Connecting with The Heart of the Farm

by the Vegetable Connection | TheVegetableConnection.org

“Mom, my favorite smell is a fresh tomato plant.” Wow, music to my ears! I thought maybe I was doing something right when my 13-year-old son Alphonse said these words to me in our garden this summer. It made me think of all of the kids in our community garden this summer, too, at The Vegetable Connection’s plot at Rogers Park, hopefully having similar experiences as they got their hands dirty finding out how their veggies were coming to life. Creating a generation of veggie eaters – that was something to get excited about each day.

Our connection to this experience of growing beautiful, healthy food is what I call the heart of the farm. I learned this by being a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) member at Happy Heart Farm several years back, the first CSA farm in Colorado. Being a part of a farm community, getting to go through the growing process with the farmers, and getting excited about what was being picked each week changes your experience of eating and what food means to you. Even being a nutritionist for many years, getting closer to where my food was coming from made me more excited about eating healthy and appreciating the farmers who were working so hard to battle all the challenges of farming to give our community the best food possible. 

Happy Heart Farm also founded The Vegetable Connection (TVC), a nonprofit organization serving Larimer County for the last 16 years. TVC’s mission is “Connecting families and farms to inspire lifelong healthy eating.” They now work with six farms in Larimer County that practice organic and sustainable agriculture practices, serving 55 families this year from Estes Park to Red Feather and in between. They help low-income families be able to access local vegetables by subsidizing CSA shares. TVC purchases the shares from the farms and then raises money to help offset the cost that the families pay. It’s not a one-time hand-out, but families are CSA members like everyone else at the farm and get vegetables for six to ten months of the year. TVC also provides nutrition and cooking education to help people learn how to use all of the vegetables and eat more seasonal ingredients on a long-term basis. The underlying goal is to inspire families to eat healthier, especially more plant-based, high-quality vegetables from local farms, which not only helps combat every major disease but also helps the environment. TVC was not just telling people what to eat but providing them the actual resources to do it. They are putting vegetables right into the family’s hands and helping them know how to use all of these veggies they were getting from their local farm partners. The Vegetable Connection is also helping to support our local food economy by creating more financial security for small farms that go above and beyond to provide produce from the healthiest, safest soil, which results in the most beautiful, tasty veggies.

The Vegetable Connection is hoping to achieve generational change for healthy lifestyles, teaching kids in our community garden and at the farms where their food comes from and then teaching them how to cook it and love vegetables their whole life. It’s not the telling. It’s the doing that makes an impact on their perspectives and motivations to want to be healthy themselves. Research shows again and again how eating as many vegetables as possible is a major key to good health. Producing prescriptions rather than drug prescriptions can keep people from becoming sick and give them a more abundant life. Also, public health research affirms that a cost-reduced CSA share plus nutrition education creates long-term changes in eating habits. At TVC classes, we see kids filling their plates with vegetables and plant-based meals rather than turning their noses up at them. We have parents addressing health issues through healthy eating. We see neighbors creating a community together as they gardened, cooked, and ate together throughout the summer. Our Program Director, Jill, knows every story and every name as she makes sure nobody falls through the cracks and helps them troubleshoot their CSA pick-ups or how to use their vegetables efficiently with new recipes, preservation techniques, and meal planning on a budget. 

TVC invites you to celebrate the beauty of our local food at the Heart of the Farm Dinner coming up on August 24th,, which raises money for TVC’s programs. There is something magical about sitting beneath the stars, eating food on the land where it’s grown, and sharing laughter and smiles with your neighbors. The meal will feature a six-course meal prepared by Santa Elena’s and featuring vegetables from Well Fed Farmstead with dishes like mushroom tostadas with Hazel Dell Mushrooms topped with a spicy tomato chutney made with tomatoes grown by Well Fed and canned at a TVC canning workshop. There will also be courses featuring local summer squash, eggplant, and carrots and finishing off with peach cobbler with of course Colorado peaches. One of the values of TVC believes is that “Participating in a community nourishes the soul.” Our community of supporters and our family participants experience this at our events and workshops, realizing that it’s not just the food that is nourishing our bodies. It’s the connection and sense of belonging we give each other. That’s the heart of the farm.

Come be a part of our community, too. Learn more or donate at TheVegetableConnection.org and come to our Heart of the Farm Dinner event on August 24th, 6:30-9:30 pm, where we’ll have live music, an elegant 6-course meal highlighting local ingredients as well as drinks and beer from Horse & Dragon Brewing. Hope to see you there!