PUTNEY — Two driving forces in food and agriculture in Vermont are celebrating seminal birthdays on Saturday, Oct. 1 - the Putney Food Co-op its 70th, and the Northeast Organic Farmers Association (NOFA) its 40th.
Sustainable agriculture and the idea of neighbors feeding neighbors have played an important role in launching the healthy food movement.
While the Co-op and NOFA are not directly connected, the demand for healthy food grown by local farmers is an offshoot of a movement started in Putney and Westminster that has spread throughout the United States.
And, in the case of the Putney Co-op, it predates that movement by decades.
In 1941, on the eve of America's entry into World War II, more and more resources were being devoted to the war effort, and growing one's own food became a necessity.
Putney residents responded preemptively, and formed the Putney Co-op, making it one of the oldest co-ops in the country.
According to the Co-op's official history: “To get needed supplies, a group of Putney residents led by Carol Brown formed the Putney Co-op according to the Co-operative Principles. Cash raised from selling member shares was used to rent a store front (purchased in 1944), obtain goods and hire staff.”
For years, the Co-op was right next to Putney General Store on Kimball Hill, and according to 30-year part-time employee and local resident Annie McBroom, “it had a different personality...mostly because of its placement in the town.”
“It was small and it was before computers,” McBroom said. “Because of our location, a lot of elderly Putney residents lived within walking distance and a lot of the clientele were from Windham [now Landmark] College.”
In time, the Co-op outgrew its downtown location and in 1992, its membership voted to move the store to its present site on Carol Brown Way, near the junction of Interstate 91 and Route 5.
McBroom recalls marking prices by hand using magic marker instead of a price gun “on every can and box.”
She said “inventory in those days was a lot looser than it is now.”
“On Sunday morning, the board of directors would do inventory and guesstimate 'there's about 8 pounds of rice, and about 5 pounds of something else,” McBroom said. “Everything got a lot tighter at the new store when we got computerized.”
McBroom has worked full-time in the admissions office at the Putney School all along as well. She said working the register at the Co-op two evenings a week has always fulfilled a social function for her.
“I know everyone. I love to see them and talk to them,” she said.
McBroom appreciates another benefit, especially at this stage in her life. “I think having to exercise my brain and remember the numbers of the products keeps my memory sharp to some extent,” she said.
McBroom, whose mother was a friend of Carol Brown, said the women of Putney at the time were “amazing women.”
“They were so strong, and when they saw a need [for a community food source], they just went ahead and did it,” she said.
McBroom sees a possible connection between the presence of The Putney School and teaching sustainable living to the community, past and present.
“A lot of people came here to school, and came back here to live, or stayed on,” she said. “There are also a lot of artists and musicians who live here, people who would be concerned about the quality of their food and other products.”
In this environment, it was natural that Putney area farmers and residents took the lead in the state in pursuing related agricultural food production and distribution venues that include farmers' markets, making fresh healthy food available to seniors via Meals on Wheels, using local food in school lunch programs, encouraging community gardens, and looking ahead to a post-oil world by increasing and supporting local food agriculture.
Born in a library
It was also the type of environment that allowed a group formed in nearby New Hampshire in 1971 to teach, organize and promote local and sustainable organic agriculture to flourish.
After touring the country with his wife, former Brooklynite Samuel Kayman found himself in Unity, N.H., where he scoured the nearby Claremont library for books on how to grow healthy food.
Growing up in Brooklyn, he said, “We all thought food came from boxes and cans. There was no concept, if you grew up there, that food came from the ground.”
His big a-ha moment came in the early 1960s during a two-week stay in the hospital following a fall that resulted in a back injury.
“A guy I had just met brought me a book to read while I was there. I didn't grow up reading books, so this might have been the first book. It was Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. ”
Kayman said since it was the only book he had during the two-week stay, he “read it at least 20 times.”
“I really got it,” he said. “I realized that if I wanted to live a healthy life, I needed to change some things.”
So the man with the Brooklyn accent made it his mission to figure out how to grow food without using poisons to do so.
“Everyone was using pesticides, and I started realizing we were putting poison into our bodies along with the food. I understood that this was a result of mega-agriculture ventures to get food into stores, to feed people,” Kayman said.
“When I started looking, there wasn't any information on how to grow food without pesticides,” he said. “The word 'organic' wasn't even in use then.”
In 1969, while living on a hillside in New Hampshire, the owner of the house gave Kayman permission to build a small shelter on one of his fields and make a garden.
“With that permission, I prepared myself for the following spring by spending that winter studying reading and researching,” Kayman said.
He said he read “every single book on food, agriculture, soil, etc. [at the Claremont library]. One of those books, Soil and Civilization by Edward S. Hyams, shook me to the core and pointed me in the direction of what I should do with my life,” he said.
Hyams talked about how all the past civilizations collapsed because of degradation of soil and agriculture.
“I wasn't able to speak to a single person who knew anything about farming without chemicals, without poisons – there wasn't anyone…,” Kayman said. “I made that garden in 1970 and, not knowing what I was doing, it produced a lot of food and was relatively successful.”
The following winter, Kayman was introduced to Westminster West resident Kim Hubbard at the Earthbridge Community Land Trust, who invited Kayman to come use a field and see what he could do with it.
“I went there really ignorant and not knowing anybody,” he said.
Kayman said he began to think about assembling like-minded farmers and gardeners, and so he printed flyers and drove around all over Vermont and New Hampshire to announce a meeting.
“We had several dozen people from all over show up [including Westminster's Howard Prussack of High Meadows Farm] who were interested in how to grow food without using poisons.”
That was the founding meeting of NOFA, and interest in the group grew with each year.
Kayman saw the farmers' organization to its feet, then moved on to found an organic farming school and, later, Stonyfield Farm, a successful organic yogurt and dairy food manufacturer in Wilton, N.H.
Following NOFA's lead, thousands of similar organic farm organizations have grown up around the country.
Today, NOFA has grown into a nonprofit association of farmers, gardeners, and consumers with 1,200 members throughout the state. It certifies more than 580 farms and processors to the USDA National Organic Program Standards.
Kayman said that the only thing from his Brooklyn upbringing that informed his later life was “a respect for all living creatures, great and small.”
He added that “it's not just learning how to farm. It's learning how to have a relationship with nature and being stewards of this unique mystery” of life on this planet.
He said his mission of “helping to create a new food-based economy and agriculture economy for local productions based on the cycle of nature and love and caring... helping people feed each other healthful food, avoiding corporate toxicity, in a nourishing way is creating a new agriculture.”
And, as a kid from Brooklyn, that mission “makes me very unique,” he said with a laugh.