Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship, in partnership with Vermont Public
BURLINGTON â On the Saturday before Passover began, about 20 people packed into Emily Talkowâs Burlington apartment. She doesnât usually have this many guests over for dinner â she had to tell people to bring their own bowls.
Guests were there to load up on leavened bread before the holiday, grab a bowl of dal, and get to know each other.
This was one of 28 âLong-Handled Spoonsâ dinners that the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont (NOFA-VT) helped fund this spring.
In February, NOFA-VT invited members to apply for a new $200 micro-grant to buy local food and eat it with their neighbors â especially neighbors they didnât already know.
Talkow and her cohost, Marin Warshay, advertised the event to their separate friend groups. They hoped to bring people together and make new friends.
âWhen it’s gray outside and everyone’s feeling a little down, coming all together over a shared meal is so special,â Talkow said.
Erin Buckwalter, NOFA-VT’s deputy director of development and engagement, said the name â âLong Handled Spoonsâ dinners â comes from a parable.
In this parable, a group of people are trying to eat a meal. Each person is trying to feed themselves with a long-handled spoon, but the spoons are too long, and they can’t reach their mouths.
Eventually, they realize that they can all eat if they each use their long-handled spoon to feed the person across the table from them.
âWhat we take from that,” Buckwalter said, “is when we’re all working together and taking care of each other, we can keep each other fed, which feels like such an important message for this time that we’re in right now, when so many people don’t have the food that they need.”
When NOFA-VT announced the new program, Buckwalter said they thought maybe 10 or 20 people would be interested.
âWe put the application out, and within 24 hours, we had over 50 applications,” she said. “And then in a week, we had 175 applications.”
What they heard over and over in those applications, Buckwalter said, was that people were hungry for an excuse to get their neighbors together.
âThere are a lot of people that were like, âOh, I’m a single parent who lives in rural Vermont, and I felt really isolated, and this feels like a really cool way to get to meet some of my neighbors and think about the work that we want to do together,ââ Buckwalter said.
Two weeks after Talkowâs dinner, Megan Humphrey welcomed 50 people to her Burlington backyard for her Long-Handled Spoons dinner.
The college students across the street helped set up. Guests brought their own dishes to share and made it a potluck.
For over 20 years, Humphrey was the executive director of HANDS, a nonprofit she founded to support seniors facing food insecurity. Finding solutions between people and food is her thing.
âIâm food obsessed, so anything to do with food is a big deal,” she said. “But this is perfect. I mean, itâs just perfect. We get the neighbors together. A lot of people havenât met each other before, and thatâs wonderful.”
Erin Buckwalter at NOFA-VT said that community organizing through micro-grants is a growing trend.
âWe’re not the only organization that is doing this. As we were doing this, we actually learned about some micro-grants that Local Motion in Burlington is offering for block parties,â Buckwalter said.
Between February and April, there were Long-Handled Spoons dinners in every county in Vermont.
âWe really hit on something that is clearly wanted by our membership,â Buckwalter said.
Now, Buckwalter hopes to continue the program with more funding. She said it felt hopeful to see so much interest in the dinners.
âPeople really want to come together and want to work together on projects,” Buckwalter said. “And anything that we can do to help support that is a step towards our mission.”