Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Flavors of the Valley

On Sunday, April 13th, 2014 many of the Upper Valley’s farmers, restaurants, and food producers converged at Hartford High School for the “2014 Flavors of the Valley”.  More than 1,100 consumers meandered through the packed HHS gymnasium grazing on a wide variety of foods.  Product samples ranged from quick bites (cheese, veggies, chocolates, caramels, jams/jellies, etc.) to mini meals (gourmet grilled cheese, grilled chicken/bacon sandwiches, pulled pork, sausage gravy with biscuits).  In addition to the free samples (included with $6 entry fee), many farmers/vendors had their products for sale as well as CSA shares, frozen meats, and other crafted goods.  While the main lure of the show is obviously the food, the true value of Flavors of the Valley is for consumers to “get to know their farmers.” 

Yankee was represented by Chris Bessette who handed out lots of Yankee "goodies", including our green buckets which are quite the hit every year at this show.

Friday, April 11, 2014

Director Election Results

Our annual meeting week wrapped up with the 4th meeting last night in St. Albans, VT. Members completed voting for directors, ballots were counted, and the results were announced before the meeting was adjourned. Elected to three year terms on the board of directors were:

Region 1 – Celeste Kane-Stebbins
Region 2 – Walter Gladstone
Region 3 – Paul Franklin

Congratulations to Celeste, Walt and Paul. And thanks to Dr. Heather Darby, Dr. Marco Turco and Clifford Allard for participating in the elections as candidates.

We welcome any feedback about annual meetings, if you have questions or comments please let us know!  You can e-mail your thoughts or give Ruchel a call at 800-639-3053.

Monday, April 7, 2014

Personnel Changes

Yankee Farm Credit is making management changes to help the Association meet current and future needs.

Mike Farmer will join the administrative team as Senior Vice President/Chief Systems Officer. His new job is to help the Association improve business systems and practices with the goal of providing even better customer service, more efficient operations, and improved internal administration. In this newly created position, Mike will be looking at our policies and procedures, staff training and guidance, software systems, and reporting.

Since 2011 Mike has been Senior Vice President/Regional Manager and branch manager of the St. Albans office. His new position will be based in the Williston office. We have posted a job opening for St. Albans branch manager.

For several years we’ve had a north/south regional structure which served us well, but is no longer necessary. John Peters will continue to lead the credit staff as Senior Vice President/Chief Credit Officer. The branch managers will report directly to John. The four credit branches and their managers are:

St. Albans - open
Middlebury - Ken Button
Newport - Loren Petzoldt
White River Jct. - Ken Nelson

In addition to these management changes, two individuals on the credit staff are being promoted in recognition of their contributions to the Association:

Loren Petzoldt has been Assistant Vice President/Branch Manager since 2011. He is being promoted to Vice President. Loren is doing a great job serving customers, and expanding and diversifying our customer base, out of the Newport office.

Tom St. Pierre is being promoted to Senior Loan Officer. He has been a Loan Officer in the St. Albans office since 2004. Tom is one of our "go to" people for the maple industry. He is a former dairy farmer and an active sugarmaker.

I hope you’ll join me in congratulating Mike, Loren and Tom.