Part of the Solution Dairy Farmers Talk About Clean Water
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Staying grounded in tough times Vermont Land Trust page 2 Panorama2020 Views from the forest and field Spring Kyle Gray Kyle Clara Ayer of Fairmont Farm has been working with VLT to protect water quality in the Winooski River. Part of the Solution Dairy Farmers Talk About Clean Water By Gaen Murphree lara Ayer is back at work after being home with her now two-month-old Ctwins. As she walks through the barn, on the land where she grew up “We have seven kids under in East Montpelier, co-workers welcome her. The herdsman who works the barn’s “maternity ward” (himself a dad of twins) gives Clara a thumbs up. six in our extended family, She checks on the moms-to-be; they all look comfortable. and we want good futures As we walk into the calf barn, she says, “I did a lot of calf chores growing for them.” up, and I loved that.” When her three-year-old was a baby, Clara said, she’d – Clara Ayer, sometimes strap him into the carrier while she fed the calves. When he Fairmont Farm got to be a toddler, he’d zoom up and down the central aisle in his walker as she worked. (continued on p. 3) 2 ••• Spring 2020 Panorama Vermont Land Trust From the President | Nick Richardson Staying Grounded n times of crisis, Vermonters pull closer together. IThe coronavirus tests that—when the best thing we can do for ourselves and for one another is Vermont Land Trust to create physical distance. It’s a challenge we all share; let’s make it a source of connection. Conserving Land for the Future of Vermont At the Vermont Land Trust, we are grateful for The Vermont Land Trust is a private, the natural places that you have helped to protect, nonprofit, member-supported land as they ground us in difficult times. We are also conservation organization that has worked grateful for the outpouring of support for farmers that we have seen. with families, communities, farmers, Like many other organizations, we have cancelled our in-person and forestland owners since 1977 to events through August and our staff is working remotely. Because the conserve nearly 600,000 acres. situation facing Vermont changes by the week, we invite you to sign up We publish Panorama three times a year. for our e-newsletter or to follow us on social media, as we are posting For inquiries about our publications, news, ways to help, and educational content to help get us through please contact [email protected]. this time. (See page 23 for more on this.) We have offices around the state, listed We don’t know what the weeks below. Direct phone numbers for and months ahead will bring— It’s a time for all of us individual staff members can be found but we are stronger together than to recommit to what at vlt.org/contact or by calling our main we are apart. It’s a time for all of office at (802) 223-5234. Our Board matters most. of Trustees is listed at vlt.org/board. us to recommit and reconnect to what matters most. This could be deepened gratitude for local food, HEADQUARTERS wonder at the returning cedar waxwings and finches, curiosity among 8 Bailey Ave., Montpelier, VT 05602 (802) 223-5234 our children as they explore backyards and woods, or extending help [email protected] to those in need. CHAMPLAIN VALLEY VLT’s purpose over the next several months is simple—to help PO Box 850, Richmond, VT 05477 (802) 434-3079 Vermonters take care of themselves, take care of our community, and KING FARM reconnect to this place we call home. 128 King Farm Rd., Woodstock, VT 05091 I wish all of you peace and good health over the weeks and months (802) 457-2369 to come. Your continued support matters a great deal during this time MAD RIVER VALLEY PO Box 432, Waitsfield, VT 05673 of economic uncertainty. Providing access to land, and all that it has to (802) 496-3690 offer, is more important than ever. u NORTHEAST KINGDOM 171 Scott Farm Rd., Newport, VT 05885 (802) 748-6089 SOUTHEAST VERMONT 54 Linden St., Brattleboro, VT 05301 (802) 251-6008 Notice: At the time of printing, all offices are closed for public health reasons SOUTHWEST VERMONT and staff are working remotely from home offices. 10 Furnace Grove Rd., Bennington, VT 05201 (802) 442-4915 Vermont Land Trust Panorama Spring 2020 ••• 3 A Complex Problem As Vermont struggles to address phosphorus overload in Lake Champlain, there’s been a lot of wrangling over who’s to blame when a hot stretch in July paints the waters with yet another bloom of toxic cyanobacteria. Ben Gabos Phosphorus, found in manure and other fertilizers, is also a naturally occurring element that binds to soil. Each particle of soil that reaches Lake Champlain—from a plowed Above: Fairmont Farm field, an eroding streambank, a is working with VLT construction site, a road, your lawn— to conserve this stretch brings phosphorus. According to of the Winooski River. the EPA, 41% of the phosphorus Right: Blue Spruce Farm going into the lake comes from in Bridport uses dragline farming, and 37% from forests and manure aeration, which streams. Roads and development Courtesy Blue Spruce Farm Blue Spruce Courtesy injects manure directly add 18%, and wastewater treatment into soil rather than on plants contribute 4%. the surface—meaning The EPA gave Vermont until 2038 less fuel use and less soil to reduce phosphorus entering the lake compaction because by 213 metric tons a year. In 2019, manure tankers are not the best year yet, we reduced it by driven on fields. 16.4 metric tons. Almost all of that reduction came from farms, according to a Vermont Clean Water Initiative Dairy Farmers Talk About Clean Water report. However, making changes (continued from p. 1) for clean water on farms, such as improving manure storage or making Clara is part of the extended family We want them to grow up in a time barnyard upgrades, can cost farmers tens that owns Fairmont Farm. They milk when the land and water and resources to hundreds of thousands of dollars. 1,450 cows and crop around 4,000 are good quality and there’s going to The current economic climate in the acres, including 1,600 conserved acres be a bright future for everybody.” dairy industry adds to the challenge. in five towns. Some of that clean water effort has In the past decade, the price paid to Not far from the barn, the Winooski involved VLT. “We’re now working farmers for their milk has declined and River winds its way towards Lake with Fairmont Farm to protect half the state’s lost one-third of its dairies. Champlain. Clara and her family, a mile along the Winooski River in Organic milk is now subject to some like other farmers interviewed for this Marshfield,” said VLT’s Britt Haselton. of the same volatilities as conventional story, have been working to support “The river will be allowed to meander milk. There is more supply than cleaner water in the river and the lake. and will be surrounded by newly planted demand, so distributors aren’t taking “We have seven kids under six in our trees and shrubs. We’re also helping on any new farms and are cutting extended family, and we want good them conserve land in East Montpelier back how much milk they will buy futures for them,” explained Clara. where we’ll work with volunteers to from existing organic farms. “And, it’s way beyond the farm… plant 200 trees along a tributary.” (continued on p. 8) 4 ••• Spring 2020 Panorama Vermont Land Trust The Tranquility and Beauty of Really Old Forests By Liz Thompson, VLT’s Director of Conservation Science s a teenager, I loved being in the woods. I felt A at peace there, far from the noisy crowds at school. The woods were quiet, but there were also signs of a once busy place, of fields and plows and grazing animals. I saw stone walls, abandoned roads, and old cellar holes wherever I went. And the trees were small. This was a new forest, grown up on former farmland. My home in eastern Massachusetts was only a few miles from Henry David Thoreau’s cabin on Walden Pond. The woods he walked in the early 1800s were even younger than the ones I knew in the 1970s. Thoreau wondered what he wasn’t seeing. He wrote: “…no one has yet described for me the difference between that wild forest which once occupied our oldest townships, and the tame one which I find there to-day. It is a difference which would be worth attending to…” On returning from the wilds of Maine, where he saw some very old forests, he wrote about that difference: “[The Massachusetts forest] has lost its wild, damp, and shaggy look; the countless fallen and decaying trees are gone, and consequently that thick coat of moss which lived on them is gone too. The earth is comparatively bare and smooth and dry.” Bare and smooth and dry. That’s how I remem- ber the forest floor near my childhood home. • When I started working as an ecologist in Vermont, I sought out old forest. I wanted to know: what was “that wild forest”? What might it have looked like before Europeans settled and “tamed” the land? Gifford Woods State Park VLT’s Pieter van Loon and Jack Minich admire an old sugar maple in in Killington was among the places I explored Andover.