Hurry! Enrollment Closes Dec 29 for QuickBooks Classes for Food Producers!

A condensed QuickBooks accounting workshop tailored to food producers will be held on January 3, 5, 10, and 12 from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.

Hosted by the Lyndon State College’s Center for Rural Entrepreneurship and Vermont Food Venture Center, the course offers start up businesses and establish business owners hands-on experience in setting up and maintaining business accounting. Essential QuickBooks accounting skills needed to succeed in the food producing business will be covered, including:
• setting up vendors and suppliers

• billing

• tracking inventory

• building assemblies for finished product

• formulating financial statements.


John Castaldo (Lyndon State College Business Accounting Professor) has over 20 years of teaching in accounting and is a certified QuickBooks Advisor. He will guide participants through this interactive workshop, providing practice problems and personal attention for questions. Workshop participants will leave with handouts on the wide range of material covered.

Participants are required to own a copy of QuickBooks Pro 2011 and bring a laptop to class. Classes will be held at the Vermont Food Venture Center,

140 Junction Rd, Hardwick, VT.

The cost for the four classes is $115 and enrollment is limited to 10 participants. Enrollment closes on December 29.

Cooking with Jacques Pepin in Mo'Vegas

Some of the best stew ever had in Lamoille County was rabbit with a French name (lapin). A recent Burlington Free Press article may help revive interest in this meat, advising it be cooked “low and slow.” That’s perfect for our winter months.

Sixteen year old Josh Gillen (McKinstry Hill Rabbitry) takes excellent and kind care of his stock, and he supplies a few restaurants and Yourfarmstand.com in Morrisville with fine rabbit meat. Josh is a very earnest and serious young man, and learning how to market and vend through Yourfarmstand.com is like a mini-business school.

Rabbit is an “old” source of nutrition; we’ve been eating it since human time began. It can be grown in small areas and uses fewer resources to produce protein. It can be grown in raised hutches creating a rich to use in vegetable production.  The American Rabbitry Association has this to say about rabbit meat:

• Rabbit meat is all white meat.
• Rabbit has 795 calories per pound. Compare: chicken at 810, veal at 840, turkey at 1190, lamb at 1420, beef at 1440 and pork at 2050.
• Rabbit has the highest percentage of protein.
• Rabbit has a lower percentage of fat than chicken, turkey, beef, or pork with unsaturated fatty acids at 63% of the total fatty acids.
• The cholesterol level in rabbit meat is much lower than chicken, turkey, beef, pork.
• The U.S. Department of Agriculture has stated that domestic rabbit meat is the most nutritious meat known to man.
• Research shows that rabbit meat has been recommended for special diets such as for heart disease patients, diets for the elderly, low sodium diets, and weight reduction diets.
• Because it is easily digested, it has been recommended by doctors for patients who have trouble eating other meats.

I highly recommend Jacques Pepin as a source of great rabbit recipes, particularly stew. Everything I ever made from a Pepin recipe has turned out well; he is the master. This week, I’ll be providing his recipe in all orders from the Morrisville Yourfarmstand.com. (Vegans and vegetarians, please forgive me.) McKinstry Hill rabbit meat arrives frozen and carefully packaged. Try it!

And that’s the Bounty of the County.

Lamoille: The Bounty of the County: Driving With My Mind on the Bar

Lamoille: The Bounty of the County: Driving With My Mind on the Bar: It never fails. I’ll be driving home on Route 100, 12, or 16 at near dusk, and I’ll see a Vermont farm tractor chugging down the road towar...

Driving With My Mind on the Bar

It never fails. I’ll be driving home on Route 100, 12, or 16 at near dusk, and I’ll see a Vermont farm tractor chugging down the road toward me. Sometimes there’s a load of balsam or hay. In the spring it’s a manure spreader or logs.

I never get inpatient when I get behind these venerable machines. They are, after all, the sign of people renewing their pact with the working landscape. I remember fondly how my then 98-year old father once confided, “The best day of my life was when I got a tractor.” And I do know what it’s like to sit up high and haul a load of heavy material across the barnyard and over the hilly fields.

Now, however, I drive with my mind on the bar.

Tractors made before 1985 often lack installed roll bars. This is such a hazardous situation that the Lamoille Economic Development Corp has decided to underwrite  UVM’s Extension Service Roll Over Protective Structures Program (ROPS) for the next four years in Lamoille County.

A roll bar saves lives and farms. There’s a 70% likelihood that farms where a roll over death occurs will be out of business within one year. We know this from experience right here in northern Vermont. So, the LEDC has committed $140,000 to help Lamoille County farmers purchase and install roll bars on their mechanical workhorses, in order to protect the biggest ag asset there is: farmers.

If this doesn’t underscore the Bounty of the County, I don’t know what does. It’s a firm commitment to the agricultural community and a practical way to lend support.

If you know someone driving a tractor without a roll bar, check out the ROPS project at (877) 767-7748 and then nag them until the roll bar is installed. This program applies to tree farmers and foresters as well. The rebate is 75% for an installed bar/seat-belt, or 70% for a self-installed kit. In special cases, LEDC might approve a higher rebate.

What’s a farmer’s life worth? Everything. And that’s the Bounty of the County.

Oh Honey...Really?

My husband was asking me the other day about why the honey we buy is called “raw.” What’s the big deal? What’s the difference between this little jar and what we used to buy at the supermarket? So I launched a little research project.

I wasn’t too surprised to read about a study showing that 75% of honey sold in supermarkets is…not really honey. In fact, it’s so processed that it ends up as just sugar. Most of the pollen is removed through heavy filtration. The end result is homogenized and, in my opinion, low-flavored “honey product.”

Furthermore, Leah Zerbe, in her article on honey for Rodale publications, notes, “The problem with removing … microscopic pollen particles is this: without the pollen, there’s really no way to trace where the honey originated, or if the source is safe and uncontaminated. (Previous reports have found honey laced with antibiotics and heavy metals.) And for this filtration to work, the honey is often heated, which can damage some of the natural products’ disease-fighting properties.”

In Lamoille County, we’re lucky to have the products of Honey Do Farm. You can order their delicious raw honey through www.Yourfarmstand.com at the Morrisville market. And here’s a Spanish home remedy to knock out a cold with honey. We use it at my house; we buy Honey Do farm honey, and we’re very healthy!

Garlic Tea with Honey

In a large saucepan, bring 3 cups of water and 3 cloves of garlic (cut in half) to a boil. Turn off the heat when the water boils, and add ½ cup raw honey and ½ cup of fresh lemon juice. Strain. Sip ½ cup, warm, three times a day. Refrigerate extra to use the next day. (Prevention, 2003)

LEDC Supports Local Ag through Yourfarmstand.com

Lamoille County has an impressive array of farms and producers of value-added agricultural products. From small family farms to wineries, the Valley has promoted the localvore movement since before it was a trend.

The Lamoille Economic Development Corp has stepped to the plate, so to speak, to market farms and agricultural products more visibly and to support the ag community. With the help of an advisory group comprised of farmers and entrepreneurs, LEDC launched a local franchise of  Yourfarmstand.com in July 2011. The project quickly became a viable way for small producers and large to distribute products and for customers to appreciate the “Bounty of the County.”

Marketing and Supporting Family Farms

Yourfarmstand.com  is an on-line farmers’ market which saves the farmer valuable time, cuts down on the distance food travels to the consumer, and brings the freshest and tastiest food within reach of busy buyers. Unlike a traditional CSA, consumers buy only what they want, when they want it and pay as they go. Farmers, even those who sell to larger distributors such as Black River Produce, can find new customers for their “brands” through Yourfarmstand.com  And for budding entrepreneurs, it’s a good way to learn and experiment with marketing.

Farmers list their products for sale on the site, and customers buy only the products they need. All payment is transacted securely through Pay Pal. On market day (Thursday), vendors drop off their goods in baskets marked for each customer. Customers stop by at Rock Art Brewery to pick up their basket of goods, kept fresh just for them. The entire transaction takes about 5 minutes.

Building a Network for Ag Promotion

The Yourfarmstand.com project provides a handy network on which to build other projects to promote the County’s agriculture infrastructure. Agri-tourism is a fine way to bring business to area farms, and to make people aware of the importance of agricultural businesses to the community.

We have only to step into the Stowe Visit Center to hear that a “visit to a farm” is one of the most popular requests. And the success of bicycle tours to farms, breweries, fiber producers (llama farms) and localvore restaurants in other Vermont regions can be replicated in Lamoille Valley with similar success. Everyone benefits when the tourist dollar enters the community system this way.

Projects on the drawing board for LEDC include a farm tour partnership with the Stowe Resort, and an on-line and brochure-type map of Lamoille County Farms which are open to visits and tourism. As bicycle paths are developed in the region, they create another venue for farm to brewery visits, and the like. The popular “Tour de Farms” staged in the Champlain Valley are testament to how popular and lucrative these can be for market-savvy agriculturalists.