Grow More, Waste Less - Food Systems Consulting empowers people to affect positive food system change, from the ground up. Cat Buxton is our change facilitator. She is an effective and enthusiastic presenter, community organizer, project manager, and an advocate for regenerative food systems and a healthy environment. She offers coaching and consulting to all ages about composting, gardening, building soil, landscape planning, farm-to-school, and working toward zero waste. She won the 2015 Jack Cook Award at the Northeast Organic Farmers Association (NOFA-VT) Winter Conference for her work in ‘Growing The Good Food Movement’ during her years working with Cedar Circle Farm. Contact Cat at growmorewasteless.com.

Cat is the garden manager for Thetford Elementary School’s edible schoolyard, a project she co-founded in 2007. She manages the gardens from seed to harvest and coordinates project based education activities with the K-6 school teaching staff, to do with soil, food and food production.

Regeneration Corps is a learning collaboration between high school-aged students in Vermont and leading organizations in resilience and agriculture. This partnership is supporting the academic needs of students while priming them for engagement with transitions through acute challenges of our time. The existing Flexible Pathways (FP) personalized learning option and Proficiency-Based Learning (PBL) evaluation system anchor this opportunity for young people in Vermont to work for community resilience. Learn more about What We Do. www.regenerationcorps.org

The Upper Valley Apple Corps is a volunteer initiative working to establish a perennial edible Upper Valley landscape, free for the picking, that is inhabited by people with all the skills, community, and awareness they need to build a resilient local foods culture to meet the future with confidence.

The Latham Works Neighborhood Working Group is committed to cleaning up our neighborhood and making it a safer place to live. In the short term we will transform a neglected piece of Town property into a wheelchair-friendly Forest Garden trail that is safe, educational and productive, to connect and celebrate the water, land and people of our neighborhood.In the long term we want to help develop a Hartford Riverwalk trail connecting our neighborhood to the downtown by way of the beautiful confluence of the White and Connecticut Rivers.

I work with the school staff and community volunteers to create productive outdoor spaces and systems that support environmental education and promote healthy people and communities.

Cat is the field organizer and social media coordinator for the Vermont Right To Know GMOs Coalition who championed Vermont’s first-in-the-nation GMO food labeling law in 2014. Coalitions member organizations are VPIRG, Rural Vermont, NOFA VT, Cedar Circle Farm, and Grow More, Waste Less. The coalition dispersed shortly after our law was superseded in July 2016 by a national GMO labeling law. http://www.vtrighttoknowgmos.org/who-we-are/

Cat coordinated the education programs for Cedar Circle Farm & Education Center from 2007-2014 leading farm tours, planning events large and small, teaching, pioneering farm to school programs and community gardens, and promoting food policy through grassroots organizing.