Vermont
Vermont Food and Drink Producers Prepare for the Adult-Use Cannabis Market
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Hashish edibles get a foul rap. Home made variations with unknown dosing and delayed results have brought about sufficient unlucky experiences to maintain many people away from unmarked trays of brownies at events.
However, as Vermont prepares for the authorized retail hashish market to launch on Saturday, October 1, it is no shock that a few of the state’s proficient food and drinks producers are getting ready to enter the budding trade. In a state obsessive about farm-to-table fare, growing recipes with regionally grown hashish is a logical subsequent step. And, with strict rules governing dosing, testing and labeling, these aren’t your stoner buddy’s thriller edibles.
We talked with some native meals and beverage purveyors about how they’re getting ready to enter the adult-use market, from licensing and sourcing to switching from common baked items to cannabis-infused edibles.
Surprise Girl
Fog Valley Farm, Middlebury, fogvalleyfarm.com
Martha Bruhl has a aggressive edge in Vermont’s adult-use market: She holds producer license 0001.
The license for Fog Valley Farm, Bruhl’s hashish edibles enterprise, was accredited at a Vermont Hashish Management Board assembly on August 31, together with these of two others: Household Tree Hashish and Dalen. Final week, the state accredited a fourth producer, X-Tract Vermont.
“It is an ideal opening line once I’m speaking to folks,” Bruhl mentioned. “‘Hey, you are a retailer? I do edibles. My license quantity is 0001.’”
Fog Valley Farm is called for the highway on which Bruhl’s household lives in New Haven, the place the 22-year-old baker launched her enterprise within the spring.
Over the summer season, Bruhl examined her large-scale baking abilities, making customized truffles and promoting pies, cookies and different treats on the Shelburne Farmers Market. Now that she’s licensed to fabricate hashish edibles, Bruhl will shut down the “common baked items” a part of her biz and transfer right into a business kitchen in Middlebury. (Hashish processing and non-cannabis meals processing can not occur in the identical facility, per the Vermont Division of Well being.)
Bruhl hopes to have a easy line of single-bite, small-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)-dose cookies and caramels — and finally ice cream — at one or two retail places by mid- to late October. Her base recipes for chocolate chip cookies; lemon drop shortbread cookies; and darkish, gentle and sea-salted caramels are prepared, however she’s nonetheless engaged on sourcing hashish flower from licensed growers. As soon as she has that, she’ll make infused butter and baked items and ship them to the lab for testing.
Bruhl bakes with conventional cannabutter, which she cooks utilizing a butter-infusing machine. The result’s fairly potent, Bruhl mentioned, so she does not have to make use of a ton to achieve her goal dose of 5 milligrams per serving. That retains the hashish taste from being overwhelming within the closing cookie or caramel, and the trace that continues to be performs effectively with notes of vanilla.
“It is good, as a result of it does not odor that a lot whenever you’re baking them. It simply smells like cookies,” Bruhl mentioned. The decarboxylation course of — which converts tetrahydrocannabinolic acid within the hashish plant into THC utilizing warmth, unlocking its high-causing compounds — does odor. However she’ll have to try this solely as soon as per week, earlier than she makes the cannabutter.
Bruhl’s great-grandmother was a proficient dwelling baker, and her abilities have been handed down by the household. When leisure hashish turned authorized in Vermont, Bruhl’s mother began enjoying round with edibles. For Christmas, Bruhl gave her two hashish cookbooks with recipe titles akin to Whoopie Highs — “simply because the titles have been hilarious they usually regarded actually enjoyable,” she mentioned.
Because the adult-use market approached, Bruhl noticed potential in a small-batch edible biz — particularly one centered on low-potency baked items made with native substances. She at present sources from Cabot, King Arthur Baking and Monument Farms.
The younger entrepreneur had knowledgeable assist in navigating the licensing course of from Dave Silberman, an lawyer who makes a speciality of hashish companies and co-owns one of many first licensed dispensaries in Vermont, Middlebury’s FLŌRA Hashish. The management board prioritized Fog Valley Farm as a result of, as a woman-owned enterprise, it met the standards for an financial empowerment applicant.
As she will get Fog Valley Farm’s edibles rolling, Bruhl hopes to construct a enterprise that helps ladies within the hashish trade.
“I believe folks might overlook me as a result of I am a girl and since I am younger,” she mentioned. “However [I’ll have] one of many solely merchandise available on the market, [so] they’re going to have to concentrate.”
Candy Tea
Taunik, Hinesburg, @drinktaunik on Instagram
Bob Grim and Todd Haire like to deal with agricultural experiments. With the remainder of the Foam Brewers staff, the brewers-turned-farmers introduced a Hinesburg winery again to life in 2020 and launched their first Pure Hack wine in February of this 12 months.
In 2019, Grim and Haire tried their fingers at rising organic-certified hemp, planting 5 acres at Grim’s mother and father’ home in Alburgh. It was a difficult 12 months for hemp farmers — even the skilled ones — with heavy rains and chilly temperatures till June, adopted by a blistering scorching, dry summer season.
“It was onerous work and a ache within the ass,” Grim mentioned. “However it was enjoyable.”
They threw a giant harvest occasion; Shawn Rice, who had helped with the farming, blasted music from his huge DJ setup. That evening, they screened a horror film in the midst of the sector.
Then the hemp market bottomed out. Fairly than promote for pennies on the greenback, Haire and Grim packaged their harvest in humidity-controlled, breathable hemp sacks and put it into chilly storage whereas they found out how one can rework it right into a value-added product.
In 2022, Taunik was born, with glowing, tea-based CBD drinks that hit the market in June, on faucet at Foam and in cans across the state. It is a separate enterprise from Foam, although the staff of Grim, Haire, artist and inventive director Rice, brewer Josh Bayer, and packaging professional Steve Gourley related by their work on the brewery.
They make their carbonated, 50-milligram CBD drinks with a water-soluble nanoemulsion, including it to numerous combos of tea, hemp flower, citra hops, botanicals and Vermont honey. Taunik at present affords three “transcendent hashish elixirs”: Melody Maker, a black tea with sumac; Wonderful Frequency, a mix of yerba maté and lemon; and Name of Peaks, a inexperienced tea with lime and peppermint.
Taunik’s cans are actually in additional than 20 stores across the state, and the staff has brewed its second large-scale batch. They are a tasty addition to the native CBD beverage market — however they’re additionally a check of kinds. The Taunik staff has acquired prequalification approval from the management board for a tier 3 producer’s license, which allows the best variety of extraction strategies. As soon as that license is issued, they plan to launch a separate, THC-infused beverage model, at present registered underneath the title Drink Taunik, as quickly as attainable.
The earliest may very well be a month from the adult-use market’s October 1 begin date. First, all the licenses within the provide chain, from the growers’ to the extraction lab’s to Taunik’s, should be accredited and in hand.
“We’ll be able to brew, however we’d not have the ability to get the THC,” Rice mentioned. “And we do not wish to push it.”
As soon as the celebs align, the precise brewing will probably be fast.
“Steeping tea takes minutes, whereas a [beer] brew day takes eight hours,” Bayer mentioned.
“It is a totally different mindset,” Grim added.
Just like the CBD drinks, the THC-infused drinks will probably be made with a water-soluble nanoemulsion — simply with totally different energetic parts. Taunik will supply a spread of drinks and dosages, together with a “sessionable,” lower-potency 2.5-milligram possibility. (In line with management board steerage, producers of consumable THC merchandise should “embrace the variety of 5 milligram or much less servings within the package deal as much as a most of fifty milligrams per package deal,” and the servings should be “simple for customers to measure.”)
“Our market can be folks that need a substitute for alcohol at social gatherings however nonetheless need one thing greater than soda or nonalcoholic beer,” Grim mentioned. “They’re collaborating in partaking, however otherwise.”
The consequences of THC-infused drinks made with nanoemulsions are likely to hit sooner than these of conventional edibles, Grim mentioned — and to fade sooner. That is excellent for customers seeking to management their expertise in a social setting.
Utilizing a beer metaphor, Grim in contrast a two-milligram drink to a lightweight, low-alcohol pilsner and the upper THC-content drinks to a double IPA. His staff hopes to maintain the pricing similar to beer, too.
Hashish drinks have been standard in different states the place the substance is authorized; even megabreweries akin to Lagunitas Brewing and Pabst Blue Ribbon promote nonalcoholic THC seltzers. Hashish analysis company Brightfield Group predicts above-average market development for hashish drinks by 2027.
The Taunik staff hopes to assist foster that pattern in Vermont, utilizing as many regionally grown substances as attainable.
“Drinks have been enormous and profitable on the West Coast,” Rice mentioned. “We’re very antsy to learn the way they’re going to work right here.”
Paradise Waits
Black Flannel Brewing & Distilling, Essex, blackflannel.com; Rookie’s Root Beer, Burlington, fb.com/rookiesrootbeer
Different acquainted figures in Vermont’s beverage scene are taking a special strategy to the retail hashish market: Wait and THC.
The staff at Black Flannel Brewing & Distilling isn’t any stranger to hashish terpenes. Comparable fragrant compounds are present in hops, certainly one of beer’s fundamental substances. The brewery additionally collaborates on a beer known as Magic Disco with its Essex Expertise neighbor Magic Mann, a maker of CBD merchandise. It is an infusion of Black Flannel’s flagship New England IPA, Disco Montage, with Magic Mann’s Cherry Pie terpenes.
The ensuing beer does not include any THC — that is unlawful — simply the candy, berry-scented, earthy terpenes added on the finish of the brewing course of, Black Flannel founder Chris Kesler mentioned.
“Consider it as sprinkling salt in your meals,” he mentioned. “It is accentuating, elevating and amplifying what’s already there from the hops, then supporting [it] with some extra flavors.”
The brewery launched the primary batch of Magic Disco on draft on April 20 (that’s, 4/20), and it offered out quick. A brand new keg is able to rejoice on October 1.
Will Black Flannel ever manufacture THC drinks? Product innovation is nothing new for the brewery, which has been on the forefront of ready-to-drink canned cocktails in Vermont. And, whereas he described himself as not an everyday hashish client, Kesler has advocated for hashish legalization for many years and sees potential within the adult-use market.
The Black Flannel staff must arrange a individually licensed firm to make something THC-infused, Kesler famous. That is “one thing we’re ,” he mentioned, they usually’ll reevaluate the chance three to 6 months down the highway.
“We’re a beverage producer. That is what we do effectively,” Kesler mentioned. “If we are able to determine the formulation for infusing THC right into a nonalcoholic product and make it style nice — and do it in a selected, managed dosing, similar to we do with alcohol — then I believe there is a particular chance.”
Over at Rookie’s Root Beer, house owners Dave and Jenny Rooke have been ready a very long time to launch a cannabis-infused soda. They also have a product developed: the Grateful Elixir, a model of their lemon mapleade with a long-lasting, full-spectrum hashish infusion. (They’re going to maintain the basis beer for the youngsters, Dave mentioned.)
However the Rookes aren’t leaping into the THC enviornment. They already took on a brand new enterprise this 12 months: Whoa Nellie! Kettle Corn. They’ve had a busy summer season promoting popcorn at festivals and sending their staple Rookie’s merchandise to eating places and bars across the state.
The hashish product would “be one other good thing for us to juggle in there,” Dave mentioned. First, although, he desires to see traces on the dispensaries for a full six months.
“I am prepared to show the change, nevertheless it’s a matter of letting the massive guys gamble slightly bit,” Dave mentioned. “I do not know if I am going to have the ability to compete with them, or who’s going to outlive.”
Will Vermont’s inhabitants help its small food and drinks producers as they get into the hashish sport? And can vacationers from close by authorized hashish states spend their cash at Vermont’s dispensaries?
“That is a priority amongst lots of people,” Dave mentioned. “We’re simply ready, ready, ready.”
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Vermont
Made in Vermont: Allison Korn Designs
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BRATTLEBORO, Vt. (WCAX) – In Allison Korn’s small but sun-soaked studio, creativity is in no short supply.
“Earthy, rustic,” she says. “I want my jewelry to be meaningful.”
Down in Brattleboro, Korn turns silver into something special. It’s a totally different place than where she was even 15 years ago, living in Ecuador while working on a graduate degree in anthropology.
“[I] decided that I was done with academia, it was too much thinking in my head,” she says. “And I decided I just wanted to live my creativity.” Living her creativity meant taking a leap of faith.
“I bought a little bit of the material and decided that if I could make a piece of jewelry out of that, then that’s what I was going to do,” Korn explains. She did it and went on to learn what it takes to run a business.
Ten years ago, it was time for a move from the tropics to Vermont’s snowy tundra. It was the perfect time to launch Allison Korn Designs, honing in on her skills and her style.
“We had to reinvent ourselves anyway,” Korn says.
Now, she makes mostly earrings and necklaces. All of her pieces are made in one of two ways — either traditional metalsmithing, or by using precious metal clay.
“It feels like clay, but it’s made out of pure silver particles,” says Korn. “Fire it in a kiln and then it turns into pure silver.”
She does dabble in gold, but for the most part, everything is silver. No matter the material, her goal is to add a little extra to everyday life.
“You know, they put it on in the morning and they feel a little bit happier, or more brave, or a little bit more confident in their day… that’s why I want to do this,” Korn explains.
Despite a big geographical jump, Korn says the community feel in Brattleboro is roughly the same as it was in Ecuador. It’s why she sells at the local farmers market in addition to online. While life looks different than it did, it’s a change that Korn can get behind.
“There’s so much that we have to offer and creativity is one of the ways that I can give back to the world,” she says. That creativity is taking shape in Vermont.
Copyright 2025 WCAX. All rights reserved.
Vermont
Annual Vermont Home Show creates connections
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ESSEX JUNCTION, Vt. (WCAX) – The Annual Vermont Home Show wrapped up on Sunday.
“It has been a good show so far. It is a hit or miss with how busy it gets. I think the biggest thing is just getting our name out there,” said Richie LaFond from the Energy Co-op of Vermont.
LaFond spent his Sunday talking to lots of people about saving money and cutting back on fossil fuels. The company he works for specializes in heating peoples homes and in times like these the best way to connect with customers is at events like this.
“Right now we are having a tough time just because there is some uncertainty about the new president. As far as where the rebates are going to go. Are they still going to be here. But you are starting to get a lot of people that are starting to think about cutting their bills a lot,” said LaFond.
The Vermont Home Show has been a tradition for many years, this year hosted by Jenks Productions. About eighty vendors show off their products from landscape design, home re-models, banks & mortgage companies, energy efficient heating systems and more.
A thousand plus people came to the event hoping to save some money.
“There is rebate programs that you don’t really know about. They are obviously more educated than I am on some of those things. Being able to find out what programs are actually out there to help get things done,” said Greg Lang from Chittenden.
The show was once managed by a different company and went into a Covid hiatus during the pandemic. Jenks says they hope the event grows in the future.
“We have had some really positive feedback. Everybody remembers what the show was a long time ago. We are just looking to re-build it,” said Wes Jenks of Jenks Productions.
Copyright 2025 WCAX. All rights reserved.
Vermont
Afghans helping Afghans: Case workers in Burlington outline their struggle to respond to federal funding freeze – VTDigger
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BURLINGTON— At 17, he was on the front lines in Afghanistan, shoulder to shoulder with foreign soldiers, fighting America’s longest war.
Now he is a case worker at the Vermont Afghan Alliance teaching new refugees how to drive and helping with translation and interpretation.
Originally from Herat in Afghanistan, Hamed Noorzai didn’t know how to drive when he arrived in the United States in October 2023. But when he saw a driving instructor job advertised by the alliance, he applied. Then he hopped into the Toyota Corolla the alliance uses for training, learned the ropes and got his license.
Since then he has helped roughly 40 people secure their driver licenses in Vermont.
That driving program stalled last month in the aftermath of a Jan. 21 White House memo freezing federal funding for refugee support.
“Since then, we’ve faced a rollercoaster of uncertainty,” said Molly Gray, executive director of the Afghan Alliance, a small Burlington-based nonprofit. “We’ve had to prepare for a future where we go without federal funding. We’ve had to revise our budget for 2025, let a staff member go, and urgently seek new sources of funding.”
The organization, which started in 2022 as a scrappy volunteer-led effort with locally raised dollars, was one of 15 nationwide to win a three-year $256,000 Ethnic Community Self Help grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2023. That money helped open an office, hire Afghan program officers and provide direct services to the Afghan community statewide, Gray said. The alliance now has seven paid staff offering services ranging from English and driving lessons to training on legal rights and citizenship. And, Gray estimated, it has helped more than 200 of the estimated 600 Afghans relocated in Vermont.
The Trump administration’s recent halt on refugee arrivals from Afghanistan and Pakistan and the funding freeze represent “a shameful, systematic abandonment of those who risked their lives in support of U.S. military and diplomatic missions,” Gray said in an email today.
She learned of the funding freeze when she tried to log into the federal payment management system on Jan. 28.
They weren’t able to access the system for three weeks, she said Thursday. Access has since resumed thanks to a temporary restraining order put in place by a federal court judge in Rhode Island. A hearing on the case — in which Vermont is a plaintiff along with more than 20 other states — took place Friday, though the judge’s order is not expected immediately.
Meanwhile, the future is uncertain for initiatives such as the driving program, which helped 35 Afghans get their licenses last year, 10 of whom were women.
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On the front lines
For Noorzai, the Trump administration’s actions are a slap in the face. But he chose his words carefully during an interview this week. He talked about honor. And he talked about betrayal.
“I was a good fighter. I was translating Taliban passwords in radio chats,” he said. His work on the frontlines in Kandahar helped save dozens of American lives, he estimated.
Afghans like himself supported America for two decades so helping the Afghans who have made huge sacrifices and are here now would be the honorable thing for America to do, he said.
Noorzai, 32, didn’t finish school and his family didn’t know he had joined the military. And it was his American brothers in the military who helped him escape after the country was overtaken by the Taliban, he said.
He said he loves his American friends. That feeling doesn’t extend to the current federal government.
He once dreamed of being a doctor. Someday he hopes he can follow that dream. For now, Noorzai said he is happy he is helping other Afghans improve their lives and take a step towards independence by learning how to drive in Vermont.
His colleague at the Afghan Alliance, Drukhshan Farhad, also takes deep pride in the work she does to help fellow Afghans. Again, it is not without some conflict.
“There are days when I think, is my work really helping people or am I making them co-dependent,” said the 27-year-old program officer.
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“Then there are days where I’m like, oh my goodness if I got hit by a truck today, how many people will lose their minds tomorrow? Because their livelihood depends on me. Basically, I am their eyes and ears, sometimes in the most important ways,” she said.
This includes something as mundane as sorting through their mail to weed out important notices from junk mail, she said.
Originally from a small village in Badakhshan in northeast Afghanistan, Farhad came from a progressive family, didn’t cover her head, went to study alone in Kabul at 17, and attended the American University there which involved going through multiple checkposts daily during the war. There was an outer wall riddled with bullet holes, she recalled, and sometimes they had to pause lessons because of the gunfire raging outside.
A brilliant student, Farhad recounted the many hurdles she overcame to come to the United States on a full scholarship at Norwich University in August 2017. She was the first and only female student from Afghanistan there, she said.
Far away from home and family, the news of the fall of Kabul in August 2021 “felt unreal,” she said, as her family moved to Pakistan to escape the Taliban.
In 2022, she helped the university organize an international event on campus to celebrate Nowroz, the Afghan New Year, as vice president of intercultural student organization on campus. It involved kite flying, henna, Afghan food and music. That’s where she met Gray, Vermont’s former lieutenant general, who would later hire her to work at the alliance
When Gray received news of the federal grant in September 2023, she called Farhad because she knew she would need someone with strong language and translation skills.
Fluent in English, Dari and Pashto, Farhad now helps with interpretation, translation, case management and leads the alliance’s legal rights training and community engagement programs.
Now Farhad’s work is potentially at risk.
“So we now have to move forward without those funds, or at least presume that we will not have consistent access to them,” Gray said.
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‘An incredible ambassador’
Sayed Yassin Hashimi, a case worker at the alliance, said it’s always a good feeling to help people, especially, his own.
Last year he closed 92 cases which included helping to connect new Afghan refugees to jobs, English lessons, driving classes. He also helped create a free tax filing clinic and a program through which the alliance can serve as an intermediary between an employer and a new Afghan employee if a problem arises.
Hashimi, 29, was one of many U.S. allies in Afghanistan when Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021. “That was like the darkest night in my life,” he recalled.
With an undergraduate degree in political science, journalism and English literature from an Indian university, Hashimi said he dreamed of being an ambassador to help bring peace and democracy to the world. Originally from Bamyan in central Afghanistan, he helped the U.S. embassy as an interpreter during the war. But that night changed everything.
After months of terror — including the Taliban showing up at his house in Kabul in an effort to track down those who had been helping the U.S. government and being separated from his large family — Hashimi escaped to Washington D.C. in June 2023.
Three months later he moved to Georgia, Vermont for a job at Perrigo, a manufacturer of infant formula. While a far cry from his dreams, Hashimi said he was glad to take it to support his family, who, by then, had fled to Pakistan. “I did not have any other choice,” he said.
Months later he spotted a case worker job at the alliance, applied and joined the organization in January 2023.
“Yassin is an incredible ambassador for the organization and he is also extremely entrepreneurial. When he sees a need in the community, he finds a way to create a program to address the need,” said Gray.
Hashimi said he doesn’t know what to think about the federal freeze and the recent attacks on the country’s most vulnerable under the new Trump administration.
“I think the existence of this organization is a must for this community, and that’s why we are trying our best to keep running and to maintain our existence here in Vermont,” he said.
Noorzai recalls how hard it was for him to navigate a new country and culture, especially with limited language skills. The new Afghan refugees will be lost without help, he said.
“If there is no resettlement agency, they will face lots of problems, especially those Afghans that cannot speak English. It will be like leaving them in the middle of a jungle with nothing,” he said.
Farhad doesn’t know what the future holds for her but she does know that she likes what she is doing. She knows people depend on her and because of that she said she cannot give up.
“I would fight till my last breath to keep things going — like this program,” she said.
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