The Intervale Center, COTS and City Market Partner To Support Our Community And Our Environment
We’re wrapping up our 24th Annual COTS Tree Sale, and it’s been a joy to see our community come together to support safe shelter for our neighbors this winter. Every year, all proceeds from our COTS Tree Sale go to support the work of the Committee on Temporary Shelter. This year, City Market continued to partner with the Intervale Center to plant a tree somewhere in Vermont in 2022 for each tree sold.
The Intervale Center is a 33-year-old farm and food organization based in Burlington, Vermont with a mission to strengthen community food systems. We are located within the ancestral home of the Vermont Abenaki people, Winooskik, the place of the wild onions, and are committed to supporting, honoring, and protecting Abenaki survivance and their homeland.
Founded with the radical vision to reclaim an agriculturally significant stretch of land for new, community-based farm and land enterprises, today, the Center manages a model 340-acre campus in Burlington, delivers food access, agricultural and conservation programming across Vermont, and inspires others across the globe to take action to create a more sustainable food system.
The 340 acres along the Winooski River they manage is home to commercial organic farms, community gardens, hiking trails, conservation areas, and a host of Intervale Center-run programs and enterprises. Our impact radiates out, as we grow and plant thousands of native trees for watershed restoration, deliver over a million dollars’ worth of local food to people in our community, conduct agricultural sector research, engage hundreds of people in the work of transforming our food system and support farms with business development and land access services. Together, these programs and enterprises are uniquely designed to support the development of a food system that provides people with nourishing food while supporting viable local farms and a healthy planet. When you round up at the register at City Market in December, you’ll be supporting this work to build a resilient local food system!
For twenty years, the Intervale Conservation Nursery has been ecologically growing and planting native trees and shrubs throughout Vermont to help restore riparian and wetland areas critical to the health of our watersheds. In 2021, they sold over 38,500 stems to conservation projects statewide, planting hundreds of acres of new forest.
What do trees have to do with the local food system? So much! Trees support cleaner water, mitigate flood risk, and provide important habitat for the pollinators agriculture relies on!
Trees planted by the Intervale Center for each COTS tree sold at City Market this year will live for decades, providing habitat for animals, reducing erosion, filtering pollutants from our waterways, and sequestering carbon. It’s pretty amazing what a tree can do! Thank you to everyone who helped plant healthy forests in Vermont by purchasing a COTS tree at City Market this December. Don’t forget to round up at the register in December to support the Intervale Center’s conservation work!