Bee farmers, bakers, and butchers gathered in the HUB on Wednesday, Nov. 6 as part of Dining Service’s Local Foods to give students and faculty the opportunity to see where some of their food comes from. Ryan Houck of Dining Services and Store Room Manager Kenneth Berrier arranged this event as part of Dining Service’s Let’s Get Local campaign to promote the benefits supporting local food vendors.
The Let’s Get Local campaign started a week prior in the dining hall with the local apple cider tasting provided by Three Springs Fruit Farm, and it will continue this week with a Farm Fiesta where the Dickinson Farm will be making salsa from the fruits and vegetables they have grown.
“[The local vendors] have been our hidden secret,” said Houck. It has been advertised that much of the food on Dickinson’s campus comes from local farms, but students did not know specifically where it was coming from. This vendor’s fair not only gave them that information, but it allowed all Dickinsonians the chance to talk with the vendors about their Bee farmers, bakers, and butchers gathered in the HUB on Wednesday, Nov. 6 as part of Dining Service’s Local Foods to give students and faculty the opportunity to see where some of their food comes from. Ryan Houck of Dining Services and Store Room Manager Kenneth Berrier arranged this event as part of Dining Service’s Let’s Get Local campaign to promote the benefits supporting local food vendors.
The Let’s Get Local campaign started a week prior in the dining hall with the local apple cider tasting provided by Three Springs Fruit Farm, and it will continue this week with a Farm Fiesta where the Dickinson Farm will be making salsa from the fruits and vegetables they have grown.
“[The local vendors] have been our hidden secret,” said Houck. It has been advertised that much of the food on Dickinson’s campus comes from local farms, but students did not know specifically where it was coming from. This vendor’s fair not only gave them that information, but it allowed all Dickinsonians the chance to talk with the vendors about their products and their production practices.
There were seven vendors at the event, all located within 50 miles from campus. All of these vendors hand delivers their products to the HUB.
The closest vendor present was the Dickinson College farm in Boiling Springs, PA. The College Farm was represented by apprentice Megan Moody. The farm provides seasonal produce to the dining hall, including tomatoes, carrots, leaf lettuce, spring salad mix, romaine, bell peppers, spinach, yellow squash, green squash, potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, sweet potatoes, kale, diakon and radishes. In total, the college farm delivers nearly 10,000 lbs. of produce to the dining hall every year.
Also present at the fair was Tom Jones, proprietor of Tom Jones Honey Farm. Jones, a local beekeeper, came prepared with crackers and pure local wildflower honey for students to sample. Located seven miles from campus, the farm has provided honey to the campus dining facilities and merchandise to the Devil’s Den for over 15 years.
Other local providers include Terranetti’s Bakery of Mechanicsburg, PA, which provides Dining Services with over 3,000 loaves of bread annually, and Warrington Farm Meats of Dillsburg, Pa, which supplies Dining Services with nearly 10,000 lbs. of local grass-fed beef each year.
From Camp Hill, PA comes Betsy’s Bakery, whose bread, cookies, cupcakes, muffins, brownies, gobs, pies, bagels and rolls can be found in all dining facilities on campus. Patrick Andrews of Besty’s Bakery explained that all of their products are gluten free and they fill orders placed by Dickinson two to three times a week.
Three Springs Fruit Farm is located in Aspers, PA. According to Ben Wenk, Three Springs supplies all of the cider and apples in the café. They also provided pears and peaches earlier in the season, totaling about 3,000 lbs of fruit being delivered to Dickinson.
The farthest vendor was Swiss Premium Dairy, coming 42 miles from Lebanon, Pa. Representative Craig Markel said that they have been supplying milk and tea cooler to Dickinson for more than 20 years, with about 25,000 gallons of their products bought by Dickinson annually.
The event also gave student organizations with stakes in sustainable agriculture an opportunity to reach out to students. The Sustainable Food Committee, which works as a liaison between the Dickinson College Farm and dining services, also had an informational booth at the fair. Lauren Jeschke ’14 collected names of any students that were interested in helping Dining Services with the processing of sweet potatoes and squash from the farm for the Thanksgiving Dinner. The next date to volunteer for this work is Saturday Nov. 16 from 8 am to 1:30 pm in the Dining Hall Kitchen.
Sustainability Intern with Dining Services Alexandra Raczka ’15 also represented the Sustainable Food Committee at the event.
“I think this event was really important because it’s one thing for Dickinson to say that it gets food locally, but students who are not familiar with food systems may not really understand what that means or the benefits of it,” said Raczka. “By allowing students to have personal, face-to-face contact with those that grow and produce the food that they eat, they can realize that these local farms have a much more intimate relationship with them than food grown on an industrial sized farm on the other side of the country.”
Though there was ample turnout among vendors, the event organizers were underwhelmed by the low student attendance.