Hardwick, VT is often referred to as a hardscrabble town. And it is. It's located in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, the part of VT that least fits the precious stereotype of Vermont as this quaint, latte drinking liberal bastion. The Kingdom is quite rural and has a higher rate of poverty than most of VT.
Lately something remarkable has been going on in Hardwick, and its been attracting some attention.
The CBC recently published this about Hardwick's revival.
Before the long-haired people from the city moved into these tree-covered hills, Hardwick, Vermont, was known as the "Building Granite Centre of the World."
It boomed in the late 19th and early 20th century as thousands of workers cut deep into the mountains, blasting out sheets of granite that were then cut, ground, polished and loaded on trains for the boardrooms, post offices and city halls of America.
But in 1929 when Wall Street crashed, so did Hardwick. By the time of the post-war building boom, cement and plate glass reigned supreme.
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Fischer is the executive director of the Centre for An Agricultural Economy in Hardwick. He coordinates the growing number of food-based businesses in this town of 3,000 or so.
The walls of his office on Main Street are covered in charts that show how everyone from traditional dairy farmers and cheese makers to a soy-milk producer and an organic seed grower, even a lending circle called Slow Money, are part of the local network.
"What's happening is that with the new entrepreneurs there is a mass of production that allows for more produce, more value-added food products to be on the local market.
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More than 100 jobs have been created in Hardwick over the past three years, all of them are related to North American's growing interest in healthy food.
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In the space of an hour you can see quite a bit of Hardwick because everything is within a couple of kilometres.
Here we are passing the soy guys who will soon be exporting to New York City. Over there are the compost guys who teach everyone from kindergarten students to seniors about environmentally friendly waste. And these are the cheese women who hand out hairnets and sterilized boots before you tour the Jasper Hill, underground cheese-aging cellar
It is as big as a hockey rink — 22,000 square feet — and filled to the rafters with thousands of rounds of cheddar, blue and goat cheeses.
The cheese centre is brand new and, it is said, there's nothing like it in North America. Local cheese makers pay Jasper Hill to take care of the ageing and the marketing of their cheeses in order to reach the broadest market possible.
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http://www.cbc.ca/...
The NYT also did a story about Hardwick back in October.
Uniting Around Food to Save an Ailing Town
THIS town’s granite companies shut down years ago and even the rowdy bars and porno theater that once inspired the nickname "Little Chicago" have gone.
Facing a Main Street dotted with vacant stores, residents of this hardscrabble community of 3,000 are reaching into its past to secure its future, betting on farming to make Hardwick the town that was saved by food.
With the fervor of Internet pioneers, young artisans and agricultural entrepreneurs are expanding aggressively, reaching out to investors and working together to create a collective strength never before seen in this seedbed of Yankee individualism.
Rob Lewis, the town manager, said these enterprises have added 75 to 100 jobs to the area in the past few years.
Rian Fried, an owner of Clean Yield Asset Management in nearby Greensboro, which has invested with local agricultural entrepreneurs, said he’s never seen such cooperative effort.
"Across the country a lot of people are doing it individually but it’s rare when you see the kind of collective they are pursuing," said Mr. Fried, whose firm considers social and environmental issues when investing. "The bottom line is they are providing jobs and making it possible for others to have their own business."
In January, Andrew Meyer’s company, Vermont Soy, was selling tofu from locally grown beans to five customers; today he has 350. Jasper Hill Farm has built a $3.2-million aging cave to finish not only its own cheeses but also those from other cheesemakers.
Pete Johnson, owner of Pete’s Greens, is working with 30 local farmers to market their goods in an evolving community supported agriculture program.
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http://www.nytimes.com/...
Could what's happening in Hardwick be a model for other communities?