So, it’s been a bit over two years since officially expanding the syrup distribution to Pumpkin Village Foods. Your support and generosity has been wonderful, not to mention the surging global interest in food production and sourcing. Providing the government continues to support and enable smaller producers and regional food production, there are exciting times ahead of us. I hope to continue to move in the direction of providing you with true food commodities, in addition to maintaining the specialty food items that are currently provided.

A sincere thanks to all of you who been willing to carry any of the additional products that I now distribute. Your inclusion of Mimmo’s Marinara, VT Cranberry Co. cranberries, VT Soy tofu, Honeygardens honey, Tizane botanical drinks, Vadeboncoeur nougat, VT Pepperworks and Greene’s pepper sauces, Maple City maple candy, and Vermints on your shelves is critical to the continuity of this venture. The high quality of all of these products makes for easy excitement in sharing them with the public. Please do ask for samples for yourself if you’ve yet to taste these fine products. I will be dedicating significant time to demo-ing starting in September through the holiday season. Please let me know if you are having any special events or you might want me to visit for samplings. After this summer, my deliveries should be on strict once a month schedule.

This season was a good one for maple syrup producers in Vermont. As we ended up selling some bulk syrup from last season’s crop, I intend to cautiously provide syrup to a few more stores in New York without overextending our production. If you are interested in visiting during the production season (primarily March and April) please do not be shy to get in touch.

My Toyota Tacoma was determined to have a defective frame along with thousands of other Tacomas around the world. Apparently they had used some steel that was not up to snuff. The Toyota customer service people were more than generous in their compensation for this oversight. This windfall enabled the purchase of a diesel Dodge Sprinter with a 6’ by 10’ cargo space!

Working with the neighbor mentioned last year, a grant for $10,000 was secured to develop an innovative method for processing vegetable oil into biodiesel. We are about to finish our test processor in the hope of finishing a 100 gallon batch processor by mid-summer. Maybe next year we’ll have some oilseed crops in the ground at Green Wind Farm!

In personal news, my longtime girlfriend, Martha, and I visited New York city hall December 23rd to get married. It was a planned event, and are entertaining family and friends to celebrate the occasion this summer. May the warm weather and summer activities treat you and yours well.

Thanks again and see you soon