The Northwest Connecticut Food Hub connects regional farmers with wholesale customers, even during these winter months when local food is harder to come by.
Farmers list available items each week on the hub’s online platform — at this time of year mostly roots, squash, apples, mushrooms and greens. Restaurants, schools, grocery stores, and food pantries can go online and order aggregated items from multiple farms for delivery.
If one farm only has butternut squash left in storage from the fall harvest, another might be flush with arugula coming out of a winterized greenhouse, while another still has beets in the cooler. Alone, each crop might be hard to sell or hard to use, but put them together in a restaurant’s shopping cart through the Hub’s online platform and you have a winter salad special on the menu.
The Food Hub is a locally developed spin on a more typical industrial food distribution model where large farms that specialize in one item or another ship their crops to warehouses to be repackaged and trucked off to retail grocery stores or food service venues.
By the very nature of our region’s topography, farms are relatively small and far from customers. Valleys and slopes don’t make for wide, expansive fields, and quiet windy roads often set farmers at a distance from population centers. Growing a diverse range of crops is good for the soil and for business resiliency — if a crop is a flop one year, there are others that likely did well. All of these factors make for colorful, bucolic farm landscapes throughout Northwest Connecticut, but they also present local farmers with a significant marketing challenge, and local buyers with the significant logistical question of how to access fresh, local food.
The Food Hub began operations in 2017 as a project supported by the region’s economic development plan to help bridge these gaps between the unique growers we have in our region and potential customers. It is an initiative of the nonprofit Partners for Sustainable Healthy Communities, whose board oversees operations. Day-to-day management of the Hub falls to Renee Giroux, a farmer herself who knows firsthand the challenges and opportunities of farmers in the area.
“The Hub helps with distribution while lifting everyone up,” said Giroux. “It isn’t a place where farms are in competition with one another, but rather gives them an additional outlet to expand their businesses into.”
Photo by Janna Siller
Locally grown produce aggregated at the food hub for delivery to a local food pantry.
While some buyers, like restaurants and grocery stores, pay full wholesale prices for the farm products, others have their deliveries subsidized by different grants. The Hub cobbles together a number of funding sources to allow them to work with schools, food pantries and health care facilities. Ed-Advance, an education nonprofit, helps fund farm-to-school initiatives facilitated by the Hub. A community wellness grant allows diabetes patients to receive produce prescription deliveries through Hartford Healthcare. Community foundations support food pantry purchases.
“Individual farmers don’t have time to navigate all the potential funding sources that can help expand their markets,” said Food Hub board member Jocelyn Ayer. “That’s where the Hub comes in. We work with partners to secure funding for a wide range of projects.”
On a frigid December day, Susan Zappulla-Peters arrived bright and early at the Hub’s Torrington warehouse with a delivery of radishes and scallions from the farm her son manages, Maple Bank Farm in Roxbury. “The first time I delivered here, I was so inspired by what Renee is doing that I asked if I could help. Now I volunteer every week after I drop off Maple Bank’s produce.”
Zappula-Peters spent the morning receiving produce off farmers’ pickup trucks and compiling orders as generated onto lists by the online purchase platform. The pallets quickly filled up with food, including apples from March Farm in Bethlehem; carrots and cabbage from Vibrant Farm in Bantam; and sweet potatoes and potatoes from River Bank Farm in Roxbury. Zappula-Peters helped Giroux and driver Stuart Rabinowitz load a van headed for a delivery route that included Charlotte Hungerford Hospital, the Corner Food Pantry in Lakeville, and Fishes and Loaves Food Pantry in North Canaan.
“I love that this food, the best our region has to offer, is reaching people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to access it,” said Zappula-Peters in between moving pallets.
Nora Garcia, 6, of Millerton, bottom right, gets a face painting treatment from Maddy Rowe, a Webutuck High School senior. Nora’s sister, Juliana, 8, top right, is decorated by Giana Kall, a Webutuck senior. The program was sponsored by the Webutuck PTA.
Bee Bee the Clown offered everyone attending the Millerton Street Fair balloon figures, jokes and musical sleight-of-hand. “I can make 50 types of balloon animals without thinking and probably around 100 if I concentrate,” the most complex being a rabbit in a top hat made from balloons, Bee Bee said. The clown, who also bills herself as Jackie the Magician, merged her two disciplines of clowning and magic to entertain visitors for the length of the fair.Bee Bee’s commitment to her craft appears beyond her performance, as reflected in her brightly-colored outfit and carefully-applied makeup. “The control exercised over the line work detail” of her eye makeup and the proper choice of footwear — no smaller than the size-16 shoes Bee Bee wore — are two of the aspects of clown dress which Bee Bee noted as being most important to her costume.Photo by Charlie Greenberg
The NorthEast-Millerton Library joined in the fun, hosting a book sale inside and a cookie bake-off on the front lawn.
Live music on the lawn of the Millerton Methodist Church supplied good vibes to those within earshot. The John Stey Band started the morning with classic country, western and bluegrass tunes. The afternoon wrapped up with a few hours of Afro-Cuban jazz from the Berkshire Resilience Brass Band.
Townscape and the North East Community Center joined in participating as non-profit organizations in the Millerton News Street Fair, coinciding with the regular weekly Millerton Farmers’ Market that attracts more than a dozen vendors to sell fresh produce, baked goods and more.
Eloise Gerstle, 2 and a half, posed with her balloon animal and her mother, Aimee Couture, both of Sharon, enjoying the fun of the Millerton News Street Fair on Saturday, June 28.Photo by Leila Hawken
Lisa Cope, Village of Millerton Town Clerk, was there to hand out “Save the Date” cards for next year’s 175th Anniversary of Millerton.
“I know it’s early,” she said. “but it’s coming.”
Amanda Coppola, the Webutuck Elementary School principal, was on hand to discuss after school programs, and mentioned a new pre-K program for three-year-olds that is the first in Dutchess County.
And Century Boulevard was packed with cars. License plates from across the Northeast could be spotted lining the wide street, including New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and even Pennsylvania.
Reporting and photography from Leila Hawken, Charlie Greenberg, Nathan Miller and John Coston contributed to this article.
Photo by Nathan Miller
Brody Reyes of Millerton, left, and Aaliyah Velie of Millerton, right, run and play with a beach ball in the parking lot of the Millerton Firehouse on Century Boulevard.
The Millerton Fire Company was a popular destination with its hot food — dogs and burgers and homemade french fries. The volunteer firemen ran the concession. Patti Lynch-VandeBogart was also on hand with popcorn and flavored ices.Kelly Roger, treasurer and a fire police captain of the department had pulled together the fire department’s food court.
A touch-a-truck event for children was popular, leading occasionally to a loud blast of a fire truck horn from an excited youngster.
