The Intervale Center’s “People’s Farm”

The COVID-19 pandemic has had and continues to have a tremendous impact on the Intervale Center, presenting us with challenges to overcome as well as opportunities to make meaningful change across our enterprises, programs and partnerships.

For decades, we’ve known the value of partnerships to our work, so much so that we prioritize collaboration as a key characteristic of our organization in our strategic plan. These relationships and this spirit have proven essential to our COVID-19 response. From Shelburne Farms employees pitching in to support the rapid expansion of the Intervale Food Hub, to the enthusiastic “Yes!” we offered Benjy Adler and The Skinny Pancake when Shiftmeals was just a concept, we have been able to build on decades of relationship building to quickly adapt and respond to community needs.

One new project really highlights our collaborative ethic – the People’s Farm.

The People’s Farm is a 1.3-acre farm that operates as part of the Intervale Center’s Gleaning and Food Rescue Program, which provides free fresh produce to hundreds of families in the greater Burlington area each summer. The Farm is focused on producing a significant volume of crops to be distributed through the Fair Share program and to partners like Feeding Chittenden. Crops include carrots, corn, onions, potatoes, broccoli, cabbage, beets, watermelon, cilantro, dill, and flowers. These represent good staple crops that people can utilize throughout and beyond the growing season as well as crops that are less frequently available to glean to help us round out what produce we can make available to our recipients and social service partners.

Since the beginning, we have relied on volunteers, friends and partners to get the People’s Farm off the ground. These folks and businesses include Megan Browning of NOFA-VT, who came on staff to help us map out the garden, Red Wagon Plants, which seeded starts for us and offered so much help free of charge, Andrea Solazzo at the Vermont Foodbank, who is helping us think through distribution, and a Shiftmeals’ GrowTeam, which showed up for weeks to prep, plant and tend the farm.

Throughout this summer, our staff will work with City Market crop mobs, corporate volunteer groups, and a GrowTeam to move produce from our farm into the charitable food system. In future years, we see this farm integrating into neighboring programs at the Abenaki Heritage Garden and providing a platform for collective farming that demonstrates organic and sustainable growing practices while producing a meaningful amount of food to people in need.

In a way, the People’s Farm is a quintessential Intervale response - focused on community, collaboration and returning production to the people!

Find out how you can get involved at http://www.intervale.org/volunteer.