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.