courtesy Kristyn Achilich
Jenna Wilbur is a senior studying Environmental Studies with a minor in Digital Media & Communications at Saint Michael’s College. This article is published through a collaboration between The Winooski News and a journalism course at Saint Michael’s College.
WINOOSKI — When you enter Saint Michael’s Leahy Institute for the Environment, the first thing you notice is the table just inside the doorway: baskets of produce, mason jars of flowers, tinned hand salves and a refrigerator stocked with vegetables, all offered on a help-yourself system.
Beyond it, tall windows frame the teaching gardens, shelves hold nature-based learning materials and pictures of the Winooski River line the walls.
It’s a space rooted in the local landscape, which is exactly how Director of the Institute Kristyn Achilich approaches her work.
“We know we’re connected to, and thereby hold a responsibility for, the watershed,” she often tells her students.
Her work spans farming, ecological restoration, sustainability, and education to support the needs of families and learners in Winooski and beyond.
Q: To start, could you share a bit about how your work connects to communities, such as within the Winooski watershed?
A: We have five focused content areas connected to the watershed. Farm and food is on our two-acre farm; ecological restoration focuses on our 360-acre natural area on the Winooski-Colchester-Essex border; sustainability covers college operations; environmental analysis looks at soil and water quality; environmental education spurs behavior change.
We do this across four classrooms: the natural area, the farm, the facilities and the Champlain Valley watershed. We know we’re connected to and responsible for the watershed, and we call that out transparently in all programming.
Q: What originally drew you to focus on local food systems and sustainability education?
A: It felt very organic and natural. I studied biology and chemistry on the premed track and researched plant systems. I grew up in rural Maine around plants my whole life — paternal grandmothers with dark green thumbs — and just got excited about plants and their power in healthy communities.
In my 20s, I worked in preventative medicine and the outdoor industry, teaching backcountry skiing and mountain biking. I realized I liked teaching. I came back to Saint Mike’s for a master’s in education and license to teach high school science.
Every time I was at a workshop or took my students on a field trip, I felt this longing to be both working in the land and teaching about working the land.
That led me to a second master’s in food systems at UVM. I studied community food security, looking at structures that enabled or disabled food sovereignty and access to food. Education was central. I just dug deeper and stayed in that community food system space.
Q: Winooski and surrounding towns have faced both floods and droughts. How do you see those climate challenges intersecting with local food systems?
A: Privilege is going to have a lot of influence on the survival of folks. Monday night, I was at City Market, and a gentleman came by filling up large water bottles. He said, “We’re almost out.” I didn’t realize folks were starting to run out of water.
I got hit by the privilege stick hard that evening. I had a car, I had a membership, I still had water. And if I didn’t, I had the means and skills to ask and advocate for it.
There are many folks in river valleys and urban areas, like Burlington, the Intervale area, Winooski, that are inhabited by New Americans as part of the refugee resettlement program. Folks often can’t speak English, haven’t learned to drive, or been here long enough to work to purchase a car. They don’t have the same access to resources.
Climate change data quickly identified the northern poles of the U.S. as climate refugee sites. We don’t have the housing, infrastructure, or grocery stores. It’s an economic conundrum, a justice issue and an environmental crisis all rolled into one.
Q: When you think about the Winooski River and the surrounding watershed, what role do you see it playing in the community’s identity or daily life?
A: Our ecosystem, our rivers and our mountains very much shape our lives. Some of us moved here and feel a responsibility to do well by the land. Generational Vermonters grew up on the land, the land raised them. It’s a different mentality around land ownership and land stewardship, but the call is the same.
The original settlers of Winooski, the Abenaki, help us understand the relationship of the people to the land. Onion City is a descriptor given to this place by the people who walked the land every day.
Ramps, a type of wild onion, only grow in mixed hardwood forest areas along river banks. Winooski was originally wild with onions. Environmental and social events depleted them, but if you know where to look and how to harvest responsibly, you can still find them.
We have a food forest at SMC developed and stewarded by students. We hope this one small installation gets us a few steps closer to a reciprocal relationship with our native elders and community.
Ecologically diverse fields, meadows and forest mean better river health, healthier invertebrates and fish. City planners can embrace these methods or dedicate dollars to staffing positions with these skills. Dam removal has been hugely successful at restoring downstream health in the U.S.
Q: How can environmental education, especially hands-on learning, help people feel more connected to the environment and their local communities?
A: The engagement of students working in their community is a developmentally appropriate pedagogy. Agriculture becomes not the outcome but the tool to engage folks, repair land we’re using as our classroom and make intergenerational connections. That’s how we raised communities 80 years ago, in a community of care.
When you work the land shoulder-to-shoulder with students, those connections stay. It feels really natural, like what I need to do. Here’s hoping we can continue to educate and share resources with our immediate community and mobilize students to support our community.
Several years ago, we partnered with the DREAM program. We connected with families and educators in the Winooski School District. Students visited our farm, learned about farming in this climate, performed reciprocal service, built social capital, and took food home. They shared their cultures with our SMC students. They’ve visited on several occasions since.
Q: For an average person who wants to get involved in local sustainability, where is a good place to start?
A: I recommend the local schools. They’re community epicenters. City Market, the Intervale Center, and the Vermont Community Garden Network have volunteer programs. By going to these places and washing squash, you get exposed to the world, but you also get membership hours to increase your discount at the co-op; it’s a circular economy type of thing. But really, one question will lead to another.
Talk to people. Talk to the vendor at the farmers market or the clerk at the grocery store. Churches, community centers, the YMCA — there are so many intersection points. You just have to take initiative, go there and do the thing. Be the connector and learn by doing.