 tonight. I'm super excited. This is the first time in four years that the Hunger Mountain Co-op has hosted a dinner in discussion. So it's already a success and we haven't even had the presentation yet. So this is fabulous. Yeah, all of us. So the Hunger Mountain Co-op Council and the Council's Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee are pleased to present our first dinner in the discussion since 2019. First, I want to thank the Montpelier Senior Activity Center for making this space available and thanks to the Co-op Community Relations staff, Stephanie, Jess, and Robin, and member owner, services staff, Rowan, and Allie from HR for doing everything to pull all the pieces together tonight. Thanks also to Orca Media for the microphone and the visuals and recording all this tonight. I'm looking forward to watching the Zoom when I'm not thinking about all the other things later. Thanks to Abby Jaffee representing the Everything Space and providing information and resources on my Graham under experience study group and the Vermont Kindness Project, Shonda Williams, and Kimberly Pierce. So tonight we have invited young BIPOC women and LGBTQIA plus farmers and food producers to speak with us about their experiences. Our goal is to learn from our community how to best support underrepresented farmers and food producers in our community with the intention of having a lasting impact on council and co-op practices and policies. And I want to introduce Desmond Peoples. Desmond, can you raise your hand? There you are. Desmond is a writer living in Underhill and working in communications and exhibiting curating for the Vermont Arts Council. Desmond formed and facilitates the Arts Council's inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility advisory network. Desmond also serves on the board of Out in the Open, a bratabar-based non-profit organizing and advocating for rural LGBTQ plus people. Take it away, Desmond. Hello everybody. Thank you very much Eva and thank you everyone for being here. So the way tonight is going to work, we're going to have our four presenters speak to you one by one. I'll introduce them and then after each speaks, we'll have them sit over at this table here and we'll have a Q&A portion. So at that point I'll bring the mic out to people who want to ask questions. So we asked each presenter to consider a few points as they speak and those are how did you get to where you are in your business? What are your goals and how are you pursuing them? What does community support look like to you? And if that's not what you see, how could the co-op be part of your community support? So we're going to start with Nurbu Sherpa of Sherpa Foods. Nurbu Sherpa is originally from Nepal, a small Himalayan country in Southeast Asia. Nurbu and his wife Fura moved to Vermont and started Sherpa Foods in 2015. They make and supply Nepalese foods such as momos, which are Nepalese dumplings, chow mein, which is Himalayan-style fried noodles, Himalayan-style fried rice, and momo sauce. Nurbu. Hello everyone. Thank you Hungaman co-op team, the Jedi, and everyone else for having me here. We really appreciate it. Thank you Desmond and Eva as well. As you mentioned my name is Nurbu Sherpa. I have a food supply business called Sherpa Foods and again he mentioned everything about what we supply so I don't need to go through that again. So I'm from Nepal as you mentioned a small Himalayan nation in Southeast Asia between India and China. We moved here when I was young. I went to school in Texas, graduated from University of Texas, got a job offer from Macy's and moved to New York City, worked there for about 10 years, doing different work. I was a buyer, marketing manager, a business manager and such and then in 2014 we moved up here in Vermont and started our business in 2015. So we initially started out at the farmers market in Burlington and then we started sampling and demoing and doing other things at the farmers market and started getting into some accounts like City Market, Healthy Living, Hunger Mountain co-op, Middlebury co-op. So these four stores we have a very, a lot of love for these stores because that's the kind of like the foundation that we started on so we really appreciate the support Hunger Mountain team really, really we do. And so yeah we've been very fortunate to receive that kind of support from our customers, our store partners and everyone else to help us grow and to bring us where you are so far. Right now we supply our products in New England region. We just got into Whole Foods just now like a couple months ago so we're really excited about that. So our goal is to go further New England, further in Connecticut, Hudson Valley, New York, just go into East Coast and then hopefully take over the nation down the road. Just kidding, just kidding. But that's our hope in dreams and goals for the future. But we're just working slowly one step at a time because when you have a small business you try to grow too fast and sometimes you fail. So you've got to make sure you're buying what you can chew and you can't do that more than you can you can chew so. And along the way I feel like what Desmond was saying earlier about the support from the community you know we I feel like we couldn't have been where we are if we had started in a different state let's say in New York City you know if I was in New York and we tried to start this business in New York I don't think it would have been you know where we are because I don't feel like the support that we received here from you know customers you know about the local businesses you know and minority owned business it was amazing for us you know. So you know we we'd like to thank the whole community here you know all the people that that supported in the in the beginning when we were first coming out and the funny thing is when we first you know started our business a lot of people didn't know what Momos were because it was a very new product you know all together. So it was really tough in the beginning trying to educate what Momos were you know how you know how we're supposed to be eaten you know what it's made of you know all the just different things you know do you eat Momos with soy you know we got a lot of questions like that and we had to answer you know no you know Momos are usually eaten with tomato puree sauce you know and you know we supply our sauce also to go with it you know so it was in the beginning it was a little tough for the first couple of years but you know again with the support that that we received from from all the customers the store partners you know we were really thankful that that we started our business here and the one thing that that i i i do feel and in it's on my perspective our perspective the business you know that we when we started the opportunity that i that i see is in the financial side and the governmental thing i guess you know the agencies you know because when we moved here we had no idea about i mean we had no networks no connections you know we had no no idea about actually you know how to start a food business basically i was in retail you know i was at maces for about 10 years but that's a whole different ballgame you know food industry is a whole different thing i didn't know that you know when i first started i thought you know hey you know let's start a business you know how hard could it be but then i started realizing you know one step at a time there's you know there's like this permit and that permit and then you know usda fda you know hell department has a you know i had no idea what the has of was so it was just learning process you know so i think there's opportunity in in that sector in that section you know when not only actually i mean every startup you know has difficulty you know getting off the ground but i feel like minority you know bipoc folks you know i think has even more you know issues or problem that they face when they when they are you know getting their business off the ground i mean we had some savings of our own that we had saved up from our work my wife used to work at the jfk you know at a cargo division so we bootstrapped this whole business when we first started when we i still remember you know i went to a bank to get some loan and they almost kind of laughed at me and they said you know maybe you come back and they like four or five years you know when you're really you know and i understand i understand their point of view and i understand where they're coming from you know food business you know restaurant business is not it's not easy you know and they've you know majority of them fail you know in the first couple years i understand that but yeah there's the opportunity you know in supporting new startup you know new folks that are getting into any type of business finding that resource of kind of you know funding or even like just a mentor finding some mentors you know on how to access those resources or fundings and things like that i think that would be very helpful for new startups so that's one of my things that i've been trying to do you know trying to share my experience with people that are starting up new businesses you know whatever i could do i you know just sharing my experience you know telling them who they should contact you know where should they go and things like that so you know those are the opportunities that i feel like that's out there for new startups, BIPOC, minority you know all of that so that's what i feel that's what i think and again thank you so much for having me i appreciate it thank you thank you very much Nurbulu next i'd like to introduce Arielle Kralik of Arielle's Honey Arielle Kralik has owned Arielle's Honey infusions for 12 years she handcrafted 16 unique honey infusions using only sustainably harvested raw vermont honey infused together with local organic herbs Arielle is passionate about spreading understanding and awareness about the vital role bees play in keeping the planet healthy Arielle come on up thanks for having me i appreciate it i am not really used to talking in front of people i'm usually around bees and plants and i work by myself and it's just me so this is kind of pushing me out of my comfort zone a little bit but i'm really excited to be here and want to thank all of you for having me um yeah i've been in business for 12 years um i am in business by myself i don't have um a staff or partner it's just myself i do everything literally i go and deliver to co-ops i meet with buyers i go to stores i make products i work online and design my website i design labels i mean everything you can think of with a business i do um yeah um on on the flip side i also run a landscaping business and so right now is a really crazy time for me um i build pollinator gardens so i always tell people i kind of cross pollinate businesses um i started doing the landscaping business before the honey business and it was kind of this passion where i was seeing people really interested in wanting to make gardens to bring more pollinators to their house and what can they do what can they do with their kids and their family so i was a teacher at the time and i needed a summer job and i was always a gardener so i started this business and um when i finished teaching i started the honey business that they kind of crossed over um because i really enjoy connecting people to what's going on in in their garden and with bees coming into their life and instead of just people being afraid of bees i wanted to have them understand what they were doing for all of us so i really i started making these honey infusions which are which are basically raw honey straight from the hive no sprays or pesticides are used on the hives or the farms or the bees at all and then i work with organic um herb flower growers through vermont and i mixed the herbs and the spices with the honey and the longer they sit it kind of changes the flavor um medicinally they're amazing for cold season but you can use them on food you could just eat them i'm usually covered in honey um so yeah i'm i'm around it all the time but basically i took two businesses and tried to make them both work together um and during that i just sort of decided i'm gonna try to educate people as much as i possibly can about what we can do to keep bees alive because as i've been growing both businesses i've been seeing a really big decline with bees like really really big where i go to a garden and i used to see bumble bees and now i maybe see one um and so with both businesses they kind of keep cross pollinating each other where i'm talking to people and you know sharing knowledge about what bees are doing for us and so as i talk about honey or go to stores i'm also kind of mixing in the other talk about bees um so i've been doing that for about 12 years um one of the questions that was asked of me was how did i get to where i am and really it's a lot of hard work and a lot of like falling on my face and getting back up again um but all of these co-ops that have taken me on from the get-go just going in introducing myself tasting honey hearing my story have been amazing and just kind of kept me going along the way um as well as just growing and meeting other bee keepers and connecting with them and hearing their stories there's not a lot of female bee keepers out there and maybe there are some in here today maybe not um so i'm always looking for like new bee keepers to connect with of all ages um and some big goals of mine as i've been growing the business have always been how can i take control of doing like not having rent or how can i just own everything instead of kind of having somebody else over me that i'm always trying to race to keep up and like have to pay pay that rent pay this pay that and my long-term goal has always been i'm gonna someday find a piece of land and build a little honey house and you know have bees and flank these gardens and and have my own business out of that space and have like a little haven that is for bees and myself and people can come to and learn there um and starting last summer i i took this on and i started building um a honey office um my partner and i have been living on a piece of land for about seven years and we're at the point where i was ready to build this office and for the past year that's what i've been doing um i guess what i mean like i've been building like literally i've put in the electricity put in the plumbing put in the foundation everything um from ground up and it's been so much work but the payoff's been unbelievable for me and my long-term goal is to just keep trying to have bees stay alive there keep trying to bring good honey to people and educating you know kids especially because kids are so important right now for keeping bees alive and just like letting them know that they're not you know gonna not really gonna hurt us we might get stung once in a while but um they're really keeping all of our co-ops and us going because without bees we really wouldn't have the co-op we wouldn't have food um we wouldn't have plants we wouldn't have all of these blossoms that are so beautiful so it's just a constant thing that i'm always working on and trying to i don't know figure out how community can get involved with me to to keep that going in a positive direction i do definitely have struggles as a small business owner not necessarily because i'm female but um money is always a factor i think that um when you're a small business and you're trying to figure out how to do everything and pay bills and have a life um you're trying to balance out all these things it's really hard to sit down and like write a grant for instance like i don't have time to write a grant like i don't even really have time to like just have fun so i'm like constantly in the balance of like life work and um it's not easy and covid definitely like was challenging um but i'm trying to figure out as a small business owner like how i can ask for help and um what that looks like and who would be the right person to do that um and just yeah how to figure it out and really for me to be able to to build the honey office that i created it was just work lot of work i didn't take out any grant or loans i've done it all myself and it's just you know that constant work all the time um so i guess that would be one thing looking to community for people that have extra time or resources to to sit down with you know these small businesses that are just working so hard to like give suggestions or help out with things like that um but yeah i'm just i'm really thankful for the community that i have and all the people that have supported me along the way yeah i just i have a really big passion for for bees and i hope that through my product when people taste it they kind of get like a new vision of you know all the beautiful things that bees do for us and just kind of keep building on that over time but um yeah i'm just thankful for the community and the co-ops and all the people that i work with and um yeah i think that's kind of good thank you ariel next up we have jonah mossberg of milkweed farm jonah mossberg is a queer trans farmer who lives in west minster west jonah has been working in agriculture for almost 20 years and has run milkweed farm since 2017 the farm is a diversified no-till vegetable flower and pear operation with a focus on growing high quality nutrient dense food jonah is most excited about making compost mushrooms and his two wild farm kids coming up jonah all right um thanks so much for having me um yeah my name is jonah mossberg i run milkweed farm down in west minster west so we're down south not exactly part of this food shed exactly so we appreciate um the invitation up here and opportunity to to speak um i run the farm with my wife emily hearts and it is our seventh season of milkweed farm we grow we're yeah diversified vegetable flower operation um we inherited this lovely pear mostly asian pear orchard on our farm and um we grow organically though we're not certified organic we use organic standards we meet or exceed them on our farm we're small we grow unjust over an acre i think i counted the other day and we have like one about a hundred one hundred foot beds and and in that space and a bunch of greenhouses included in that and in that space we run a 75 member csa of our own we also sell 30 shares worth of food to our farm partners at wild carrot farm and braddleboro that's a cool partnership we've had with them for about five years kind of supplementing their csa um so we feed about a hundred families throughout the season we sell to our local co-op the button co-op and we do a little bit of wholesale through a local food hub sometimes but mostly mostly csa um yeah we're queer and trans let farm and for us it's like all about community we work really hard to give away food to our local food shelf whenever possible we work with the NOFA farm share program to give subsidized shares to folks who otherwise wouldn't normally be able to afford them we give shares away to queer, bi-pock, disabled, elders um as much as possible we also grow uh seeds we grow shishito pepper seeds if you're familiar with that um pepper it's an excellent frying pepper and we grow that seed for uh true love seed company if you don't know that and you should check them out they're this amazing like farmer led seed company that's mostly most of the growers are queer or bi-pock folks um kind of Philadelphia based true love seeds um so yeah it's a busy time for us right now we have a lot going on on the farm and I guess the question of like how did we get to where we are and what are what are the goals of the farmer kind of like I'm going to answer that all at once they're all kind of tied up in each other um so yeah I've been working on farms for about 20 years I'm 37 now I started when I was like 18 19 working on farms and so for the longest time for me the goal was yeah sure can't hear me yeah is that better okay so for me for the longest time the the goal was to I have a long-term land base for the farm to buy a farm um and last year that happened um yeah the dream came true yeah after literal decades of saving and you know I really it's a whole another long story about how we got the farm and the process of buying it I could write a book about how strained and difficult that process was but we did it and um so we're so we're there so that that goal has been achieved and now moving forward with our farm not only do we want to continue to grow really good food for our community um and sort of like this year we're just kind of like it's our first year on the land we're kind of just like stabilizing our business in a lot of pretty big ways working on big infrastructure projects capital improvements um chipping away at stuff like fencing and irrigation and rebuilding greenhouses and fixing things so things just kind of are more well oiled machines so we're that's sort of like a short term um goal kind of more present and then in the long term with our farm our vision now is basically to uh to use the land to actually incubate other businesses other farmers who are young beginning farmers bifoc farmers queer farmers farmers that you might not or people who you might not normally think of as um like your typical farmer kind of like how we are there's not a ton of queer people or trans people that i know that are farmers there's definitely some of us but we're not like your average farmer population when i go to farmer conferences there's not usually a lot of other queer people there just to be real sometimes there are but not generally speaking so we want to use our land base now it's to sort of create a place where other people can incubate their businesses so giving folks not only like access to the actual physical land to do that but access to water to greenhouse space sort of all of the things that you need like setting people up you know with all the things that you need to be successful and additionally taking it one step further we want to be able to buy all of the food that the folks that were incubating that they're producing so buy it for our csa buy it for a future farm store that we're going to build that way we're sort of taking the marketing piece and the sort of like difficulty with marketing out of the picture for people who are just starting because for me that's always marketing is always the hardest part of farming like you can grow the most beautiful stuff but if you can't get it to market or get it into the co-ops or get it to people to eat it then it kind of doesn't matter and your work is all for naught so yeah it's like I think about that stuff a lot in farming we just farmers have to wear so many hats and I really can't think of any other profession kind of like what you were saying it's just like you have to be an electrician a plumber a mechanic sometimes an engineer you have to know how to grow your product well if you're raising animals or flowers or vegetables or whatever did I say mechanic carpenter there's so many other things that you have to do in order to be successful in farming so oh also a bookkeeper and then being able to like successfully market your crops so with the incubation idea that's sort of like removing that from the whole equation for people and just giving folks like an established market to step right into as they're building their business other goals for us are like having retirement accounts that we contribute to it's real and yeah and then how do we pursue our goals I mean we work really hard every damn day during the season and in the off season we revisit our business plan and we look back at our records to make observations and projections for the next season so always like revisiting those documents and going back to the numbers and running the numbers and seeing what worked and what didn't work yeah what else let's see community support so i've i had a farmer once say to me that and it rings so true that it takes a village to raise a child but it takes an entire community to have a sustainable food source and to me that's just like straight to the heart and like i said in the beginning for us we farm because of community and for us we landed on csa because for us it's sort of the best way we've felt or like the most fitting way that we've been able to build relationships with folks we've done farmers markets we've sold to restaurants we've done a bunch of different stuff with farming and all of those things are cool if you do markets that's totally cool but we've found that our relationships with our csa customers tend to be like a little bit less superficial than what you find at the farmers market and so we've actually moved our farm two times now before we before we bought our farm we had two kind of like really difficult short-term land leases with difficult landowners that both ended pretty poorly unfortunately and so we have now twice moved all of our greenhouse like you know built and rebuilt greenhouses and moved them we've moved all of our farm stuff it's uh it's extreme and we didn't do it alone we literally had 40 friends with 80 arms show up on two separate times to help us do that and there's no other way that we could have made it happen um without without that kind of mutual aid so that's what community support looks like for us um yeah for real and uh and the and just like another detail to throw in there in terms of community support the the food hub that we sell to they showed up last time we moved um in march in ice and snow with their big rig truck and helped us move all of our greenhouse materials instead of like truckload by pickup truckload um so that was just like completely amazing and we were so grateful um and then also just little things like community support to me kind of looks like a $50 bill that happened last week where I went into the co-op in putney to sell them some greens it was like a small sale so they paid me in cash with here's a $50 bill and then it was mother's day and I went back in the co-op and bought my wife some chocolate and that $50 bill was still in my pocket and I was like oh let's just recirculate you know this money in the local economy um and it was just kind of this like small thing that really wasn't so small at all actually um I don't know I guess I'll I guess I'll stop there thanks thank you very much Jonah and our last presenter is Arantha Farrow of Caledonia cannabis Arantha is deeply committed to cultivating authentic connected and reciprocal relationships with the aspects of life on this amazing planet her love of agriculture took a deep dive about six years ago when she and her family began to homestead in the northeast kingdom of Vermont she opened the Caledonia cannabis in 2018 which endured the global pandemic her passion for inclusivity is the driving force of her work Arantha yeah thank you I'm really happy to be here today with all of you and really honored to be on this panel alongside alongside these amazing people I'm hearing about today um yeah so I started in the CBD industry in 2018 me and a friend grew some plants and I basically got to know a lot of the state of Vermont and a lot of people who are also interested in that industry because I was working alongside others trying to form a growers co-op for for cannabis in Vermont understanding that you know it's a lot to do everything by oneself and you know to work together with community makes everything a lot simpler and there's people who just want to grow plants and then there's people who maybe just want to market plants or yeah make products and so anticipating all of this I basically just started talking to a bunch of people and going to different events and talking to other Vermonters about forming a co-op I also had had some experience at other farms out in California and Oregon at the time so I kind of knew a bit more about the process than some of the people alongside of me who are also jumping into it so it quickly turned into me also being able to share with people information about you know starting with seeds or with clones and then where to get them and then and then all of that so yeah that's how it started and then the following year after opening my company and turning what I'd grown into product I I got approached by a big investor to manage a big project project for them and I was just I just opened my company and was really excited about it and there's all this momentum and we were at the hemp conference and we had all these different products and me and my friend like it was I don't know it was a lot of fun but I mean it felt really like everything felt really glorious impossible and beautiful and then I decided to take this job for these investors he approached me they approached me in April and I took the job not because I really wanted to a company that I was a part of I thought would represent that scale of a grow they wanted to grow 50 or 100 acres in Vermont as much as they could but I thought that if I aligned myself with those kind of resources then I could and I was managing like the drying machines then I could turn to my neighbor and be like hey there's a slot in the drying machines and like these problems that we were seeing in the industry might be able to be resolved through aligning with that kind of resources so anyways they said they were going to pay me $50,000 to manage this project I was 26 years old I met him in April it started by me just like putting quotes together of like okay how much is the dirt like it just kind of like rolled into it was happening like he was like so how much is all the dirt cost and how much of the trace be and how much and so I was like making these spreadsheets and then all of a sudden he's like okay so where are you gonna do it and what's and so anyways we did it we did this huge project it was really complicated and messy in a lot of ways but it happened but then unfortunately he didn't pay me and so I realized yeah I realized in I just started to realize that I wasn't going to get paid for it after working all summer so I was just I kind of just like walked away from it after the season in December I moved down to New York city and I began this is like December in 2019 and I began talking to all these store owners and talking to them about all the farmers up in Vermont and all this amazing Vermont organic flower that people are growing and all the products and all the different people that I knew and beginning to bridge this connection between Vermont CBD and New York City Manhattan storefronts and all of that they at the time were getting stuff from Colorado didn't have those kind of connections with Vermont and then the pandemic happened and so I got my stuff and I got on a train and I went back up to my mom's cabin and I did the thing we all did and hunkered down and me and my friend Fern decided that we should grow a lot of food because who knew what was happening with the world so we grew a bunch of food sorry I guess I'm just going on this like whole story of what happened but anyways basically in a lot of ways my experience in the industry has been tumultuous and yeah I ended up I'm ending up right now kind of standing on the precipice of deciding if I'm going to continue to move deeper into the cannabis industry in the state of Vermont as it goes into recreational THC I do understand that I think people I think that a lot of where the real medicine is that is is when it's there's a balance between CBD and THC and so I anticipate a lot of CBD only companies getting squashed out by THC licensed people because they'll be able to play with the ratios whereas a CBD only person will get stopped at a certain point I was always kind of more interested into the in the broader scale like CBD part of the plant and I'm really ultimately interested in like industrial hemp and hemp for clothing and plastic and oil I think that cannabis is an amazing plant ally to all of us and has been kind of like keeping us paying attention to it for a really long time and if we were able to work alongside it right now in these moments it could help us solve a lot of these global crises we have in our hands but yeah so somewhere along the lines I ended up getting throwing everything into getting a trolley which is like it's like a it's like a it looks like a it drives like a bus but it looks like a trolley which is like it's like a I don't know it's like a pretty bus with with like at some places they do it's like in San Francisco sometimes or like they'll do tours with the trolley it's kind of a funny thing to describe in Vermont there's not really that many trolleys but but I after yeah after New York City and everything just shut down it it came up as this solution for retail for retailing mobile retail and so yeah the trolley has in the last few years become a huge part of my life I'm like constantly working on the trolley or like like I don't know I'm renovating this old trolley and that's been a journey and but yeah now it seems like a lot of the things that I've been doing or the ideas that I've had with all of this have kind of been like one step like I was like talking about co-ops but they hadn't legislatively gotten there yet and I'm taught I'm thinking about like mobile retail but it hasn't really been a thing quite yet for cannabis so so yeah now I'm in this moment of reevaluating just all things and after a really tragic year Burnett ended up ended up dying and being yeah that's but I just had a really hard year and just stopped doing everything kind of and now now I'm deciding what I'm gonna do and if I'm gonna keep going with this what I'm sorry what I've been working on for a while um yeah my dad is from Zimbabwe and I grew up in he was deported when I was four for cannabis related racial profiling things from Vermont so I grew up in Vermont with my mom's side of the family and have always been trying to go see my dad in Zimbabwe and I just did that and I just got back like a few weeks ago and I saw my dad and I saw my family and in some ways I think that the timing of it is kind of rerouting my trajectory so to be quite honest I don't know what what how much my involvement will continue to be in the Vermont cannabis industry but I do know that Vermont has a wonderful strong backbone community of farmers and good people who who need community support to stay afloat I feel passionate about the people who grow our food and grow our medicine to have homes with roofs that are sturdy and to be able to support themselves and feel strong and and supported because yeah farming and agriculture is the most is one of the most important important things um in the world and I think um and yeah it's been a while since I spoke in front of a lot of people and yeah I'm just like emotionally in some ways all over the place but I do really appreciate being here um and yeah I think that we're gonna have questions which maybe I'll be able to answer those in a more concise way thank you so much Aranthan thank you to all our presenters gets have a round of applause for everybody so yeah now now all of our speakers will be sitting over there um do we have two portable microphones we do great now it's on so this um to turn on thank you very much okay so if you just like to if you have a question like to raise your hand I'll bring the mic to you um we also have questions coming in from zoom um when when there is a question would you like to raise your hand and we'll just turn to you great thank you very much all right questions please for our speakers i'm a member and um some of you have already touched on this but i'm wondering what may what helped you get through all the problems that came along with the pandemic actually reached out to the community the most I ever have to other food folks um and I started making boxes of different foods from different organizations like companies and businesses and we started distributing them amongst the community and that actually kept me and probably about a hundred other vendors going through the pandemic and um it really was an incredible thing it pushed me in new ways and I got to meet so many different people so that helped me get through along with a lot of other people um is it possible to make that horrible humming stop anybody know how um for us uh things really didn't change that much we actually had a banner year during COVID the first year we had already purchased most of our supplies by the time lockdown happened so we were kind of just like business as usual and our csa was like sold out sales through the roof everywhere all the time food flying out the door going like here going there people couldn't get enough of it and um so we kind of had a good time I mean it was tough we stayed home a lot more than we usually do but honestly I don't get off the farm a whole lot in general anyhow so I with the timing of me opening my company and the timing of the pandemic wasn't actually able to um get any like business support or I hadn't I wasn't quite a bit I wasn't quite established enough to um I don't know I think the other businesses that I knew of in Vermont were getting support there was federal support for some businesses but because of the timing of me with uh the pandemic happening um it it just it was difficult and I I pivoted I pivoted and I stayed creative um and I stayed hopeful um but yeah so uh you know March April 1st started uh our sales dropped you know like most businesses in a suffered we suffered the same thing in our businesses dropped in every store every account and um at that time we only had beef momos and vegan momos so we only had two different flavors and to make that matter worse there's a lot there were a lot of outbreaks you know at different processing meat processing plants you know so it was really getting you know really hard getting a beef at that point and even if we get some we're able to source some you know they were so expensive so you know you couldn't afford it basically so at one point you know we so we had to let everyone go our you know staff at that point it was just me and my wife and our son at that at that time just going into our facility and just you know doing whatever we could do at that time just working from seven eight in the morning and then you know we had Aiden because he had online classes so we had to make sure that he was taken care of also and just cooking making whatever and then after a month or so you know we started to realize that only one product was not gonna hold us over because like I said the sales in every stores were like dropping like rocks so at that point you know me and my wife sat down and we thought about you know what's going to happen in the next two three months you know we're trying to do our financial projections and it seemed like we had to shut down in like a couple months because we didn't have enough you know revenue coming in so at that time you know what we decided was to maybe you know we need to add more different flavors because you know the the sales of the beef product were significantly you know down from before so we you know talked about in the different flavors different options so what we did was we came up with a chicken and pork flavor it's too far close like this further away sorry like this sorry about the so yeah so so what we decided to do was to add more flavors just to you know offset the the dropping sales of our beef flavor so we started working with USDA and we asked for their help and said you know we won't be able to you know stay in business after two three months if things you know state the the way it is so they were very helpful at that point you know so they expanded some things so we were able to get all the labels and all the formulation done you know in a couple of months we also added a vegan option vegan chow mein and vegan fried dish that we have right now we which we didn't have before pandemic so before the pandemic we only have we had beef and vegan and then we had our hot sauce but after the pandemic you know we had to pivot we had to be creative we had to do whatever we could to keep the business going because the business was our livelihood you know it was our kids livelihood so we had you know we had no choice we had no option you know so we added those four flavors and then on top of that what I did was I laid down the map of Vermont and I checked what stores we you know had you know we're carrying our products and which stores didn't and I got all the phone numbers of those stores and I started calling all these accounts in Vermont and I said hey you know we're such and such you know we're from Sherpa Foods we have such and such kind of product you know can you give us a try I'll let you send some samples so I started calling out you know giving out samples emailing so that went on for like a month and you know I think we added more accounts during the pandemic the 2020 you know then previous the two years prior to that I would say there was no there was actually there was no choice it was I had to do it because the sales were just going down and down every month every week you know so that was the only option so we added four flavors four more flavors we added more accounts and then yeah just a persevere just just kept going just you know just going in working you know put 10 12 hours a day taking care of our son and then coming out and just hoping that it would go away or get better soon and at one point like I said we almost had to shut down but I'm glad that we stuck around and my wife you know I mean she has been such amazing amazing you know support you know so yeah so we that's how we we got through the pandemic thank you very much more questions over here in the corner hi I'm Eric Jacobs and I was previously on the council of the hunger bound co-op I have a specific question for Aranta and you know when you go into the cannabis stores the product that they're selling is as you described was really very much focused on THC and the percentages of THC are so intense for those of us who grew up in New York City buying dime bags and nickel bags of cannabis at the band shell you know it's not the kind of thing maybe at our age now that we want to get into sitting in front of a bond duty right what is it 35 percent or more and when you go to the shops and you ask them well what about a more mild product more integrative there really is no interest however I did see recently in the seven days a report of Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's who mentioned that that's his interest is a more mild integrative product it was in the seven days just a couple weeks ago so there I just want to encourage you for a number of things that you said that you're totally on the right track I think there is there are a lot of customers that would be interested in your approach and I would just want to encourage you to continue not give up yeah well that's why CBD flower CBD flower is is kind of similar to I think what weed used to be like more I feel the same way that I and I think that's kind of why I was so interested in CBD and those properties of the plant because I I'm smoking for me high straight high THC strains is like too much I don't I don't feel like I can like go along with my day I do the things I have to do it's just like so yeah it was amazing in New York City and stuff there was whole stores opening up of just CBD flower and I think that I think that people's interest in CBD flower surprised was surprising but yeah I haven't really been tuned in much with what's going on with the dispensaries I haven't been into very many dispensaries in Vermont to be honest or in general I haven't really been I've just been this past year especially just trying to get into Africa and I'm just coming back and now just standing here and being like okay what am I gonna what am I doing but yeah so I don't know much about what the what the recreational selection is looking like but I can imagine that it's I they can imagine that it's THC high THC focused which which I also can imagine doesn't necessarily feel accessible for a lot of us maybe so that's good thank you thanks for reminding me hi my question is directed at aerial if I understand correctly honeybees are not native to this continent can you speak to the to the degree that our pollinators are at risk whether they be honeybees or native and how great of a concern it is thank you so right now I know see if you can hear me okay I know that there's a few bumblebees right now they're on the extinction list it doesn't mean they're extinct yet but they're getting close to being extinct and that's for Vermont honeybees I mean there are so many different wild varieties of honeybees or bees that are wild um I don't know exactly where they are on that list but in talking to all different beekeepers and friends the amount of hives that are dying from these getting into pesticide is so high I don't know what I mean pesticides I mean farms big scale and small home farms that are spraying round up any chemicals on farms where all of these pollinators all these different varieties or bees of bees are going into them they can't get back to their hive or wherever they live because they're they're lost really and then they die um the majority of beekeepers you talk to everyone seems to always lose a hive that way they find all their bees dead so I don't really know the statistics right now of you know for all the different varieties of bees but I do do know that I think it's the two of the bumblebees are on the extinct list or close to extinct in Vermont and that's just like the common bumblebee um that you would see out like fat bee blacks you know like um yeah I don't know if the answers are questioned or it is it is seven o'clock um if folks don't mind sticking around for another question or two um how okay let's let's have a couple more questions yeah another bee question for Ariel um we have eight or ten acres that we only mow a couple times a year so there's plenty of things for the pollinators but uh normally when I mow in our lawn we have a couple acres of lawn I stop for the bees bumblebees don't like they aren't intimidated by lawnmores so they'll sit there and not get out of the way but my question is I haven't seen a single bee this spring is it too early I haven't seen any kind of a bee the dandelions should get them out this is when we should be seeing them I have a question for Jonah um you were talking a lot about like 40 plus people coming and helping you with moves and things and I just wanted to hear more about um how do you build community as a farmer and is it across the state is it really local and just how do you meet other people who want to help out um yeah in that in those cases those were just friends or friends of friends I mean my wife and I have lived in our community for over 10 years she's been a longer than I have actually um so we're pretty rooted and pretty connected and I think that we have like a cool we have a reputation in our community as being like a cool farm that people want to people want to hang out at and and get to know us and be a part of um and so I think that certainly helps not to like toot my own horn but I think it's just kind of it's just what's happening um for us um we also like to think about our farm is not just like a site where we're growing food but also as a place where we can host community events workdays bring people in that way that we might not otherwise connect with we've certainly made friends that way um a lot of folks are queer and some folks are not um yeah I guess those are kind of some of the ways that we that we build community and now that we have our our forever farm which is um just like the best thing ever to say we um yeah we just want to go deeper with that and hold more events and educational stuff for folks um to come in and really see what it means to get your fingers in the dirt this question is from James and it is to Ariel or Jonah in terms of access to land for underrepresented farmers do you feel like there are resources there are resources or support um I have a lot to say about this topic um our journey to farm uh our long-term situation on our farm was really rocky and difficult um kind of actually regardless of being queer or not we were farming for many years had a sustainable profitable business we had good credit we had good income um and yet when it came time to find land that we could afford it was nearly impossible to the point where we almost became this close to um equating farming and walking away from it all because we had a lease on a short term um with a short term landlord that ended kind of abruptly and surprisingly and we desperately needed to find a place to be so uh where we farm now we actually don't own our land we have kind of a non-traditional approach to our land access we have a lifetime lease on 10 acres on by a small community land trust called the earth bridge community land trust and they also just real quick want to give a shout out to Linda Smith who's in the room here who if you don't know her she was the farmer for 30 years on our piece of land before we got it and she lives here in Mount Plyo now so huge we owe her a huge debt of gratitude immense immense thanks um but um in terms of like resources um because our because our uh because we didn't when we when we went to buy our farm we actually needed a we got caught in this weird loop hole where we actually needed a home construction loan but because we didn't own the land that the house was on no local institution bank credit union nothing would work with us nor would the farm service agency which is like the gold standard for young farmers getting farm loans they said no which much to our dismay and shock so we ended up getting a loan um ultimately to finance our farm which was a shorter term and a much higher interest rate than we really wanted but that was that was what we had to do and that's what we're looking at um so in terms of like resources I mean there are grants out there there's some funding the I'll give a shout out to the intervail center who does business coaching and support for farm businesses they were a huge help they offered us some legal support when you were transitioning and going through the process of buying our buying our farm and working with the land trust which took actually like most of a year to do um there's the legal food hub here in vermont which is a project of the vermont law school I believe they offer pro bono um legal services for farmers so that they be worked with um we had an attorney through them which was a huge support um because otherwise we would just have had massive legal fees to get through all the red tape and buying our farm um yeah like I said there are some grants out there but like kind of like what you're saying are you like you don't have the time or if you don't know about the grants or if you're not grant savvy you don't know the language you don't know the grant systems you don't know how to like massage those networks or work that world then those aren't really going to be available to you um we have received a bunch of grants this year we got just under the radar as like young farmers and we got a grant from the National Young Farmer Association slash Chipotle which gave us a five thousand dollar grant to help us build a barn um yeah weird I've never even set foot in a Chipotle um but so yeah there's some resources out there but honestly not enough and really it's kind of less about the resources and more that so we live in Vermont we're an agricultural state and the problem is not actually a lack of land there's land everywhere look around it's here the problem is access to land and that people are hoarding land and that people who want to invite farmers onto their land to rent or to lease don't know what they're doing and don't know how to be like compassionate kind and consider it of what farmers need actually are so if you're a landowner and you're thinking about maybe I want to like give out eight or ten acres to somebody who wants to start a business or run their farm out here like you should talk to land for good they have really good resources for folks who are trying to do that to kind of educate yourself so that the farmer can be protected so that the landowner can also be protected um because there's just I've just heard you know myself included two times over and there's just way too many young farmers and other farmers out there who have been burned um in those kinds of situations and it's emotionally draining and like it's bad for your business bad for your community it's bad for um it's just bad energy all around hope that answered the question I guess I can say just to not give up hope I had a different experience it was like a lot of searching and when I found a piece of land I actually wrote the landowners a handwritten letter and said this is what we want to do on the land this is who we are like kind of old school and it totally worked and they were like all right you know and we like built our home and like built business and we're taking care of the land and so I would say like don't give up hope you never know there's so many incredible people out there who have land and they want it to just go to the right people and not have it be developed and they would love to see young people or any aged people do good things on it so I would say to that person you know you never know you might just find something you really want and just like go for it and also NOFA in every state is an amazing resource for any business I would say to reach out to them look at online they have like a classified list that you can post what you're looking for or people post what they you know what they have so yeah those are my I we're going to take one more question and then wrap up but I want to remind everybody that on each table is an exit form with some questions to help the cop evaluate how this event went so please if you have a moment fill those out okay so the exit surveys will you can they'll be collected over here and then there's also food you can take home there's extra food so let's take one more question everybody I'm shonda Williams the Vermont kindness project and Jedi committee member so I just want to ask the BIPOC farmers and business owners did you have white allies helping you because I just do want to mention that here there is a lot of white supremacy and white privilege especially you know you get a hand up helping you to go further in your business than you would if you were a BIPOC person did any white allies show up for you and I also want to put it out to the co-op what is the co-op doing to help small business owners such as these in my experience I feel like honestly I in this industry have been kind of like tokenized a lot quite often and like used as kind of a bit of like a poster child person in the cannabis industry by the state of Vermont by media in the state of Vermont by people like calling me and asking me information and greening information from me so I don't feel like I I don't feel like I've been felt that much ally honestly uh as a person of color in Vermont but this is nice this this event I don't feel that way though but but I have historically that's been something that I've so uh for my research my career and so I've found it's kind of like a mixed situation for me so I feel like so when we first started out stand up yeah so I feel like it's kind of like a mixed experience for me so when I first started out there were you know not a lot of help you know seriously you know as a what I mentioned earlier about you know a new startup to folks you know needing help uh every startup you know anyone you know needs help but you know I feel like BIPOC and minority people need extra extra help because they have not a lot of connections a lot of network to tap into and you know especially honestly we moved here from New York so on top of that you know we had we didn't know anybody we had no no connections no you know anything so it was even tougher for us but I understand what you're saying you know there's sometimes we feel like especially the one we were first starting out we felt like we were kind of looked down upon you know as an Asian person you know when they see you know an Asian person starting a business and they're trying to go into a bank or you know get a loan or even trying to get a meeting you know you know you don't get that as fast as if you would you know been a different person I guess you know a different background so there were a lot of challenges but at the same time you know I also also had a lot of great allies you know some folks from USDA you know that helped me understand you know all these permits the regulations you know the hassle you know all of these things and what I mentioned earlier about if I had started in New York you know they wouldn't have given me a time of the day you know they would be just hanging up on me constantly and I was calling the folks here at you know the Vermont DA you know hey I don't know what this is can you help me and they took my calls you know they took time to answer my you know questions and stuff like that so it's a very mixed you know scenario for me and again it's only my personal feelings but again you know in general I know there's there's a lot of you know challenges for being BIPOC you know minority people starting a business and especially what I mentioned earlier about funding it's really tough you know I mean starting out this tough you know but without having any kind of funding available to you it's even worse because you know people always want to associate with you or you know help you if you're successful if you already have some kind of background you know if you don't have anything then they don't want to give you any money they don't want to give you you know any funding you know so it's kind of I mean if you don't have funding either you can't start out right and if you don't if there's not a place in or somewhere that you can start out then you know you're not going to get to step two step three you know and so on so you know those are the main challenges that I saw mainly you know in the funding and as a community as a whole you know again you know there's sometimes you feel like you've been ignored or you know kind of like pushed away and you know not given the most priority you know but you know you just got to perceive here I guess you just keep going just you know just keep chugging along and do the best you can and hope for the best I guess and you know work hard thank you this is from Hazel and she says we're a small African American farm in year two the Flying Buffalo the co-op has assisted us with a small grant this year toward the purchase of a tunnel really helpful would be great eventually to be able to sell to the co-op but the really big issue is land access and land ownership from an african-american perspective allies can be really helpful to build with okay we're going to pass it to Elaine I'm just going to introduce Elaine Elaine is a member of the Justice Equity Diversity and Inclusion Committee and she is going to offer a closing statement for for the evening so thank you Elaine thank you I hope this isn't too like everybody hear me thank you so much for coming tonight and um it's so wonderful to see everyone who came out and this food was absolutely delicious thank you to Rowan thank you the salad greens were absolutely delicious too thank you and especially especially to our presenters I I learned so much and just want to give you another round of applause thank you so much for being here and for everything you do every day it's it's such hard work and we all of our stomachs really appreciate it every bit of it I have just a quick quote from an amazing author and activist in addition to being the wife of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and she said the greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members so just as a shortened sweet goodbye let's all continue to compassionately help each other out and thank you for being here