WELCOME TO MiddFarmStand

Middlebury College offers faculty and staff a new and easy way to shop local -- for the best food grown, raised and prepared in our corner of Vermont. Carefully selected farms and their weekly-updated offerings are listed on a website dedicated to faculty and staff. Browse the site, click everything you’d like and your food will appear – bagged and ready for pickup every Tuesday at the Mahaney Center for the Arts.  On market day (Tuesdays), you’ll meet our coordinator, Greg Krathwohl, who will make sure you get the right bag(s) and even help get them to your car.

TO GET STARTED…

• Go to www.yourfarmstand.com and click “Sign Up”
• Select the Middlebury College as the Market
• Complete the form.
• Follow instructions to add funds from a credit card now, or go to “My Account” tab later to add funds anytime.
• Click on “What’s for Sale?” to start buying fresh local food.
• Pickup your fresh food at Mahaney Center for the Arts, by the Museum door Tuesdays between 3:30 and 5:30.

WILL IT IMPACT THE CO-OP OR FARMERS’ MARKET?

If you are faithful to and concerned about the Middlebury Farmers’ Market or the Middlebury Natural Foods Coop, don’t worry! We checked with them and they see this market as complementing their missions to provide local, well-produced, low embedded-energy food. All of us want this to be good for farmers and good for eaters!

You’ll decide why this will be good for you. For farmers, it’s a new sales channel that comes with the benefit of requiring less of their time than some others, and absolutely zero product waste.

A BRIEF HISTORY

Founded in 2010 in Charlotte, VT and managed by three small Charlotte producers to support local food production and consumption, yourfarmstand.com now serves more than a dozen Vermont communities, from Fairfield to Brandon to Stowe. The system has proved successful because it functions smoothly and provides choice and value to buyers and good margins to farmers. It’s a good fit for Middlebury College: small in its simplicity and big in its potential impact, strengthening links between food producers and consumers and reducing the food’s embedded energy costs.

WHY ON CAMPUS?

Put simply: Demand. In addition to the philosophical fit described above we know that college folks want it. In a survey of faculty and staff last June (to which 229 people responded) two data points stood out: 91% said they would like to have access to a Community Supported Agriculture program. 94% said they would prefer delivery on-campus rather than somewhere in town.  The thought of easier access to and choice of local food (a specialized 24/7 website for meal planning and ordering) and convenient, packaged pickup resonated with busy faculty and staff.

Please contact Greg Krathwohl, gkrathwohl@middlebury.edu or Francisca Drexel, fdrexel@middlebury.edu if you have any questions about this market.