On Saturday morning, May 21 from 9 am to 12 pm, events will take place at various locations around Bennington. Come to the Bennington Community Market on 239 Main St. to pick up a map. Bring your children! On Saturday afternoon, May 21 from 1 to 3 pm, there will be a FREE lunch at the lower pavilion at Willow Park prepared by Becky Arbella and her colleagues in the food system and cooking classes at Shires Housing. ALL ARE WELCOME.

Tours, workshops, and open houses are happening at the Bennington Community Market, Southshire Regenerative Food Center, the Bennington Community Garden, Lake Paran, the Robert Frost Stone House Museum, GBICS/Kitchen Cupboard, Sunrise Family Resource Center, Orchard Village Community Kitchen, and Lake Paran Village. Workshops at the Bennington Community Market include PAVE's milk jug planting herbs, face painting, block printing on tote bags, seed giveaways, painting on planters, and making wildflower seed bombs. The Bennington Community Garden will host a family-friendly seedling planting activity to learn how to successfully get your seedlings off to a healthy start. In addition, Master Composter Reed Gooson will lead a Composting 101 session from 11-12 pm at the garden. Drop in at GBICS' Kitchen Cupboard for a tour of the food pantry and a conversation about food insecurity work in Bennington County. Visit Lake Paran to see the potential of a community kitchen/incubator space for aspiring food entrepreneurs. At 11 am, Lake Paran will host a cooking demo to make arugula pesto and crostini. The Robert Frost Stone House Museum will host artist and guerrilla grafter Margaretha Haughwout, who will be making seed bombs for tactical food forestry and discussing her Food Forest Futures installation at the Frost House as part of the 2021 Bennington Food Summit. Visit Sunrise's Pantry to see all the concrete supports they provide to their program participants and the greater Bennington County community.

"Food is central to everyone's existence; the ability to access healthy, nutritious food is a human right. With hard work, creative thinking, and collaborative effort, many groups in the town of Bennington are working hard to address food insecurity. We hope that the residents of Bennington will come out to support these amazing groups and their work," says Susan Sgorbati, director of the Center for the Advancement of Public Action at Bennington College.