We organize and amplify the voices of those impacted by injustice in order to move toward greater food sovereignty in the Northeast Kingdom.

Grow Your Own

The mission of Grow Your Own is to increase food independence, better health and well-being through shared knowledge and experience. The project offers workshops taught by neighbors that focus on gardening, cooking, and food preservation. 

Upcoming Workshops: 

Bread Making with Durrelle Morey

September 23, 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.

Center for an Agricultural Economy at the
Vermont Food Venture Center

140 Junction Road, Hardwick, VT 05843

Durrelle Morey will teach a hands-on bread baking workshop, and we will enjoy a shared meal afterward. If you have had bread at the Thursday lunches at the United Church in Hardwick (or take out) in recent years, you've tasted her flaky, beautiful, satisfying bread. At this workshop we will all have access to her secrets!

Participants will share a light meal. Children are welcome to accompany adults. Grow Your Own is a project of the Hardwick Area Food Pantry and the Center for an Agricultural Economy. The mission of Grow Your Own is to increase food independence, better health and wellbeing through shared knowledge and experience. If you have questions please email CAE Community Programs Manager Bethany Dunbar at bethany@hardwickagriculture.org. Register by August 25. Space is limited in this workshop. Donations can be made online for those who wish to contribute, but workshops are always free for anyone who wishes to participate. 

Register Today! 

What People Are Saying

"Awesome fun!"      "Very encouraging to try new ideas!" 

  "Great workshop!"      "Great info! Love the hands-on work."

  "Best workshop yet! I'm excited about bucket gardening now!"

"Learned a lot. First time veg gardener."                     

 "Loving the workshops! Keep them going!" 

Grow Your Own is a collaboration among CAE, the Hardwick Area Food Pantry, and Wonder Arts. It involves a steering committee of dedicated community volunteers.

Interested in joining Grow Your Own or learning more? Membership and workshops are free and open to the public, and children are welcome. For more information, contact Heather Davis, executive director at the Hardwick Area Food Pantry or CAE Community Programs Manager Bethany Dunbar.

Pies for People

Each November, our annual Pies for People event brings together volunteers and gleaned local produce in the spirit of sharing the bounty of the harvest! Each fall volunteers make more than 100 pies from gleaned squash - donated by High Mowing Organic Seeds. The pies go to our neighbors at the pantry, schools, and nursing homes in time for the Thanksgiving holiday.  During the pandemic we created a new project when neighbors baked Thanksgiving pies at home to donate. We will regroup in the summer of 2022 to consider which direction to go with this project in the fall. 

Produce to Pantries

Local food networks are nimble, flexible, and adaptive, this allows them to meet the needs of the community in ways larger, centralized systems cannot. The pandemic has illuminated many ways that the industrial food system doesn’t work to feed and nourish everyone. After participating in the national USDA Farmers to Families Food Box programs in 2020, we asked, “How can we localize this effort? Can we use our existing relationships and infrastructure to involve local small-scale farmers and our local pantries to meet the needs of our communities?”

The answer is Produce to Pantries, a partnership between the CAE and the Hardwick Area Food Pantry (HAFP). We buy produce from local farms, which is distributed at HAFP’s three sites in Hardwick, Albany, and Craftsbury. Not only does this get quality, locally-grown produce to more households - we intentionally seek small-scale and emerging farm partners to build equity among small farmers in our area. It is truly an example of neighbors feeding neighbors, and communities looking out for each other.