Tour de Farms connects cyclists and farmers
Published on The Middlebury Campus (http://www.middleburycampus.com)
By The Campus
Created 09/24/2009 - 12:34am
Lea Calderon-Guthe
On Sept. 20, bicycle bells, the crunch of crisp apples and merry chatter punctuated the usual idyllic quiet of a Sunday morning in the miles of farmland surrounding Shoreham, Vt. It was not a bicycle gang of apple thieves but rather the more than 300 participants in the second annual Tour de Farms, a cycling tour of 10, 25 or 30 miles featuring 10 free sample-filled stops at local farms.
"We couldn't have asked for a better day," said Richard Bernstein of Ferrisburgh, Vt. "It was a great ride - more hanging out than riding, and it was a nice mixture of challenging and fun with great stops. Everybody was really friendly."
The event, which collects a small entry fee from all participants, serves as a fundraiser for its three founding nonprofit organizations: the Vermont Pedestrian and Cyclists Coalition (of which Bernstein is a sponsor), Rural
Vermont and the Addison County Relocalization Network. This year an additional beneficiary, the Shoreham Public Library, set up an apple festival on the Shoreham town green for bikers to continue enjoying local products, music and community (and raising money for the library's upcoming renovations) after their rides.
"Last year it was the collective sense that the ending was sort of anticlimactic," said Shelby Girard, a Rural Vermont organizer from Brookfield, Vt. "We really wanted there to be something exciting and big for people to return to, incentive for people to come back and stick around. It worked out fantastically that the Shoreham library was planning to do an apple festival at some point in the fall, so we got together and decided that it would be great for us if there was something going on here that could be offered to riders and it would be even better to have somebody else organize it."
The Tour de Farms serves as a celebration of community and local agriculture, and even though the farms are not profiting financially, farmers appreciate the special opportunity to put friendly faces to the farm names local buyers see in grocery stores.
"[The farmers] do it out of the kindness of their hearts," said Cassandra Corocoran from Monkton, Vt., one of the event's organizers. "None of them are being remunerated. Everybody was really quite generous and wanting to put their faces out in the public. That doesn't happen that often for [the farmers]. There's the farmers' market, but this is a whole other concept."
Two Middlebury students offered a unique perspective on not only meeting the people who produce their food, but truly understanding the distance from farm to plate.
"It was so interesting because [Michaela Skiles '11.5] and I live in Weybridge House, so we're eating all local this year as our big project," said Sam Parry '12. "We're getting a ton of our food from all of these farms we just visited. We had been to them before, but it's a whole other experience, since we're eating local and concerned with distances food travels, to see actually how far our food travels from the farm to Middlebury."
A sunny day of cycling in the beautiful Vermont countryside is never a hard sell and many vendors already anticipate participating in a second annual Apple Fest based on this year's impressive turnout.
"The nicest thing about this event was that people came out to not only have a good day and try a lot of samples, but then people bought a lot," said Paul Seyler from North Ferrisburgh, Vt., owner of Vermont Cookie Love. "That says a lot about the community. We like that. We'll be back."
It is the sense of community that makes this kind of fundraiser possible, and Girard credited the farms and the opportunity to connect with them as the true draw for the event.
"It seems like everyone liked a different farm for a different reason," said Girard. "I've heard Doolittle Farms because of their heritage breed workhorses; I've heard Golden Russet because of their fantastic gardens; I've heard B Vineyard because their wine was spectacular and not something that people can buy in stores because they're not commercially selling so it was an insider treat. Someone had something great to say about each and every stop. We're really happy and looking forward to next year."