Patients and staff at Lebanon’s Alice Peck Day Hospital, as well as residents of its Harvest Hill assisted-living and independent-living retirement community, can look forward to more fresh, locally grown vegetables on their plates this fall and winter. That’s because a new high-tunnel greenhouse is going up at Acorn Hill Farm in Lyme, which is a regular source of produce for the hospital and its affiliated retirement community.

The hospital—known around the Upper Valley as APD—is a leader in the New Hampshire health care community in serving fresh, locally produced foods to patients, staff, visitors and residents. It is one of five New Hampshire hospitals that have signed on to the ‘Healthy food in health care’ pledge—along with Cheshire Medical Center-Dartmouth Hitchcock in Keene, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, St. Joseph Healthcare in Nashua, and Littleton Regional Hospital. Nationwide, 350 hospitals have signed the healthy food pledge.

“It’s great stuff,” APD Food Services Director Sam Fazio says of the Acorn Hill vegetables, and other locally produced foods the hospital serves. “The quality really is superior.” The prices can also be higher, he allows. “You have to work it into the budget.” Fazio says their produce distributor Upper Valley Produce is carrying more locally grown produce all the time. “We just have to specify that we want local,” he says.

“We’ve taken the pledge,” Fazio says, referring to the ‘Healthy food in health care’ pledge which is part of the global ‘Health Care without Harm’ initiative (visit www.noharm.org). Healthy food efforts at APD and Harvest Hill involve staff and volunteers, too. Members of the hospital auxiliary tend a 600-square foot garden, growing vegetables and a variety of herbs that are also used in meals prepared by the dining services chefs.

Janine Johnson Weins, owner of Acorn Hill Farm, has created attractive, easy-to-read ‘cue cards’ that have become a popular mealtime feature at the hospital and among Harvest Hill residents. The cards provide nutrition facts, plus historical or cultural background about each vegetable or herb. Weins says the nurses and hospital staff can use the cards to help patients with menu selections.

“The cards are great for people in the hospital, or for residents at Harvest Hill,” Fazio says. “They’re great conversation starters. People learn about—and think about—what they are eating. They can be learning while they are eating.”

After a career in engineering, Weins in 2002 inherited and returned to the 150-acre farm where she had grown up, on the south-facing slope of Acorn Hill in Lyme. She undertook restoration of the buildings and gardens, and has established a thriving, certified-organic vegetable farm. The farm motto, “Because food SHOULD be exciting,” underlines Weins’s colorful vegetable logo. APD and Harvest Hill, along with several Upper Valley restaurants, are the primary markets for Acorn Hill Farm. Weins also sells her produce at the Lebanon Farmers Market.

Visitors to Weins’s farm on Acorn Hill find meticulously kept vegetable fields, and a farmstead with two antique English barns, and a unique brick-fronted greenhouse designed by a neighbor. The 30’ X 72’ high-tunnel greenhouse that will lengthen the seasons of fresh vegetables destined for APD dining services, is being erected on a 150-foot long track. The plastic-covered greenhouse structure slides on tracks, an innovation made popular by Maine season-extension guru Eliot Coleman. The house can be positioned over tomatoes in the fall to keep them ripening after frost, for example, and then slid down to the next section that might have been planted with greens and leeks. Weins plans to grow spinach, carrots, winter onions, beets, chard and wild arugula this winter.

Lorraine Merrill, Commissioner
(reprinted from the Weekly Market Bulletin published by the Department of Agriculture, Markets, & Food, Sept.7, 2011)