BRATTLEBORO-According to the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food, and Markets, there are approximately 60 summer farmers markets and 15 winter markets in the state.
Of those 15, a key player is the continuously running, November-through-March Brattleboro Winter Farmers Market (BWFM) which is in its 19th season.
Support structure under the state's farmers markets is Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont (NOFA-VT), which assists markets around the state with promotion and consulting, and the Vermont Farmers Market Association, which promotes the markets around the state and shares best practices that "enhance direct marketing opportunities for market vendors while building direct connections between vendors and local consumers," as described on the organization's website.
BWFM Co-manager Sherry Maher, who joined Post Oil Solution's Tim Stevenson and Cindy Hellman to help move the nascent market forward in 2006, sits on the VFMA board.
"They assist with a lot of advice and guidance, and they've hosted [an email group] so farmers market managers, participants, [and] board members around the state can talk to each other, get questions answered, and problem-solve," Maher says.
New BWFM Co-manager Kelly Brown adds, "We are so lucky to have NOFA-VT. There are equivalents in other Northeast states, but Vermont was the first; Vermont is a rock star."
Of Brattleboro, Maher observes, "I believe we are the only market in the wintertime that is weekly through March." It picks up where the Brattleboro Area Farmers Market leaves off each fall.
"Local farmers, bakers, chefs, and craft artisans bringing you an abundance of fresh produce, local grass-fed and pastured meats, freshly baked goods, lunches, and more each week," the winter farmers market website says.
The Commons spoke recently with several involved in the BWFM about its place in the community, given its mission "to celebrate and support local farms, food producers, and artisans working together to strengthen the local economy and build community around year-round access to local food."
John Levin, who joined the BWFM steering committee in 2022, fulfills the role of "customer voice." Providing input on market operations from the customer's perspective, he reflects: "I think a lot of people don't know about the winter market - that it's a really good way to get local vegetables throughout the winter. It's amazing: you can get lettuce, arugula, [...] spinach, parsley, cilantro - all kinds of things that are green that you wouldn't necessarily think you would get in December."
It's not just carrots and parsnips.
Levin, who's been in southern Vermont for 33 years, talks of watching agriculture disappear in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he grew up; thus, he's eager to see agriculture thrive here: "Vermont's a rural state: It provides beauty; it also provides food."
Fellow steering committee members Cole North of Finocchio, a wood-fired kitchen and bakery in Marlboro, represents BWFM specialty foods/prepared food vendor members. Having built a wood-fired oven and a commercial kitchen on his property, he's been selling for three years primarily at Brattleboro's summer and winter farmers markets: sourdough Italian breads, Italian sandwiches, wood-fired bagels, specialty loaves - all made with locally sourced ingredients.
Originally from Oakland, California, where he cooked for several years before moving to the area with his wife, Hannah, a Vermont native, he says, "I can't tell you how helpful it's been to have these great markets in the area [...] It's been an incredible experience, not just in meeting other people in the food world," but in being able to avoid the need for a brick-and-mortar presence for his operation, thus keeping costs down.
Justin Bramhall, of Leaping Bear Farm in Putney, started selling at BWFM three years ago offering Real Organic pasture-raised chicken and eggs and, more recently, microgreens. Since then, joined by Vanessa Rose, he sells through several other area markets.
"And we send a lot of eggs to the Putney Diner," Rose reports.
A former science teacher, passionate about the environment, Bramhall came to the realization several years ago that he wanted to farm, "to produce good clean food," he says. "And I knew lots of people wanted that."
Having begun his farming life here in 2019, he says the operation "snowballed."
He started with 50 laying hens his first year, and "this year we have a laying flock of 900." The farm has raised approximately 2,200 meat birds this year.
Rose, a graphic designer, moved here in 2022. "I spent the first season with Justin just in awe of regenerative agriculture [...] and really wanted to be a part of that. Coming here and seeing all this felt like it was a way to really make a big impact, so I signed right up."
Michael Fuller, owner-chef of the 41-year-old TJ Buckley's Uptown Dining in Brattleboro, says the farmers markets "sustain me and keep [the business] going," noting that any given night's menu is predicated on what's available there.
"In the dead of winter, of course, I'll supplement with things that I can't get locally, but in the late spring, summer, [and] fall, just about everything [patrons are] eating is local," he says.
"I can go to each plate and tell you what farm it came from, what soil it's grown in, maybe even what kind of mood that farmer was in that day," Fuller says. "Most of what's on your plate here comes from within a 12-mile radius."
Food for everyone
The BWFM experience is rounded out by different musicians slated weekly to play in the café area, where three hot food vendors offer a range of foods to take out or to eat in.
"Sherry and her team have been really moving this forward, giving opportunities for people on lower incomes to get more bang out of a buck there," Fuller says.
Rose adds that the BWFM "sets itself apart from [others] because it is so heavily involved in trying to make sure that lower-income people are able to come and enjoy this really nutritious food that might not be otherwise available to them."
Customers eligible for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, commonly known as "food stamps" and called "3SquaresVT" in Vermont) are welcome at the market and, thanks to innovative funding efforts, Maher says.
"SNAP/3Squares Vermont shoppers can extend their food budgets every week at the market," she explains. "Every $10 spent in SNAP dollars earns $20 in Crop Cash, a NOFA-VT grant program which gives extra cash to SNAP customers to be used on local fruits, vegetables, herbs, and culinary seeds and plant starts.
"Add to that an additional $10 from BWFM's own Boost Your Bread program to yield $40, which can buy any food in the market, even hot-lunch food.
"We knew that people needed fresh fruits and vegetables and our farmers could be there with them. But they also needed bread, eggs, and meat, and other things that you can't get with the Crop Cash coupons," says Maher.
Brown called Boost Your Bread "an exceptional program" that Maher developed with a few small grants they "pieced together."
This is the fourth year into BWFM's Boost Your Bread, for which they've received "a very sizable grant from the Vermont Foodbank to support the program," says Maher.
"During Covid, when we actually closed the market and went curbside only, we knew how many people were coming to Everyone Eats and lining up to get food," she says.
"And we knew that the need was huge, so we started fundraising early that fall," added Maher, calling the result "big, in terms of helping people get more of what they needed through the market. It served the double purpose of also boosting our vendors."
BWFM supports families' health, community vendors, and the local economy, which Maher calls "the triple-win concept" that made Everyone Eats so successful and is "something I've talked about in grant applications," says Maher.
"There is so much money that comes into the state of Vermont for SNAP. The more we can get that circulating through local producers and not going out through big-box stores, the more everybody wins," she adds.
The value of eating local
Limiting the miles our food travels, Brown adds, ensures that it's far more nutritious.
"The greens that you get at the farmers market will last in your refrigerator, as opposed to the greens that you get in the grocery store that traveled from California," she notes.
Brown adds that Maher and Stevenson, longtime activists of local resiliency, "draw the short line between climate change and agriculture and our food systems and keeping things local: That makes us resilient."
Vendor applications for the BWFM are reviewed by a curatorial committee: On an average Saturday, one can find 12 to 14 agricultural vendors out of some 26 altogether, says Maher.
"Unlike outdoor markets, we have a limited space, so we don't overrun it with too much of any one thing," she says.
Weekly, it's close to 50% agricultural presence - produce, grain, bread, meat, eggs - and roughly the same in terms of percentage of gross total sales.
Brown adds, "It's focused on farms, and then it's filled in with other really wonderful vendors, too." The mission, though, is to keep local food available to the public year-round. That's the word she, Maher, and the market want to spread.
Kaitlin Ford, a single mother who has shopped at the BWFM regularly before, during, and since Covid, calls it "a very welcoming and open market" and says the matching program with SNAP benefits has been instrumental in her family's nutritional health.
"It allows us to have fresh, local food, and to support farmers and the economy at the same time," she says. "It allows me to connect my daughter with local food sources, to become knowledgeable regarding food supply chains and the impact of the global food supply chain on climate, and to understand the importance of eating locally."
The Brattleboro Winter Farmers Market is open every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., November through March, in the Croker Hall gymnasium at the Winston Prouty campus at 60 Austine Drive. Ample parking is available, and the market is served by the MOOver bus line. For more information, visit brattleborowinterfarmersmarket.org.
This News item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.