Montreal Gazette / Donna Nebenzahl / 10 June 2011
Every Saturday morning, the town square in Mansonville, an Eastern Townships village bordering Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, is a beehive of activity, as shoppers mill about tables festooned with produce to buy bunches of beets just pulled from the earth, baskets of sun-warmed tomatoes, locally harvested honey and the freshest of flowers, picked that morning and brought to market.
Nestled between Brome Lake and Lake Memphremagog, the town has gone food crazy, with a collective of 15 producers leading the way. They are front-line members of a movement designed to highlight the fruit of local growers’ toil, as well as carefully collected honey, maple syrup, homemade jams and jellies – and in May, masses of seedlings available for sale.
After three years attending to their popular farmers’ market, some of these growers are now part of a co-operative. Known as Locomotive, the officially registered co-op is now able to launch small business projects, like a restaurant that will favour local produce, mainly serving the township of Potton, where Mansonville is located.
The inspiration for all this is the nearby town of Hardwick, Vt., once a lacklustre mill town that has been famously transformed by putting local food first. Hardwick managed to revive itself by having agriculture businesses band together, promoting each other’s products, lending each other short-term loans. A community-supported restaurant was opened by four partners and 50 investors with $1,000 each.
Mansonville has taken notice. Making it easier for people to buy locally is the engine for what the cooperative is planning, says co-founder Gwynne Basen.
