Hello Friends,

Welcome to the Eat Local VT app! Whether you are a Vermonter or are just passing through, we hope this will help you connect with local agriculture and support small businesses.

This app is the culmination of ten months of work and nearly 10,000 lines of code. A full-time summer internship for some and a fun extracurricular project for all, this is the result of lots of love and hard work. We are a group of students from Middlebury College who, like most students at Midd, want to make a difference in the world. Last spring, when ACORN reached out to a few Middlebury organizations searching for students to help them move their local food and farm guide online, the two of us responded to different calls. Surprisingly, the two of us were friends and didn't realize we had volunteered to work on the same project. It was very exciting! We quickly reached out to more friends and built a small but mighty team of students. We come from a wide range of backgrounds, studying everything from Computer Science to Portuguese.

Stuck at home all summer and unable to gather during our fall semester, we happily worked across time zones and continents, communicating over Slack and Zoom. Our weekly meetings with Lindsey from ACORN and impromptu coding sessions kept us connected to our community. "Hello friends" greeted us every morning with our next assignment from our lead developer, and it was a constant reminder that we were not alone.

The acorn app team on a weekly zoom call

Not only did we develop professional skills and help fellow Vermonters through our work on this app, but we were also introduced to a fantastic local food community that we may never have known otherwise. We are very excited for a time when we can go out, explore these farms, and meet the farmers. This experience also inspired us to share. We have begun to build a club that creates apps for the community hoping that other students can develop their professional skills, make lasting friendships, and have an impact on Addison County.

We hope that our app helps you discover a new favorite farm, explore Vermont's food culture, and have fun. If you are enjoying our app, please share it with your family and friends (those who don't live in Vermont can still support our local community by purchasing products online – just use the filter!) and leave us a review in the App Store. And if you want to give us feedback, please reach out to info@acornvt.org. We love receiving messages, especially when they begin with "hello friends."

Love,

Aska, Zack, Ben, Manuel, Rachel, Jake, Jason, Sam, Max