Barney and Chris are the owners of Sunrise Orchards, a family-run apple farm in Cornwall that became a Vermont Foodbank donor in 2025, when Barney reached out to offer the Foodbank more than 120 bushels of Paula Red apples, ensuring more neighbors could have access to the tasty autumn treat.
Since then, they have become Foodbank partners through the Vermonters Feeding Vermonters program.
Working with the Foodbank aligns with Barney and Chris’ core business value: build good, solid relationships.
Those relationships, Barney says, go in all directions. Customers, employees, vendors, the local community—they’re all connected and they all matter in creating a stronger, healthier world.
“I think that there’s a benefit that can’t be measured in building relationships around things that support the community,” Barney says. “We have a lot of good will here. Like, it goes both ways. People support…Sunrise Orchards and they know we do good things and I mean, that good will, what comes around goes around, right?”
This philosophy extends beyond human relationships for Sunrise Orchards. Barney knows it’s possible to produce big crops using fungicides and pesticides throughout the growing season. But for him, it’s more important to grow apples responsibly and preserve the land his family has farmed for over 50 years. Their farming practices, that good relationship with the earth, he says, keep the apples eco-certified by an independent program, and it makes him feel good to know he’s providing healthy, conscientiously grown apples.
And with the ongoing food-sourcing relationship the farm now has with the Foodbank, more community members will have access to Sunrise Orchards’ fruit for their holiday meals this year.Apples and other local produce will be distributed through Vermont Foodbank events and partnering food shelves in time for festive celebrations.
“The Foodbank…serves a really important role in providing healthy food to families in need within Vermont,” Barney says. “And I want to control a little bit more of directing what we can when we can, in a more targeted way. So, I feel like the Foodbank allows that to happen.”
And what relationship does the apple have with Chris and Barney’s own holiday menu? Pie. Chris and all three of their kids make the best pies, Barney says. As for recipe tips and tricks, it’s best to use a variety of apples. But there’s a caveat:
“A McIntosh pie will be too runny but not having a McIntosh in your pie is a mistake.
The Montpelier Community Market—a Vermont Foodbank partner—and the Central Vermont Refugee Action Network are working together, with support from you, to ensure that families have access to favorite, familiar foods in all seasons.
Hunger is solvable. Its causes include policy choices, economic conditions, and structural inequities. Vermont Foodbank is committed to helping change these factors so that everyone in Vermont has equitable access to enough nourishing food to thrive.
Forty years ago, Vermont Foodbank came to be. Today, it is Vermont’s largest hunger relief organization. But why was it created in the first place?
