LOCALadk Magazine

24 Summer 2017 LOCALadk Magazine LOCALadk At the intersection of Middle Road and Route 22 in Essex, the Hub on the Hill literally sits on a hill surrounded by bucolic farmland. At its heart is the bustling commercial kitchen decked in shiny stainless steel and featuring large-scale food processing equipment such as food grinders, dehydrators, steam kettles, a flash freezer, and a vacuum-packer. The kitchen has only been up and running since January 2016, and yet in this short time nearly 200,000 pounds of local vegetables and fruit have already moved through it and gotten transformed into dozens of delicious value-added products, from tomato sauces and pickled peppers to eggplant dips and salsa. What's even more impressive, almost all the ingredients come from about 27 local farms and other food producers. Value-added products like these not only help increase a farmer's bottom line, they also help secure the year-round availability of local food. Welcome to the Hub on the Hill, a nonprofit venture run by Essex resident Jori Wekin. Once a hardware store, then abandoned for years, and more recently a storage facility, the 3,000-square-foot building offers a broad collection of resources and tools for farmers and other food producers. Since its inception, the Hub on the Hill has been a highly collaborative effort, with more than a dozen local area farms involved in advising and development each step of the way. In addition to the kitchen rental and co-packing services and market, the Hub offers office space, dry storage, cold storage, a fermentation room, and a workshop. These shared-use spaces with communal resources foster a true community spirit, explains Wekin. Hub on the Hill: Empowering Local Farms and Feeding Communities By Gretel H. Schueller Susie Smith of Dak Bars displays her work before packaging. Susie is just one of the local business owners who utilize the Hub on the Hill.

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