The Garden at 485 Elm
People growing together:
a collaborative community garden in Montpelier, Vermont

Central Vermont organization gleaning to feed those in need

Community Harvest of Central Vermont executive director Allison Levin runs the organization and gleans, too

Community Harvest of Central Vermont executive director Allison Levin runs the organization and does a lot of gleaning, too

In The Garden at 485 Elm’s first year, gleaners from Community Harvest of Central Vermont (CHCV) carefully picked, weighed, documented, packaged and delivered 200 pounds of food from this garden. It was a modest but significant contribution to CHCV’s program that brings fresh, local food to organizations feeding people in need.

So much more is accomplished when helping organizations collaborate. Both CHCV and the New England Grassroots Environment Fund (NEGEF) are partners of The Garden at 485 Elm as well as each other. (NEGEF helped fund this garden’s efforts in our first year with a Seed Grant and this year with a Grow Grant.)

The accomplishments of CHCV and its director, Allison Levin, who manages the organization from her home, are significant indeed. As reported earlier this year, in CHCV’s first year of operation:

CHCV recovered 28,156 pounds or 84,468 servings of produce, with that produce being donated to 13 recipient sites. Approximately 6,000 people with limited access to healthy fresh local food in the community received the donated produce.

Capstone Community Action’s Barre Food Shelf, Community Kitchen Academy in Barre, Berlin Elementary School, Family Center of Washington County, Barre Housing Authority’s The Galley, Just Basics, Northfield and Roxbury Schools, and the Vermont Foodbank all received donated food from CHCV.

“We’re very excited about what we were able to accomplish. We were hoping to recover 15-20,000 pounds. We certainly surpassed that,” Levin said. “Volunteers were very inspired by all the surplus they were able to recover. We’d report on how many pounds we did, and they were excited about sharing that with their friends and how much they were helping the community.”

Click here to read the full article, which appeared in The World newspaper earlier this year.