Early July Update

Hi Folks!

Happy summer! I hope everyone is enjoying the warmer temperatures and spending lots of time outside. At my house, our garden is in full swing and I go outside every day and give a few words of encouragement to our plants and daydream about all the canning I'm going to get to do later on in the season. I'm going to plant a few soybeans in small pots so I can take the plants to farmers markets with me and show people what soy plants look like! I'm pretty excited about that.

Here are Vermont Soy, we are just as busy as ever! Our Maple Ginger Baked Tofu has come out, and has been receiving lots of positive reviews. Jamie, our tofu master, has made an awesome creamy sesame ginger salad dressing using the baked tofu- it tastes amazing! If you are lucky enough to be a CSA member at Pete's Greens, then you've been able to try some. Todd is getting a lot closer to a final yogurt recipe, and has been spending a lot more time here at the soy plant, which we are all excited about. Andrew has been busy with Vermont Soy and Vermont Natural Coatings, and he's also working hard to help transition the Food Venture Center to Hardwick. The Food Venture Center is an awesome organization that is a shared-use kitchen incubator for value-added and specialty food producers who can rent the kitchen on an hourly basis or arrange for co-packing at the facility. So basically, if' you're a small farmer and want to make pesto to sell, but can't because you don't have a certified kitchen, the FVC is something you could definitely benefit from. Learn more about it at: http://www.edcnv.org/programs/northern_enterprises/food_venture/

Coming up next month (I can't believe it's July already!) is the launch of our new sizes of soymilk- we will be launching quart sizes as well as 10 ounce sizes of our Fresh Soymilk. Sophia and I have had a few meetings with Julie, our awesome graphic designer at Great Big Graphics, to come up with designs for the shrink sleeves that will be going on our bottles. The whole process is very exciting and I can't wait until we can start shipping the quarts and 10 ouncers out to people.

Hardwick is definitely a great place to be as a young person involved in sustainable agriculture. New articles about the Hardwick Agricultural Revolution are being written on what seems like a regular basis, and I'm constantly reminded of my place in this movement. A few weeks ago, Vermont Soy, along with High Mowing Seeds and an awesome organization called the Greenhorns hosted a "Young Farmer Mixer" at the Center for an Agricultural Economy and Claire's Restaurant in Hardwick. It was.. amazing. The Center was PACKED. I've never been in a room with so many young people involved farming, and it was so inspriring and affirming. I caught up with old friends, met new folks, and had a wonderful time. So if society is getting you down, keep the faith! There are so many people working to change it, little by little.

So as always, keep in touch. We really do love hearing feedback about our soy foods! Email info [at] vermontsoy [dot] com and someone (most likely me) will get back to you.

Cheers everyone!

Beth