We organize and amplify the voices of those impacted by injustice in order to move toward greater food sovereignty in the Northeast Kingdom.

Grow Your Own: 2026 Workshops

August: Garden Pests with Vic Izzo

Join us on Saturday, August 15th for a practical, hands-on session to identify common garden pests, understand their life cycles, and learn effective, garden-friendly management strategies. Participants will also leave with up-to-date information about jumping worms. Bring your burning questions and curiosity!

Vic Izzo is an agricultural entomologist and ecological pest management specialist with the University of Vermont's Institute for Agroecology. He teaches ecological pest management for various scales and types of production systems and serves as the lead entomology instructor for UVM's Master Gardener Program. Vic is passionate about helping gardeners and farmers grow food in an ecological and responsible way using science-based low-input practices. 

Saturday, August 15th, 1:30 - 3:30pm
Atkins Field Pavilion
140 Granite St, Hardwick
Click here to register.

More Workshops This Year

More information and registration links will be added when available. 
Subscribe to the Grow Your Own Newsletter to learn more.

July: Mushrooms
July: Garden Pest Management
August: Cold Frame Gardening
September: Canning Basics
October: Knife Skills & Soup Workshop
November: Gluten-Free Holiday Baking

Grow Your Own is a project of the Hardwick Area Food Pantry and the Center for an Agricultural Economy. The mission of Grow Your Own is to increase community food independence and well-being through shared skills, knowledge, and experience.

Follow these steps to register for Grow Your Own Workshops online.

Please note, you DO NOT need to log in to register for GYO workshops. Using our new event registration system, you will “buy” tickets to register, at no cost.

1. Click on the tile for the desired workshop.
2. Click on the blue “Get Tickets” button at the bottom right, below the workshop name and date.
3. On the right side of the window, click in the box with the 0 and press the up arrow to increase the quantity of tickets needed.
4. Click on the “Add” button on the right.
(At this point, you will see a little number matching your number of tickets chosen next to your shopping cart, and “Order expires” with a countdown from 10 minutes.)
5. Click on the “Checkout” button at the bottom right.
6. On the checkout page, enter your contact information (First Name, Last Name, and Email Address).
7. If you need to make changes to the number of tickets (how many people you are registering), click on the “Edit Order” button at the top right. (You will need to repeat steps 2 through 5 to add tickets.)
8. Click on the blue “Submit Order” button at the bottom right.
9. You should receive an email confirming your registration and "ticket purchase." You do not need to bring your tickets to the workshop.ation and "ticket purchase." You do not need to bring your tickets to the workshop.

If you have questions or want support registering please reach out to: kelly@caevt.org

To view visual step-by-step instructions click below.

 Visual Guide

Grow Your Own is a project of the Hardwick Area Food Pantry and the Center for an Agricultural Economy. The mission of Grow Your Own is to increase community food independence and well-being through shared skills, knowledge, and experience.

Most workshops are from 1:30pm to 3:30pm. As always with Grow Your Own workshops, there will be time for sharing your own ideas, successes, challenges, and questions. There is a general camaraderie among those of us who love to cook and garden and preserve!

Workshops are always free. Donations are graciously accepted when you register.

Allyson Howell is the lead point person for Grow Your Own. Ally is the Food Sovereignty Organizer for CAE and has been working in public health, local food systems, and community organizing for about a decade. She also partners with Northeast Kingdom Organizing on the Barton Hub and other projects. If you have any questions, concerns, or want to meet for coffee, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Ally at: allyson@caevt.org

GYO MAY 2024 WORKSHOP RECAP
Peggy Newfield of Newfield Herb Farm in Craftsbury led a May workshop in growing herbs and cooking with them. Thanks to the Hardwick Area Health Center for use of the community kitchen! Participants had a great time and learned much from Peggy's excellent teaching.

What People Are Saying

"Awesome fun!"      "Very encouraging to try new ideas!" 

  "Great workshop!"      "Great info! Love the hands-on work."

  "Best workshop yet! I'm excited about bucket gardening now!"

"Learned a lot. First time veg gardener."                     

 "Loving the workshops! Keep them going!" 

Interested in joining Grow Your Own or learning more? Membership and workshops are free and open to the public, and children are welcome. For more information, contact allyson@caevt.org.

Pies for People

Each November, our annual Pies for People event brings together volunteers and gleaned local produce in the spirit of sharing the bounty of the harvest. 2023 marked 15 years of Pies for People!!! Each fall volunteers make more than 100 pies from gleaned squash - donated by High Mowing Organic Seeds. This project is a part of Grow Your Own, and a collaboration between the Hardwick Area Food Pantry (HAFP) and CAE. The pies go to our neighbors at the pantry, schools, and nursing homes in time for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Our goal is 300 pies for 2024!!!
🥧🥧🥧Pies for People volunteers have been busy making PIES for Thanksgiving! 🥧🥧🥧 We recently had a team baking at the Vermont Food Venture Center kitchens and students from Hazen Union School were working hard to make pies for our neighbors, too!
Pies for People is a community baking initiative, calling on families, individuals, businesses, and groups of all sorts to bake pies for the Hardwick Area Food Pantry Thanksgiving boxes! This project is a part of Grow Your Own, and a collaboration between the Hardwick Area Food Pantry (HAFP) and CAE.

THANK YOU for helping make the holidays a little brighter for our neighbors facing food insecurity.

To join the effort or learn more, visit: 

Pies For People

Produce to Pantries

Local food networks are nimble, flexible, and adaptive, this allows them to meet the needs of the community in ways larger, centralized systems cannot. The pandemic has illuminated many ways that the industrial food system doesn’t work to feed and nourish everyone. After participating in the national USDA Farmers to Families Food Box programs in 2020, we asked, “How can we localize this effort? Can we use our existing relationships and infrastructure to involve local small-scale farmers and our local pantries to meet the needs of our communities?”

The answer is Produce to Pantries, a partnership between the CAE and the Hardwick Area Food Pantry (HAFP). We buy produce from local farms, which is distributed at HAFP’s three sites in Hardwick, Albany, and Craftsbury. Not only does this get quality, locally-grown produce to more households - we intentionally seek small-scale and emerging farm partners to build equity among small farmers in our area. It is truly an example of neighbors feeding neighbors, and communities looking out for each other.

Barton Hub

The Barton Hub is a community resilience hub space that hosts community organizing, events, a meal site, and a giving pantry in the basement of the Barton Memorial Hall.
 

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.

NEKO has been organizing and building relationships in the Barton Community since 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Community members stated how critical the Barton Senior Meal (which closed just before the pandemic) was to the community. Other issues they called out included: the lack of access to transportation, mental health, and social isolation. CAE staff have collaborated with NEKO on building relationships with the Barton Community by canvassing, facilitating one-on-one conversations, community breakfasts, meetings, and more.
 

Community meals returned to Barton after the July 2023 flooding in the NEK, and the Barton Hub was established, first as a flood recovery hub and over time as a giving pantry, community meal site, and place for social connection and shared learning. CAE supports the Barton Hub and keeps money in the community by purchasing ingredients at the C & C Supermarket, located next to the Hub. CAE’s Produce to Pantries program purchases and distributes local produce that is also incorporated into meals at the Barton Hub.
 

Since 2023, CAE has partnered with many local individuals and organizations to organize a Tomato Party, Pies for the People, Barton Celebrates: History + Resilience Week, a Barton Hub Organizing Team, an Elder Caucus, and more. When the flood of July 2024 happened, we were prepared and organized to act quickly, making the Barton Hub part of a climate resilience strategy.