The scene: Wednesday, 3:30 p.m., the Statehouse cafeteria. It had been a momentous afternoon, and now it was time to eat. At one table, Pete Coleman of Vermont Salumi offered curls of capicola. A few feet away, apple pies rubbed shoulders with maple-cured bacon, pasture-raised pork meatballs simmered in sweet maple chili sauce, and green smears of Intervale-grown-pesto-topped half-toasts. The crowd roamed and hummed, fortified by chocolate milk and apple cider and all things good and local.
Among the farmers and the bakers and the curers and the lawmakers milled peeps from the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, and they had every right to be merry. They’d just spent 18 months combing the state for input from farmers, vendors, chefs, researchers, academics and everyone else who felt they had something to say about what was working and what wasn’t in Vermont’s food system.
Then they took that raw data and fashioned it into a 10-year plan with dozens of interrelated objectives. As a Nor’Easter swirled outside, they unveiled its contours to lawmakers with a press conference, a joint legislative session and an elegant 52-page executive summary.
This article appears in Jan 12-18, 2011.
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The state should do away with hunting seasons and let man do what they have done thoughout time. If person A wants to stop at City Market and grab a slice of beef they can. If person B want’s some rabbit for dinner why can’t he stop on the way home and get himself one for stew anyday of the week?
I’m also of the mind set that picking yourself up by the boot straps is an essential trait in life and society. Yet feel so fortunate to live in a state that spearheads policy creation to fuel job growth, agricultural sustainability and long term food security.Thanks VT, you rock!