Chittenden County farms join forces to ensure their future

This story by Liberty Darr was first published in the Other Paper on July 18.

What does the future of farming in Vermont look like?

For a group of four prominent farmers in South Burlington and Shelburne — Bread and Butter Farm, Killeen Crossroads Farm, Blank Page Café and Chrysalis Landworks — a future might only be possible by working together.

Through a new nonprofit known as The Agrihood Collective, these farmers are exploring solutions to the ever-growing challenges of working in agriculture and are collaborating on an innovative land-ownership model in partnership with the Vermont Land Trust.

And now, plans are coming to fruition as the group moves through fundraising to purchase nearly 360 acres of land in South Burlington to support its agricultural dreams to build a comprehensive shared-farm infrastructure.

There is no surprise that the nature of farming is shifting. In addition to the daily, labor-intensive work — most work from sunup to sundown — farmers must also adapt to a changing climate and unpredictable weather events, increasing infrastructure costs and a housing crisis that leaves many workers earning low wages without a place to live.

“We understand that there are absolutely critical issues that we are currently facing in our farming community,” Brie Gelinas, co-director of the new nonprofit, said. “We’re talking about the foundation of what Vermont is. Vermont is not Vermont without farms, and even though there’s a lot of land and there’s a lot of abundance, what’s happening is that land is becoming increasingly unaffordable to a farmer. There’s also a challenge with affordable infrastructure, and that’s due to the soaring equipment costs. We also have a challenge with the retention of the workforce, and that’s because there is this housing crisis and, obviously, inflation just exacerbates an already very huge problem.”

The idea of the collective is relatively simple, she said. If farms pool their resources, the rate of survival is inherently higher.

The nonprofit’s founders — whose farms sit within a one-mile radius of each other — collectively provide fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, eggs and value-added products to over 13,500 customers. They feed more than 450 households weekly with organic produce through community supported agriculture, or CSA, and offer food and land education programs and 150-plus events each year.

Big vision

The larger vision for the new farm began in 2017 when Bread and Butter Farm, spearheaded by owner Corie Peirce, saw a “for sale sign” posted on the old Auclair Farm almost directly across the street from her farm, which straddles the South Burlington and Shelburne town line just off Cheesefactory Road.

“When we saw the for-sale sign posted on the Auclair Farm, we immediately acted to find a way to protect its place as an open landscape and working farm in our community. We approached the city of South Burlington and received an overwhelmingly positive response to pursue a conservation path for this land,” the farmers wrote in 2018.

The city fronted nearly $605,000 in open space money to help in the conservation of portions of the land with the Vermont Land Trust, which currently owns the land.

“We’ve partnered with them, we’ve conserved the land, brought the cost of the land down, and now we need to finalize that,” Gelinas, who joined the nonprofit team last year, said. “The final step is to purchase those 360 acres from them.”

Abby White, vice president for engagement at the Vermont Land Trust, said her team has been collaborating with the collective, and has even helped fundraising efforts for Agrihood to eventually purchase the 360 acres.

“If we want to be successful in protecting land, particularly farmland, we have to ensure that the farmers who are working that land are also successful,” she said. “What’s really exciting about The Agrihood Collective is that it is an innovative way for farmers to come together and figure out how to be economically viable on the land.”

A massive win came when the collective received a recent donation of just under $1 million to purchase a 13-acre stretch of developable land just north of the property from the nonprofit Dirt Capitals Partners.

By the end of the month, the transaction should be signed, sealed and delivered, Gelinas said.

That is where the group envisions a commercial kitchen, freezer refrigeration, shared farming equipment and a possible event space. More important, it is where the collective plans to build housing that’s affordable for its workers.

Of the $750,000 needed to buy the separate 360-acre property, the collective has already raised nearly $435,000. But receiving the $1 million donation for the 13 acres sent a much-needed message of support to the team.

“Receiving that donation was a huge movement in the right direction, and helped us to really go, ‘OK, this is something that can work, this is something that people believe in,’” Gelinas said. “It’s not just us on the inner circle that are hopeful and wishing for this to exist.”

City council members in South Burlington attended an event at Bread and Butter Farms last month that focused on the Agrihood Collective and they showed overwhelming support for the project at a council meeting in July.

“I’m very proud of the city’s role in that it helped conserve those 400 acres,” city councilor Andrew Chalnick said. “Lots of excitement there about the conservation, about what they’re doing on the land, and the regenerative agriculture, and just how important that local food production is to South Burlington, Chittenden County and the state of Vermont.”

Gelinas anticipates that as the nonprofit moves into a new phase of more public fundraising efforts, events across all the farms like the one last month will pop-up in coming months. The “community conversations,” as they refer to them, are to grow increasing support from community members while looking for continued donations to purchase the land this year.

“This is such a critical moment for farming in Vermont, which is such a farm state,” she said. “It’s really the core fabric of what ties the community together. It’s what has been so part of the history of Vermont, as well as the economics. So, I think people deeply care about farming. They really care about the land, and they’re also seeing that there are some things that need to evolve so that we can support the farmers in the right ways.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Chittenden County farms join forces to ensure their future .