Late last month, the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont offered $200 grants to members willing to host a dinner — preferably with guests they don’t know well — asking that they spend the money on local organic food. NOFA-VT accepted applications for its Long-Handled Spoons Dinners for one week — and received 173.
“It would mean the world to me to reach out to people I’ve seen for years now but never knew how to approach or felt comfortable getting to know better,” one applicant wrote. Another said they’d invite the people they always see — but never talk to — at school drop-off. Others said the distances between houses on their dirt road keep neighbors apart or that people living nearby speak a different language.
To facilitate conversations, NOFA-VT will help find translators and provide discussion prompts. At its core, NOFA-VT is a people’s organization, marketing and communications director Lindsey Brand said, and gathering around a table is a form of casual community organizing: “People can’t get to the deep, lasting relationships and big community plans if they don’t first meet each other and get to know each other and build something across their differences.”
Plus, she continued, “it adds deeper meaning when the food that people are sharing was produced locally with a lot of care for a local ecosystem.”
The dinners are named after a parable in which two groups of people sit around a large pot of stew. Each has a long-handled spoon — so long that the people cannot feed themselves. At one table, representing hell, people starve in frustration. In heaven, though, people use the spoons to feed each other.
The nonprofit can support about two dozen dinners and plans to spread the money across the state. If more donations flow in, more grants will go out.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Soul Food”
This article appears in The Food Issue • 2026.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!