The Barton Hub is a community meal site and giving pantry in the basement of the Barton Memorial Hall. This is a community site with a rich agricultural history located in the heart of the town of Barton in the middle of the Northeast Kingdom. 

The Barton Hub is a project of Northeast Kingdom Organizing’s (NEKO) Social Connection Campaign and the NEK Working Communities Challenge, which advances local collaborative efforts that build strong, healthy economies and communities in northern New England’s rural towns, regions, and smaller cities.

CAE works deeply with community partners, including NEKO, towards the goals of equitable access to local food, productive land, and economic opportunity for all. CAE’s Food Sovereignty Organizer, Allyson Howell, works closely with NEKO to build collective, local resilience through community organizing, shared learning, and food justice at the Barton Hub.

Before the pandemic, this space connected locals through activities and a senior meal twice per week. Historically, this site was a vibrant community hall hosting community meals, events, and even holiday pageants and movies in the theater upstairs. Barton gradually experienced a loss of community connection with the socio-economic decline of the mill and agricultural industry over many decades. This was compounded by the social isolation of the pandemic, when the space finally closed and the community meal merged with Glover.

NEKO has organized and built relationships in the Barton community since 2019. In 2023, NEKO coordinated a deep listening campaign, by going door-to-door in the villages of Barton and Orleans to hear about opportunities and challenges in the community, directly from the community. This campaign found that folks in Barton Village felt strongly that the community meal site was a critical community asset and that folks felt isolated, which laid the groundwork for reestablishing the community hub.

In July 2023, when the flood disaster devastated the Barton community, NEKO was uniquely positioned to react immediately, due to the relationships and trust they had developed in the community. They soon established a flood response hub at the Barton Memorial Hall (and another supply hub was down the road at the Orleans Federated Church). Later, the Barton Memorial Hall became a FEMA Disaster Recovery Center. The Barton Hub originally housed flood disaster and cleaning supplies and distributed grocery vouchers from the CAE and promoted Emergency Eats. Simultaneously, the community meal returned to Barton because the Glover senior meal site was wiped out by the flood. Over time, non-perishable food was included and the Giving Pantry was formed. Barton Hub Meeting was established, bringing various community groups and community members to help plan activities, write grants, imagine, and build relationships.

The Barton Hub is now open on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12pm - 3pm, regularly hosting the Barton Giving Pantry, two weekly community meals, community food preservation and cooking activities, yoga, bingo, live music, community meetings, as well as other emergent activities.

Allyson Howell, CAE’s Food Sovereignty Organizer, works to build community connections and promotes food justice by organizing the Thursday community meals alongside NEKO and community members. CAE supports Ally’s involvement and other critical aspects of the community meal, including funding for ingredients, the transportation of food with Farm Connex (and Ally herself!), and provides raw local produce (carrots, potatoes, beets, onions, garlic, squash) through Produce to Pantries.

"Food justice is a movement that aims to ensure that everyone has a right to food and addresses systemic inequities that contribute to food insecurity, poverty, loss of passed down food preservation and growing knowledge, social isolation, poor health, and more."
-Allyson Howell

Ally champions the belief that our neighbors deserve a right to food, with dignity and respect. She, alongside her partners at NEKO, has helped the Barton Hub evolve into an inclusive space, where community members build confidence and are empowered to contribute. Folks help by setting tables, rolling silverware, leading activities, attending meetings and even learn how to cook by helping to make the community meals. Free local vegetables from the Barton Community Giving Garden, Hornet Hill Farm (in Glover), and Produce to Pantries are incorporated into weekly meals. Local school students from the Barton Graded School also get involved by contributing a side each week through the Green Mountain Farm to School after school program. Beet brownies and a carrot salad were recent hits at the community meal!

"I’m so proud of the reciprocity we’ve woven into this work. We buy 99% of our ingredients for Barton Community Meals at the C & C Supermarket next door to keep money in the community and strengthen relationships."
-Allyson Howell

Ally looks forward to the Barton Hub becoming a model for a network of hubs across the NEK and the state. Barton is located in the middle of a tri-county region with a rich agricultural history and is the home of the Orleans County Fair. This space could contribute to a reinvigorated local agricultural economy, mutual aid, and continue to respond in times of emergency. Community hubs play a critical role in climate resilience, as was made very evident during the emergency response following the 2023 flood.

Another goal is for Barton Celebrates to become an annual community-wide festival: this past August, the Barton Hub was an anchor for the first Barton Celebrates, a weeklong festival with participation from many Barton organizations, individuals and businesses, and funding from the Vermont Community Foundation. Reviving the Barton theater to once again show movies and host events and turning the Barton Hub into a robust community kitchen and food incubator space are among other hopes and dreams for this budding community resource.

Learn more at (NEKO) or get involved at the Thursday Community Meal; all are welcome!