We’ll meet you in the middle! The NH Food Alliance is hosting a field trip series to understand the current value-added processing capacity in New Hampshire and to learn from successful businesses that provide crucial processing, aggregation, and distribution services for small farms in our neighboring states.
The series will consist of three, day-long field trips, each focused on two or more businesses in New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont. On each trip, we will take a guided tour of the facilities to learn about the business and consider the implications and find inspiration for the Granite State. We’ve provided more information about the businesses being highlighted on each field trip below.
These field trips are invite-only. Following each field trip, the NH Food Alliance will host a field trip recap during one of our Network Cafés to share information about each trip and invite discussion about bolstering New Hampshire’s middle of the food supply chain with the broader network.
New Hampshire Field Trip | October 23, 9am-4pm
- Tour Genuine Local, Laconia: Genuine Local provides business development and production assistance and small batch co-packing services. Genuine Local's offerings include hot-pack and hold production for local farms and small batch co-pack customers, kitchen access for state-licensed local makers and business development support, in addition to aggregating purchases to leverage the best price for each customer on ingredients and packaging.
- Tour Micro Mama’s, Weare: Micro Mama’s is a stand alone commercial fermenter producing lacto-fermented vegetables, whole food condiments, and botanical infusions. All of their products are raw, vegan, gluten free, certified organic, and they source the large majority of their produce locally.
- Lunch & Listen: during lunch at Trillium Farm to Table in Laconia, hear from Sarah Cox, owner of Tuckaway Farm in Lee, about the Tuckaway Food Commons project, and from Lionel Chute, of the Sullivan County Conservation District, about the district's forthcoming food processing facility
Maine Field Trip | November 12, 8am-4pm
- Tour Harvest Maine, Yarmouth: Harvest Maine sources oddly-shaped and under-sized veggies from local farmers, as well as fruit byproducts from other processors, to create small batch spreads/dips and fruit bites.
- Tour Fork Food Lab, South Portland: Fork Food Lab is a non-profit food business incubator and shared commercial manufacturing and processing facility focused on growing the local food economy. By providing entrepreneurs with work space, equipment, resources and access to locally sourced ingredients, they support the growth of sustainable Maine-based food businesses.
- Lunch & Listen: over a catered lunch from Fork Food Lab, hear about Doug Clopp's work developing the Maine Marinara Collaborative
Vermont Field Trip | January 22, 8am-4pm
- Tour The Center for an Agricultural Economy, Hardwick: The Center for an Agricultural Economy (CAE) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization based in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Through programs that support food access, farm viability, and working landscapes, CAE is building a healthy, regenerative food system by promoting local foods and the people who produce them.
- Farm Connex is a local, small-producer-oriented, non-profit delivery service operated by The Center for an Agricultural Economy.
Just Cut is an innovative social enterprise of the Center for an Agricultural Economy that provides institutions and individuals
direct access to high-quality, ready-to-use produce. Their model connects the abundant yields of Vermont farms to food buyers of any scale and provides opportunities for food growers to reach new markets and maximize their farm’s potential by aggregating, inspecting, washing, and preparing root and storage crops from regional farms for ease of use.
- Tour Littleton Food Co-op, Littleton, NH: The Littleton Coop is a member-owned grocery store featuring local produce, hot prepared foods, deli, bulk foods, craft beer, wine and a quality grocery selection. Member-owned Littleton Consumer Cooperative Society, Inc. strives to serve the North Country of New Hampshire and Northeast Kingdom of Vermont by providing a broad range of high quality food products, offered at a fair price, with outstanding service.
This field trip series, hosted by the NH Food Alliance, is funded by the NH Department of Agriculture, Markets, and Food through the USDA’s Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure (RFSI) program. The purpose of the RFSI program is to build resilience in the middle of the food supply chain, defined as everything after production and before direct retail. In New Hampshire, the program has a strong focus on collaborative sales, marketing, and distribution through shared-use equipment and infrastructure.
