Volunteers at our 2025 Grow Your Own Garden distribution day

Spring brings a sense of optimism, and many gardeners are already sowing hardy crops like peas and spinach. Growing food at home is a great way to be more sustainable and save money. It is also a good way to increase your family’s food security, or reliable access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious foods. This is especially true right now, as food prices rise amid the ongoing war in Iran.

The war has driven up the cost of key agricultural inputs. Nitrogen fertilizer, which is produced using natural gas and often shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, has become significantly more expensive, with prices rising by around 80% since the war began. At the same time, diesel fuel costs have surged, increasing the expense of running farm equipment and transporting goods.

At Sustainable Woodstock, we’re paying close attention to local need and working to meet it wherever we can. This year’s food security work includes:

Community Gardens

Sustainable Woodstock strives to make gardening accessible to all. We run two community gardens at Billings Farm and King Farm in partnership with Billings Farm and the Vermont Land Trust. Our gardens observe organic and “no-till” or “minimal disturbance” gardening principles. These gardens serve over 30 families and organizations, and have dedicated growing space to produce vegetables for the Woodstock Community Food Shelf and the Haven– last year we donated over 400 pounds of produce! Gardeners pay a small sliding-scale fee, with the option to use a plot at no cost. This makes land available to those who need space to garden, while providing fresh local produce to all. Interested in growing produce for your family and/or the Food Shelf at our community gardens? We still have a few plots available at our Billings Garden this year. Email gardener@sustainablewoodstock.org to learn more.

Grow Your Own Garden Kits

Each year we also distribute Grow Your Own Garden Kits free of charge to individuals and families who want to produce their own food. Each kit includes seeds, seedlings, and a beginner’s book on organic gardening. This program is open to families who would not otherwise be able to afford to garden, and has empowered over 1,000 people of all ages to establish new gardens and grow their own nutritious vegetables and herbs. In 2026 we will again provide 75 kits free of charge, enabling more local families to grow their own gardens. You can sign up to receive a kit here. (Thank you to our sponsors: King Arthur Baking Company, Hanover Consumer Cooperative Society, and M&T Bank, and thank you to our partners: Sherburne Farms, Yankee Bookshop, Willing Hands, High Mowing Seeds, and West Lebanon Feed & Supply).

Raised Garden Beds

Lastly, this year we will return to Riverside Mobile Home Park for the fifth year in a row to provide free wooden raised garden beds, soil, and plants to residents–last year we built 19 beds for residents! Our raised beds weathered the July 2023 flood well, as they sat high up and far away from flood waters. We look forward to working with residents again to meet the need for gardening space at Riverside.