The following may be of interest:

 

Vermont Tech is planning to create a dairy and food processing facility for community use.  We have submitted a grant proposal to help us build a processing center within the Vermont Tech Enterprise Center on Route 66.  The facility will have two production spaces.  One will have the capability to process milk into fluid milk, cheese, ice cream, butter, yogurt, pudding, and other dairy products.  The other will be set up to process, prepare, package, and freeze vegetables, fruit, and berries.  We are very excited about what this facility will offer to Vermont Tech and the community at large.

 

VTC will use the facility to process some of its own farm products part of each week.  The remaining days of the week, the facility will be available to area farms and specialty food producers to use as a community food processing facility.  In addition to the processing capacity, the Vermont Tech Enterprise Center, which is a business incubator, will offer programs and assistance to help people develop their business through product development, marketing, distribution, and business operations. 

 

I invite you to attend an event at VTC on October 12^th from 1:00pm to 5:00pm, at Langevin House.  At 1:00, we are presenting a workshop titled, Social Media Marketing for Agribusiness: How to market your value-added farm products more effectively using social media.  Following this, we will introduce the community food processing project in more detail and seek input from area producers about how they might use the facility and what capabilities they might like included.

Immediately after this discussion, we will make the award presentations for the 2012 VTC Business Plan Competition and follow with a reception.

 

Here’s the link to register for the event:  Social Media Marketing for Agribusiness

 

We would appreciate it if you would share this with any people or email lists that you think might be interested.  We hope to have a good turnout for a great marketing program, the discussion of the Community Dairy and Food Processing Center, and our awards presentations.

 

Please let me know if I can answer any questions for you or share more information.

 

Steve Paddock, Director    

Vermont Tech Enterprise Center

Business Incubator

Location:

1540 VT Route 66

Randolph, VT 05060

Mail:

P.O. Box 188

Randolph Center, VT  05061

Office:  802 728-9101

Fax:       802 728-3026

www.VtSBDC.org

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Bo Keach called us today to let us know their cottage at 148 Narrows Drive is literally going to "bite the dust" on October 8th.  Bill and Bo have sold their Waterford, Vermont home and will make Joe's Pond their permanent address from now on.  Bo says they are looking forward to being here year around, although they'll see how that goes - they may spend a few months down south, too - but here's the thing.  There are things such as windows and other materials from their cottage  that are too good to toss, and they are hoping someone can make use of them.  Give them a call at 802-748-8404.  They are putting a note on our "Comments" page, too. 

We are excited that they will be spending more time here at Joe's Pond.  There is an ever-increasing number of our members who are building year-around homes here at the pond.  Like I told Bo - the winters seem to be getting easier to cope with - not as much snow and fewer of the prolonged deep cold periods we used to have a few years ago.  That said, we're about due for an "old fashioned" winter, and I'd be more concerned about that except for the fairly obvious  warming trend that has dealt us milder, less snowy winters for the past several years.  I won't rule it out, but our seasons do seem to be changing, even here in the cold/snow belt from Walden to Danville.  Anyway, Bill and Bo are used to Vermont winters and won't notice a huge difference coming from Waterford.  We'll try to get some pictures of the demolishing and of setting in the new Huntington Home shortly after.

I heard from another cottage owner today that they had B&B Septic pump and inspect their septic system while they were at camp Labor Day weekend, and all is well.  That's good news for the pond.  B&B told me they can usually tell if a septic system is failing or not in good shape just by pumping it, so that's another way to go.  Most septic systems need to be pumped about every 2-3 years, but smaller systems or ones that may be over-used during the summer, should be pumped at least every year.  At least one cottage owner we know of who rents regularly, has it done several times each summer.  We applaud whatever measures cottage owners take to insure they are not contributing to the pollution and high bacteria counts we've seen on occasion this summer.