3c hapter - Index of

122 Locavesting
and help one another work through business issues. “It’s through
this group that many of the creative fi nancing models have been
shared,” says Stearns. One problem common to many of the young
companies—a soy milk producer, a vegetable grower, a cheese
maker, among others—was how to manage rapid growth. Like
High Mowing Seeds, some of them were doubling sales every year.
The business owners began making informal bridge loans to each
other, to help make necessary investments to support the growth.
That works especially well when they happened to have opposite
cash fl ow cycles—or, “when my fat time is your lean time,”
says Stearns. High Mowing Seeds, for example, is fl ush in the
winter and early spring months, when it sells most of its seeds. Its
lean time is October through December, when Stearn is putting
together the next season’s catalogue, buying seeds, and staffi ng
up for the busy season.
On the other hand, for Pete Johnson of Pete’s Greens, spring
and early summer are the lean months. It’s a year- round organic
farm, thanks to the hand- built greenhouses, but that’s when Pete’s
is ramping up for the main growing season. Come late summer
and fall, “he’s selling colossal amounts, and is more than paid up
for any borrowing he’s done for spring,” explains Stearns. The
two friends have lent money back and forth 8 or 10 times over the
past fi ve years, says Stearns.
The Hardwick model, as it has been called, comes down
to the close relationships and collaboration of its new- breed entrepreneurs.
The success of local cheese makers like Jasper Hill and
Cabot Creamery has opened up a vital market for local dairy farmers
who supply them with their raw material. Claire’s Restaurant
showcases the produce of local farmers, while unused crops get
composted by local enterprises and turned into fertilizer to nourish
the fi elds of local farms. Andrew Meyer, the clean cut founder
of Vermont Soy, which produces small- batch tofu, and Vermont
Natural Coatings, which makes nontoxic wood fi nishes from the
leftover whey, created the nonprofi t Center for an Agricultural
Economy to further marshal the community’s resources.
The spirit of mutual support has created a thriving economy
in a former quarry town that not long ago was slowly dying. And