Agriculture

The staff of Little Rivers Health Care is planting a community food garden this spring.

As discussions of land use persists, solar grazing promotes dual-use of space

The seasonal shift adds a whiff to the air that signals the start of spring.

NOFA-VT is lobbying to include the program in this year’s budget bill.

As sugaring season comes to a close, Eddy reflects on his first year as a sugarmaker and what brought him to his shack.

Legislators are debating how to reformat a law that would exempt farmers from municipal regulation

H.537 passed the House on March 20 and is now in the Senate Committee on Economic Development.

The event on Saturday featured syrup tastings, live entertainment and more activities to celebrate Vermont’s cherished good.

Homecoming Seeds cultivates varieties to extend the state’s short growing season.

Producers adopt new methods as climate change disrupts sugaring season.

The Hinesburg farm sells fresh produce and finds a way to feed neighbors in need

Local mushroom growers are working toward a more sustainable food system, powered by a greener good.

The advocacy group will zero in on PFAS, local regulations and more on behalf of local farmers

It may be home to Ben & Jerry’s Factory Store, but Waterbury’s last three dairy farms were driven out of business. Their former owners struggle to let go.

As solar grows, so does Vermont’s capacity for agrivoltaics — the dual use of land on solar farms for agriculture.

BLUE BTV is giving residents up to $2,000 for rain gardens, permeable driveways and other fixes to reduce phosphorus flowing into Lake Champlain.

Q&A with Kristyn Achilich, director of the Saint Michael’s Leahy Institute for the Environment

Brothers transform their family dairy into an organic distillery, crafting grain-to-glass whiskey on their Hardwick farm.

A new wave of agritech tools — from maple monitors to virtual fences — is revolutionizing how small farms manage labor, costs, and climate challenges.

Growers gathered at Sam Mazza’s Farm last Saturday to see who had the biggest pumpkin.

“I like to think that, spiritually, if you wanna put it that way, that the Christmas trees know they’re being grown as Christmas trees. They’re happy with their fate. I’m good with that. And I always say, you cut it down – I’m gonna plant another, don’t worry,” said Steve Moffat of Moffat’s Tree Farm. 

Community Supported Agriculture, also known as a CSA, has taken over the Vermont agriculture world. As farms deal with and adapt to climate change, their members are seeing how a warming world creeps onto their dinner plates.

The Bobolink Project pays owners of fields, often farmers, to conduct bird-friendly practices. The birds get time and habitat to nest while the landowners get some compensation for letting them do so.

A St. Albans food digester that opened in May transforms organic waste into energy, fertilizer, and water. 

“These young people could have jobs doing other things, but they’re choosing to work really hard and they’re choosing to come out here in the elements and spend their time doing manual physical labor that then makes a strong change in their state” said Devon Cooke, director of development and community at Vermont Youth Conservation Corps. 

Branch out Burlington, a tree nursery located in the University of Vermont Horticulture Farm, has been providing trees to Vermont towns and organizations for nearly the last 30 years.

“They were lying on top of the hay bales staring up at the sky, watching for shooting stars.”

A food-start up bill exempts home based food producers from requiring state food safety permits if they keep their sales under $30,000.

Watching the cheddar cheese–making process is the centerpoint of Shelburne Farms’ “Sun to Cheese” tour, which opened May 10 and runs into October. 

Since 1900, annual temperatures in Vermont have increased by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit, and annual precipitation has increased by 21% over the same span, according to the state.

A sound art portrait of Bekah Gordon, a farmer and teacher at Bread & Butter Farm in Shelburne.

Chocolate is one of Vermont’s top food exports. But cacao doesn’t grow here — and climate change has been disrupting the global supply chain.

Someone’s grandparents always seem to remember one, and sometimes you can still find the scuffs and scrapes of shoes and boots on the floors. But where’d those hoedowns go?

The goats’ milk is creamed into an increasingly popular treat in the U.S., velvety caramel.

The state’s agriculture industries are paying close attention to prices on products they use.

A House committee recently heard the introduction of seven new bills covering five topics legislators hope to tackle.

Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship When one of Vermont’s oldest lumber mills, run by the A. Johnson Company in Bristol, shut down its saws in 2023 after 117 years in business, it seemed like another sign of a waning timber industry.  Now, a sweeping executive order from President Donald Trump […]

Over the last two years, “persistently rainy conditions made many forested areas too wet to harvest,” a logging industry rep told legislators.

Farmers say it helps secure their bottom line, and officials in and outside the Legislature say it’s vital to curbing hunger. 

Immigration crackdown makes migrant dairy workers vulnerable, advocates say

The biochar project is designed to help curb methane emissions from cow manure at the sprawling property along Lake Champlain.

Native plants provide the preferred food source, habitat and host for native birds and pollinators, as well as prevent invasive species from moving in.

Guy Crosby collects plastic waste from farms and brings them to a landfill in New Hampshire, where they are compacted into a bale. 

Legislators were eyeing a pool of $7.5 million for the 2026 fiscal year, though the bill on the Senate floor now leaves the price tag to be determined.

“The access to fresh locally grown food is something that they’ll miss,” said a founder.

Sustainable Charlotte connects a community that’s committed to sustainability.

The bill is modeled after California’s 2024 School Food Safety Act.

VCIH has grown to serve and teach clients across the U.S.

About half the shares of Calabash Gardens are owned by family and friends, and 39% are owned by people of color.

A judge in August sided with the cannabis and duck farmer, but his neighbors are pursuing an appeal of that decision.

The survey, done with the University of Massachusetts Amherst Labor Center, focused on 212 Spanish-speaking migrants working on farms.

On a recent afternoon, entrepreneurs like Adriana Munch congregated in the warehouse, sinking their boots into disinfectant and slipping past each other as they hunkered down in kitchens.

The Heritage Winooski Mill Museum, which organized the fair, brimmed with posters, quilts and blankets as exhibits traced the threads between modern Winooski and its wool manufacturing past. 

Farmers in Vermont and in Latin America face many of the same challenges, and events like the picnic help make that connection for people here, an organizer said.

The mission is to reduce the distance pollinators like bees and butterflies must go to get nectar and pollen. The gardens, in effect, form a highway.

“We’re trying to start small and tackle this issue,” said a junior involved in the effort. “It’s hard to see the world destructing and not take action.”

A number of Vermont vineyards and wineries practice regenerative agriculture — that goes beyond minimizing farming’s costs on land to instead help restore it.

The project was showcased as a success story for collaborations between municipalities and businesses coming together to spur economic development in Vermont’s small towns.

The products, the Wisemans say, can boost immune systems, improve memory and energy and spur a range of other healthy body functions.

It has become increasingly more expensive to keep and repopulate his hives, the vetoed bill’s sponsor said, because colonies are dying at faster rates in recent years.

The couple formed the sanctuary in 2017, first in the town of Washington, then in 2019 they moved their setup to Tunbridge.

Many black artists and historians have gathered for the past five years at Clemmons farm to discuss Black history and culture in Vermont.

Vermont only has five medical cannabis dispensaries as opposed to at least 51 recreational businesses opening within the last two years.

The institute, its partners and others in the sustainability industry see the practice — dubbed “peecycling” — as a cheap, easy and less-destructive method than synthetic fertilizer.

Over the past two years of partnering with farms, Farm Stand Together has provided over 250 families with access to organic food.

In a survey by the state after last summer’s flooding, 70% of farmers said they didn’t have crop or livestock insurance. Another 10% said the insurance didn’t apply to their industry — meaning only around one in five had coverage for those losses.

Mark Krawczyk grew up in the suburbs in Wisconsin and entered the farming world through holistic planning and designing permaculture zones.

Ben Mattern, a senior at Thetford Academy, lives and works on Mt. Pleasant Farm in Tunbridge, Vermont.

To Amanda Adams, growing on her family’s land was not only an opportunity to start something new, but a chance to give back to the land.

Abdoulaye Niane is from Senegal, and he also has lived in Italy, New York and Minnesota before he moved to Berlin, Vermont, 13 years ago. 

By meeting a slew of conditions, producers wouldn’t need inspections to sell raw chicken products from the farm, at farmers markets or to restaurants in Vermont.

Students from Windham Elementary School and Compass Middle School were tasked with the mushroom selection.

The bill would rebrand the board that sets rules for implementing Act 250.

Once collapsing ruins, the two old barns are becoming rustic venues.

The most heated debate arose over a topic that wasn’t even up for a vote: construction of a new fire department.

Montalban asked neighbors within a 3-mile radius to not use seeds treated with the pesticide, and he said many have been receptive to the request.

Neonicotinoids are insecticides that coat plants’ seeds, so the toxins are taken up into a plant’s tissue as it grows.

About 75 cows died after a fire broke Jan. 20 and turned a 400-foot-long barn into a pile of rubble and ash. 

The Community News Service is a program in which University of Vermont students work with professional editors to provide content for local news outlets at no cost. A team of scientists at the University of Vermont believe meat lovers will soon reach for a substitute for their beef, chicken and pork that’s made in a […]

Agricultural, food and nutrition advocates in the state want to see increased focus on climate, protection for nutrition initiatives and stronger support for small-scale growers and dairy farmers, among other things, in the next bill.

Quacking ducks, the baas of sheep and bleats of goats, horses snorting, pigs and turkeys roaming about — another day for the crew of rescued animals who live new lives in this haven off Lime Kiln Road.

The situation around Struthers, his weed and his ducks has evolved into yelling matches, lawsuits, letters to legislators and an Essex Junction neighborhood on edge.

Fourth generation farmer Keith Sprague, 52, has watched the dairy farms around him in Brookfield disappear.

The July 10 floods that decimated many Vermont farms’ crops had squashed Winooski’s pumpkin prospects.

Virginia Barlow, Dave Mance, Amy Peberdy and Patrick White have worked together for decades now, creating and publishing the Northern Woodlands Magazine, a quarterly chronicle of the forests of the Northeast. For the past four years, however, they have dedicated themselves to something a little closer to home: the Vermont Almanac.

Fewer than one-fifth of agricultural business applicants had received payments. Those that did, on average, received tens of thousands of dollars less than needed.

On Sept. 30, Goodling will join other Vermont sheep farmers and New England fiber artists for the 35th Vermont Sheep & Wool Festival at the Tunbridge Fairgrounds.

Farmers are grappling with what could soon be a hay shortage that threatens their livelihoods and the normal food routines of their animals.

Even though Winooksi was spared direct damages from the recent Vermont floods, farms that benefit businesses and food programs in the city have been wiped out, causing delays in restaurants and disrupting free food services people relied on. 

Even with these losses, and 10 of the 45 acres of pasture taking significant water damage, Sanford-Long considered herself one of the luckier farms last week.

Vermont is the only state in the country where farmers cannot readily access a program meant to pay them back for restoring habitats around their farms.

Whether towns and cities can charge farms for stormwater utility fees is at the center of a bubbling debate between state agriculture officials and municipal leaders around Vermont. 

A bill to help small farmers diversify their products with a new grant program crossed over from the House to the Senate, but not without a significant cut in the money behind it. 

As lawmakers aim to make universal school meals a permanent measure, they are also looking to make sure more of those meals are made with local food. 

Lawmakers are looking to create a new grant program to help small farmers diversify their products or transition from one type of farm to another.

Eleven organic dairy farms in Vermont closed in 2021. The next year, 18 more followed. And this year the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont expects to lose another 28 farms. 

Apple-picking season is back in Vermont, and orchards across the state are starting to come alive with visitors — and apples. The Other Paper checked in with three orchards across the Champlain Valley to see what their owners think about this year’s fall fun. Shelburne Orchards For Nick Cowles, running Shelburne Orchards is a family […]

Historically, the Charlotte Grange acted as a society of farmers, a place for them to socialize, sell their wares and seek support from one another.

It was a problem just waiting to be solved and all it took was a few Harwood students asking “why?” to tackle it.