About Us
MiddFood Blog
Everyone has a story about food—a pizza dinner on Christmas Eve, learning the family’s secret chocolate chip cookie recipe, or a mother’s inexplicable aversion for the even the perfect fried egg. Meals, by their very nature, bring people together to nourish and converse in a meaningful way.
The MiddFood Blog is a collaborative forum for developing a more local, tasty and healthy food system. Located in Addison County, “the land of milk and honey,” the town and college are ideally situated to participate in the growing sustainable food culture.
This blog celebrates these edible traditions by covering the ideas and events of the Middlebury College Organic Garden and Weybridge House with the hopes of expanding to college dining, Dolci and the greater community.
Middlebury College Organic Garden
The Middlebury College Organic Garden (MCOG) provides students and other members of the college and town with the opportunity to participate in and learn about local organic agriculture. At the garden, we want to understand the challenges of making organic food more accessible, more affordable, and better tasting. While planting rows of lettuce for Atwater Dining Hall, or gazing through the stained-glass windows in our outdoor classroom, or using a spade fork to dig up the inscrutable quackgrass, we not only come to understand the problems with industrial agriculture but also explore and help develop local, organic solutions.
This year has been particularly exciting for us, despite challenges with early blight and other pests. We kicked off an official CSA volunteer program (contact Jessie at jebersol@middlebury.edu for more info), which will award four hours of volunteer work with a basket of fresh vegetables. This fall, we have already had a great honey harvest with our beekeeper Ross Conrad and are looking to a wonderful harvest festival, featuring food from the garden.
This winter, we will begin work on a hoophouse out at the garden, and two former summer interns will lead a winter term course entitled Food Justice in Vermont (contact David at dwdolgin@middlebury for more info).
Please come and join us in harvesting this year’s crop or just stroll the garden and relax amongst our beautiful flowers and crops. We always love help and will be holding volunteer hours at the garden from 3-5pm, Monday through Thursday beginning September 1st.
Weybridge House
Although there are many avenues for practicing environmental activism, Weybridge House believes that purposeful eating is as an exciting and essential vehicle for reducing our carbon footprint and revitalizing the Vermont economy. Weybridge House demonstrates lived-activism in the collegiate setting by revealing the feasibility of local-eating and sustainable living on a budget, and the joy and fulfillment possible from community living.
By purchasing, preserving (via freezing, canning and drying), cooking and eating food from within the state, Weybridge residents apply the goals and values of the Environmental Studies department outside of the classroom. On campus, Weybridge nightly dinners are seen as an alternative to the dining hall, and all members of the Middlebury community, regardless of course of study, are invited to join the house for an all-local dinner.
Below is a map that shows where our food is coming from.
Everyone has a story about food—a pizza dinner on Christmas Eve, learning the family’s secret chocolate chip cookie recipe, or a mother’s inexplicable aversion for the even the perfect fried egg. Meals, by their very nature, bring people together to nourish and converse in a meaningful way.
The MiddFood Blog is a collaborative forum for developing a more local, tasty and healthy food system. Located in Addison County, “the land of milk and honey,” the town and college are ideally situated to participate in the growing sustainable food culture.
This blog celebrates these edible traditions by covering the ideas and events of the Middlebury College Organic Garden and Weybridge House with the hopes of expanding to college dining, Dolci and the greater community.
Middlebury College Organic Garden
The Middlebury College Organic Garden (MCOG) provides students and other members of the college and town with the opportunity to participate in and learn about local organic agriculture. At the garden, we want to understand the challenges of making organic food more accessible, more affordable, and better tasting. While planting rows of lettuce for Atwater Dining Hall, or gazing through the stained-glass windows in our outdoor classroom, or using a spade fork to dig up the inscrutable quackgrass, we not only come to understand the problems with industrial agriculture but also explore and help develop local, organic solutions.
This year has been particularly exciting for us, despite challenges with early blight and other pests. We kicked off an official CSA volunteer program (contact Jessie at jebersol@middlebury.edu for more info), which will award four hours of volunteer work with a basket of fresh vegetables. This fall, we have already had a great honey harvest with our beekeeper Ross Conrad and are looking to a wonderful harvest festival, featuring food from the garden.
This winter, we will begin work on a hoophouse out at the garden, and two former summer interns will lead a winter term course entitled Food Justice in Vermont (contact David at dwdolgin@middlebury for more info).
Please come and join us in harvesting this year’s crop or just stroll the garden and relax amongst our beautiful flowers and crops. We always love help and will be holding volunteer hours at the garden from 3-5pm, Monday through Thursday beginning September 1st.
Weybridge House
Although there are many avenues for practicing environmental activism, Weybridge House believes that purposeful eating is as an exciting and essential vehicle for reducing our carbon footprint and revitalizing the Vermont economy. Weybridge House demonstrates lived-activism in the collegiate setting by revealing the feasibility of local-eating and sustainable living on a budget, and the joy and fulfillment possible from community living.
By purchasing, preserving (via freezing, canning and drying), cooking and eating food from within the state, Weybridge residents apply the goals and values of the Environmental Studies department outside of the classroom. On campus, Weybridge nightly dinners are seen as an alternative to the dining hall, and all members of the Middlebury community, regardless of course of study, are invited to join the house for an all-local dinner.
Below is a map that shows where our food is coming from.
View Weybridge House Foodshed in a larger map
