For Immediate Release: December 14, 2009

For more information, please contact:
Elise Annes, VP for Community Relations at (802) 262-1206
Nadine Berrini, Communications Manager at (802) 262-1205
 

Call us to purchase
a gift membership today!
(802) 223-5234

Local and Generous to the Core:
You Can Give the Gift of Vermont this Holiday Season

Wouldn’t it be great if this holiday season you could avoid wasting some of the gas and wrapping paper and at the same time support our local farms, forests and economy? Vermonters know the impact their dollars can have in supporting local, independent businesses, family farms, and Main streets.

This holiday season, the Vermont Land Trust has a few gift ideas for those of you who love the Green Mountain State and the bounty and beauty it has to offer. These ideas will allow you to share your values and give a gift of, and to, Vermont.

Consider a $50 gift membership to the Vermont Land Trust and help protect what makes Vermont special: our working lands, sense of community, and natural and open spaces (to name a few). With a $50 gift membership, we will send the recipient a note acknowledging the gift, a hunter-green VLT tote bag made from recycled bottles, and a year-long subscription to our publications. If you prefer, we’ll send you the tote and you can fill it with local goodies and pass it on to the recipient yourself.

Purchasing a gift membership for that special someone can help keep farms in production, ensure a supply of raw materials for forest products and wood energy, sustain our tourism industry, provide opportunities to snowmobile and hunt, preserve clean water and wildlife habitat, slow climate change, bring place-based education to our schools, and put local food on our tables.

If you are hoping to stuff your tote with local products, you can make an impact on Vermont’s economy. With the gift ideas below, your holiday shopping dollars will go to the farmers in our state and you will be helping to create jobs and healthier local businesses.

Here are some products from conserved Vermont farms:

Jar of apple butterApples, Pies, Jellies and Jams
Why stop eating apples just because they are no longer hanging from the trees? You may have picked your own from Allenholm Orchards in South Hero or Champlain Orchards in Shoreham and so you’ll agree that your family and friends shouldn’t miss out on Allenholm’s spiced butter, delicious crab apple jelly or Papa Ray’s homemade, mouth-watering pies. Other orchard options are Champlain Orchards apple sauce, apple cider, fresh honey and local maple syrup sold at their farmstand would also make a fine package of goodies for the apple-lovers in your life. From the conserved Berry Creek Farm of Westfield you can purchase honey, honey jams or honey cakes.

Cheese rounds aging on a shelf.Vermont Artisan Cheese Basket
Your gift recipients are probably aware that eating local cheeses in Vermont has become synonymous with eating some of the best cheeses in the country. There are several farmers on conserved land producing some of the state’s best cheeses. How about gifting a selection of Vermont’s finest to the cheese virtuosos in your life? A basket of dairy delights from conserved farms may include Major Farm’s Vermont Shepherd aged sheep cheese, Taylor Farm’s Maple Smoked Gouda, Jasper Hill’s Bayley Hazen Blue or Constant Bliss, and Blue Ledge Farm’s herbal fresh chevre. You could also bake a spectacularly tasting cheesecake Vermont-style with Butterworks Farm’s maple yogurt.

Maple syrup in decorative bottles.Maple Syrup Stocking Stuffers!
If you know some folks who are grade A maple people—the type who travel with jugs of Vermont-made syrup for pancake emergencies at out-of-state restaurants—then perhaps a maple stocking stuffer is a good idea. Syrup producers vary in their methods and the size of operation, but they share a belief that mud season is the most beautiful time of year. Some of the sugarmakers tapping on conserved land include Couture’s Maple Shop of Westfield; Tom and Cecile Branon of Faifield; Dave and Lucy Marvin, Butternut Mountain Farm of Johnson; Glenn Goodrich of Cabot; Bob and Bonnie Baird of Chittenden; Keith Armstrong of Pownal; and Dan Crocker of Sidelands Sugarbush in Westminster.

Local Wood Products
Finally, why not give the gift of sustainable Vermont forests. By purchasing a bowl from The Bowl Mill in Granville or to find other fine Vermont Wood products you can visit www.buyvermontwoodproducts.com or www.vtwoodnet.org. Vermont's wood artisans can often tell you exactly where and when the timber was supplied. This way you will know that you are supporting our local foresters, loggers and mills as well as our local artists!

For more information about the products mentioned above or to purchase some of these local delectables contact the producers directly:

 

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