A brief roundup of news and information regarding Norwich, Vermont that may have escaped your attention.
MOCO
Norwich-based MOCO – My Organic Coco won a sofi Award from the Specialty Food Association in the New Product category for 2020. The sofi (“specialty outstanding food innovation”) Awards were announced in late August.
MOCO’s Peppermint Hot Chocolate was one of 148 winners across 39 product categories selected from nearly 2,000 entries. “We’re so honored to win a New Product Award, and it was a big surprise when the notice came,” said Amy Perotti, owner of MOCO in a press release. “We are incredibly grateful to receive this stamp of approval!”
In all, eight Vermont companies took home 13 awards that celebrate excellence in the specialty food industry, according to the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets.
Sweetland Farm
Sweetland Farm in Norwich is pledging to reduce the farm’s fossil carbon emissions by 90% in 10 years. I saw mention of this pledge on the listserv recently in a post by the Norwich Energy Committee.
It’s an ambitious goal, for sure. But Sweetland Farm appears up for the challenge. Here’s an excerpt from its website:
Yup. 90 in 10. Starting from a 2018 baseline, when we’d already done some cutting. It’s ambitious. Ludicrous even. More ambitious than any other goal we’ve heard any local company or municipality commit to.
But plenty of people told us 8 years ago that starting a new farm was somewhere between ambitious and ludicrous too! And this rate of reduction is just what needs to be done. …
We honestly aren’t sure if we can meet our pledge. It’s gonna be hard work and might cost some money. But, when we started scratching our heads about what we needed to do to erase fossil carbon from the farm, things actually started to seem pretty doable. In 8 years since we took over the farm, we’ve remodeled and/or refurbished every building on the property. Why not remake all of our energy systems in the next 10 years? We think we can do it.
90 in 10: Sweetland takes a crazy climate pledge!
In addition, Sweetland Farm urges its customers “to challenge other businesses you patronize” to address climate change. “Tell them to get serious. Ask them to make and publicize a plan to achieve their 90 in 10 commitment!”
What say you Town of Norwich?
Dan & Whit’s
Dan & Whit’s General Storeis an inaugural member of the JAG Ambassador program, according to a news report in Broadway World earlier this week. JAG Productions recently “launched its new JAG Ambassadors program, in which local businesses adopt anti-racist practices and collectively promote marginalized voices in their operations, products, and services, such as being safe spaces for the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people,” said the report.
Inaugural members of the JAG Ambassador program are: Wolf Tree [White River Junction, VT], Abracadabra Coffee [Woodstock, VT], Lucky’s Coffee Garage (Lebanon, NH), Stitchdown Farm (Bethel, VT), Silo Distillery (Windsor, VT), Farm Run (Bethel, VT), Vermont Glove (Randolph, VT), Dan & Whit’s (Norwich, VT), and Babes Bar (Bethel, VT).
JAG Productions Receives $100,000 COVID Relief Grant From The Bay & Paul Foundations and Continued Support In The Upper Valley
JAG Productions is based in the Upper Valley and produces “classic and contemporary African-American theatre.” It is the recent recipient of a $100,000 COVID Relief Grant From The Bay & Paul Foundations.
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