Year in Pictures 2021
With much gratitude, I am excited to share the Year In Pictures 2021 with you. I hope that as you look through, you can see all the ways that the Intervale Center is using good food to change the world. Even though this year had its challenges, we end it with joy in our hearts knowing that we made a meaningful and lasting impact. Our success is easy to see: more viable farms, more healthy forests and clean water, more people engaging with our community food system. I hope you enjoy this look back at 2021! - Travis Marcotte, Executive Director
This year our agricultural service programs worked with 103 farms with 32 farm projects including a land access component. Projects have ranged from farms looking to expand direct sales, to new farmers growing their organic broiler operation, to supporting a nonprofit retail food distribution system in Southern Vermont that was born out of the Covid-19 pandemic. We also continue to support succession planning, helping retiring farmers exit gracefully while identifying and training the next generation.
At the Conservation Nursery, we harvested 26,775 of our own stems and sold over 38,500 stems to conservation projects statewide. Our stewardship and planting projects totaled 130 acres. And incredibly, we propagated 64,146 stems with over 70% (45,600) successfully transplanted into the field for future planning projects. This is the most stems we have ever propagated and positions us well to grow the number of stems we have available for sale in years to come.
Our gleaning and food access programs also did more than ever this year. Our core program gleaned and rescued over 54,000 pounds of fresh food this year, and we grew an additional 10,000 pounds at our People’s Farm. We reached over a thousand people each week during our 18 week gleaning season, distributing food through a free Community Supported Agriculture program and free farmers’ markets in Burlington and Winooski. We also expanded our role in Vermont Everyone Eats, providing 225,000 meals directly to people impacted by Covid-19 in Chittenden, Grand Isle and Franklin Counties. We also continue to look for ways to expand access in dignified, low barrier, and convenient ways. This fall and winter, we will continue providing thousands of meals each week and hosting three monthly free farmers’ markets.
The Intervale Food Hub, our online marketplace for local food, sold almost $1 million worth of local food from 70+ producers to families in the greater Burlington area this year. We delivered over 16,400 orders, averaging 326 orders per week, and reached 738 households. In August, we surveyed our customers. They gave us a 9.6/10 for convenience, a 9.9/10 for safety, a 9.7/10 for customer service, and a 9.5/10 for likelihood of recommending our service to a friend. These numbers are all up from last year, indicating growth in our team’s abilities to meet our customers’ needs.
We also expanded our educational offerings. In addition to four weeks of Summervale, our premier music and local food festival, we hosted over two dozen educational classes, engaging hundreds of people in the Intervale from May to October. These classes ranged from workshops on fishing, home composting, and bat habitat to cooking classes on backcountry cooking and Mediterranean spices.
Finally, we continued to steward the Intervale with an eye toward sustainable agriculture, conservation, and recreation. We grew our relationship with the Abenaki indigenous community through the Abenaki Heritage Garden and by providing a platform for private and public ceremonies. We supported New Farms for New Americans, a refugee garden and farm program managed by AALV, by hosting a greenhouse and managing a three-acre production farm. We improved over four miles of trails, installed new directional and informational signage, removed invasive species, planted trees and gardens, and completed new agricultural infrastructure, including the addition of a food access cooler. We recently purchased 87.5 acres of land we have rented for decades, growing our holdings by 37% and ensuring this parcel of prime agricultural land will be stewarded for sustainable agriculture, conservation, and recreation indefinitely.
We have also made new investments in our organization, as we seek to prioritize DEI work. We have instituted Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training and planning with programs and enterprises and are refining our policies, procedures, and programs to root out racism within our organization and culture.
All of this was made possible because of you! Thank you! For the stories behind the impact, please visit intervale.org/blog.