Carver Food Enterprise Center

09/04/2026

🍅 BIG news for our little (okay, increasingly enormous) tomato project! 🍅

Farm Credit of the Virginias is supporting our next round of Farm-to-School tomato sauce!

Their support will help us refine our process, complete product testing, and develop a shelf-stable sauce made by aggregating tomatoes from local farms; including the uglies, extras, and smaller harvests that can be harder to sell.

Huge thanks to Farmer D, Piedmont Farm & Greenhouse , Gardens of Khmet, and the Rapidan River Master Gardener for helping us tackle roughly a TON of tomatoes this season. Together, we're working toward a product that creates new markets for farmers while putting more local food into our schools. ❤️🍅

09/03/2026

We had such a wonderful time with the Transitions students yesterday! Spearheaded by our board president, and fearless partner, Lenah with Virginia Cooperative Extension - Culpeper Unit the students help process over 450lbs of produce in ONE day!

09/03/2026

THANK YOU!🍎

We are incredibly grateful to ServicePoint for their generous support of the Carver Food Enterprise Center Capital Campaign!

ServicePoint is a national technology services company built around innovation, reliability, and the idea that great things happen when people work together, and we are incredibly grateful that they chose to put those values to work right here in our community.

Their support brings us another step closer to completing our expansion and building a space that will create new opportunities for farmers, food businesses, and our entire regional food system. 💚

Every single dollar invested in this project has helped make this vision possible, and we are tremendously grateful to ServicePointfor being part of it.

🌱 Want to help us keep growing? Support the programs that will put this new infrastructure to work through our Zeffy page or Linktree:

👉 https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/donation-form/capital-for-community-food

09/02/2026

🍅💪 A ton of tomatoes later... 💪🍅

Tomato season has given us a few things: a LOT of delicious puree, a process we're getting pretty darn good at, and (as photographic evidence clearly demonstrates) absolutely enormous muscles. 😂

It has also given us tomato splatter. So. Much. Tomato. Splatter. Turns out a dicer can launch tomato approximately 20 feet when it really puts its mind to it.

And yes, those are a few green tomatoes you see! Tomato acidity can vary, which is especially important when developing a shelf-stable product, so a small amount of underripe fruit helps us manage acidity as we refine and test our recipe.

Huge thanks to every volunteer who has chopped, hauled, stirred, bagged, and, perhaps most importantly, helped us clean up the evidence. And huge shout out to Farm Credit of the Virginias for funding this work! ❤️🍅

09/01/2026

THANK YOU!🎆

We are incredibly grateful to PATH Foundation for their generous support of the Carver Food Enterprise Center Capital Campaign!

The PATH Foundation has been an incredible champion of ours from the very beginning; believing in our vision, our mission, and the potential of this work. When we reached out about the gap in our Capital Campaign, they not only stepped up with additional support, but helped champion our project to others, demonstrating their belief that strengthening our food system means investing in the infrastructure and solutions that address challenges at their roots. 💚

Their investment is helping us expand the Carver Food Enterprise Center and quadruple our production capacity, giving us the infrastructure to grow our Farm-to-School and food rescue programs while creating even more opportunities for local farmers and food entrepreneurs.

And we are SO excited to show it off! Construction is happening while we continue our work, and we can't wait to welcome our supporters and community into the expanded facility in 2027.

Every single dollar invested in this project has helped make this vision possible, and we are tremendously grateful to PATH Foundation for being part of it.

🌱 Want to help us keep growing? Support the programs that will put this new infrastructure to work through our Zeffy page or Linktree:

👉 https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/donation-form/capital-for-community-food

08/30/2026

🌽🍅 Do you have what it takes to be the Carver Local Food Challenge Champion? 👩‍🍳👨‍🍳
Gather your family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, or community group and join us for the inaugural Carver Local Food Challenge during the Culpeper County Farm Tour on Sunday, September 20!

Teams of 2–4 amateur cooks will put their creativity to the test by preparing an original dish featuring locally grown and locally made ingredients, including products from the Carver Food Enterprise Center.

🏆 Every participating team will receive a locally sourced prize basket, and top teams will take home additional prizes featuring products from local farms and food businesses!
Whether you're an experienced home cook or just love spending time in the kitchen, this family-friendly event is a fun way to:
🥕 Celebrate local agriculture
🍎 Showcase your culinary creativity
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Spend time cooking together
🌾 Support Culpeper's farms and food businesses
📅 Sunday, September 20, 2026
📍 Carver Food Enterprise Center (during the Culpeper Harvest Days Farm Tour)
👥 Teams of 2–4 (ages 9+ with at least one adult per team)
📝 Registration closes Thursday, September 17

🔗 Register today: https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/carver-local-food-challenge. (Or check our linktree in our bio :)

Tag your teammates and start planning your winning dish! 🍽️

08/29/2026

🍅🧅🍉 Summertime Harvest Day at Carver! 🍉🧅🍅

Every summer, there comes a point when local produce just seems to drift across our loading dock. A few onions here. Watermelons there. Tomatoes.... SO MANY tomatoes. Whatever our farmers and community partners have in abundance, we do our best to find a home for it.

So while one crew was busy making strawberry ice pops for Farm-to-School, the rest of our volunteers turned the kitchen into a full-blown summer harvest processing operation.

🧅 Onions were diced and frozen for future Feeding500 meals.
🍉 Watermelon became a surprisingly delicious salted watermelon ice pop for our local food bank partners.
🍅 And, because apparently August at Carver is legally required to involve tomatoes, another round was cooked down and frozen in preparation for our BIG sauce-making days ahead. Plus some bonus tomatillos!

This is one of our favorite parts of Feeding500. Not every donation is enough to make 500 servings of something on its own, and it doesn’t have to be. By processing and preserving each harvest as it comes through the door, we can combine those ingredients into meals months down the road.

A little bit here + a little bit there = a whole lot of local food that doesn't go to waste. 💚

Huge thanks to the volunteers who somehow kept ALL of this moving at once!

08/28/2026

We are so excited to be the recipient of the Farm Credit of the Virginias’ Charitable Contributions Fund! Our proposal included expanding our farm to school work while creating recipes for our value added production lines. Shelf stable tomato sauce and fruit compotes coming to schools near you soon!
Thank you Farm Credit of the Virginias!!

Drum roll please... We're thrilled to announce the 2026 Charitable Contributions Fund grant recipients. This year, we awarded $130,000 in funding to support the efforts of 16 organizations. This year's recipients are seeking to strengthen agriculture and the rural communities we serve through projects that advance youth agriculture involvement and education, farm safety, food security and more.

Grant recipients include the Appalachian Farm & Food Alliance, Augusta Health, Common Grain Alliance, Fauquier County 4-H, Rappahannock County 4-H, Carver Food Enterprise Center, Gilmer County Farm Show, Monongalia County Fair, Randolph County Fair, Southwest Virginia 4-H Educational Center, West Virginia Food & Farm Coalition and more.

Read the press release to view the complete list of grant recipients and learn how the funds will be used: https://bit.ly/4zGyixc

08/28/2026

THANK YOU!👏

We are incredibly grateful to AECOM Tishman for their generous support of the Carver Food Enterprise Center Capital Campaign!

As a company with a long history of building infrastructure that shapes communities, AECOM Tishman’s investment in our Capital Campaign feels especially meaningful. We’re incredibly grateful for their support as we build the food infrastructure our region needs to help local farmers, food businesses, and families thrive.

This expansion is more than additional space and equipment. It is an investment in critical regional food processing infrastructure and in Carver's role as a hub for economic development, agricultural innovation, workforce training, and community food access.

And we are SO excited to show it off! Construction is happening while we continue our work, and we can't wait to welcome our supporters and community into the expanded facility in 2027.

Every single dollar invested in this project has helped make this vision possible, and we are tremendously grateful to AECOM Tishman for being part of it.

🌱 Want to help us keep growing? Support the programs that will put this new infrastructure to work through our Zeffy page or Linktree:

👉 https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/donation-form/capital-for-community-food

08/28/2026

🍓 Strawberry Pop Production: we’ve got this down!!!

Another batch of strawberry ice pops are in the freezer and dedicated for our Farm-to-School program.

After making these beauties all summer, we officially have the process down to a science: thaw, puree, pour, package, repeat! With some of our seasoned volunteers at their stations, we’re basically a well-oiled pop-making machine.

A huge thank you to the PATH Foundation’s Let’s Volunteer Grant for supporting these volunteer days and helping us transform local strawberries into a pretty fantastic back-to-school treat. And for our partners with Virginia Cooperative Extension - Culpeper Unit for coming up with this pop-ticular plan💚

And while all this was happening on one side of the kitchen... let’s just say the other side was taking full advantage of August harvest season. More on that soon. 👀🍅🧅🍉