organizers will be trying it out one day per week. The idea for the café, indeed for the group meals, is to serve nutri-tious meals with plenty of fresh, local food.

The new food activities at the senior center will involve seniors in helping out with the meals. Said Clar, “We’re getting tremendous volunteer enthusiasm. People want to help and get involved.”

It’s the new commercial kitchen that will make all three meals programs possible. “We have expanded the size and scope of the kitchen,” said Clar. “There was never a walk-in cold room or freezer. Now we can flash-freeze seasonal vegetables like squash.”

At the moment Just Basics is announcing a bidding process for individuals or organiza-tions—all kinds of bidders—who might be interested in contracting to manage produc-tion for all three meals programs.

Clar expressed excitement about the new partnership between Just Basics and the se-nior center. “I can’t help grinning widely these days,” she said, “knowing that we’re

finally moving forward with this partner-ship. It’s been a long time coming, and the community passion for revamping the senior meals options is energizing.”

Clar put out an invitation to anyone in the community to come and take a look at the new senior center. A year and a half ago the senior center had just over 600 members. “Now, we’re over 800 members,” Clar said. And, she believes, some of that added mem-bership strength is explained by the recent opening of the brand-new center and its exciting, expanded programming.

Talking about the new senior center space, she said, “It’s bright and beautiful.”

Then she added, “I’m also pleased to say that the new kitchen equipment was de-livered Monday [April 15] and is getting installed this week under the watchful eye of our patient and generous volunteer project manager, Eric Seidel.”

For further information about the Montpe-lier Senior Activity Center, phone 223-2618 or go online to montpelier-vt.org/msac.

At the Senior Center: New Partnership, New Kitchen, New Meals Programs

Janna Clar, director of the Montpelier Senior Activity Center, left, and Kimberley Lashua, executive director of Just Basics. Photo by Becca Clark.


by Rachel Carter

Strengthening Vermont’s food system is a top priority for the Vermont Sus-tainable Jobs Fund (VSJF) where ana-

lytical minds and visionary technology are in the final stages of developing the much-anticipated Vermont Food System Atlas. The third floor offices of VSJF, located next to the Montpelier police station, are bus-tling with preparations for the launch of the most comprehensive website of its kind in the country. The atlas features thousands of food system resources, including stories, videos, job listings, data, a searchable map and all sections of the Farm to Plate Strategic Plan.

Farmers, food production businesses, spe-cialty food producers, educational institu-tions, nonprofit organizations and state en-tities will soon have access to a one-stop web portal searchable by people and places, region, keyword and food system catego-ries to connect with one another and build economic partnerships based on production, distribution, marketing and outreach goals. The atlas is scheduled to launch in May.

“As a diversified farmer, I anticipate being able to use the Food System Atlas as a single source to connect with all the resources avail-able to help me farm successfully,” says John Cleary of Cleary Family Farm in Plainfield. “Improving farmer access to technical assis-tance programs, educational workshops and financing opportunities will help Vermont farmers grow and develop new markets. In my role as a fieldman for Organic Valley, the atlas will help me connect new and existing farmers with market opportunities offered by our farmer-owned cooperative.”

Erica Campbell, program director of the VSJF Farm to Plate Initiative adds, “The Vermont Food System Atlas will also serve as the communication hub for the 225 food and farm businesses, organizations and stake-holders engaged in the state’s Farm to Plate [F2P] Network. Network members collabo-rate in working groups and task forces and are developing and initiating specific projects to meet the 25 F2P strategic plan goals. The atlas will help these groups stay connected and coordinated.”

Central Vermont involvement in the F2P Network is diverse. Hunger Mountain Coop

provides local food retail distribution support, expertise and opportunities for area produc-ers. Greenfield Highland Beef of Plainfield and Greensboro Bend offer a producers’ per-spective to technical assistance programs. The Vermont Agency of Agriculture is represented across network working groups. Montpelier’s Food Works and the Vermont Foodbank help keep food access central in projects and con-versations. Each will be able to use the atlas as suits their needs and goals.

“The atlas will provide Food Works with the tools to better communicate with other food system businesses and organizations around the state and will provide us with data and mapping tools to build a more resil-ient, just food system in the central Vermont region,” comments Joseph Kiefer, cofounder and director of education at Food Works at Two Rivers Center. “Central Vermont needs the tools that connect food system niches to rebuild a food system that will serve ev-eryone. Having seen the atlas, I think it is an incredible resource to reweave the web for our future work. It will help farms and food producers connect to one another as well as increase local food in our restaurants,

generate more farm-to-school programs and rebuild food shelves.”

On April 16, the Central Vermont Food System Forum will be held at Goddard Col-lege from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., a Central Ver-mont Food Systems Council public event that includes Food Works, the Vermont Agency of Agriculture and the F2P Network.

“The upcoming food system forum is just one small example of how the F2P Network engages with relevant food system entities to cross-pollinate efforts,” Campbell says. “In addition to further generating practical food and farm collaborations, the atlas will offer easy ways to search for and share data found in the detailed chapters of the F2P Strategic Plan.”

To learn more about Farm to Plate and the Vermont Food System Atlas or to attend the Central Vermont Food System Forum, e-mail [email protected], call 828-5670 or visit vtfood atlas.com. Follow Vermont Farm to Plate news and updates on Twitter at @VTfarm2plate.

Rachel Carter is a Vermont food system jour-nalist and communications specialist.

Vermont Food System Atlas Nears Completion

by Simeon Chapin

If you walk down most any supermarket aisle in Boston, it would seem everything is in season and everything is available.

Produce and food items are brought in from across the country or around the world to maintain stocked shelves. But the results are questionable. Cheap labor, unsustainable land management, chemical fertilizers, fac-tory farming and other practices that degrade our communities and quality of food all contribute to the appearance of inexpensive, always available food.

Greg Georgaklis, wanting to change this situation, started Farmers To You in Calais two and a half years ago with 22 families, a handful of farms and a small pickup truck. Now he is providing weekly deliveries from over 50 partner farms in Vermont, New Hampshire and Quebec to families in the Boston metro area at 11 community pickup sites and delivery to home or office. Deliver-ies are made year-round. Since that small beginning, Farmers To You has grown to serving over 430 families with weekly custom orders.

Take Julie Wormser. For over a year now, she has fed her family in large part with food from farms and producers from within the New England food shed. “When I order meats, cheeses, dairy and vegetables from Farmers To You, I get the freshest food on my

kitchen table, and it’s so easy,” she said. But it’s more than that. She feels connected

to a community of farmers and families who are supporting each other to reinvigorate the regional agriculture and economy. “Farm-ers To You is working to create a saner food system,” she said, “and I’m excited to be part of it.”

During his work as a consultant on Ver-mont’s Farm To Plate project, Georgaklis re-alized that a significant barrier to the growth of local food consumption was an inequity between small family farms and large food retailers in both scale and model. Farmers To You was launched with the idea that partner-ing families and the farms that feed them in a small-scale direct-to-consumer distribution system would create mutual benefit for both.

“We’re here to prove how a holistic part-nership between farmers and families can thrive environmentally and economically,” says Georgaklis. “There’s knowledge and wis-dom in natural systems that we’re modeling in our business design. My goal is to hone this model and then give it away—so that other communities across the country can do what we’re doing too.”

Families have complete choice of what is put in their order, and although there are no upfront costs to families joining the partner-ship, they must make a commitment to the farmers and producers. Farm To Table asks families to source a consistent portion of their

food from their partner farms, with a mini-mum of $40 each week. This ensures a steady demand, which is needed for the develop-ment of sustainable, local food businesses.

While some partner farmers may have been skeptical of the model at first, they are all now seeing the benefit and have become committed to its success. Lee Blackwell, of Blackwell Roots Farm in Cabot, said, “We’ve been supplying Farmers To You for a couple of years now, and it’s really working for us.

We are hoping for more growth in their Boston market and know that we can specifi-cally plan on expansion as this market grows. The long-term vision is something we can really get behind. They have been completely reliable, flexible and go the extra mile. Can’t beat it.”

Simeon Chapin is a staff member at Farmers To You, proudly offering Vermont products to CSA members.

Farmers To You: Building a Sustainable Food System


Staff of Farmers to You. Photo courtesy of Simeon Chapin.


by Gail England

Have you ever noticed that sometimes you set out in one direction and end up in a completely different place

than expected? This is one of those stories. As a member of Transition Town Mont-

pelier, I’ve been looking for ways to build a sustainable, resilient local food system that meets my needs today and those of future generations. Part of this is growing more of my own food, helping others do the same and then finding ways to store it. It wasn’t all that long ago that people in Vermont didn’t have electricity, so what did they do?

Building root cellars for year-round food storage is one of the answers. These practical systems are back in vogue in central Vermont. Transition Town Montpelier has hosted root cellar tours and produced a root cellar video and will consult with folks wanting to build their own. All this led me to then ask: In late

spring when a root cellar is empty but the harvest hasn’t come in yet, where can you get fresh foods? Wild harvesting of edible “weeds” is one answer, another is sprouting seeds, but is there anything else?

This question led me to author/teacher Louise Frazier, owner of S & G Enterprises in East Montpelier and creator of Garden Splendors lacto-fermented vegetables. These delicious, ultrahealthy, probiotic vegetables have all the vitamins and minerals of raw vegetables but are easier to digest because of the lacto-fermentation process. In fact they provide our digestive systems with the good, healthy bacteria needed to function properly.

OK, full disclosure. After taking a couple of classes with Louise, she made me her business partner, a surprise change of direc-tion in my life. Not only do we create these vegetables, but she has been teaching me and others whole grain cooking too.

In the 1980s, Louise and her partner, Wolf-

gang Rohrs, owned a vegetarian restaurant in Cologne, Germany, which focused on the tradition of whole grain cooking and using fresh, local, seasonal organic vegetables in new ways. Their menus were based on what was available from the region’s farmers that week. An abundance of one crop challenged them to be creative, leading to unusual, deli-cious dishes. Known for her excellent teaching and cooking workshops, Louise then traveled throughout Germany spreading her wisdom.

After returning home, they worked with Mahaiwe Harvest (formerly Gardens at Great Barrington), located at Sunways Farm in Massachusetts, one of the two original CSAs founded in the U.S. Then the U.S. Biody-namic Association sent Louise to Sweden to study lactic acid fermentation, an ancient way of preserving the abundance of the harvest. This method is perfect for those living in cold climates as the food can be stored easily in a root cellar or refrigerator.

At a youthful, energetic 81 years old, Lou-ise still teaches workshops designed to pique the interests of expert cooks and beginners alike, focusing on the seasons, the foods available and what will prepare us inwardly as we transition into the next season. Work-shops may combine cooking with millet, barley, buckwheat, rye or oat groats along with fresh parsnips, squash, chard, turnips or whatever. You may learn to make lacto-fermented vegetables and then use beet peels for soup. After the class, a meal is served for all. Samples of the lacto-fermented vegetables and whole grain cooking are available at the April 27 Capitol City Farmers Market. Or go to sunrisehillnutritionretreat.weebly.com for more information about classes.

Louise Frazier is a local treasure, not what I expected to find when thinking about root cellars. Her knowledge of nutrition is vast as she brings a lifetime of experience to the table.

Louise Frazier: A Local Treasure of Food Lore

Food & Farming: Growers & Producers

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by Sylvia Fagin

Some pundits have said that “farmers are the new rock stars.” Successful local food movements across the country and the

seemingly exponential increase of farm-to-table restaurants have turned farmers into heroes in some circles. Interest in farm internships is on the rise, and a crop of young farmers is cultivat-ing a new generation of diversified farms.

Yet it’s incredibly hard work, being a land-based rock star. Weather is unpredictable, con-sumers are fickle, pests are tenacious and the human body has its limits. There’s an endless supply of work, but rarely an endless supply of funds to hire labor. It would be tempting to quit, but most farmers don’t. What keeps them going?

Every farmer probably has his own answer, his own X factor of longevity. For Joey Klein and Betsy Ziegler, owners of Littlewood Farm in Plainfield since 1983, it’s gratitude.

“The support from the community has been marvelous,” Klein says. “We’re so grateful. Betsy and I want to thank people for supporting our strawberries for so many years.”

For more than 20 years, Littlewood Farm has hosted annual pick-your-own strawberries, invit-ing customers from near and far to traverse the fields in search of tiny, succulent berries to enjoy fresh or in pies and jam. Hundreds have turned out to fill cartons and flats in the much-antici-pated, short-but-sweet season. This year, though, there won’t be strawberries at Littlewood.

“My enthusiasm hasn’t waned, but my en-ergy has,” Klein says, explaining this turn of events. Klein has had to slow down a bit since undergoing heart surgery in the fall of 2010, and strawberries, an incredibly labor-intensive crop, require more energy than he’s got right now.

“I’ll miss it,” Klein says, noting that until now, he’s planted strawberries every year. But while he’s taking a break from strawberries, he’ll con-tinue to grow vegetables for retail outlets, like the Hunger Mountain Coop, and annual events, like the bedding plant sale, will proceed as planned.

“That’s the last thing I’d give up,” Klein says. “I love being in the greenhouse in March, and I love helping people get their gardens going.” Littlewood grows a wide array of vegetable starts for its annual sale, which begins around Mother’s Day and continues for a month. Dozens if

not hundreds of Vermont gardens have emerged from plants started at Littlewood.

“We’ve got a hard-core fan club,” he says, citing a mailing list of 500 people. That fan club has clearly appreciated Klein’s strawberries, but folks may not understand the intricacies of growing them. Klein explains where his energy’s gone all these years and why he’s willing to take a break.

“The thing about strawberries is that they’re profitable two years out of five,” Klein says with a characteristic chuckle, outlining the many po-tential difficulties in raising organic strawberries. Namely, weeds, bugs and “the wacky weather we have in the spring.”

Early May can see daytime temperatures of 50 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, but nighttime temper-atures can fall to 28 to 29 degrees, low enough to kill the delicate blossoms that will, if they sur-vive, yield the biggest fruit. He’s set up systems to prevent frost, but they are labor intensive and, because it’s coldest at night, sleep stealing.

“Strawberries are a public-service crop,” Klein quips. He and Betsy enjoyed seeing families come back year after year, he says, but it’s time to take a break.

“I’m looking forward to a version of retire-ment,” Klein says. “We’d like to be able to get away from the farm more often to watch birds and visit friends.”

The change of scenery will be a well-deserved reward for this farmer who’s been working the land since 1974. An original member of NOFA, the Northeast Organic Farming Association, Klein and those of his generation taught them-selves how to farm organically. “We had to go back and find techniques that were lost with chemical agriculture,” Klein says. “We developed a whole culture of sharing our discoveries.”

Klein is one of the six farmers highlighted in the exhibit Plowing Old Ground: Vermont’s Organic Farming Pioneers, currently showing at the Vermont History Museum in the Pavilion Building in Montpelier. Klein notes that he and his associates saw themselves as a movement “right from the get-go. We weren’t in it for our-selves. We wanted to change the economy and change how food was grown. And I think we’ve succeeded beyond our expectations. I think the organic farming movement is one of the big suc-cesses of the 1970s counterculture.”

“It made me feel very good when Lieutenant

Cultivating GratitudeJoey Klein and Betsy Ziegler of Littlewood Farm

May 3–5 Our 31th Cinco de Mayo celebration!

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Cultivating GratitudeJoey Klein and Betsy Ziegler of Littlewood Farm

Governor Phil Scott started distributing bumper stickers that say ‘Buy local, it’s not just for hip-pies anymore,’” Klein says.

Klein is confident that the next generation of farmer rock stars will bear the torch well. Littlewood has hosted farm interns for years, and Klein sees his past interns as indicative of a capable cohort. “I’m very proud of the people who’ve interned here,” he says. “I’m pleased with the educational impact the farm has had.”

Thanks to a recent initiative of the Vermont Land Trust, the farm will continue to be used for agricultural purposes into the future, with protection from subdivision and development. Klein notes that he and Betsy are grateful for all the support received in community contribu-tions for this initiative. When the project is fully implemented, according to Klein, the land will be preserved for farming, and in the future, the property can only be sold to a buyer who will continue to farm the place.

Until then, Joey and Betsy Klein will greet visitors to the greenhouse, dispense gardening advice, grow row upon row of vegetables for sale at local stores and feast on the crop they’ve so carefully cultivated all these years—gratitude.

Sylvia Fagin writes about Vermont food and agriculture from her home in Montpelier. She currently serves as vice president of the Hunger Mountain Coop Council. Follow her on Twitter @sylviafagin.

what a weekend!May 3–5, 2013 • Montpelier

Joey Klein in his fields. Photo courtesy of Sylvia Fagin.



by Michelle Wallace

Each year Vermont farmers donate as much 400,000 pounds of produce through the Vermont Foodbank’s

Gleaning Program. These donations are making access to healthy, local food a reality for all Vermonters.

Gleaning is the act of harvesting and gath-ering surplus or seconds from farms. Rely-ing on a network of hundreds of volunteers, the Vermont Foodbank collects fresh, nutri-tious food that might otherwise go to waste and delivers it to Vermonters in need through 270 partnering food shelves, meal sites and senior centers.

It’s a winning situation all around. Grow-ers who have extra produce find a good home for their edibles beyond the compost pile; the foodbank’s partner food shelves and meal sites get much-needed fresh food for their patrons; and the gleaners get to give back to their communities.

The Vermont Foodbank Gleaning Pro-gram was born out of a necessity to secure more food for Vermonters in need. With declining donations from traditional sources, the Vermont Foodbank looked to local farms to help fill the growing need.

Improving access to fresh, healthy produce for Vermonters who need food assistance is a top priority for the food bank. This wouldn’t be possible without the generosity of Vermont farmers and the assistance of each and every volunteer. For more information about donat-ing produce or volunteering, please contact Michelle Wallace at 477-4125 or by e-mail at [email protected].

Vermont Fresh: A Fruit and Vegetable Handbook

The publication of Vermont Fresh: A Fruit and Vegetable Handbook was a collaborative effort of the Vermont Foodbank, Salvation Farms and Sterling College. The handbook

highlights 40 fruits and vegetables that are particularly well suited to the Northeast re-gion and addresses growing, storage, recipes and nutritional information.

The handbook increases the information available on how to use fresh foods and com-plements work being done statewide through the Foodbank’s Gleaning Program to increase access to Vermont-grown foods. The handbook is available as a free download on the Vermont Foodbank website at vtfoodbank.org.

Vermont Foodbank is the state’s largest hun-ger-relief organization, serving communities in all 14 counties of Vermont through a network of more than 270 food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, senior centers and after-school pro-grams. Visit them at vtfoodbank.org.

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Food & Farming: Food Security

A young gleaner. Photo courtesy of Michelle Wallace.


by Kimberley Lashua

In July 2012, George Gross, owner and founder of Dog River Farm in Berlin, contacted me to discuss a gleaning part-

nership. As the executive director of Just Basics, an organization that works to recover or rescue food that is no longer sellable but is still edible, I am always looking for opportu-nities to save food.

George and I had met a year earlier when he was using space at Trinity United Meth-odist Church as a drop-off site for his winter CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). He expressed that he no longer had an outlet where volunteers were coming to his farm to pick up donations that he defined as “still edible, good foods.” He and his staff were now composting or feeding the chickens with produce that had once been donated to the community.

“It was really noticeable when we lost a local gleaning program,” George confesses.

He wondered how he and our organization might partner to help get his good food to those who needed it.

You might be asking why foods are being discarded when so many people are without. George talks about a market where pretty foods are the norm. “We’ve been mesmerized by beautiful, absolutely 100 percent perfect-looking foods,” says George. “We’ve been trained to say that a particular food is good because of the way it looks and what is ac-ceptable in the U.S. marketplace. Just be-cause there is a rotten spot that could be cut out or it’s misshapen or small doesn’t mean that it is not good food.”

He also states that while it is much easier to compost than take the extra steps needed to put foods aside for the food pantry, “it makes my staff feel good and appreciative to know that if they can work just a little bit harder, they can make that food actually go somewhere useful rather than the compost. Overall, it is about feeling good about what

you are doing and feeling good about the im-pact you are having on other people.”

George has donated more than 2,700 pounds of produce since we started this part-nership. He says, “This is maybe one-tenth of what we’ve been able to donate in the past.” His hope is to continue our partnership by expanding the amount of produce that we are able to capture at the farm.

We are looking for volunteers who could assist in collecting foods with George’s field crew. Volunteers can help sort foods that George is unable to market. They can work side by side with his staff as they are pack-ing—“ready and willing help” as George calls it.

If you would like to help with this very worthwhile program and make a difference in your community, please contact me at [email protected] or 595-9145.

Kimberley Lashua is executive director of Just Basics.

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by Lila Bennett

Sustainable farming is a hot term right now, and there are a lot of ideas about what it means. In Vermont, we are try-

ing to use and reuse everything our farms produce, reaching out to other farms and sharing our resources to benefit one other. Sustainable in Vermont means taking care of our grasses and soils and working together to ensure we are able to keep producing foods for generations to come. This is exciting as a farmer. Not only do we want to keep pro-ducing food, but we want to work together as farmers to produce the most healthful, wholesome and humanely raised foods.

Until this year, Tangletown Farm did not own any farmland and so leased fields all over the place to farm. Nothing was connected. The chicken manure stayed on the chicken fields, the cow manure stayed on the cow fields, the pigs pooped in the woods. We bought our hay. It was fine because it got us into farming, but it wasn’t sustainable from the closed-loop idea of everything contributing to the health of all. The chicken manure will return more to us by being spread on hay or vegetable fields. We knew we had to find a farm and consolidate our efforts toward sustainability.

We looked at many farms and finally found a beautiful farm in West Glover, Vermont. Now

our chickens and pigs poop a lot, and we col-lect and compost it. This spring we will spread it on our hayfields. Then the hay will grow to be lush and nutritious to feed our cows, pigs, rabbits and hens. The cows and pigs also roam along and poop on the pastures and make the grass the chickens eat lush and nutritious. Everything feeds everything, including, and especially, our family and many Vermont fam-ilies. It is a beautiful picture. Happy animals, happy fields and healthy children.

There was another loop we hadn’t con-sidered until we moved here. Our farm is surrounded by dairy farms. Dairy cows must calve every year to keep making more milk. The little heifer (female) calves are kept at the dairy, so they always have new cows to keep making more milk. The bulls are the gap in the loop. It is a burden to find something to do with these calves, let alone the income lost from having a bull not a heifer.

Right after we moved, the phone started ringing. The dairy farms wanted to know if we wanted to take the bulls and raise them for beef. It gave us an idea. We could take these male calves and raise them for ham-burger and sell the meat at an affordable price to Vermont schools. The enterprise Smart Burgers was born.

Schools, with their limited budgets, have difficulty providing quality food. Our school-

children, with their developing brains and high-energy needs, are expected to eat antibi-otic-ridden, factory-farmed meats from mis-erable animals alongside canned vegetables and then are expected to thrive. This needs to be combated somehow. Lots of schools and communities are working hard for change. Smart Burgers is our effort. This year, we at Tangletown Farm are raising the dairy bulls for the program. The first Smart Burgers will be on the Green Mountain Farm-to-School truck in the fall.

We set up Smart Burgers as a low-profit limited liability company separate from Tan-gletown Farm. It can thereby accept dona-tions and apply for grants, with the mission of keeping the cost of burger to schools low while still making it worthwhile for farmers to raise the cattle. It is our hope that this will eventually allow dairies to raise their own bull calves up to market weight and then sell them to the Smart Burgers program, which will take care of the marketing and distribu-tion, another tricky loop to close. This way, schools across Vermont can have wholesome beef for the kids and the dairy farms can have something to do with the bulls.

We farm because we want to raise animals for meat with care. We want to know that there is healthy food in the world without antibiotics in it. We want people to trust that

the meat they are eating came from animals that lived the way they were supposed to. It feels great to be working with the dairy farms and closing one more gap. You can learn more about our farm, farming prac-tices, what we offer and where to purchase at tangletownfarm.com. We are taking orders now for our year-round CSA, and we will be at the Montpelier farmers’ market each and every Saturday.

Also coming soon is the Smart Burgers website, smartburgers.org, where you can learn about the program or donate. We hope to see you this summer at the farmers’ mar-ket, where there is every kind of food from every kind of farm. Sustainable means Ver-monters feeding Vermonters, from chicken to carrot. Come support and enjoy the many healthy and sustainable choices produced so close to home.

Lila Bennett, David Robb and their three children work together on Tangletown Farm in West Glover. Dave and Lila are both na-tive Vermonters and have been farming for 10 years years together. Lila serves as president of the Capital City Farmers’ Market and is very committed to providing food to schools and low-income Vermonters. Check out their website, tangletownfarm.com, and the Smart Burgers site, smartbugers.org.

Tangletown Farm: Smart Burgers and Sustainable Farming

Food Insecurity in Our Community

Everyone is busy. You’re busy, I’m busy and that guy down the block is busy. Kimberley Lashua, the director of the Montpelier Food Pantry, is just as busy, but she still found

the time to speak to students at Main Street Middle School. One of the things Lashua does is ensure that the community is aware of food insecurity.

She led us through exercises where we assumed the roles of people trying to get enough to eat on a limited income. This helped us comprehend firsthand just how difficult it is to feed yourself and your family without enough money. In one activity we divided into “fami-lies” and created meals to feed our whole family for a week. Each family was given a certain amount of food, so some families had big, delicious meals while others scraped by on barely anything. This really made us think about how hard it would be if you didn’t have enough money to eat nutritious, filling meals. What would you do to get enough to eat? Well, some people grow their own food or apply for programs such as Three Squares Vermont, and others go to food shelves like the Montpelier Food Pantry.

Many students had never thought about this extremely common issue. “Food insecurity was completely irrelevant to me. I never thought about it being so close to home,” said eighth-grader Laura Smith.

“I now realize how many families have to make it through the day with only a couple of dollars,” said eight-grader Elan Mayo.

Later this month, seventh and eighth graders will bake fresh bread and donate it to the Montpelier Food Pantry. Our teacher, Lisa Cassetty, says she wants us to be able to make our own food and give back to our community.

If you are food insecure, don’t be afraid to accept help. At one time or another, you, me and pretty much everyone has needed some kind of help. Perhaps one day, it will be you who is do-

nating the food or volunteering. There is something everybody can do to help food insecure households. So when you see an opportunity to help food insecure people, please do it.

So yes, I know you’re busy. I know you feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day. But finding that extra minute, or finding that extra dollar, could mean a starving family has food on the table.

For more information about hunger in Vermont, visit hungerfreevt.org, justbasicsvt.org/JBI/Food_Pantry.html or montpelierbridge.com/2012/10/essay-heroism-at-the-montpelier-food-pantry.

—Rachel Sucher, MSMS student

Cooking for the Good Samaritan Haven

Eighth graders practiced healthy cooking skills in a community service project that in-volved cooking a healthy meal for 50 individuals staying at the Good Samaritan Haven,

an emergency homeless shelter in Barre. The class of 16 students made chicken pot pie from scratch, says Family and Consumer Science teacher Anne Giroux.

Students boiled the chickens, cooked the vegetables, picked the meat off the bone and made gravy from the juices; they also learned how to make biscuit dough from scratch for the top of the pot pie. The soon-to-be high schoolers sliced green beans for a healthy side dish and peeled Vermont apples for a sweet apple crisp.

Giroux credits instructional assistant Nancy Vachon with the idea and the communica-tions legwork, which gave the students the opportunity to assemble a complete, healthy meal from scratch and to use their new skills to make a positive impact in the community.

—Sylvia Fagin, MSMS teacher

Food News from Main Street Middle School

Food & Farming: Food & Schools


Upcoming EventsFRIDAY, APRIL 19Spring Migration Bird Walk: Berlin Pond. Explore local birding hot spots for warblers, vireos, thrushes and waterfowl. 7–8:30 a.m. Free for nature center members, $10 nonmembers. Call North Branch Nature Center for directions: 229-6206.Questions About Senior Services? Sarah Willhoit, infor-mation and assistant specialist with Central Vermont Council on Aging, helps coordinate services for food and nutrition assistance, housing, legal services, health insurance, caregiver supports, in-home help, transportation and more. 9 a.m.–noon. Montpelier Senior Activity Center, 58 Barre Street. By appointment only; call Sarah, 479-4400, to schedule an appointment.Lunch & Learn: Letters from the Front. Author Robert Plumb and student actors read from Plumb’s book Your Brother in Arms, featuring correspondence from George McClelland to his family as a citizen soldier with the 155th Pennsylvania Infantry. Light lunch served. Noon–1 p.m. Sullivan Museum & History Cen-ter, Norwich University, Northfield. Free. 485-2183 or norwich.edu/museum.Dave the Raw Food Trucker. With David Conrardy. Learn how Dave, a formerly 430-pound ill trucker, started eating raw organic vegan food and lost 230 pounds, reversed colon cancer, diabetes, acid reflux and kidney disease and weaned himself off most medication. 5–7 p.m. Hunger Mountain Coop community room, Montpelier. $10 co-op member-owners, $12 nonmembers. Register at 223-8000, ext. 202, or [email protected] and Author Night. Art opening of Lark Upson’s work followed by a reading with author Gayle Hanson. Refreshments served. 6 p.m. Jaquith Public Library, 122 School Street, Marshfield. Free. 426-3581 or [email protected] with Aurora Brush. The up-and-coming singer/songwriter performs her repertoire of original work in the style of Norah Jones and Brandy Carlile. 7 p.m. Bethany Church, 115 Main Street, Montpelier. By donation.A Polka, A Forgotten Waltz; A Recital of Ecstasy and Delirium. Pianist Diane Huling plays music from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including music of Busoni, Debussy, Beach, Bridge, Rachmaninoff, Chopin and Liszt. 7:30 p.m. White Chapel, Norwich University, Northfield. By donation. Dance Party with Johnny Rawls and the Dave Keller Band. The Mississippi and Vermont soul musicians join forces. Southern soul-food hors d’oeuvres by Susanna’s Catering. 7:30 p.m. River Arts Center, Pleasant Street, Morrisville. $15–$20 sliding scale. riverartsvt.org.Laugh Local: Vermont Comedy Showcase. Hold on to your hats or seats for a wild mix of four Burlington and four central Vermont comics, shaken and not stirred. 8 p.m. American Legion Post #3, 21 Main Street, Montpelier. $8. Bob, 793-3884.

SATURDAY, APRIL 20Walk with the Montpelier Section of the Green Mountain Club. Moderate 5-mile road walk around Berlin Pond with possible extension to 8 miles according to group prefer-ence and leader’s whim. Contact leader Kevin Ryan, 249-8849 or [email protected], for meeting time and place.Affordable Farmland: Vermont Land Trust Open House. Check out a 87-acre farm in South Barre. Asking price is $160,000. 10 a.m.–3 p.m. For direcetions or more information, call Jon, 533-7705, or visit vlt.org/initiatives/barre-farm.PoemCity: Summit Songs. A showcase of poems set to music by Summit School teachers and students. See how musical words can be. 11 a.m. Hayes Room, Kellogg-Hubbard Library, 135 Main Street, Montpelier. Free. poemcityvt.wordpress.com.Comics Madness with Marek Bennett. Cartoonist, musi-cian, world traveler and educator Marek Bennett leads a discovery-based workshop on creating your own comic for ages 5 and up. 1–4 p.m. Kellogg-Hubbard Library,135 Main Street, Montpelier. Free. 223-4665 or kellogghubbard.org. PoemCity: Poetry that Heals. With poet and teacher Mary Rose Dougherty. Explore how poetry can help us realign when we are thrown by life, access and release feelings and resolve emotional and spiritual distress. 3 p.m. Hayes Room, Kellogg-Hubbard Library, 135 Main Street, Montpelier. Free, but space is limited; register at 223-3338. poemcityvt.wordpress.com.Shape-Note Sing. Ian Smiley leads tunes from The Sacred Harp. All welcome; no experience necessary. Event happens by RSVP only: please call or e-mail to confirm. 6:30–8 p.m. Tulsi Tea Room, 34 Elm Street, Montpelier. By donation. Ian, 882-8274 or [email protected]. Event happens every first and third Saturday.Northern Third Musical Collaborations: Brahms, Mozart and Lutaslawski. Sofia Hirsch, violinist, and John Dunlop, principal cellist, join pianist Alison Cerutti and violist Elizabeth Reid. 7:30 p.m. Barre Opera House. $15 adults, $5 youth under 18. Tickets at 476-8188 or barreoperahouse.org.Contra Dance. All dances taught; no partner necessary. All ages welcome. Bring shoes not worn outdoors. 8–11 p.m. Capital City Grange, 6612 Route 12 (Northfield Street), Berlin. $8. 744-6163 or capitalcitygrange.org. Event happens every first, third and fifth Saturday.Stand-up Comedy for Project Independence. Vermont comics Carmen Lagala, Ben Orbison, Autumn Spencer, Nancy Schultz and Mike Thomas perform to benefit the central Vermont adult day service. Show is rated PG-15. 8 p.m. 81 North Main Street, Barre. $12 in advance, $16 at the door. Tickets at Angeleno’s Restaurant and Woodbury Mountain Toys in Montpelier, New Chap-ter Book Store in Barre or pibarre.org.

SUNDAY, APRIL 21Walk with the Montpelier Section of the Green Moun-tain Club. Easy 10-mile outing on the Stowe bike path. Meet at Montpelier High School. Contact leader Michael Chernick, 249-0520 or [email protected], for meeting time.

PoemCity: The Yoga of Poetry; The Poetry of Yoga. Lydia Russell-McDade leads participants in exploring the fluid poetry of bodies in motion, as well as the poetry that arises from this practice of articulation, self-expression and inspiration. Inter-mediate-level yoga; bring a notebook and pen. 11:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m. Yoga Mountain Center, 7 Main Street, Montpelier. $10–$30. Preregister at yogamountaincenter.com. poemcityvt.wordpress.com.Early Spring Plant Walk. With clinical herbalist Rebecca Dalgin. Learn about plants that are widely distributed throughout our area and simple ways to incorporate their medicinal values into daily life. Tea served after walk. 1–2:30 p.m. Meet outside the Wild Heart Wellness office (Flander/EarthWalk building), Goddard Col-lege, 123 Pitkin Road, Plainfield. $4–$10. 552-0727 or wildheart-wellness.net.Pruning 101 Workshop. Zach Leonard teaches the principles of fruit-tree and berry pruning with an emphasis on apple trees. Bring your questions and challenges and dress warmly, rain or shine. 1–3 p.m. Elmore Roots Nursery, 631 Symonds Mill Road, Wolcott. $10. 888-3305 or [email protected] Film Society. Watch the 1986 film Room with a View, directed by James Ivory and starring Maggie Smith, Helena Bonham Carter and Denholm Elliot. 7 p.m. Chandler’s Upper Gallery, 71–73 Main Street, Randolph. $9. 431-0204 or [email protected] Do the Math Tour. Documentary film followed by a live-streamed discussion with leaders in the climate movement in New York City. 7 p.m. Community Center Media Room, Goddard College, 123 Pitkin Road, Plainfield. Free. goddard.edu.

MONDAY, APRIL 22Earth Day Celebration. Plant walk, community book swap, face painting and seed planting for kids, cell-phone and battery recycling, free samples and local food demos, information from lo-cal environmental organizations, raffles and prizes. 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; plant walk noon–1 p.m. Hunger Mountain Coop, Montpelier. Free. Register at 223-8000, ext. 202, or [email protected] Point Film Viewing and Discussion. Documen-tary on the impacts of the Canadian tar sands and what a Native community is doing about it. Followed by discussion with God-dard faculty members. 3:30 p.m. Community Center Media Room, Goddard College, 123 Pitkin Road, Plainfield. Free. goddard.edu. Presented by Goddard’s BA in Individualized Studies program.Retrofitting and the Lost Art of Window Repair. With Steve Byers from Open Sash. Learn how the modern integration of weather seals, foam-insulated weight cavities and double-thermal resistance can get your old windows functioning as well as a modern window. 6–7 p.m. Hunger Mountain Coop com-munity room, Montpelier. Free. Register at 223-8000, ext. 202, or [email protected]: Writing Nature Poetry: Workshop and Readings. Workshop and reading with Andrew Hepburn. Use your imagination and senses to capture the natural world in verse. Families encouraged to attend. Bring writing supplies. 7 p.m. Hayes Room, Kellogg-Hubbard Library, 135 Main Street, Montpelier. Free, but space limited; register at 223-3338. poemcityvt.wordpress.com.Adult Book Group. Copies of the book available at the library. New members welcome. 7–8 p.m. Jaquith Public Library, Old Schoolhouse Common, Marshfield. 426-3581 or [email protected]. Event happens every fourth Monday.Kristen Iversen Reading & Q&A. Iversen reads from her haunting new book, Full Body Burden, combining investigative

TheaterRANSOMMusic-drama based on the letters, diaries and military documents of Civil War soldier Ransom Towle of Rochester, Vermont. April 25–May 12. 7 p.m. Thursdays and Sundays; 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. matinees on Sunday, April 27, and Sunday, May 12. Lost Nation Theater, 39 Main Street, Montpelier. $30 Friday–Sunday, $25 Thursday, $5 discount for students/seniors; $10 children age 6–11. Infants and toddlers not admitted; children under 6 admitted at discretion of theater. Tickets at 229-0492 or lostnationtheater.org.

Live MusicBAGITOS28 Main Street, Montpelier. All shows 6–8 p.m. unless otherwise noted. 229-9212 or bagitos.com.Every WednesdayBlues jam with the Usual Suspects and friendsEvery SaturdayIrish/Celtic session, 2–5 p.m.Sunday, April 21Cody Michaels (solo piano), 11 a.m.–2 p.m.Tuesday, April 30Peoples’ Cafe with Occupy Central Vermont (music, art, poetry, activist discussions)

CHARLIE O’S70 Main Street, Montpelier. All shows 10 p.m. unless otherwsie noted. 223-6820.

Every MondayTriviaEvery TuesdayKaraokeEvery SaturdayAll-request dance party with Blue MoonFriday, April 19Andrea Gillis Band (soul rock)Saturday, April 20Lava Moss (rock)Wednesday, April 24Jay Ekis residency (rock), 8 p.m.Thursday, April 25Jack Grelle/the Johnson Family (blue-grass), 9 p.m.Friday, April 26Starline Rhythm Boys (honky-tonk/rock-abilly), 9:30 p.m.

FRESH TRACKS FARM 4373 Route 12, Berlin. 223-1151 or [email protected], April 26The Usual Suspects (blues), 6–9 p.m.

NUTTY STEPH’S CHOCOLATERIERoute 2, Middlesex. 229-2090 or nuttystephs.com.Every ThursdayBacon Thursday, live music and hot conversation, 6 p.m.–midnightSaturday, April 20Solid Gold Sing-Along with Jay Ekis, 7–10 p.m.Thursday, April 25Concrete Rivals surf party, 6–9 p.m.

POSITIVE PIE 222 State Street, Montpelier. 229-0453 or positivepie.com.Saturday, April 20MadMen3 (dance), 10:30 p.m., $5, 21+Friday, April 26Abby Jenne and the Crooked Brook Band, 10:30 p.m., $5, 21+Saturday, April 27Michael Chorney and Hollar General (alternative/folk/Americana), 10:30 p.m., $5, 21+

SKINNY PANCAKE89 Main Street, Montpelier. All shows 6 p.m. unless otherwise noted. 262-2253 or skinnypancake.com.Every SundayOld-time sessions with Katie Trautz and friends, 4–6 p.m. (intermediate to advanced players welcome to sit in)

THE WHAMMY BARMaple Corner Café, 31 West County Road, Calais. All events free unless otherwise noted. 229-4329.Every WednesdayOpen mic, 6:30 p.m.

see UPCOMING EVENTS, page 22

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Cody Michaels, who will be performing at Bagitos on Sunday, April 21.

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Actors in Ransom, playing at Lost Nation Theater

April 25–May 12.


journalism with personal memoir to reveal the destructive power of secrets. Part of the Visiting Writers series. 7:30–9 p.m. Haybarn Theatre, Goddard College, 123 Pitkin Road, Plainfield. Free. goddard.edu. Presented by Goddard’s BFA Writing program.

TUESDAY, APRIL 23Lunch & Learn: William Earle’s Painting. Emily Phillips, painting conservator, talks about the art restoration and cleaning of the painting that hung in Norwich University’s dining facility for over 40 years. Noon–1 p.m. Sullivan Museum & History Center, Norwich University, Northfield. Free. 485-2183 or norwich.edu/ museum.World Book Night at the Ainsworth. Librarians hand out copies of My Antonia by Willa Cather, while supplies last. 2–7 p.m. Ainsworth Public Library, Williamstown. 433-5887, [email protected] or ainsworthpubliclibrary.wordpress.com.Medicare and You. Turning 65? Those new to Medicare get questions answered. 3–4:30 p.m. Central Vermont Council on Aging, 59 North Main Street, suite 200, Barre. Free. Register at 479-0531. Event happens every second and fourth Tuesday.Tech Tuesdays. Get help with any computer or Internet ques-tions, or learn about the library’s new circulation software and how to use ListenUp to download audiobooks and more. Bring your iPod, tablet, phone, laptop or other device. 5:30–7 p.m. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, 135 Main Street, Montpelier. Free. 223-3338 or kellogghubbard.org. Event happens every second and fourth Tuesday.Ayurveda and the Energy of Food. With Karen Johnson, certified ayurvedic lifestyle consultant. Understand your unique body type, what foods serve you best and how to use this ancient science to increase vitality and balance with everyday foods and spices. 6–7:30 p.m. Hunger Mountain Coop community room, Montpelier. $2 co-op member-owners, $3 nonmembers. Register at 223-8000, ext. 202, or [email protected]: Goddard Writers Read. Wendy Call reads translations from the work of Mexican poets Irma Pineda and Jose Alfredo Escobar Martinez; Janet Sylvester reads poems from The Mark of Flesh and Breakwater, her most recent books. 6:30 p.m. Capitol Grounds, 27 State Street, Montpelier. Free. poemcityvt.wordpress.com.PoemCity: The Other Wish. Vermont poet Diane Swan reads from her new book of poetry. 7 p.m. Bear Pond Books, 77 Main Street, Montpelier. Free. 229-0774 or poemcityvt.wordpress.com.Rhythm of Structure: Journey of a Math Artist. Keynote by artist John Sims as part of Goddard College’s undergraduate program spring 2013 residency. 7:30–9 p.m. Haybarn Theatre, Goddard College, 123 Pitkin Road, Plainfield. Free. goddard.edu.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24François Truffaut Mini Film Festival: The 400 Blows. A neglected young man delves into a world of petty crime in this 1959 classic. Presented by film scholar Rick Winston. Part of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. 10:30 a.m. Savoy Theater, Montpelier. $5 suggested donation. 223-1736 or [email protected]. Series continues every Wednesday through May 8.Lunch & Learn: Outdoor Landscape Drawing Work-shop. Try your hand at plein air drawing on the Norwich campus

with assistance from an artist. Noon–1 p.m. Sullivan Museum & History Center, Norwich University, Northfield. Free. 485-2183 or norwich.edu/museum.School Vacation Days: Art of the Civil War. Kids age 6–12 participate in games, crafts and a snack inspired by topics featured at the history center. 1–4 p.m. Vermont History Center, 60 Washington Street, Barre. $8 per child; $6 per child for three or more children or Vermont Historical Society members. Preregistration required: 828-1413 or [email protected]. vermonthistory.org/vacation.Going Solar Without Going Broke. With Jessica Edgerly Walsh from Suncommon. Learn about financing options and state and federal incentives to help you go solar and save money. This workshop will focus on solar electric systems. 6–7 p.m. Hunger Mountain Coop community room, Montpelier. Free. Register at 223-8000, ext. 202, or [email protected] Important Wild Vermont Medicinals: A Chinese Medicine Perspective. With Brendan Kelly of Jade Mountain Wellness. Discover turkey tail, reishi, bloodroot, wild ginger and black birch. Detailed handouts provided. 6–9 p.m. Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism, 252 Main Street, Montpelier. $15 VCIH members, $17 nonmembers. Preregistration required: 244-7100 or [email protected]. vtherbcenter.org.Business Building Blocks: Get More Done. With profes-sional life coach Marianne Mullen. Learn ways to shift from feel-ing overwhelmed and stressed to productive and balanced. 6–8:30 p.m. Central Vermont Community Action, 195 Route 302, Berlin. Free, but registration required: sign up with Margaret, 477-5214, 800-843-8397 or [email protected]. Bicycle Maintenance. Gas prices are going up: tune up your bike for spring with Anne Miller and special guests. 7 p.m. Jaquith Public Library, 122 School Street, Marshfield. Free. 426-3581 or [email protected] Discussion Series: Deception. Bette Davis, Claude Rains and Paul Henreid star in this romantic mystery about a pia-nist who will stop at nothing to protect her refugee husband from her rich and powerful ex-lover. Discussion with library director Richard Bidnick follows. 7 p.m. Kellogg-Hubbard Library,135 Main Street, Montpelier. Free. 223-3338 or kellogghubbard.org.Woodcock Watch. Listen and watch for the dramatic court-ship flight of the American woodcock, and be serenaded by spring peepers and Wilson’s snipe. 7 p.m. North Branch Nature Center, 713 Elm Street, Montpelier. $5 nature center members, $8 nonmem-bers. 229-6206.Poetry Reading. With Rick Eschholz, Julia Shipley, Ben Aleshire, Nicholas Spengler and other Vermont poets. 7 p.m. River Arts Center, Pleasant Street, Morrisville. riverartsvt.org.

THURSDAY, APRIL 25School Vacation Days: Vermont’s Natural Resources. See Wednesday, April 24, for description and information.Worcester Clothing Swap. Bring in your gently worn clothing and accessories, then pick out some new-to-you items on Saturday. 1–5 p.m. Worcester Historical Building, Old White School, Calais Road. Drop off continues Friday, April 26. Karen, 552-7494.Slowing Down to the Speed of Nature. With Ivan MacBeth of the Green Mountain Druid Order. Learn how to slow down, engage with nature and stop missing so much of life. 6–7:30 p.m. Hunger Mountain Coop community room, Montpelier.

$8 co-op member-owners, $10 nonmembers. Register at 223-8000, ext. 202, or [email protected] Borealis: Dark Ships in the Northern Woods: Ballads and Stories of the Supernatural. With Tony Barrand, expert and exponent of traditional song and dance and former professor of anthropology at Boston University. 7–8:30 p.m. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, 135 Main Street, Montpelier. Free. 223-3338 or kellogghubbard.org. Presented in collaboration with the Center for Circumpolar Studies.Ecumenical Group. Songs of praise, Bible teaching, fellowship. 7–9 p.m. Jabbok Center for Christian Living, 8 Daniel Drive, Barre. Free. 479-0302. Event happens every second and fourth Thursday.Green Mountain Dog Club Monthly Meeting. Learn about the club and events. All dog lovers welcome. 7:30 p.m. Commodore’s Inn, Stowe. 479-9843 or greenmountaindogclub.org. Event happens every fourth Thursday.

FRIDAY, APRIL 26Spring Migration Bird Walk: North Branch Nature Center. See Friday, April 19, for description and information.Worcester Clothing Swap. See Thursday, April 25, for dis-cussion and information.LGBTQQ Youth Group. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgen-der, queer or questioning youth age 13–22 enjoy free pizza, soft drinks and conversation. Facilitated by adult volunteers trained by Outright VT. 6:30–8 p.m. Unitarian Church, 130 Main Street, Montpelier. Free. outrightvt.org. Event happens every second and fourth Friday.PoemCity: Transformations. Jon Turner reads from his new collection of poems and discusses the healing transformation that occurred from writing after his time at war in Iraq. 7 p.m. Storefront Gallery, 6 Barre Street, Montpelier. Free. poemcityvt.wordpress.com.

SATURDAY, APRIL 27Walk with the Montpelier Section of the Green Mountain Club. Moderate 5-mile walk around Sodom Pond in Adamant. Contact leaders Mary Garcia, 622-0585, or Mary Smith, 505-0603, for meeting time and place.Signs of Spring. Amy Butler leads a walk around North Branch Nature Center in search of singing birds, chirping frogs, budding leaves and blooming flowers. 8–10 a.m. North Branch Nature Center, 713 Elm Street, Montpelier. Free for kids and nature center members, $10 nonmembers. 229-6206.Bethany Church Auction. Antiques, furniture and collect-ibles. 9 a.m. preview and concessions; bidding starts at 9:30 a.m. Bethany Church, 115 Main Street, Montpelier. Melitta, 262-1019.Worcester Clothing Swap. Pick out new-to-you clothes and accessories. 9 a.m.–3 p.m. Worcester Historical Building, Old White School, Calais Road. $1/bag suggested donation; benefits Worcester Food Shelf and Community Kitchen. Karen, 552-7494.Spring Art Workshops for Youth: Comic Book Fun/Build Your Own Superhero. For youth age 4–12. 9:30 a.m.–noon. Helen Day Art Center, 90 Pond Street, Stowe. $25. Register at 253-8358. helenday.com. Workshops continue Saturday, May 27.PoemCity: The Chapbook: Reading and Writing the Slender Book. Jim Schley and Julia Shipley lead a hands-on class, covering a brief history of chapbooks, production techniques and the process of assembling a manuscript and finding a venue

UPCOMING EVENTS, from page 21

Support GroupsBEREAVEMENTBereavement/Grief Support Group. For anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one. Every other Monday, 6–8 p.m., starts April 29. Every other Wednesday, 10–11:30 a.m., starts April 24. Central Vermont Home Health & Hospice, 600 Granger Road, Barre. Ginny or Jean, 223-1878.Bereaved Parents Support Group. Facilitated by Central Vermont Home Health & Hospice (CVHHH). Second Wednesdays, 6–8 p.m. CVHHH, 600 Granger Road, Berlin. Jeneane Lunn, 793-2376.

CANCERKindred Connections. For anyone affected by cancer. Get help from Kindred Connections members who have been in your shoes. A pro-gram of the Vermont Cancer Survivor Network. Call Sherry, 479-3223, for more information. vcsn.net.Living with Advanced or Metastatic Cancer. Second Tuesdays, noon to 1 p.m. Cancer Center resource room, Central Vermont Medical Center. Lunch provided. 225-5449.Writing to Enrich Your Life. For anyone affected by cancer. Third Tuesdays, noon– 1 p.m. Cancer Center resource room, Central Vermont Medical Center. 225-5449.

Cancer Support Group. First Wednesdays, 6 p.m. Potluck. For location, call Carole Mac-Intyre, 229-5931.Man-to-Man Prostate Cancer Support Group. Third Wednesdays, 6–8 p.m. Conference room 2, Central Vermont Medical Center. 872-6308 or 866-466-0626 (press 3).

DISASTERHurricane Irene Support Group for Re-covery Workers. Get peer support and help processing emotions, strengthen relationships and learn coping skills. Every other Monday, 3:30 p.m. Unitarian Church, 130 Main Street, Montpelier. 279-4670.Hurricane Irene Support Group. Share your story, listen to others, learn coping skills, build community and support your neighbors. Refreshments provided. Wednesdays, 5:30 p.m. Berlin Elementary School. 279-8246.

KIDSGrandparents Raising Their Children’s Children. First Wednesdays, 10 a.m.–noon, Barre Presbyterian Church, Summer Street. Second Tuesdays, 6–8 p.m., Wesley Method-ist Church, Main Street, Waterbury. Third Thursdays, 6–8 p.m., Trinity United Methodist Church, 137 Main Street. Child care provided in Montpelier and Waterbury. Evelyn, 476-1480.

HEALTHBrain Injury Support Groups. Open to all survivors, caregivers and adult family members.

Evening group facilitated by Marsha Bancroft; day group facilitated by Kathy Grange and Jane Hulstrunk. Evening group meets first Mondays, 5:30–7:30 p.m., DisAbility Rights of Vermont, 141 Main Street, Suite 7, Montpelier, 800-834-7890, ext. 106. Day group meets first and third Thursdays, 1:30–2:30 p.m., Unitarian Church, 130 Main Street, Montpelier, 244-6850.NAMI Vermont Family Support Group. Support group for families and friends of indi-viduals living with mental illness. Fourth Mon-days, 7 p.m. Central Vermont Medical Center, room 3, Berlin. 800-639-6480 or namivt.org.Celiac and Food Allergy Support Group. With Lisa Masé of Harmonized Cook-ery. Second Wednesdays, 4:30–6 p.m. Confer-ence room 3, Central Vermont Medical Center. [email protected] Discussion Group. Focus on self-management. Open to anyone with diabetes and their families. Third Thursdays, 1:30 p.m. The Health Center, Plainfield. Free. Don, 322-6600 or [email protected]. Diabetes Support Group. First Thursdays, 7–8 p.m. Conference room 3, Central Vermont Medical Center. 371-4152.

RECOVERYTurning Point Center. Safe, supportive place for individuals and their families in or seeking recovery.• Alchoholics Anonymous, Sundays, 8:30 a.m.• Making Recovery Easier workshops, Tuesdays,

6–7:30 p.m.

• Wit’s End Parent Support Group, Wednes-days, 6 p.m.

• Narcotics Anonymous, Thursdays, 6:30 p.m.Open daily, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. 489 North Main Street, Barre. 479-7373.Overeaters Anonymous. Twelve-step pro-gram for physically, emotionally and spiritually overcoming overeating. Fridays, noon–1 p.m. Bethany Church, 115 Main Street, Montpelier. 223-3079.

SOLIDARITY/IDENTITYWomen’s Group. Women age 40 and older explore important issues and challenges in their lives in a warm and supportive environment. Faciliatated by Amy Emler-Shaffer and Julia W. Gresser. Wednesday evenings. 41 Elm Street, Montpelier. Call Julia, 262-6110, for more information.Men’s Group. Men discuss challenges of and insights about being male. Wednesdays, 6:15–8:15 p.m. 174 Elm Street, Montpelier. Interview required: contact Neil, 223-3753.National Federation of the Blind, Montpelier Chapter. First Saturdays. Lane Shops community room, 1 Mechanic Street, Mont-pelier. 229-0093.Families of Color. Open to all. Play, eat and discuss issues of adoption, race and multicultur-alism. Bring snacks and games to share; dress for the weather. Third Sundays, 3–5 p.m. Unitar-ian Church, 130 Main Street, Montpelier. Alyson, 439-6096 or [email protected].

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for publishing it. 10 a.m.–noon. Snelling Room, Vermont Historical Society, 109 State Street, Montpelier. Free, but space limited; register at 223-3338. poemcityvt.wordpress.com.Indoor Farmers’ Market. Live music by Sheefra. Final indoor market; market moves downtown and outdoors Saturday, May 4. 10 a.m.–2 p.m. Gym, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier. Carolyn, 223-2958 or [email protected]’s Book Swap. 10:30 a.m. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, 135 Main Street, Montpelier. Free. 223-4665 or kellogghubbard.org. Rug Hooking: Open Class for All Levels. Bring questions you have on a current project or get help starting a new one. Shop open for supplies. 1–5 p.m. Green Mountain Hooked Rugs, 2838 County Road, Montpelier. $25. Register at 223-1333 or vtpansy@ greenmountainhookedrugs.com. greenmountainhookedrugs.com.PoemCity: Chapbook Publishing Roundtable. Vermont chapbook publishers and authors Ann Aspell, Benjamin Aleshire, Andrew Miller-Brown and Neil Shepard discuss their love of writ-ing, designing and selling the slender book. Moderated by Julia Shipley, poet and cofounder of the Montpelier-based Chickadee Chaps and Broads. 2 p.m. Hayes Room, Kellogg-Hubbard Library, 135 Main Street, Montpelier. Free. poemcityvt.wordpress.com.PoemCity: Three Chaps Reading. Burlington-based poets Ben Aleshire, Ralph Culver and Nicholas Spengler read from their chapbooks. 3:30–4:30 p.m. Hayes Room, Kellogg-Hubbard Library, 135 Main Street, Montpelier. Free. poemcityvt.wordpress.com.Lucky Dog Catsino Night. An evening of dining, drinks, dancing and dice to benefit the Central Vermont Humane Society. Play blackjack, roulette, craps and poker, win prizes and help homeless pets. 7–11 p.m. Montpelier Elks Club, 1 Country Club Road. $20 in advance, $25 at the door. Tickets at Central Vermont Humane Society in East Montpelier, Guy’s Farm & Yard in Montpe-lier or cvhumane.com.[radical] signs of life. A work-in-progress showing of a per-formance by three local dancers and two New York City dancers, as part of an artistic residency at the studio. 7 p.m.; doors open at 6:30 p.m. Contemporary Dance and Fitness Studio, 18 Langdon Street (third floor), Montpelier. $10 suggested donation. 229-4676 or cdandfs.com.Capital City Concerts: Borromeo String Quartet. The quartet is joined by flutist Karen Kevra in a world premiere of Teta, a new work by New York City composer Mohammed Fairouz, plus pieces by Beethoven and Dvorak. 7:30 p.m. Unitarian Church, 130 Main Street, Montpelier. $10–$25.Tickets at Bear Pond Books in Montpelier or capitalcityconcerts.org.Paula Poundstone. The Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me panel-ist brings her spontaneous, intelligent humor to Chandler. 7:30 p.m. Chandler Music Hall, 71–73 Main Street, Randolph. $34 in advance, $37 day of show. Tickets at 728-6464 or chandler-arts.org.Traditional New England Dance: Irish Ceili. Alice Mc-Neish calls dances to tunes by Brian Kessler, Katrina VanTyne and friends, interspersed with performances and singing. No partner or experience necessary; all dances taught. Family friendly. Bring clean shoes and a snack to share. 8 p.m.; instruction/refresher 7:30 p.m. Capital City Grange, 6612 Route 12 (Northfield Street), Berlin. $8 adult, $5 student, $20 family. Merry, 225-8921.Ellis Jackson Solo Performance. World premiere of Jacobson’s new comedy solo, Adapted from Samuel Beckett. Recom-mended for adult audiences. 8 p.m. Haybarn Theatre, Goddard College, 123 Pitkin Road, Plainfield. goddard.edu.

SUNDAY, APRIL 28Muddy Onion Spring Dirt Road Ride. A 35-mile, mostly dirt-road ride in and around Montpelier. Scenic roads, beauti-ful views and plenty of climbing. 9:30 a.m. ride start; registration opens at 8:30 a.m. Onion River Sports, Langdon Street, Montpelier. $20; includes fully stocked aid station and postrace meal. Register at bikereg.com/net/19072.Wildflower Walk with the Montpelier Section of the Green Mountain Club. Moderate outing in Little River State Park in Waterbury. Meet at 1 p.m. at Montpelier High School. Leaders: George Longenecker or Cynthia Martin, 229-9787 or [email protected].

MONDAY, APRIL 29Savvy Seniors. A performance troupe educating audiences on health care error, fraud and abuse. Q&A and discussion follows; refreshments provided. Presented by the Council of Vermont Elders and Lyric Theatre. 5 p.m. Cutler Memorial Library, 151 High Street (Route 2), Plainfield. Free. 454-8504 or cutlerlibrary.org.Tonic Herbalism: The Wild Medicine Solution. With Guido Masé. Explore new ideas on how wild weedy plants have shaped our human nature, are keys to vibrant health and need to be a part of daily life. 5:30–7 p.m. Hunger Mountain Coop com-munity room, Montpelier. Free. Register at 223-8000, ext. 202, or [email protected]: Until Nothing More Can Break. Kate Fether-ston of Montpelier reads from her latest book of poems. 7 p.m. Hayes Room, Kellogg-Hubbard Library, 135 Main Street, Montpelier. Free. poemcityvt.wordpress.com.

TUESDAY, APRIL 30Food Fiesta. Stories, rhymes and rice and beans with New Eng-land Culinary Institute chefs. 10:30 a.m. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, 135 Main Street, Montpelier. Free. 223-4665 or kellogghubbard.org. Vermont Women’s Business Center: Business Wis-dom Circle. Theme: The Feminine Principle in Business, conver-sations on how women do business differently. A lightly structured networking and mentoring opportunity to learn and share in your business venture. 4–6 p.m. Quarry Grill and Tavern, 210 North Main Street, Barre. $10, includes refreshments; coupons available. Register at 479-9813 or [email protected]. vwbc.org.Successful Life Changes: The Brain: Use It or Lose It. Discussion with Dr. Deborah Black of Central Vermont Medical Center and Jeanne Kern of the Central Vermont Council on Ag-ing. 6–7:30 p.m. Montpelier Senior Activity Center, 58 Barre Street. Free. 262-6288 or 223-2518.Empowering Women Through Literacy. Joni Zwieg, executive director and president of Amurtel, an international relief and development organization focused on women and children, talks about the impact of literacy or illiteracy on women’s lives. 6:30 p.m. Joslin Memorial Library, 4391 Main Street, Waitsfield. Free. 496-4205.PoemCity: Annual Open Poetry. A night of reading, laugh-ter and encouragement, open to the community. Space is limited: sign up in advance and limit your reading to 5 minutes so everyone has a chance to read. 7 p.m. Bear Pond Books, 77 Main Street, Montpelier. Free. Register at 229-0774. poemcityvt.wordpress.com.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 1Start Your Own Business Workshop. Learn how to get started and write a business plan with the Vermont Small Business Development Center. For all businesses. 9 a.m.–1 p.m. Community National Bank, Barre. $99. Register at vtsbdc.org (click the Training tab). Heather, [email protected]çois Truffaut Mini Film Festival: Shoot the Piano Player. Life takes on unexpected complications for a pianist working in a bar in this 1960 classic. Presented by film scholar Rick Winston. Part of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. 10:30 a.m. Savoy Theater, Montpelier. $5 suggested donation. 223-1736 or [email protected]. Series continues every Wednesday through May 8.One Movement for People and the Planet: March and Day of Action. Vermonters unite through their struggles for child care, health care, workers’ rights, education, the right to organize, affordable housing and a healthy planet by taking part in a day of action toward human rights and true democracy. Kid-friendly activities, live music, food and a health screening clinic. 11:30 a.m. State House lawn, Montpelier. workerscenter.org.Apples and Honey Family Program: Preparing for Shavuot: Receiving the Torah. Families with children of all ages experience the joys of being Jewish. 5–6:30 p.m. Montpelier. Suggested donation $22 per family. To register or for more informa-tion, contact Tobie, 223-0583.

Art & ExhibitsBIGTOWN GALLERYMasterworks, group show exploring the personal collections of the late sculptor and printmaker Hugh Townley. 99 North Main Street, Rochester. Through July 28. Opening reception Saturday, April 20, 5–7 p.m. Hours: Wednesday–Friday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Saturday, noon–5 p.m. 767-9670, [email protected] or bigtown gallery.com.

BLINKING LIGHT GALLERYNew Work: Landscapes and Heads, paintings by Janet Wormser. 16 Main Street, Plainfield. Through May 2. Hours: Thursdays, 2–6 p.m.; Friday–Sunday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m. blinkinglight gallery.com.

CHANDLER GALLERYGive Us Your Best!, group show by area artists. 71–73 Main Street, Randolph. Through May 19. Hours: Friday, 3–5 p.m.; Saturday–Sunday, noon– 2 p.m. 431-0204 or [email protected].

CHESHIRE CATJewelry by Sylvia Gaboriault, blending metal, lava, agate and beads. 28 Elm Street, Montpelier. Through April. 223-1981 or cheshirecatclothing .com.

CONTEMPORARY DANCE & FITNESS STUDIOCaptured Mind Wanderings, photography by Montpelier High School students Zivah Solo-

mon and Nathan Burton. 18 Langdon Street (third floor), Montpelier. Through May 27. 229-4676 or cdandfs.com.

GIFFORD GALLERYX-pressions, graphite, pastel and colored pencil works by Jan Rogers. 44 South Main Street, Randolph. Through May 29. 728-2324.

GODDARD ART GALLERYThe Nature of Things, installation by seven artists: Thea Alvin, Khara Ledonne, For-rest White, Robyn Alvin, Gowri Savoor and Bruce Hathaway. 54 Main Street, Montpelier. Through May 11. Reception Friday, April 19, 6 p.m.; PoemCity social Friday, April 26, 7 p.m. Hours: Wednesday–Thursday, noon–5 p.m.; Friday–Saturday, noon–7 p.m. 322-1685 or goddard.edu.

GOVERNOR’S GALLERYHard Line, Soft Color, scultpture by Robert Hitzig emphasizing grain patterns in wood and other inherent qualities of the material. 109 State Street (fifth floor), Montpelier. Photo ID re-quired for admission. Through June 28. Reception Wednesday, April 17, 3–5 p.m. 828-0749.

GREEN BEAN ART GALLERYTwirl, digitally altered photography by Gary Seaton. Capitol Grounds, 27 State Street, Mont-pelier. Through April. curator@capitolgrounds .com.

HELEN DAY ART CENTERStudent art show: the gallery’s 32nd year of exhibiting local students’ work. 90 Pond Street, Stowe. May 3–May 26. Opening reception Friday,

May 3, 3–7 p.m. Hours: Wednesday–Sunday, noon–5 p.m. 253-8358 or helenday.com.

KELLOGG-HUBBARD LIBRARYAnimals Are Figures, Too, mixed media by Wendy Hackett-Morgan, followed by The Art of Creative Aging, juried exhibit of work by local visual artists age 70 and older. 135 Main Street, Montpelier. Animals through April 26; Creative Aging May 1–31. Reception Thursday, May 2, 5–7 p.m. 223-3338.

MONTPELIER SENIOR ACTIVITY CENTERStill Learning to See, photographs by Montpelier resident and senior center member John Snell. 58 Barre Street, Montpelier. Through April. Artist talk Monday, April 29, 6:30 p.m. Hours: Mon-day–Friday, 9 a.m.–4 p.m. 223-2518.

RED HEN CAFÉSeasons in Transition, Middlesex artist Cindy Griffith explores the changing seasons of the year. Route 2, Middlesex. May 1–June 30. 229-4326, [email protected] or redhenbak-ing.com.

RIVER ARTS CENTERLooking at Landscape, an exhibit of paintings and drawings by Peter Fried, plus new sumi-e paintings by Alex Angio. 74 Pleasant Street, Morrisville. Through May 13. Hours: Monday–Friday, 10 a.m.–2 p.m. 888-1261 or riverartsvt .org.

STATE HOUSE CAFETERIA GALLERYParallels, photo-documentary exhibit by Libby Hillhouse of Ryegate. State House, 115 State Street (second floor), Montpelier. Through April

26. Hours: Monday–Thursday, 8 a.m.–6 p.m.; Friday, 8 a.m.–5 p.m. 828-0749.

STOREFRONT STUDIO GALLERYTalking Portraits and Two-Part Inventions, an evolving show of experimental drawings, paintings and the occasional sculpture by Glen Coburn Hutcheson. 6 Barre Street, Montpelier. Hours: Monday–Friday, 3–6 p.m. 839-5349 or gchfineart.com.

STUDIO PLACE ARTSTwo by Two, group show exploring; art silent auction; Specimens, works by Jason Galligan-Baldwin; and BabyProof, works by Jenna Ann Kelly. 201 North Main Street, Barre. Through May 25. 479-7069 or studioplacearts.com.

SULLIVAN MUSEUM & HISTORY CENTERThese Honored Dead: Private and National Com-memoration, stories of Norwich alumni from both sides of the Civil War conflict in 1863. Norwich University, Northfield. Through Decem-ber 20. 485-2183 or norwich.edu/museum.

VERMONT HISTORY MUSEUMPlowing Old Ground: Vermont’s Organic Farm-ing Pioneers, photographs and interviews. 109 State Street, Montpelier. Through August. Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–4 p.m. 828-2291 or vermonthistory.org.

VERMONT SUPREME COURTUnderwater, oil paintings by Strafford art-ist Micki Colbeck. 111 State Street (first-floor lobby), Montpelier. Through April 30. Hours: Monday–Friday, 8 a.m.–4:30 p.m. 828-0749.

see UPCOMING EVENTS, page 24

Comedian Paula Poundstone, who

will be performing at Chandler Music Hall on Saturday,

April 27.

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Weekly EventsBICYCLINGOpen Shop Nights. Have a bike to donate or need help with a bike repair? Visit the volunteer-run community bike shop. Tuesdays, 6–8 p.m.; Wednesdays, 5–7 p.m. Freeride Montpelier, 89 Barre Street, Montpelier. By donation. 552-3521 or freeridemontpelier.org.★ Cyclocross Ride. A mellow, 1–2 hour dirt-road cruise. All abilities welcome; cyclocross bike highly recommended. Mondays, through May 27. Meet at 6 p.m. at Onion River Sports, Montpelier. 229-9409 or onionriver.com★ Cycling 101. Train for a summer of riding-with Linda Freeman and Onion River Sports. Build confidence, strength, endurance, road-rid-ing skills and a sense of community with relaxed rides on local paved roads. For all abilities. Tues-days, starts April 23; drop-ins welcome until July 2. Meet at 5:30 p.m. at Montpelier High School. 229-9409 or onionriver.com.

BOOKSOngoing Reading Group. Improve your reading and share some good books. Books chosen by group. Thursdays, 9–10 a.m. Central Vermont Adult Basic Education, Montpelier Learn-ing Center, 100 State Street. 223-3403.Book Discussion Group. Group focuses on The Thoughtful Dresser: The Art of Adornment, the Pleasures of Shopping, and Why Clothes Matter, by Linda Grant. Facilitated by Peggy Ramel, AmeriCorps member at Central Vermont Council on Aging. Fridays, 10–1:15 a.m., through June 14. Montpelier Senior Activity Center, 58 Barre Street. Free; books available for $13. Sign up at 223-2518.

COMPUTERSTech Help at the Library. Get help with any computer or Internet questions, or learn about the library’s new circulation software and how to use ListenUp to download audiobooks and more. Bring your iPod, tablet, phone, laptop or other device. Wednesdays, 10:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m., through mid-April. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, 135 Main Street, Montpelier. Free. 223-3338 or kellogg hubbard.org. Additional help on second and fourth Tuesdays: see Upcoming Events.

CRAFTSBeaders’ Group. All levels of beading experi-ence welcome. Free instruction available. Come with a project for creativity and community. Sat-urdays, 11 a.m.–2 p.m. The Bead Hive, Plainfield. 454-1615.

DANCE★ Ecstatic Dance. Dance your heart awake. No experience necessary. Sundays, 5:30–7:30 p.m., Christ Church, State Street, Montpelier. Wednesdays, 7–9 p.m.; first and third Wednesdays: Worcester Town Hall, corner of Elmore Road and Calais Road; second and fourth Wednesdays: Plainfield Community Center (above the co-op). $10. Fearn, 505-8011 or [email protected]. Ballroom Dance Class. With instructor Samir Elabd. For beginning to intermediate dancers. Tuesdays, through April 30. Foxtrot 6–7 p.m.; Latin line dancing 7–8 p.m. $14 per class; walk-ins welcome. Register at 225-8699; informa-tion at 223-2921 or [email protected].

FOODFree Community Meals in Montpelier. All welcome.Mondays: Unitarian Church, 130 Main Street, 11 a.m.–1 p.m.Tuesdays: Bethany Church, 115 Main Street, 11:30 a.m.–1 p.m.Wednesdays: Christ Church, 64 State Street, 11 a.m.–12:30 p.m.Thursdays: Trinity Church, 137 Main Street, 11:30 a.m.–1 p.m.Fridays: St. Augustine Church, 18 Barre Street, 11 a.m.–12:30 p.m.Sundays: Last Sundays only, Bethany Church, 115 Main Street (hosted by Beth Jacob Syna-gogue), 4:30–5:30 p.m.Noon Cafe. Soup, fresh bread, good company and lively conversation. Wednesdays, noon. Old Meeting House, East Montpelier. By donation. oldmeetinghouse.org.

GAMES Apollo Duplicate Bridge Club. All wel-come. Partners sometimes available. Fridays, 6:45 p.m. Bethany Church, 115 Main Street, Montpelier. $3. 485-8990 or 223-3922.

HEALTHPowerful Tools for Caregivers. Learn tools to help reduce stress, communicate effectively, take care of yourself, reduce guilt, anger and depression, make tough decisions, set goals and problem-solve. Wednesdays, through April 24, 5–7 p.m. Montpelier Senior Activity Center, 58 Barre Street, Montpelier. $20 suggested donation to help defray cost of The Caregiver Helpbook. Register with Jeanne, 476-2671. Presented by the Central Vermont Council on Aging.Free HIV Testing. Vermont CARES offers fast oral testing. Thursdays, 2–5 p.m. 58 East State Street, suite 3 (entrance at the back), Montpelier. 371-6222 or vtcares.org. Affordable Acupuncture. Full acupuncture sessions with Chris Hollis and Trish Mitchell. Mondays and Wednesdays, 2–7 p.m.; Fridays, 9 a.m.–2 p.m. 79 Main Street, suite 8 (above Coffee Corner), Montpelier. $15–$40 sliding scale. Walk in or schedule an appointment at montpelier communityacupuncture.com.

KIDSStory Time at the Waterbury Public Library. No story time April 22–26. Mondays, babies and toddlers. Fridays, preschoolers. 10 a.m. Waterbury Public Library. Free. 244-7036.Story Time at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library. Tuesdays and Fridays, 10:30 a.m. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, 135 Main Street, Montpelier. Free. 223-4665.Story Hour at the Aldrich. For babies, tod-dlers and kindergarteners. Mondays and Tuesdays, 10:30 a.m., through mid-May. Aldrich Public Library, Washington Street, Barre. Adrianne, 476-7550.Story Time with Bill and His Critters. Story and craft. Wednesdays, 10 a.m., through April 17. Ainsworth Public Library, Main Street, Williamstown. 433-5887, [email protected] or ainsworthpubliclibrary.wordpress.com.Story Time and Playgroup. For children age 0–6. Story with Sylvia Smith, followed by play-time with Melissa Seifert. Wednesdays, 10–11:30 a.m.; program follows the Twinfield calendar and is not held on weeks when the school is closed. Jaquith Public Library, 122 School Street, Marshfield. 426-3581 or [email protected] Play Playgroup. For children birth to

age 3 and their adults. Thursdays, 9:30–11 a.m., through June 13. St. Augustine’s Church, Barre Street, Montpelier. Christopher, 262-3292, ext. 115. fcwcvt.org.Dads’ and Kids’ Playgroup. For children birth to age 5 and their male grown-ups. Free dinner provided before playtime. Thursdays, 6–7:30 p.m., through June 13. Family Center of Washington County, 383 Sherwood Drive, Montpe-lier. Christopher, 262-3292, ext. 115. fcwcvt.org.Cub Capers Story Time. Story and song for children age 3–5 and their families. Led by Car-rie Fitz. Saturdays, 10 a.m. Children’s room, Bear Pond Books, 77 Main Street, Montpelier. Free. 229-0774 or [email protected].

LANGUAGEEnglish Conversation Practice Group. For students learning English for the first time. Tuesdays, 4–5 p.m. Central Vermont Adult Basic Education, Montpelier Learning Center, 100 State Street. Sarah, 223-3403.Lunch in a Foreign Language. Bring lunch and practice your language skills with neighbors. Noon–1 p.m. Mondays, Hebrew. Tuesdays, Italian. Wednesdays, Spanish. Thursdays, French. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, 135 Main Street, Montpelier. 223-3338.

MUSICSing with the Barre Tones. Women’s a cappella chorus. Mondays, 6:30 p.m. Alumni Hall (second floor), near Barre Auditorium. 223-2039 or [email protected] Young Singers Chorus Rehearsal. New chorus members welcome. Wednesdays, 4–5 p.m. Montpelier. Call 229-9000 for location and more information. Friday Night Community Drum Circle. Open drumming hosted by the Unitarian Uni-versalists of Barre. Everyone welcome. Fridays, 7–9 p.m. Parish house, Barre Universalist Church, Main and Church streets, Barre. Follow your ears or follow the signs. Accessible venue possible with advance notice: 503-724-7301.

PARENTINGMamas’ Circle. Meet and connect with oth-ers experiencing the joys and challenges of new motherhood. For infants up to 1 year old and their mothers (toddler siblings welcome). Snacks, drinks and parent education materials provided. Thursdays, 10 a.m.–noon, through April 19. Good Beginnings of Central Vermont, 174 River Street, Montpelier. centralvt.goodbeginnings.net.

RECYCLINGFree Food Scrap Collection. Compost your food waste along with your regular trash and recycling. Wednesdays, 9 a.m.–5 p.m.; Saturdays 6 a.m.–1 p.m. DJ’s Convenience Store, 56 River Street, Montpelier. cvswmd.org.Dollar Days. Bring in odd and sundry items for reuse, upcycling and recycling, including toothbrushes, bottle caps, cassette tapes, books, textiles, batteries and more. Mondays and Fridays, 12:30 p.m.–5:30 p.m. Additional Recyclables Col-lection Center, 3 Williams Lane, Barre. $1 per car load. Complete list of accepted items at 229-9383, ext. 106, [email protected] or cvswmd.org.

SPIRITUALITYChristian Science. God’s love meeting hu-man needs. Reading room: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–1 p.m.; Tuesdays, 5–8 p.m.; and Wednes-days, 5–7:15 p.m. Testimony meeting: Wednesdays, 7:30–8:30 p.m., nursery available. Worship

service: Sundays, 10:30–11:30 a.m., Sunday school and nursery available. 145 State Street, Montpelier. 223-2477.Deepening Our Jewish Roots. Fun, engag-ing text study and discussion on Jewish spiritu-ality. Sundays, 4:45–6:15 p.m. Yearning for Learn-ing Center, Montpelier. Rabbi Tobie Weisman, 223-0583 or [email protected] Meditation Group. People of all faiths welcome. Mondays, noon–1 p.m. Christ Church, Montpelier. Regis, 223-6043.Shambhala Buddhist Meditation. Instruc-tion available. All welcome. Sundays, 10 a.m.–noon, and Wednesdays, 6–7 p.m. Program and discussion follow Wednesday meditation. Shambhala Center, 64 Main Street, Montpelier. Free. 223-5137.Zen Meditation. Wednesdays, 6:30–7:30 p.m. 174 River Street, Montpelier. Free. Call Tom for orientation, 229-0164. With Zen Affiliate of Vermont.

SPORTSRoller Derby Open Recruitment and Recreational Practice. Central Vermont’s Wrecking Doll Society invites quad skaters age 18 and up to try out the action. No experience necessary. Equipment provided: first come, first served. Saturdays, 5–6:30 p.m. Montpelier Recre-ation Center, Barre Street. First skate free. centralvermontrollerderby.com.Coed Adult Floor Hockey League. Adult women and men welcome. Equipment provided. Sundays, 3–5 p.m., through April 21. Montpelier Recreation Center, Barre Street. $52 for 13 weeks or $5 per week. [email protected] or vermontfloorhockey.com.

TEENSThe Basement Teen Center. Cable TV, PlayStation 3, pool table, free eats and fun events for teenagers. Monday–Thursday, 3–6 p.m.; Friday, 3–11 p.m. Basement Teen Center, 39 Main Street, Montpelier. 229-9151.Homework Help for Teens. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 3–5 p.m. Aldrich Public Library, Washington Street, Barre. 476-7550.★ Mad River Valley Youth Group. Sun-days, 7–9 p.m. Meets at various area churches; call Ben, 497-4516, for location and informtion.

YOGA★ Yoga with Lydia. Build strength and flex-ibility as you learn safe alignment in a nourishing, supportive and inspiring environment. Drop-ins welcome. Mondays, 5:30 p.m., River House Yoga, Plainfield (sliding scale). Wednesdays, 4:30 p.m., Green Mountain Girls Farm, Northfield (sliding scale). Tuesdays and Fridays, noon, Yoga Mountain Center, Montpelier. Rates and directions at 229-6300 or saprema-yoga.com.Yoga and Wine. With Lori Flower from Sat-tva Yoga. Bring your own mat. Thursdays, 5–6:15 p.m.; wine bar open after class. Fresh Tracks Farm, Route 12, Berlin. $8 yoga; wine available for pur-chase. freshtracksfarm.com.Community Yoga. All levels welcome to this community-focused practice. Fridays, 5:30–6:30 p.m. Yoga Mountain Center, 7 Main Street (second floor), Montpelier. By donation. 223-5302 or yoga mountaincenter.com.

★ indicates new or revised listing for this issue

Herbal Nutrition: Delicious, Mineral-Rich Recipes for Daily Wellness. With Sage Zelkowitz, community herbalist and educator. Learn how to make three plant-based support-ive alternates to supplements: a nourishing herbal infusion, an iron-rich syrup and a high-calcium tea. 5:30–7:30 p.m. Hunger Mountain Coop community room, Montpelier. $10 co-op mem-ber-owners, $12 nonmembers. Register at 223-8000, ext. 202, or [email protected] Herbalism, Empowering Herbalists. With Dana Woodruff of Dandelioness Herbals and Sandra Lory of Man-dala Botanicals. Through self-awareness as herbalists and teach-ers, construct safe, engaging and inclusive learning spaces, build

bridges and foster trusting relationships that help heal the wounds of colonialism, racism, classism and other forms of oppression. 6–8 p.m. Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism, 252 Main Street, Montpelier. $10 VCIH members, $12 nonmembers. Preregistration required: 244-7100 or [email protected]. vtherbcenter.org.First Wednesdays: The Book of Kells. Dartmouth profes-sor Jean Carroll considers this treasure of Western civilization and how the Irish monk’s lavish illustrations of the 1,200-year-old Gospel manuscript illuminate the artist’s thoughts about theology and the power of language. 7 p.m. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, 135 Main Street, Montpelier. Free. 223-3338 or kellogghubbard.org. A Vermont Humanities Council program.

THURSDAY, MAY 2Time Banking with the Onion River Exchange. Heather Kralik and time-bank members from the Onion River Exchange lead a discussion about what a time bank is, how it works and what it means to be a member. 7 p.m. Kellogg-Hubbard Library, 135 Main Street, Montpelier. Free. 223-3338 or kellogghubbard.org.

UPCOMING EVENTS, from page 23

Submit Your Event! Send listings to [email protected]. The deadline for our next issue, May 2, is Friday, April 26. 50 words or less, please. High-resolution photos also welcome.


ClassesART & CRAFTCLASSES AND CAMPS AT HELEN DAY ART CENTERDigital Photography II, ages 16+, Tuesdays, April 30–May 28, 9:30 a.m.–noon. Youth sum-mer camps: painting, animation, fashion design and more! Camp registration early-bird discount ends May 1. Visit helenday.com for details. Member discounts and scholarships available. 90 Pond Street, Stowe. 253-8358.

SPRING POTTERY CLASSESCome and get dirty at the Mud Studio. Clay classes for adults, teens and kids of all skill levels start May 6. Call 224-7000 or visit themudstudio.com to download a registration form.

TAI CHITAI CHI CHUAN IN MONTPELIERBeginners class. Cheng Man-ching simplifed yang-style. Taught by Patrick Cavanaugh of the Long River Tai Chi Circle. Begins Tuesday, April 9. 7–8 p.m., Bethany United Church, 115 Main Street, Montpelier. For more information, contact Patrick, 490-6405 or [email protected]. Registration open through May 7.

TAI CHI FOR BEGINNERSA six-week course starting May 14. Tuesday evenings, 7:30–9 p.m.. Enjoy learning these slow, graceful movements of this ancient Chinese practice that are rejuvenating and calming. Taught by Sara Norton. First class is free. In Montpelier at 1 Granite street. Preregistration not necessary. Judy, 229-0741.

MUSICDJEMBE DRUM LESSONS With master drummer Chimie Bangoura. Th urs-days at 6:15 p.m. beginning May 2, at the First Church in Barre, Universalist. Space is limited. E-mail [email protected] to preregister or call 622-0717. Seven weeks for $105, or $15 per class. Drums available for rent.

ClassifiedsCASTINGMALE ACTORS NEEDED!Unadilla Th eater, in East Calais, is seeking male actors for a community theater production of Th e Merchant of Venice. Many roles available, all ages. Rehearsals include an immersion in learning to speak Shakespeare. Performances in early July. Contact Bill, 456-8968 or [email protected].

FOR SALECOUCH FOR SALEWith queen-size hide-a-bed. Good condition. Mat-tress in excellent condition. Maroon-colored velour cover a bit worn. $250. Call 223-4865.

SERVICESHOUSE PAINTERSince 1986. Small interior jobs ideal. Neat, prompt, friendly. Local references. Pitz Quat-trone, 229-4952.

QUALITY INTERIOR PAINTINGIn your home or workspace. Specialty: Lazure technique using earth pigments. References available. Kay Gibson, 454-7129.

PRUNINGEarly spring pruning of apple, crabapple, pear; selective pruning and thinning of deciduous stock, including lilac, burning bush, viburnum, most others. Andy Plante, 223-5409.

THRIFT STOREST&T REPEATSBikes, name-brand clothes, small household furniture and more. At least two free parking spaces for T&T customers. 116 Main Street, Montpelier, or call 224-1360.

TRINITY COMMUNITY THRIFT STORETuesdays, Th ursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Trinity United Methodist Church, 137 Main Street (use rear entrance), Montpelier. Donations accepted during normal business hours. 229-9155 or [email protected].

Class listings and classifieds are 50 words for $25; discounts available. To place an ad, call Carolyn or Ivan, 223-5112, ext. 11 or 12.

FD Professional Paintingquality, one house at a time

Interior & ExteriorFree estimates • References

Frank DeSalvo802-752-9470

[email protected]@yahoo.com

Black Door Bistro, Main StreetTurnkey opportunity. 39 years con-tinuous operation. Ready for busi-ness. Seats 100+/-. Beautiful outside deck seats additional 40+/-. Fully equipped, fully operational, excel-lent condition. Licensed, permitted, liquor, food, entertainment.

For information, contact Montpelier Property Management: 802.223.3166 or [email protected]

MONTPELIER FOR RENT

• NEW CONSTRUCTION

• RENOVATIONS

• WOODWORKING

• GENERAL CONTRACTING

223-3447clarconstruction.com


Construction Projects Heat Up

A Message from City HallThis page was paid for by the City of Montpelier.

by William Fraser, city manager

Recent rain, sleet, ice and snow do not necessarily conjure up images of summer. For city government, how-

ever, April signifies the beginning of a short construction and infrastructure maintenance season. This year promises to be very busy because one of the key priorities included in the recently approved budget was added funding for these very projects. We thank you residents for your support of that budget and these improvements.

District heat is the biggest, most complex and most publicized of all of these projects. Work on the city’s heating distribution began this week and will continue into late August and early September. Please save the special map insert in this edition of The Bridge, which shows the system route and estimated construction schedule. We anticipate that all businesses will remain open and accessible throughout construction, and we encourage people to support these enterprises during this time.

Why are we building the district heat project?

Benefits of district heat include:• Reduced health-threatening air emis-

sions from fuel combustion in down-town Montpelier by as much as 11 tons per year.

• Replacement of approximately 300,000 gallons of oil per year between the state of Vermont and downtown buildings as a prime fuel source with locally and regionally produced wood chips keeping that economic activity in the Northeast.

• Fuel cost stabilization for city govern-ment and the school department, allow-ing tax dollars to potentially be redi-rected toward services or infrastructure rather than to pay rising oil prices.

• An economic development opportunity in downtown Montpelier by providing a cleaner and potentially cheaper source of heat for private building owners.

• The potential removal of many private oil furnaces and underground fuel oil storage tanks from flood-prone areas.

What is district heat?The Montpelier district heat project is a

joint project between the city of Montpelier and the state of Vermont to provide local renewable energy to downtown Montpelier. With the rebuilding of the state’s existing central heating plant, modern wood-fired boilers will heat the capitol complex, and connections will be put in place to expand its service area to city and school buildings as well as private buildings in downtown Montpelier

The state of Vermont is rebuilding the heat plant at 120 State Street (behind the DMV building). This rebuilt heat plant will be fitted with two new biomass boilers that burn local wood to supply heat to state and city buildings and provide customers along the heating route. The city is install-ing preinsulated pipe underground, which will distribute hot water to heat downtown buildings that have elected to connect to the system.

How do we know this is going to work?

This is proven technology. The state of Vermont converted their district heat system to wood (primarily) in the early 1980s. After 30 years of operating this system, the state is seeking to upgrade and expand it, not abandon it. Other municipalities, such as Jamestown, New York and St. Paul, Min-nesota, have operated these successfully for years. This is common technology on college campuses around the country. National Life recently installed similar biomass heating technology. The owner/operators of the St. Paul system are among the lead consultants and advisors for our Montpelier project.

What is the city building and where and when?

The city’s work will include replacement of aging water lines and installation of new piping along the heat distribution route. The state will be rebuilding the existing central heating plant to include modern wood-fired boilers. Again, please refer to the map insert for route and projected dates for each seg-ment. Work begins this week and will con-tinue into early September.

What will this mean for getting around in Montpelier?

Work will occur in one zone at a time (zones delineated on the map), and every ef-fort will be made to maintain the flow of traf-fic during construction. In order to maintain two-way traffic as much as possible, parking along the construction route may be reduced while the contractor is working in each zone. Once work in a zone is completed, pavement will be placed over the construction area and traffic returned to normal. At the end of the installation of the piping, final road pave-ment will be installed. Work in each zone is estimated to last approximately two weeks. The city and contractor will attempt to man-age the unique conditions of each zone.

We also caution that these are work zones with heavy equipment, trenches and special-ized welding equipment. Please keep a safe distance away and remember that the bright welding arc can be dangerous for unshielded eyes.

What measures are in place to ensure quality construction?

The project has been designed by Hal-lam-ICS, Inc., a qualified engineering firm. Included on the design team are Evergreen

Energy from St. Paul, which has years of ex-perience constructing and operating district heat systems.

The general construction contractor is Kingsbury Construction from Waitsfield. It is an established company in this region and has successfully completed many pub-lic infrastructure projects, including several for Montpelier. The contractor has demon-strated very strong knowledge of this tech-nology and shown a willingness to work with the community for the best outcome.

During construction, the city will have a certified inspector on site to review every single weld of pipe sections and assure that all installations are done according to speci-fications. Radiological testing will be used randomly throughout the project to review all work and connections.

What is happening with the state heating plant?

The state of Vermont is managing the con-struction of the heating plant as a separate project from the city’s distribution system. The city is coordinating efforts and design work with the state to assure consistency and effectiveness. At present, the state expects the plant to be under construction this sum-mer with temporary functionality by the end of October and full functionality by the end of December. The city is working with the state to address contingencies for October, November and December.

Where can I find out more information about district heat?

The city will provide construction infor-mation on the Montpelier district heat proj-ect through the following mediums:

A district heat phone line will be updated regularly and can be reached at 262-6200.

Updates will be posted to the website (montpelier-vt.org) and will be cross-posted to Facebook (City of Montpelier, VT – City Government) and Twitter (@vtmontpelier).

Display cases at City Hall will be used to provide background on the project and up-to-date information.

Regular construction updates will be pro-vided to local news outlets.

Given the city’s commitment to infrastructure improvements, what other work is being done this summer?

The project schedule in the table below outlines all other work anticipated to be completed during this season. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work through this seasonal inconvenience.

As always, thank you for your interest in Montpelier city government. Please feel free to contact me at [email protected] or 223-9502 with any questions, comments or concerns that you may have.

ALE

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LAR

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Department of Public Works Summer 2013 Project Schedule PROJECT EXPECTED SCHEDULE

Paving July–September 2013

Dunpatrick Circle

College Street (Main–Woodrow)

Marvin Street (Bingham–College)

North Park Drive

Monsignor Crosby Avenue

Woodcrest Drive

Berlin Street (Granite–city line) Contingent on Paving Grant approval

State Street (Bailey–Main) At the end of the district heat project

Bike path (Liquor control–Bailey)

Sidewalks June–August 2013

Liberty Street (north side–Loomis–Fuller)

Hubbard Street (Barre–East State)

Monsignor Crosby Avenue

Spot repairs (citywide including East State, Elm, Barre)

State Street (Taylor–Bailey) With the State Street paving project

Retaining Walls/Slope Stability

Marvin Street (near #6) July–August 2013

Cherry Avenue August 2013

Wilder Street June 2013

Storm Drain

State Street at Bailey Avenue June 2013

Bridges

Rialto Bridge (State, abutment/ deck)

April–May 2013

Spring Street Bridge (approach slab)

September 2013?

Major Construction Projects

District heat (multiple streets) April–October 2013

River Street sewer (#223–Scribner)

June 2013–October 2013


by Ivan Shadis

Development occupied Montpelier’s City Council as they returned to their usual haunt on April 10. (City

Hall’s elevator is fixed.)The council first heard from John Bloch,

seeking reappointment to the Planning Com-mission. Noting glacial movement in the development of new zoning policy, Bloch said, “I don’t think it’s a Gordian knot . . . It’s been over two years since we’ve been suck-ing on that lollipop. It’s time we throw that stick away and write down what we’ve been thinking.”

When asked by Tom Golonka, District 1 representative, why rewriting of the zoning was so slow, Bloch said: “There is no polite way to put this . . . There has not been a single suggestion brought forth by the pro-fessional staff. We fill a lot of time finding

how many angels will fit on the head of a pin . . . For myself I’ll tell you, I’m not happy. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I know about development, I know about zoning.” Bloch was reappointed planning commis-sioner unanimously.

Volunteering their street smarts, seven ap-plicants filled seven positions on the new pe-destrian committee: Michael Philbrick, John Snell, Anne Ferguson, Harris Webster, James McQueston, Christian Andresen and Eve Jacobs-Carnahan were appointed.

Richard Sheir and Nolan Langweil joined the parking committee, as City Council ap-pointed them at-large representatives along-side their colleagues: Andrew Brewer from the Montpelier Business Association, Mi-chael Clasen for the Vermont Department of Buildings and General Services, Diane Deco-teau of the Vermont State Employees Associa-tion, Thom Wood of the School Department

and Brian Cain for the Capitol Plaza Hotel.The council eliminated a number of park-

ing spaces on Hubbard Street, prompting Councilor Thierry Guerlain to offer that he had measured, in shoed foot lengths, the width of East State Street at six intervals between top and bottom and that there was a universal width along the whole span. He suggested the consistently wide road might be made available for parking along one side along the entire length of the street.

The council then turned to economic de-velopment. Darren Winham, an economic consultant to Barre and Waterbury, proposed himself as liaison. A local development corpo-ration executive director, Winham advocated for a private but city-funded corporation to lobby for private business interests to locate in Montpelier.

“The reason I think it works better not under the auspices of the payroll of municipal

staff is that often time municipal staff will be purely at odds with the business community,” said Winham. “Mike Miller [planning com-missioner during Winham’s stint with Barre] and I were at odds all the time. I had people who had buildings who said they would not invest in this space unless there was parking. Mike Miller said this was a terrible idea. We literally went in there and shook hands and battled, and I won that one and lost many and after we had a beer.”

Speaking of beer, The Skinny Pancake was awarded an ongoing outside consump-tion permit, despite Councilor Alan Weiss’s indictment against public alcohol consump-tion: “I’m opposed to so-called alcoholic bev-erages being sold like that throughout the day. It does not set a good example for the city. For young people walking by, it offers all sorts of opportunities for abuse.”

City Council Appoints Committees, Discusses Parking

by Zachary Beechler

We live in an increasingly techno-logical world, and our schools are not immune, the challenge being

how to integrate teaching and technology in ways that not only enhance learning but are exciting for students, comfortable for teach-ers and appealing to families moving here.

With that in mind, the school district has created the position of director of curricu-lum, instruction, assessment and technol-ogy, responsible for adjusting to emerging technologies and shifting pedagogies of how students learn and teachers teach.

On April 10, the board heard presenta-tions from two final two candidates for the position.

Greg Young has taught science in tra-ditional and nontraditional public schools for 11 years, served as state liaison for the New England Secondary Schools Consor-tium, and now teaches preengineering and STEM classes at the Green Mountain Tech-nology and Career Center. Michael Martin has taught foreign languages for the last 15 years at Champlain Valley Union High School, is pursuing a PhD in educational leadership and policy studies at UVM, and is an associate for the Rowland Foundation, which promotes professional development and leadership opportunities for Vermont secondary educators.

The newly formed position combines two previously existing posts, director of cur-

riculum, instruction and assessment (cur-rently an interim position) and director of technology. Upcoming vacancies allowed Superintendent Ricca to merge the two posi-tions, following the model of other Vermont districts. The reorganization better reflects evolving attitudes in education, which be-fore separated technology and curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

“Hopefully this new position is going to help merge and put those hands really where they belong,” said Ricca, “as we look towards fur-thering education in Montpelier public schools and making sure that technology is thought of as an element of our curriculum, instruction and assessment and not ‘Here’s my lesson plan. How can I incorporate technology?’”

Montpelier’s middle and high school al-ready use interactive white boards connected to a computer and displayed via ceiling pro-jector in some classrooms, and students sign out laptops and net books from the library, but some computers in the computer lab are older, slower and prone to crashing. And not all teachers are comfortable using technol-ogy, preferring chalkboards and textbooks.

“This generation doesn’t learn the same as previous generations,” said Martin dur-ing his presentation. “The changes with so-cial media and technology are moving so quickly, we know that students don’t learn the same way.”

As each generation becomes more savvy and opportunities for incorporating technol-ogy into education multiply, how do small

schools like Montpelier, keep up? Besides keeping pace with technological develop-ments geared toward education, the director of curriculum, instruction, assessment and technology will be responsible for adopting alternative methods for student assessment adjusted to an increasingly interdisciplinary educational environment. Rather than rely-ing solely on standardized test scores and the like, a variety of assessment methods could create a more qualified and comprehensive portrait of student learning, for example e-portfolios, similar to traditional portfolios of student work except electronic and usually posted online. And cell phones equipped with cameras could document visual evi-dence of projects, especially outside school. The district hopes that the position not only

communicates academic successes and inno-vation to Montpelier, but beyond as well, as Montpelier competes to fill its schools.

There IS potential for cheating and plagia-rism, difficult to monitor online, especially when students collaborate, and some teach-ers could hesitate to incorporate phones into the curriculum, as cell phone use is already an issue in the high school, described by one teacher as “epidemic.” This past February, Vermont lawmakers considered a bill (still in committee) requiring schools to ban e-device use by students while in school.

Regardless of risks, phones, computers and other innovations aren’t going away, and rather than ban them, the district seeks new ways to incorporate technology to benefit students and Montpelier.

New School District Position to Incorporate Emerging Technologies

WHAT: The Friendly Farmers Market will start in mid-May and run through mid-October. We are seeking new vendors!WHEN: Monday afternoons, 3–6 p.m.WHO: Call Verne Duclos, 802-728-3602PRICE: First time free; $5 per market up to $25 for season

WANTED: Vendors for New Northfield Farmers Market


Tell them you saw it in The Bridge!

by Jeremy Lesniak

Computers are never obsolete. Assum-ing that it is free of damage, a com-puter will always do exactly as much

as it did when new. Your needs may change, but the computer can still be useful. Here are five ways you can rehab your old computer.

Repurpose It: Lots of people have more than one computer. If you’re one of them, you can slide that old computer into a role that doesn’t require as much juice. You might use the computer in the kitchen or apply parental controls and make it “the homework computer.”

Clean It: Few computers are properly maintained. Take some time and uninstall the junk you don’t use, run a can of com-pressed air through the inside, defragment the hard drive and stop programs from run-ning in the background.

Add RAM: RAM is inexpensive these days. My suggestions for RAM configura-tions based on current pricing are: 2 GB for Windows XP; 4 GB for Windows Vista or Windows 7 (32 bit); 8 GB for Windows Vista or Windows 8 (64 bit). You might be able to use more depending on the specifics of your system, but you’ll see a diminishing rate of return beyond these amounts.

Upgrade the Hard Drive: Solid State Drives (SSDs) have reached a price where ev-eryone should have them in every computer. There are even ways to duplicate your data onto the SSD using imaging software, which will eliminate the need for reinstalling your operating system and programs.

Disinfect It: Every Windows computer I see these days is infected, though the user rarely knows it. Malware is so pervasive that I will bet your Windows computer is infected right now. You may be surprised at how much better your computer runs after removing

the infections. There are a number of free programs to assist with this.

For those of you with Linux or MacOS, the first four suggestions still hold, though the RAM numbers will be different for you. Don’t let that computer go to waste!

For more information, please visit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/malware.

Ways to Keep Your Website Safe

Content Management System–based (CMS) websites like Joomla, Drupal

and WordPress are all the rage. Their ease of use has led to major targeting from not-so-nice individuals. Here are five things to do that will help protect your CMS website.

Update the Core: As long as you’re using a current CMS, there will be security up-grades to the core. Whenever these upgrades are released, make sure to install them.

Make Backups: Whether you perform a manual backup, pay an outside service or use a plug-in, you need to backup regularly. I recommend automatic backups. Automation reduces the chance of forgetting to back up the website. One caveat: Keep multiple ver-sions of the backup in case the most recent one is infected.

Update Plug-ins: Just like the core, these plug-ins are often updated with functional-ity, performance or security fixes. Install any plug-in updates as soon as possible.

Watch for Infections: There are a range of services to protect your site, including plug-ins that automatically scan your web-site’s files. Other services focus on remov-ing infections. Free services generally detect infections, while the paid services are more likely to automatically repair problems. Even the free knowledge is worth having.

Be Careful of Comments: The com-menting systems on websites have become a growing problem for website and blog own-ers. If your website automatically approves comments, it’s possible that a commenter can post comments with an embedded malicious code. There are no guarantees, and, unfor-tunately, there’s a good chance your site will be compromised at some point. The key is to stay diligent and mitigate the damage.

For more information, please visit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_content_man-agement_system.

Jeremy Lesniak founded Vermont Computing (vermontcomputing.com) in 2001 after gradu-ating from Clark University and opened a store on Merchants Row (Randolph) in May 2003. He also serves as managing editor for anew domain.net. He resides in Moretown.

Recycle That Old Computer

Tech Check

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Montpelier’s April Celebration of Poetry

From day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute, spring in our mountains can raise our spirits or almost break our hearts. Or as T. S. Eliot advises us in his memorable 1922

poem “The Waste Land”:

April is the cruelest month, breedingLilacs out of the dead land, mixingMemory and desire, stirringDull roots with spring rain.

Halfway through April is PoemCity—Montpelier’s local recognition of National Poetry

Month through window displays, workshops, readings and a host of other word, sound and image events celebrating poetry.

In the spirit of our current monthlong celebration, here is a poem written by Siiri Pombar, a sixth-grade student at Main Street Middle School in Montpelier.

PurplePurple is grapes,You can turn into jelly.Purple are fake hippos,With big round bellies.Purple is popular,Though not quite with me.Purple is fun,And “Yay!” and “Whee!”Purple is first place,Though sometimes that’s blue.Purple is success,And happiness, too.That is purple.

This year’s PoemCity celebration is presented by the Kellogg-Hubbard Library and Mont-

pelier Alive and is sponsored by the Vermont College of Fine Arts with further timely help from the Vermont Humanities Council and additional support from Goddard College and the city of Montpelier.

LettersLabeling GMO Foods Is Vital

To the Editor:Right now, the Vermont legislature is de-

bating whether or not you have a right to know what’s in the food you eat and feed your families. The problem is that genetically en-gineered foods (GMOs) are becoming more and more prevalent in our foods every year. About 70 to 80 percent of processed foods available in U.S. grocery stores contain some genetically engineered materials.

And here’s the kicker: The safety of these foods is inadequately tested. Many potential health concerns, such as the presence of aller-gens and toxins, are overlooked under current testing protocols. Worse, GMOs have been linked to sick, sterile and dead livestock and damage to virtually every organ studied in lab animals.

Labeling GMOs has strong popular sup-port. More than 90 percent of Americans support labeling GMOs, and more than 50 other countries already have GMO-labeling laws. We have a right to know what’s in the food we eat. Please call or write to your Vermont legislator today to demand GMO labeling in Vermont.

—Kathleen Moore, Marshfield

Al Portico Passes the Torch to Simply Subs

To the Editor:On April 15, Al Portico closed. After sev-

eral years in this business, we are passing the torch to Ed Lacross, proprietor of Simply Subs. Ed and his team will take over the busi-ness and continue to provide Montpelier with quality food at affordable prices. In addition to the variety of sandwiches available, Simply Subs will also offer delicious pizza and gelato. That’s right; the gelato will still be available under the new management. Serving as a consultant, rest assured that I will personally teach Ed the secrets of Italian gelato making. In addition to keeping the pizza and gelato, Simply Subs may even begin to offer an extensive breakfast menu as well. Currently, Simply Subs is scheduled to open at the end of May. Please help us welcome this new business into the community. We wish them great success!

On behalf of my wife and family, I would like to extend my sincerest appreciation to all my customers who, throughout my time in business, have supported and encouraged me to provide the best product I possibly could. I have valued my time spent as a small busi-ness owner in Montpelier and look forward to seeing many of you as we engage in lei-sure activities in the community. Arrivederci, Montpelier!

—Angelo Caserta, former owner of Al Portico, Montpelier

Twin City Taxi’s Closing a Loss to the Community

To the Editor:Regarding the sudden demise of Twin City

Taxi in Montpelier [Heard on the Street, April 6, 2013], I want to express my regret and disappointment. For those of us who live without cars (by choice or otherwise), having a local, reliable taxi service is vitally impor-tant, especially when public transportation options remain so limited. Car owners, too, require a taxi every now and then, when using a car or bus would not be feasible. I counted on Twin, both day and night, for trips to and from the train and called on them to help me transport artwork and other large items. They were friendly, prompt and highly efficient in running their business. What has occurred is a loss to the whole community.

—Deborah Hillman, Montpelier

Support Requested for Green Mountain United Way

To the Editor:Green Mountain United Way (GMUW)

is a local organization that collaborates with community partners to identify community needs and works to diminish and prevent them. The folks at GMUW and their com-munity partners believe in the importance of financial stability, healthy living, early learn-ing and providing basic needs for our whole community, including our most vulnerable.

I currently serve on the board of directors of GMUW. Being in the banking industry, I appreciate GMUW’s commitment to mak-ing Vermonters more financially stable by hosting financial literacy workshops. I have seen the results of their efforts in educating local people in how to budget and save for everyday expenses, emergencies and their fu-ture. This type of instruction is also vital to everyone’s need to be more diligent during these tough economic times.

All this good work, however, takes fund-ing. GMUW’s annual campaign will soon be coming to a close, yet there still remains approximately $150,000 to raise to reach this year’s goal of $600,000. Less than three weeks remain until the end of the campaign. I urge you to please send your tax-deduct-ible contributions to GMUW at 963 Paine Turnpike N #2, Montpelier, VT 05602. If you have already donated, we thank you very sincerely and hope you will consider sending another donation. Every gift is meaningful and will be greatly appreciated.

—Kevin Lunn, vice president, GMUW Board of Directors, Montpelier

Thanks for a Successful Blood driveTo the Editor:We would like to thank the Montpelier

area businesses, organizations, publications and individuals for their contributions of space, time, print and blood, which led to the success of the recent Red Cross Blood Drive in Montpelier. A great deal of effort goes into the organization of a blood drive, and an enormous amount of generosity makes it suc-cessful. Thank you for your generosity.

—Dawn Anderson, 9-1-1 Public Educator, Montpelier

Funds Needed for Fuel AssistanceTo the Editor:If the Vermont legislature doesn’t act, many

Vermonters will be going cold next winter as assistance for our most vulnerable residents through Low Income Home Energy Assis-tance Program (LIHEAP) will be woefully underfunded. LIHEAP helps keep families safe and healthy by providing assistance with paying for heating bills. Due to significant federal cuts and diminishing support from the state, the funding for this program con-tinues to drop, and more and more people each year have difficulty affording their ris-ing utility bills. Depending on what hap-pens in Montpelier and Washington, D.C., LIHEAP could fall as much as $5 million below current funding levels. No Vermonter should have to choose between heating their home, putting food on the table or buying the medicine they need to remain healthy. We feel both a public health and a moral obligation to help our fellow citizens.

We hope you will join us in contacting your legislator to ask for their support of needed funds. You can reach the State House at 800-322-5616 and ask to leave a message for your representative or senator. Your call can make a real difference.

—Greg Marchildon, AARP Vermont state director, Montpelier

Editorial

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Read something you want to respond to? We welcome your letters and opinion pieces. Letters must be 300 words or fewer; opinions, 600 words or fewer. Send your piece to [email protected]. Deadline for the May 2 issue is Monday, April 29, at 5 p.m.

Our Community Dinner and Afterward

If you announce a community dinner for Thursday evening, April 11, and bring in

food, and if the food is good and there’s enough of it, and if you lay the tables for 80 people and 80 people turn out, and if the fare-wells are tender and sweet, and if the speeches are short and to the point, and if our readers and friends tell us what they like about The Bridge and how exactly The Bridge can be made better, and if there’s joy and pleasure in the air—doesn’t that sound like a successful community dinner?

Many businesses in the community helped to make the event a success. In rough alpha-betical order, the following local stores, eating places and florists generously provided us with food, drink, flowers and tablecloths: Ange-lenos, Bagitos, Birchgrove Baking, Botanica Florals, Hunger Mountain Coop, Julio’s,

Manghi’s Bread, New England Culinary Institute, Petals & Things, Positive Pie, Sarducci’s, Shaw’s, The Skinny Pancake, Vermont Thrush Restaurant, The Uncommon Market and Village Pizza.

Nor could we have organized and brought the event without the assistance and generosity of Janna Clar, Liz Dodd and the amazing staff of the Montpelier Senior Activity Center.

I have thanked our own organizer Joyce Kahn in a previous issue of The Bridge, but I want to thank her again. And I also thank my longtime friend and graphic design artist Mason Singer.

In order to update the paper to meet our community needs, we want to hear from several constituencies who read The Bridge. Our readers and friends who joined us on April 11 for the community dinner are one such group. But there are others, such as our advertisers, young people in school and young adults out of school, new parents, the Barre community, our own staff at the paper, friends and experts who have consulted with us and the writers who have contributed their talent to the paper over many years. In the weeks ahead we will be meet-ing with and listening to these established and prospective readers. We’ll let you know what we find out and what changes we will be implementing based on this feedback as we move forward to build on a history of the paper that’s now almost 20 years in the making.

Carolyn Grodinsky, Bridge sales representa-tive, serves food at the April 11 dinner. Photo by Suzannah Mullikin.


by Gerard Renfro

I don’t care about pollution. I’m an air conditioned gypsy, that’s my solution. Watch the police and tax man miss me.

—The Who

Get ready for a third round of food fighting at the state legislature. H.112 (the Vermont Genetic En-

gineering Food Labeling Act) is being pre-sented to the Vermont House this year. I call it the VeGeFool Act. The legislation requires those products made by direct genetic manip-ulation (as opposed to accidental pollen drift) to be labeled. I basically support the bill, but have many doubts on the issues.

First is the past behavior of three local or-ganizations that support the new legislation (NOFA, Rural Vermont and VPIRG—the VeGeFooL3). For years, the Vermont legis-lature has intentionally avoided any formal hearings on the science about the poten-

tial risks of GMOs. During this time the VeGeFooL3 worked hard on public aware-ness, but passively accepted the forced intro-duction of GMOs into Vermont before the science was understood. The first attempt at GMO labeling died in committee thanks to (now governor) Shumlin’s interference. As the years passed, a second bill did not. This time because Governor Douglas vetoed the Farmer Protection Act on the advice of thor-oughly pro-biotech agriculture commissioner Steven Kerr. Kerr defended his rejection of the bill, with unabashed hypocrisy, on the lack of scientific evidence. If the VeGeFooL3 had forced the State House to do its job 10 years ago, we might not be in the place we are today.

My second reservation is due to the inten-tionally misleading perception that organic agri-biz products are generally GMO free. The organic label does not protect the con-sumer from the results of genetic drift—a product can be labeled USDA organic with-

out any verification of GMO contamination. This issue is closely connected with that of the outright theft of the local organic move-ment by the USDA. Local organics was and still is about food and soil health. Organic agribusiness is about stock investors and big food companies. But their interests and that of the biotech industry would be at odds if organic food were suspected by the public to be contaminated with GMOs. So the organic business sector found an easy solution—see no evil, label no evil, make more money. A product that is contaminated by pollen drift can be labeled USDA organic, thus justifying a higher price, which conspicuously preppie consumers will pay. Ironically, it may be the seemingly innocent engine of organic agriculture that helps genetic contaminants to enter our diet at undetectably low levels. This is very similar to industrial waste, like tetraethyl lead being added to gasoline and spewed out in car exhaust.

To their credit, the VeGeFooL3 are very honest about this contradiction in labeling but insist that including organic in the label-ing bill would “immediately kill the bill.” I respect this honesty, but it leads to a related concern: our ability to fight a legal boxing match even if the bill actually passes. On one side of the ring, we have Joe Public and Jane Local Farmer. On the other side, we have the slippery Shumlin administration and his biotech buddies. Shumlin may paint himself as the defender of food quality and small business (Go Team Stale!), but his re-cord shows the opposite. He constantly shies away from biotech issues while talking about value-added foods, which is politalk for more expensive. This fits neatly into the preppie

organic food/GMO misperception and the Vermont Seal of Quality image that is highly profitable for the state. Vermont’s politicians have already run away twice on GMO leg-islation and from a lawsuit (Monsanto and rBGH labeling). I expect Shumlin’s admin-istration to hide behind face-saving claims that there is no money for a lawsuit, which unfortunately, is credible.

Perhaps if the state had a surplus of funds, a legal challenge would not be so threaten-ing, but these days it seems that every sector of the public is feeling the fiscal crunch. Meanwhile, the private sector really is getting richer: The same corporate scum that took trillions in bailouts are now finding overseas tax shelters. Wall Street enjoys the current poor job market because job competition means lower wages. Our public funds are starving because Wall Street is fat, thus our taxes are destined to be used against us if the GMO legislation goes to court.

Regulators are actually pro-biotech lap dogs, our budgets are screwed, and the or-ganic business sector profits from our igno-rance. There is every reason to believe that any GMO regulation is doomed to fail. Let us see if Vermont’s priorities are in the wallet or in the gut.

The VT Right to Know GMOs 2013 Cam-paign is a collaborative effort between VPIRG, Rural Vermont and NOFA. This coalition works to give Vermonters information by re-quiring the labeling of genetically engineered food products sold at retail outlets in the state of Vermont. If you would like to learn more or sign the petition, visit vpirg.org/gmo.

by David Grundy

What a wonderful food distribution system we have available to us today. Why, we can trip on down

to the supermarket and select from a wide variety of foods from around the country and even from around the world. We can enjoy strawberries in December, summer squash in winter and blueberries in May, as well as a huge variety of delectables our in-dustrial food system has dreamed up for us, including enough treats to make our taste buds tired from the effort of digesting them. It’s enough to make our ancestors quite envious.

But aside from the often quoted statistic that our food travels an average of 1,500 miles to get to us; that we are using huge amounts of fossil fuels to produce the fertil-izers, pesticides and herbicides needed to grow and irrigate much of this food; or that the amount of water used to irrigate much of this cropland is creating a water shortage in

some parts of the country, I am interested to learn that recent research seems to show that those ancestors might have had it better than we do today.

Studies show that many of the diseases and maladies our bodies suffer from today were not problems for those hunter-gatherer folks.

There is no evidence they suffered from tooth decay, diabetes, cancers, obesity—af-flictions all part of a group collectively labeled diseases of civilization. Signifi-cantly, many of these

conditions started to appear in the popula-tion about 10,000 years ago, around the beginning of agriculture.

What in the world has become of our food? Many think that some of the condi-tions mentioned above are the direct result of what we humans have, with the best of intentions, added to the food. Our beef is now “fattened up” in feedlots so crowded with animals that veterinarians must patrol the lots looking for diseased animals so they can be removed. To prevent disease, animals

are fed many antibiotics, which then get into our bodies. Physicians are now worried that strains of bacteria resistant to antibiotics are developing. Our milk supply is tainted with chemicals designed to make the cows produce more. Our fruits and vegetables are covered with pesticides to avoid blemishes, the sight of which might deter us from pur-chasing them. And now, through the won-ders of food chemistry, we have partially hydrogenated vegetable oil to increase shelf life and high-fructose corn syrup to make our delectables even sweeter—both of which have been shown to have deleterious effects on our body chemistry. Add to these the growing concern about the use of GMOs flooding our industrial food system.

So, what are we to do? Well, through the good work of the folks who manage the Four Corners School House in East Mont-pelier, a group of local food producers in town has banded together to market food to their neighbors and to some commercial sites beyond our town that is closer to what our hunter-gatherer ancestors had available to them. Some produce grass-fed beef: a diet the cow was designed to consume instead of the poorly digested corn fed in feedlots. Some

raise free-range chickens, instead of the com-mercial method of shoving three hens into a cage so small they can’t turn around. Some graze sheep, pigs and meat chickens on our clean Vermont grass. Some grow organic veg-etables while others preserve these crops by fermentation to enhance rather than degrade their quality. Some produce milk with noth-ing in it other than what the cow gives us.

Through the wonders of technology, we don’t have to rely on strawberries from South America. We can harvest the berries and other crops when they are at their peak and freeze or can them for consumption throughout the year—instead of picking them early so they arrive at the supermarket shelf ripe, but old. We can do this with many of the wonderfully fresh and healthy foods produced right here in our hometown.

Vermont is leading the country not only in the largest number of farmers’ markets per capita but in the production and consump-tion of local foods. It may not be as easy as zipping down to the supermarket for the week’s groceries, but the benefits of hav-ing healthier, better tasting food is certainly worth it.

Local Food Cures Diseases Caused by Industrial Food

Opinions

April Fools for Farmers: H.112 and GMO Regulation

East Montpelier Trails Fundraising Update

Last fall, East Montpelier Trails, Inc. (EMTI) launched a fundraising campaign to improve the beautiful Mallory Brook Trail between Johnson Road and Cherry Tree

Hill Road. EMTI is happy to report that it has received almost $2000 toward its goal of raising $4000 from the community.

Trail builder extraordinaire Greg Western worked through the fall of 2012 to repair rock stair stream crossings damaged during the flood of May 2011 and make them re-silient for any future flooding, as well as to improve other troubling wet spots. He will begin the final phase of repairing the stream gullies in June of this year. Please stop by and check out his amazing stone and wood handwork while you enjoy a walk on this unique trail, or sign up for a volunteer workday.

And of course, your generous donation will be greatly appreciated. EMTI still has $2,000 left to raise. If you’ve ever been grateful to have these fine and varied trails right in our community, this is a great chance to join the effort.

In addition, volunteers are welcome to help on the trail. Send your e-mail address to Dave at [email protected], and EMTI will let you know when work dates are available. Greg Western is a trail genius, and you will learn a lot.

Donate: Any amount you can give is appreciated. EMTI will acknowledge all donors unless you state that you wish to remain anonymous. Please send checks to: EMTI, c/o Richard Brock, 234 Cutler Heights, Montpelier, VT 05602. EMTI is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

Questions? Contact: Richard Brock, 223-7029 or [email protected]; Nona Estrin, 223-7745 or [email protected]; Rick Hopkins, 229-4735 or [email protected]; Sue Chickering, 229-6232 or [email protected]; Dave Webb, 279-2198 or [email protected]; Sandy Woodbeck, 229-0734 or [email protected]; or Mary Stone, 223-2319 or [email protected].

—Sue Chickering

Annual Campaign Update: Again, Thanks

As this issue of The Bridge goes to press, recent contributions to the paper’s annual campaign take us to a current campaign total of $14,033 toward a campaign goal

of $15,000. Writing on behalf of everyone at the paper—writers, editors, graphic de-signers, our very effective bookkeeper and the team of people who deliver the paper—please accept our thanks for your timely and generous and needed support. Please help the paper complete its current campaign successfully. Please feel free to drop off an envelope at The Bridge office. We are located on the lower level of Schulmaier Hall, just off College Street on the Vermont College of Fine Arts campus. Or contribute to the campaign by writing a check made payable to “The Bridge” and mailed to this address: The Bridge, P.O. Box 1143, Montpelier, VT 05601. Again, thanks.

—Nat Frothingham


by Catherine Antley

I am a physician in Vermont. Reluctantly, I am testifying April 18 before the Sen-ate on H.200, which makes possession

of cannabis a civil offense instead of a crime. I am a private person and have a busy life but feel compelled in this instance to testify because there seems to be a piece of the issue that is not being vocalized: recent medical literature that is drawing ever clearer links between cannabis use and mental health disease, with an accompanying high cost to our state.

To understand the issue, one has to realize that the cannabis plant of today differs from that of the 1970s. In the United States, pure THC is made in laboratories and sprayed on cannabis leaves to make the particularly dangerous “cheap cannabis.”

A growing appreciation for the danger that today’s cannabis poses can be found in the Netherlands. In 2011 the Dutch cabinet des-ignated cannabis with a THC content of 15 percent or more as a hard drug, in the same category as cocaine and ecstasy. The cabi-net deems “strong cannabis as a drug with unacceptable risk, especially when used at a

young age.” The Dutch go on to declare that the consumption and production of strong cannabis will be severely punished. What scientific literature informed the Dutch deci-sion to change their stance? Shouldn’t we ed-ucate ourselves through review of up-to-date medical research on cannabis before making policies that will affect our children’s lives and well-being?

I am concerned that legislators may not appreciate the strength and downside of can-nabis, which medical and scientific research in the last two years has revealed. Do we know how much of Vermont’s cannabis has a

high THC content or how to control this? Thirty percent of middle school students

use cannabis. Nearly all users start by 12th grade. Adverse effects are especially linked to early usage. “The scientific literature is clear that regular use of cannabis especially of high potency varieties increases the risk of schizophrenia. Some individuals who would otherwise have remained well will develop schizophrenia” says internationally recognized authority on schizophrenia Sir Robin Murray of Kings College London. Dr. Steingard and Dr. Batra, leaders in our state psychiatric community, are also in full agreement regarding the risks of cannabis. Long-term use of cannabis causes a 10 point decrease in IQ. Pregnant mothers who use cannabis have children at higher risk for later opiate abuse and ADHD.

If high THC cannabis is deemed as dan-gerous as hard drugs by the Netherlands, is this something for which we should be giving out “speeding tickets”? Would we give out tickets for opium or coca leaves? It is wrong to assess this piece of legislation without current and up-to-date information. Our lawmakers need to be aware of the po-tential dangers.

I do not advocate criminal punishment for drug use. I personally feel that the money spent on jail would be better spent on hos-pitalization, substance abuse assessment and rehab. If criminal laws (or avoiding them with treatment, if needed) help force people into treatment that a ticket will not, then perhaps this law could be written to address this specifically. I would like to explore forced alternatives to criminal prosecution, which this law could create, when needed.

by Bob Lincoln

Recently, I attended a memorial service in honor of Bob Northrop who died on March 30 at the age of 92. Bob

was a unique public citizen who volunteered thousands of hours to many organizations including Vermont Public Radio, the Ver-mont Electric Cooperative, the Vermont Mo-zart Festival and oth-ers. One of his most important volunteer commitments was to the Green Mountain Club (GMC) and the Long Trail (LT), the oldest long-distance hiking trail in America. And herein lies a story.

At the age of 16, Bob hiked the Long Trail end to end for the first time, and at the age of 80, he hiked it for the seventh and last time. As he stated in a letter to the GMC board in 1997: “The Long Trail has been a wonderful gift to the quality of my life.”

I first met Bob when he walked into my office many years ago and told me he wanted to raise funds for the Long Trail Protection Campaign, the club’s effort to permanently secure sections of the Long Trail in northern Vermont that were not protected from devel-opment. He thought that hiking the LT end to end in celebration of his 75th birthday might attract some attention and help us to achieve our goal. Boy, was he right.

What ensued was a series of fundraising and public relations initiatives that led to our raising over $75,000 for the campaign. To quote Bob: “While we have exceeded the age-symbolic goal of $75,000 by quite a few thousand dollars, I believe that we all know this is but a down payment on the larger amount. So there is a lot of money yet to be raised, but what has happened so far has only increased my enthusiasm.” So Bob

immediately began to prepare for another fundraising end-to-ender upon the occasion of his 80th birthday in the year 2000, which included lots of hikes on the LT and lots of time at home on the treadmill.

During his last hike, he fell and badly bruised some ribs and left the trail to spend the night at home. He spoke to a neighbor who was a nurse, who told him she could

do nothing to help him, so he might as well get back on the trail. He did the next day in some pain and persevered until Journey’s End, where we held a big

party with dozens of friends and family in attendance to celebrate his achievement. And we activated the sensors on the border, which resulted in a government helicopter fly-over to check us out—which amused Bob greatly.

The GMC received more than $200,000 from both of Bob’s hikes, we raised aware-ness across the state and beyond for our con-servation initiative, and we made many new friends for the Long Trail. Bob’s hands were literally all over this effort, including hand-addressing hundreds of envelopes, making phone calls to friends and strangers, sharing ideas for spreading the word throughout Ver-mont and beyond and getting interviewed by some radio stations. He was indefatigable.

This was Bob’s extraordinary legacy to the Long Trail because he was a man whose commitment to the project was profound and long lasting and proved very successful. He inspired me and many others with his willingness to go to great lengths to achieve our goals. I will miss him as a friend, and the club will miss his love for the Long Trail and his dedication to our mission.

Bob Lincoln is a former director of develop-ment at the Green Mountain Club.

Opinions

Remembering Bob Northrop: Volunteer Extraordinaire

Bob Northrop. Photo courtesy of the Green Mountain Club.

Capital City Concerts Presents Premiere Performance April 27

Montpelier’s Capital City Concerts is presenting the Borromeo String Quartet in a world premiere performance by composer Mohammed Fairouz on Saturday, April 27, at 7:30

p.m. at the Unitarian Church. Teta for flute and string quartet was commissioned by Capital City Concerts in 2012 as the first major commission in its history. It’s a large-scale, three-movement work for flute and string quartet combining “colorful Middle Eastern style with highly textured counterpoint, and a wide range of emotions” and will be performed by flutist Karen Kevra and the Borromeo String Quartet. The composer will attend.

The Borromeo is one of the world’s leading string quartets and champions 27-year-old Arab-American composer Mohammed Fairouz, whom the BBC World News called “one of the most talented composers of his generation” and the New York Times called “an important new artistic voice.” Fairouz’s distinctive musical language melds Middle-Eastern modes and Western structures to deeply expressive effect.

Nicholas Kitchen, Borromeo first violinist, introduced Capital City Concerts artistic director Karen Kevra to Fairouz in 2010 when she was seeking a composer who could write a Middle Eastern–flavored piece. That introduction resulted in Teta (Arabic for “grand-mother”)—a musical celebration of history, heritage, culture, family and youth.

The evening will also include two celebrated string quartets: Beethoven’s Opus 135 String Quartet and Dvorak’s G major String Quartet, Opus 106. Northwest Mutual Financial Net-work and National Life Group are the sponsors for this concert. Advance sale tickets are rec-ommended. For more information and to charge tickets ($10–$25), go to capitalcityconcerts.org. Tickets may also be purchased (cash or check only) at Bear Pond Books, Montpelier.

Users of Strong Cannabis Need Rehab, Not Just a Ticket


grow your own

FOOD!

HOURS: Mon–Fri, 8–6; Sat 8–5

Still taking orders for laying

chicks, meat birds & turkeys.

Next order due May 10. Go to

guysfarmandyard.com or call for

details.

Also taking order for brook &

rainbow trout.

6-8” fish (lots of 25): $2.10/fish

10-12” fish (lots of 50): $3.85/fish

Order deadline is May 20;

pick up May 22,

1pm sharp!

We have a great selec-tion of seeds from High Mowing, Botanical Interests & New England Seed.

Coming soon: potatoes, onions, asparagus & organic fruit plants and trees from Elmore Roots.

See us for a full menu of organic fertilizers to feed all your plants.

the bridge, april 18, 2013

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