Producer: Gingue Family Farm
Location: Waterford, VT
Found at the Littleton Co-op: sweet corn; under their NEK Grains label: flour, wheatberries, pancake mix
Website: ginguefamilyfarm.com
Around the Littleton Food Co-op, “Gingue” is pretty much synonymous with “corn.” While Gingue Family Farm in Waterford, VT does produce exceptional sweet summer corn, a more overall descriptive word may be “evolving.” The Waterford farm was first settled by Rosario and Marie Jeanne Gingue, immigrants from Quebec and current owner Shawn’s great grandparents, in 1935. From there, the Gingue Family Farm were prominent milk producers in the Northeast Kingdom. However, by the time the fourth generation was preparing to take over in 2014, the unstable and increasingly homogenized dairy industry meant that the current path forward was no longer a profitable way to survive. Shawn Gingue always saw himself continuing his family’s commodity dairy farm, but knew it was no longer sustainable, especially when thinking about supporting his wife, Sarah, and four children. The first step in the 2010s was transitioning from raising their own cows to raising dairy heifers for other farmers and diversifying operations through meat production and supplementing farm stand sales with other local producers. Then, Shawn, looking for yet another way to diversify the farm, took a chance and attended the Grain Growers Conference put on by the Northern Grain Growers Association and the University of Vermont in 2018. Less than 90 days later there was barley and Warthog winter wheat in the ground where the cows previously pastured. What is now established as the subsidiary NEK, was built from the soil up with help from fellow Vermont farmers and producers. As Sarah told Edible Vermont, “We had the mindset of going all-in and becoming self-sufficient, but we took the Vermont approach and developed the business incrementally.”
In addition to the stability and increased margin dollars they find in flour and grains, Shawn and Sarah both appreciate that NEK Grains allows them to better track their community impact than when they were commodity dairy farmers. As Shawn told Seven Days, “The best part is being connected to the customers and to the product through eating the bread and pasta and doughnuts. And drinking the beer.” As long as we can still track their fan-favorite corn to the Co-op we’ll be happy.
Status of product availability at the Littleton Co-op, and labeling of producers (such as local, Black-Owned Business, NH-made, etc) and product status or ingredients (gluten-free, vegan, etc) is based on available information at time of publication. The food world is an ever-changing landscape and information presented here may not reflect the most up-to-date information available.
