June at the Intervale Center
We can't wait to see you at Summervale for a special one-day event! Visit our Summervale page for our full schedule.
Farms
Photo Credit: Nathan Stevens
We are proud to share that our long-time partners at Sodexo’s Vermont First Program have won the Gold Award for Sustainable Food Procurement! This award from the National Association of College and University Food Services celebrates Vermont First’s impact as a leader in prioritizing and tracking local food purchasing at institutions.
Through our Intervale Food Hub, we work with Vermont First to provide UVM Dining with fresh food from our network of over 70 local farmers and food producers. In 2024 alone, we reached $202,507 in sales with Vermont First Sodexo Kitchens! Our Food Hub Manager, Kristen McDowell, further serves on the Vermont First Advisory Board to track progress and identify opportunities to grow purchasing relationships. In just two years, Vermont First has grown UVM Dining’s purchasing of local food from 13.2% to 20.9%, with a goal to reach 25% by 2030. Learn more about Vermont First’s impact here!
Photo Credit: James Chandler
Working with a cohort of Vermont sheep farmers, our Farm Business Services team developed a resource guide to support sheep producers across the state. Commercial sheep production is seeing a resurgence in interest in Vermont, with a number of producers scaling up or planning to in the near future. To support this new generation of sheep farmers, we created a guide with our findings on viability for sheep farms and tools for production, marketing, and budgeting. You can find this new resource and other resource for farmers on our website.
Land
As part of the Riparian Lands Native Seed Partnership (RLNSP), the Intervale Center is growing our work to collect native seeds by exploring new seed collection sites in partnership with NorthWoods Stewardship Center. The RLNSP was borne out of a need for seed to restore riverbank ecosystems across the state where years of farming too close to shorelines have increased erosion and the spread of invasive plant species.
Each year, the seeds that we collect are planted in direct seeding trials to restore healthy riparian buffers, which in turn support wildlife habitat, reduce agricultural runoff, and mitigate erosion. So far this year, we have collected 95 pounds of seeds from over 20 sites! Learn more about the RLNSP’s latest work in this article from the Vermont River Conservancy!
People
We are thrilled and honored to announce that the Intervale Center is now the fiscal sponsor for Conscious Homestead!
Founded in 2016 by Candace Taylor, Conscious Homestead is a learning urban homestead that centers Black & Brown land-based healing and liberation, community care and the practice of living consciously with not over the land or any of our human, animal, plant, and ancestral kin. They operate an incredible suite of programs sharing Afro-Indigenous land-based practices, providing free food and herbal medicine to the community, and more. The Intervale Center is excited to uplift their important mission as their fiscal sponsor. Learn more about the awesome work Conscious Homestead is doing here!
Thank you to the Henry P. Kendall Foundation for awarding the Intervale Center a 2025 New England Food Vision Prize!
This generous award will support the purchase of a refrigerated truck for our Intervale Food Hub. With this truck, we will be able to fulfill our commitments to deliver local food to higher education campuses in our region and reduce barriers to market access for farms, especially socially disadvantaged farms.
Learn more about the prize and projects here.