This community build is run in partnership with Window Dressers (WD). WD brings volunteers together to build insulating window inserts for a participating town’s residents. The inserts function like custom interior storm windows, insulating a home to improve the warmth and comfort of interior spaces, lower heating costs, and reduce carbon dioxide pollution. More info is at: https://windowdressers.org/.

All recipients of our Window Dressers build are income-qualifying and are receiving up to 10 inserts for free. We were able to identify and offer support to recipients in partnership with the Woodstock Area Relief Fund, which provided home heating grants to households last winter. We also found interested families by advertising at the Woodstock Area Food Shelf and posting on local listservs. The inserts are free of charge to all due to generous funding from Mascoma Bank and the Canaday Family Charitable Trust. 

We will construct ~225 inserts for 26 families during our week-long build, which will have multiple shifts during the weekday and on the weekend for people to volunteer—no experience necessary. While you do not need to have any building experience to be successful at a community build, you can still contribute if building isn’t in your comfort zone. We will also need folks to bring snacks and other food and drink for every day of the build, including bigger dishes around lunchtime. This program is a great experience for anyone wanting to help those in our community reduce energy load, save money, and create a warmer living space during the cold months of the year.

Window Dressers is also an important way of addressing energy burden for low-income Vermonters. Energy burden is the share of a household’s income spent on heat, electricity and transportation. According to Energy Action Vermont, some Vermonters spend over a quarter of their income on energy costs. Even worse, most of those expenses are for fossil fuels, which have volatile prices like those that we are seeing now for heating oil, propane, and at the gas pump. A tighter, well-insulated home is one step towards reducing a home’s energy burden, and to making it a more comfortable space.

Volunteering is also a great way to help the planet by combatting climate change. The thermal sector accounts for about 34% of Vermont’s Greenhouse Gas emissions, making it the state’s second largest source of climate pollution, behind transportation. To reach the state’s Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA) emissions reduction requirements, we will need to weatherize around 120,000 more homes by 2030. These inserts will help us reach that goal. Each insulating window insert is made of a custom-made pine frame wrapped in two layers of tightly-sealed, clear polyolefin film and finished with a compressible foam gasket. The foam allows enough give for the inserts to be easily slid into place in the fall and removed in the spring, while holding firmly enough to provide a tight, friction-based seal that stops drafts and adds two more insulating air spaces. This is very helpful in Vermont’s homes, many of which were built in the 1900’s and have old, leaky windows. 

Join us anytime October 27^th through November 2^nd to volunteer at Woodstock’s Window Dressers Build, and build community at the same time! 

Left: a volunteer holds an insert. Right: a Window Dressers insert being installed. (Photos courtesy of Window Dressers)

The post Help Your Neighbors Stay Warm This Winter appeared first on Sustainable Woodstock.

Over 4,000 people have attended monthly films in the Upper Valley Climate Change and Sustainability Film Series, which is offered by Sustainable Woodstock in partnership with Pentangle Arts. Screening on May 24-25, 2022: Motherload—a crowdsourced documentary in which the cargo bicycle becomes a vehicle for exploring motherhood in this digital age of climate change. (Motherload is also cohosted with the Upper Valley Sierra Club.)

In this column we normally share information about important environmental, social and economic issues affecting Woodstock, neighboring communities, the Upper Valley region and beyond, including suggestions for what we can all do to help. Yet one of the most common questions we hear is: “What does Sustainable Woodstock do?” So here are some highlights and recent news. 

As of May 1st 2022, Sustainable Woodstock (SW) has our first full-time employee! Jenevra Wetmore has been our Program Coordinator for nearly two years, and recently accepted the position of full-time Program Director. This new role will allow the organization to focus more time and energy on the initiatives we are committed to, including an expansion of our income-sensitive outreach on weatherization and other energy-efficiency projects, as well as other regular programs such as our Upper Valley Green Drinks series and Climate Change and Sustainability Film Series (with Pentangle Arts). 

Energy policy action and advocacy to mitigate climate change: For several years, Sustainable Woodstock has been working toward progress with energy policy and actions in Woodstock, These initiatives include planning and advocacy for hiring a Regional Energy Coordinator (passed at Town Meeting in 2020), as well as adopting the Climate Emergency Action & Resolution (in partnership with Change the World Kids), which was passed by the Select Board and Village Trustees in December 2019. In the ensuing 2 years, we have worked closely with the Intermunicipal Regional Energy Coordinator (IREC) at Two Rivers-Ottauquechee Regional Commission (Geoff Martin), as well as town officials, in order to move several major energy projects along to mitigate carbon emissions, including the net-zero-ready design of the new EMS building.

A more recent IREC initiative (with SW’s input, support and advocacy) was a major proposal for energy-saving projects that will reduce Woodstock’s carbon emissions by 12.5%. This proposal was passed by voters on 1 March 2022. (Thank you to everyone who supported this effort!) The primary focus of the proposal is installing heat pumps in municipal buildings to substantially offset, and in some cases eliminate, the use of propane for heating. These heat pumps will reduce the town’s propane use by up to 10,000 gallons per year. (This will save Woodstock $20,000/year, even when factoring in the use of electricity by the new heat pumps.) The proposal also includes adding direct digital controls for managing the HVAC systems throughout Woodstock buildings. The controls will allow the buildings to be managed through a centralized, online platform, and will ensure that the buildings’ systems are running optimally. Finally, the project includes LED lighting upgrades wherever needed, and some minor weatherization and weather stripping.

Forest Carbon Management: Sustainable Woodstock’s Forest Carbon Action Group recently completed a 2-year effort to create a 24×36-inch full-color educational forest carbon management poster for landowners. The poster will assist and inform landowners on how to manage their forests so as to mitigate climate change by storing and sequestering more carbon. Posters are currently on display throughout the Upper Valley, Vermont and New England. You can access an online version of the poster on our website.

Weatherization and energy-saving projects for low-income households: 

1. One of Sustainable Woodstock’s biggest initiatives over the next two years is a project called: EQUAL ENERGY OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL: Nurturing Resilient Households for Future Generations Through Income-Sensitive Energy Savings & Efficiencies. As part of this effort, SW is working with the Woodstock Area Relief Fund and other regional community partners to provide small grants for low-income weatherization and energy-efficiency improvement projects. To date, fifty households have signed up to receive this assistance. Sustainable Woodstock is conducting outreach to these households to register them for free weatherization, if income qualifying, and to address their home energy concerns. The following community organizations have also donated and partnered by enrolling low-income households in their own communities: King’s Daughters, Plymouth Memory Tree, Barnard Helping Hands, Faulkner Fund, Aging in Place and Senior Solutions (southeastern Vermont).
2. SW has been working for two years now on a weatherization program conducting outreach to mobile homeowners in partnership with Vital Communities. This year, all mobile home residents in Hartland and Woodstock received an energy survey, along with materials on free weatherization and energy assistance services.
3. This fall, Sustainable Woodstock will be collaborating with WindowDressers (WD), a nonprofit organization, to make custom-built, interior storm window inserts for income-qualifying Woodstock area residents. The inserts are easy to install, removable and reusable. They let light in, keep drafts out and reduce heating costs. We will build 200 inserts at no cost for local residents.

Watershed United Block Grant: Sustainable Woodstock applied for and received a Design and Implementation Block Grant through Watersheds United Vermont (WUV), in conjunction with the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources. This grant will address an eroding bank on Barnard Brook where it flows alongside SW’s Billings Farm Community Garden. The subsiding riverbank is undermining a corner of the garden, which will need to be moved somewhat to the west once the bank stabilization work gets underway during the off-season. Work will begin this summer to create an initial design and alternatives assessment for the project. 

Community Gardens & Food Security: SW has greatly increased our focus on addressing the critical need for sustenance as the root of sustainability for individuals, families and communities by coordinating such activities in our gardens at Billings Farm and King Farm (VT Land Trust). We have increased staff time to accommodate a 30% rise in community gardeners in recent years, and to grow food for the Woodstock Community Food Shelf and Upper Valley Haven (in partnership with Zack’s Place and Woodstock Terrace). We collaborate with and support the efforts of other organizations addressing critical needs for food and nutrition, including the Woodstock Community Food Shelf, Reading-West Windsor Food Shelf, Hartland Food Shelf and Upper Valley Haven. SW’s GROW YOUR OWN GARDEN project has enabled and empowered some 600 people of all ages to establish new gardens and grow their own nutritious vegetables. 

Our sincere gratitude to all of our dedicated volunteers and generous supporters for making it all possible!

The post Sustainable Woodstock Highlights News & Initiatives appeared first on Sustainable Woodstock.

This reflection on our relationship to water, and denizens of aquatic habitats, is offered in honor of Winona LaDuke’s upcoming April 22nd Earth Day presentation “Rights of Nature,” which is being presented by Sustainable Woodstock and Pentangle Arts.

Some believe that an ancient teleost from the Paleozoic era, a Crossopterygian, is a common ancestor of all terrestrial life, including hominids. In fact, the composition of our cellular fluid is thought to be like that of the archaic seas from which our primogenitors first slithered. The human embryo still grows in amniotic fluid that has a mineral balance similar to that of seawater, and develops through ontological stages akin to amphibian-like growth forms that resemble the evolutionary paths of our primal ancestors.

Whatever your convictions about the origin of humans—without water, life would not exist. Nearly three quarters of Earth’s surface is covered by water and roughly 80 percent of our bodies are composed of this ubiquitous element. Water flows within and without all living things, impartial as to whether it moves along a riverbed or courses through the wings of a newly emerged butterfly, transforming them from a rumpled heap into gossamer tools of flight.

We seek from water more than life itself. It is to the sea—or to ponds, lakes, and rivers—that people often go to return to our liquid source and be inspired. There is a transcendent feeling in a moment spent listening to the breaking of waves along the shore, or watching the ever changing ripples of a stream. As varied and alive as a dancing candle’s flame, the surface of water mesmerizes. It is a canvas that paints the image of the world above it. Ripples and ringlet waves animate images that otherwise appear lifeless as stone.

reflected in a pool

sparkle of the morning dew

sunlight dancing

Yet this elixir of life is not merely a flowing artist. Water is mentor, the consummate sage. In its soft, pliant example is strength that is seldom understood.

That the yielding conquers the resistant

and the soft conquers the hard

is a fact known by all…

yet utilized by none.

— Lao Tzu, 5th century B.C.

Through the seasons, over the years, the movement of water is the ebb and flow of life itself. Trickling or torrential, fluid or frozen, water is the element that reminds us of our place in the natural order. Life is inextricably linked to the seasonal interplay of water and sun, ice and wind.

As I sat on the bank of the Drop, or God’s Pond, and saw the amplitude of the little water, what space, what verge, the little scudding fleets of ripples found to scatter and spread from side to side and take so much time to cross the pond, and saw how the water seemed made for the wind, and the wind for the water, dear playfellows for each other — I said to my companion, “I declare this world is so beautiful that I can hardly believe it exists. “

— Ralph Waldo Emerson (Walden Pond), 9 April 1840

Aqueous miracles may surround us, but we become jaded with the extraordinary simply because we see and experience these wonders every day. Familiarity has bred indifference. Perhaps this is why we frequently fall into the pitfall of hubris, living as giants who often stomp on a Lilliputian world of nature—a realm of nuance and connection that we are just beginning to comprehend. To drag one felled log across the forest floor of a temperate rainforest can sever the interconnected mat of root-enriching mycorrhizal fungi so completely that it can require a century to recover. To cut the trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants from along a riverbank can so undermine that protective riparian buffer that erosion and siltation will smother fish eggs,  pollution will poison aquatic life and the absence of shade needed to protect a river from the sun’s penetrating rays will over-heat the cool waters that are so essential to aquatic life. Where does the boundary between our needs and desires to alter the world around us end, and the rights of the natural world to exist by being left to its own devices, begin? Will human actions or natural laws ultimately prevail?

While I bask in the sun on the shores of Walden Pond, by this heat and this rustle, I am absolved from all obligation to the past. The council of nations may reconsider their votes. The grating of a pebble annuls them.

— Henry David Thoreau, 22 March 1840

Lesser Yellowlegs by Michael J. Caduto

This article is adapted with permission from the author’s book, Pond and Brook: A Guide to Nature in Freshwater Environments (Brandeis Univ. Press/Chicago Univ. Press).

The post Reflections on Water appeared first on Sustainable Woodstock.