Happenings in Hardwick

Peter Johnson of Pete's Greens.
Photo by Paul O. Boisvert for The New York Times.

The October 8, 2008 issue of the New York Times has an article about the agricultural renaissance happening in Hardwick, Vermont.

"Facing a Main Street dotted with vacant stores, residents of this hardscrabble community of 3,000 are reaching into its past to secure its future, betting on farming to make Hardwick the town that was saved by food.

With the fervor of Internet pioneers, young artisans and agricultural entrepreneurs are expanding aggressively, reaching out to investors and working together to create a collective strength never before seen in this seedbed of Yankee individualism."
(Read the entire Times article here.)

Many curiosity-piquing enterprises are mentioned: Jasper Hill Farm and the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese at the University of Vermont; Claire's restaurant, a community-supported local food restaurant (the concept owes something to the Farmer's Diner in Quechee VT); and the Center for an Agricultural Economy and the the Vermont Food Venture Center.

I was happy to see a few mentions of Pete's Greens. In '03, I talked to Peter Johnson for a small piece in Seven Days. (This was back before 'locavore' was in anyone's vocabulary, and the piece clunkily frames the movement in terms of 'organic, small-scale farming.')

I'm heading up to Vermont - to Hardwick, actually - this weekend, and will try to check out Claire's and Jasper Hill Farm if at all possible.

It should be a good weekend for rambling around outdoors - I hear that the trees are on fire.