Editorâs Note: The first of two articles focusing on food and agriculture in Vermont.
BENNINGTON â A recent panel discussion ranged from emergency food provision to statewide agricultural policy. Vermont-scale approaches to ongoing issues came from all directions.
The Bennington Local Food Summit was a day-long conference held over Zoom on May 15. The afternoon panel discussion for the event was titled âA Conversation Between Food Security and Local Food Advocates.â
As a flyer for the summit asked: âHow do we bring these two efforts together to make sure that everyone in Vermont can partake in food grown on our small sustainable farms? How do we support farmer livelihood while also making sure that local food is not only accessible to the most-wealthy people in our community?â
GHENT, N.Y. â Getting out of bed first thing last Sunday morning to feed a bunch of hungry goats might not sound like a blessing. In Angela Millerâs case, it is.
Everything had been going well in the fall of 2019 â the goat and cow milk cheeses made at Vermontâs Consider Bardwell Farm were winning awards and appearing on the menu of some of Americaâs most celebrated restaurants, among them The French Laundry, Daniel and Blue Hill at Stone Barns â when disaster struck. It wasnât COVID, but a listeria scare.
âIt was from bringing in goat milk from another farm,â Angela explained as she crossed the barnyard of her farm in West Pawlet, Vt. âWe stopped manufacturing and selling anything out of here so that we could trace any of the cheeses that had gone out previously of that kind. It was a voluntary shutdown.â
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In Shrewsbury, Pierce s Store, reopened as a cooperative in 2009, is thriving. Manager Elana Levin was too busy for an interview. Photos by C.B. Hall
by C.B. Hall, Vermont Business Magazine If you don t have a store, you can t really have a town, Ripton resident and prominent environmentalist Bill McKibben wrote in a
New York Times op-ed three years ago.
It s a thought that haunts many Vermont towns, as general stores, long a sine qua non of village economies – and the Vermont brand – contend with today s economic forces. From Albany in the state s northeast to West Rupert in the southwest, dozens of communities have confronted what it means to see their local stores endangered, or closed.
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PAWLET â Daniel Banyaiâs Second Amendment picnic at Slate Ridge was a success by all accounts but he is now facing a civil contempt charge from the Town of Pawlet.
Pawlet Town Attorney Merrill Bent filed a motion for civil contempt and request for hearing Wednesday in the environmental division of Superior Court.
The motion asks the court to hold Banyai in contempt of the courtâs March 6 judgment and to convene a hearing to compel Banyai and witnesses to testify.
The contempt allegations are related to the firing of guns that took place during the picnic that the town alleges violates the court order, which includes surveying and tearing down unpermitted structures, allowing firearms training on the property and failure to pay fines assessed by the court.
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The owner of an unpermitted firearms training center in the southern Vermont town of Pawlet says he won’t comply with a judge’s order to dismantle much of the facility he built in the woods near the New York border.
Daniel Banyai began operating the Slate Ridge firearms training facility in 2017. He said he is looking for “the proper constitutional attorney to appeal a Vermont Environmental Court order that he dismantle all structures on the property that were built without permits. The 30-acre property is only permitted to have a garage with an apartment.
He has until May 5 to appeal the March 4 order.