Sustainable Woodstock’s focus on community resilience in response to global climate change is catalyzed by the pressing need to ensure that residents of Woodstock, the surrounding towns and the Upper Valley region are able to find sustenance, health and safety—the necessities that individuals and communities need to achieve their full potential. To these ends, Sustainable Woodstock has increased our capacity as a leading local and regional grassroots organization that reaches across social, economic and cultural barriers to promote Sustainable Opportunities for All. We have increased the events and initiatives that provide support and security in regards to food and energy needs for those from all backgrounds and income levels. The links between Earth stewardship, social justice and racial equality are more clear and present than ever before.

2022 Highlights

• Sustainable Woodstock—The Whole Environment: Working with the community to foster Woodstock’s unique legacy of stewardship, sustainability and resilience—yesterday, today and tomorrow. 
• Climate Change Leadership: Producing and partnering on numerous public programs, student and community actions, films, articles, solar energy projects, energy conservation and transportation initiatives and programs, including a Regional Climate Action Plan to curb carbon emissions and mitigate global warming.
• Energy & Transportation Action Group: Collaborating with the Town and Village of Woodstock and the Intermunicipal Regional Energy Coordinator (IREC/Two Rivers-Ottauquechee Regional Commission) to design and retrofit buildings to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions at considerable savings to Woodstock residents over time.
  • Equal Energy Opportunities for All: Raising $100,000 to implement energy-efficiency improvements & upgraded systems for income-sensitive households—from weatherization to heat pumps.
  • Renewable Energy for All: Promoting the means to make renewable energy affordable for everyone. Partnering with Norwich Solar Technologies, Twin Pines Housing, SEVCA and IREC to plan a solar array to serve low- to moderate-income households. 
  • Window Dressers: Implementing a 2-year project for income-sensitive households in Woodstock and the surrounding towns, making some 450 interior storm window inserts to reduce cold drafts, save energy, lower heating costs and reduce carbon emissions: https://windowdressers.org/
  • eBike Trials: Provided 67 free public eBike trials (to date) to promote low-impact transportation, in partnership with Vital Communities, Local Motion, Norman Williams Public Library and St. James Church.
• Community Gardens & Food Security: Helping to meet the crucial need for sustenance as the root of sustainability for individuals and families. SW expanded our Billings Farm and King Farm community gardens and planted additional food security plots. Our GROW YOUR OWN GARDEN project created 225 beginner gardening kits that were distributed free to income-sensitive households—feeding some 600 people. This year we also funded raised beds at Woodstock’s Riverside Mobile Home Park.
• Natural Resources Projects & Funding: On behalf of the Town and Village of Woodstock, Sustainable Woodstock applied for $280,000 in state funding to implement natural resource projects related to water quality. Procured a project design grant from VT Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) and Watershed United Vermont to mitigate erosion along Barnard Brook (in partnership with the Woodstock Resort Corporation & Billings Farm). Initiated a process—in partnership with the Connecticut River Conservancy, Woodstock Resort and ANR—to remove the three remaining dams restricting fish passage along Kedron Brook.
• Advocacy: SW advocates on the local, regional and statewide level for sustainability and community benefits, ranging from climate change mitigation and community resiliency to quiet alternatives to leaf blowers.
• Upper Valley Partners & Leadership: No town is an island. Sustainable Woodstock has worked on regional sustainability initiatives, educational programs and events in partnership with more than 60 organizations and municipal bodies throughout Woodstock, the Ottauquechee Watershed and the Upper Valley. As a result of SW’s success, residents in Lebanon, Brownsville and Plymouth asked for help with forming organizations to address sustainability and resiliency in their own communities.
• Celebrating the 4th year of partnering with Pentangle Arts on monthly screenings of our Upper Valley Climate Change & Sustainability Film Series—with attendance of over 4,500 people (to date) from  the Upper Valley and beyond, including online viewers from Europe to New Zealand! Inspiring viewers to act on critical environmental and social issues, with generous support from underwriters Mascoma Bank & Vermont Community Foundation, and sponsors Mark D. Knott DDS, Ellaway Property Services, Unicorn and Yankee Bookshop.
• Bridgewater Community Center: SW is in the 4th year of helping to transform the Bridgewater Area Community Center into a resilient, sustainable hub, including the Bridgewater Community Childcare, which opened its doors to children and families in June 2022! During this time, we have spearheaded a successful $100,000 grant from the State of Vermont and National Park Service to restore and weatherize historic windows and install new storm windows throughout, and co-authored a successful $75,000 grant from the Canaday Family Charitable Trust to install energy-efficient systems.
• Completed 7 years of monthly Green Drinks discussions, reaching a growing audience with presentations and discussions on sustainability initiatives in Woodstock, the Upper Valley and beyond—a dynamic venue for networking, public education and collaboration between sustainability and resilience organizations. 
• Weekly Columns: 12+ years of writing weekly columns for the Vermont Standard. (A special thanks to the Vermont Standard staff!)
• Community Recycling: At SW’s Annual Recycling Day, on October 15, 2022, participants recycled nearly 11,000 pounds of used electronics, and 5,000 pounds of documents. Forest Carbon Action Group: Marking 4 years of leadership educating foresters and landowners about managing forest carbon to mitigate climate change. Published a 24×36 full-color Family Forest Carbon Poster with Northam Forest Carbon. 

Sustainable Woodstock is honored and grateful for the energy, enthusiasm and hard work of our dedicated volunteers—and for the incredible generosity of our supporters—all of whom make it possible to accomplish so much on behalf of our communities and the environment. Thank you!

Photo caption & credit: A sampling of harvests from Sustainable Woodstock’s Community Garden at Billings Farm that were donated to the Woodstock Community Food Shelf. (Photo: Amy Wheeler/Sustainable Woodstock)

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On average, livestock must consume 25 calories of plants in order to produce a single calorie of beef. The ratio for pork is 15-to-1, and for chickens it is 9-to-1. With nearly 8 billion people on Earth today, if the world adapted a plant-based diet, we could reduce the amount of land needed to feed everyone by 75%—from some 10 billion acres to 2.5 billion acres. If the farmland currently used to grow grain to feed beef cattle were instead used for poultry feed, the caloric and protein needs of an additional 120 to 140 million people could be met, based on the average U.S. diet. 

No one was focused on climate change in 1971 when Diet for a Small Planet was first published, at a point in time that just happened to coincide with when the rise in global temperature began to accelerate at an exponential rate. We eventually realized that, as the percentage of our diet that is derived directly from plants increases, our carbon “foodprint” drops proportionately. A person can reduce their carbon foodprint by 73% just by adopting a plant-based diet.

Of course, due to individual diet-related health needs, cultural and spiritual traditions and our strong rural desire to support local farmers, a completely plant-based diet it not always realistic. However, increasing the proportion of your diet that is plant-based will greatly reduce your carbon foodprint. For example, reducing the amount of red meat that you eat can quickly decrease your carbon foodprint by 25%.

A global shift to a more plant-based diet would also decrease the pressure to keep clearing more forest land for grazing animals and growing grain to feed livestock. This would in turn preserve forestlands, like those in the Amazon, that store and sequester vast quantities of carbon, thus acting as buffers against climate change. It would also enable the restoration of immense areas of habitat, slowing the disastrous loss of species that we are now experiencing in the midst of a human-caused Sixth Extinction.

Eating produce from your own garden is one of the most effective (and delicious!) ways to lower your carbon foodprint. Sustainable Woodstock’s Community Garden Coordinator, Amy Wheeler, with help from volunteers, grew these vegetables at our Billings Farm Community Garden for donation to the Woodstock Community Food Shelf. Photo credit: Amy Wheeler.

Perhaps the biggest concern with the global effort to reduce carbon emissions generated by industry, households, transportation and agriculture isn’t whether we can eventually accomplish our carbon-reduction goals (the successful campaign to repair the hole in the ozone layer shows what we can accomplish on a global scale), it is whether we can do so in time to preserve some semblance of the world we know and love from the impacts of global warming. Installing solar arrays, erecting wind turbines, engineering more efficient and affordable electric vehicles and batteries, etc.—all take time, money and resources.

In the midst of this temporal dilemma in our critical fight against global warming, dietary change offers a realistic opportunity for individuals to significantly reduce their carbon emissions NOW, simply by increasing the proportion of the diet that is based on consuming plants. This doesn’t mean that everyone will, or has to become vegan or vegetarian, but there are steps that everyone can take to lower their carbon foodprint:

• Reduce consumption of meat and dairy.
• Purchase meat and dairy from local and regional farms, rather than from sources that produce energy-intensive animal products that are raised on feedlots and transported hundreds or thousands of miles to reach the grocery store.
• When consuming animal-based foods, choose those with the lowest carbon foodprint. For example: The production and transportation of locally-sourced, grass-fed meat and dairy generates a lower carbon foodprint than factory farming operations. Locally-sourced food travels shorter distances from farm to table, and buying locally supports regional farms and farm workers while investing in the local economy. Meat and eggs from locally-grown, free-range poultry have some of the lowest carbon foodprints of all animal products. The carbon foodprint of milk protein is smallest of all, at just 1/5^th the CO₂ emissions of free-range chicken eggs.

Individuals, organizations, businesses and governments throughout the world are working hard to design and build new infrastructure and energy systems that will reduce carbon emissions for the long-term. But every one of us has the ability to make basic dietary choices today that can accelerate our response to climate change by drastically reducing our carbon foodprints. 

What You Can Do

• Read Frances Moore Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet (50^th Anniversary Edition), and Anna Lappé’s Diet for a Warm Planet. (Please support your local bookstore!)
• Pick up some of the excellent cookbooks that are full of recipes that offer no end of delicious plant-based meals, such as Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen, Sweet Potato Soul by Jenné Claiborne, The Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas and The New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison.

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Winnie the Pooh had it just about right: Find the honey tree in your own backyard and eat to your belly’s content. Of course, what with bee stings and rabbit-sized jars of honey, getting his fill wasn’t easy. But as time went by, Pooh ate so much honey that he grew to be shaped like a big, round honey pot. As it turns out, honey is one of the best sources of energy, is full of vitamins and minerals, helps to keep a wound from getting infected and even promotes healing.

We ought to listen to bears more often. In the past 70 years nutritionists have come to understand that we become what we eat—that we can help our bodies to stay healthy by eating good, nutritious food that is grown fresh locally. Science has proven that the choices we make for our diet also have a huge impact on the health of the planet, including climate change, because of the vast global food market.

Let’s start with the choice of where our food comes from. On average, the food that makes it onto our tables at mealtime has traveled 1,600 miles to get there. How far is that? By traveling that distance you could go from the Upper Valley to the southern tip of Greenland, to Arizona or to Nunavut and the Northwest Territories (Canada).

Apples, cabbage, corn, tomatoes and eggs, for example, may come from local farms, but other foods are shipped from around the world. Grapes may arrive at your local market from Chile, nuts from Brazil, olive oil from Turkey, kiwifruit from New Zealand, bottled water from France, gingerbread cookies from Germany and rice crackers from China. 

According to Worldwatch Institute, the amount of food shipped from overseas that appears on our tables has quadrupled since 1961. Some 30% of the fresh vegetables and over 50% of fresh fruit now purchased by US consumers are grown in other countries. The USDA projects that the US will be importing almost half of our vegetables and 75% of our fruit by 2027. 

What difference does it make that our food travels a long distance before we eat it? The more energy it takes to transport food to our tables, the more greenhouse gas emissions are generated, which increases global warming. For example, fuel is burned when food is moved by trucks, trains, and planes; plus, energy is needed to store many foods in refrigerated cars so that it doesn’t spoil. Food from far away also requires more packaging to keep it from spoiling. It takes energy and resources to make that packaging. Trees must be cut to make paper packaging. Plastic and Styrofoam are made from petroleum oil. And don’t forget: factories that make any kind of packaging run on electricity and other kinds of carbon-producing power. 

According to research findings reported in Nature Food magazine, shipping food generates 20% of the total carbon footprint generated by our current food system. Roughly half of these greenhouse gas emissions are created by the wealthiest countries, even though they make up just 12% of the world’s population. A United Nations study found that one-third of ALL greenhouse gas emissions results from growing, processing and packaging food. 

Of course, it’s not always simple to figure out what’s best to buy for food, especially given the short growing season in the North Country where fresh local produce can be challenging to source during the winter. Still, in addition to eating locally grown foods as much as possible, it’s good to eat foods that are in season and those that are easy to store. You know, like honey.

The carbon “foodprint” of protein derived from eggs laid by locally-raised free-range chickens is 3,250 times smaller than that of beef produced on distant, energy-intensive livestock operations. Photo: Michael J. Caduto

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

• Being a localvore means eating foods that are grown within 100 miles of your home in any direction. So your home sits at the center of a localvore circle that is 200 miles across. Using a state map (or two), draw a circle with a 100-mile radius around your house. Identify farms and market sources of local-grown and raised foods that fall within this 100-mile radius. Purchase as much of your food as possible from these providers. 
• Start a Localvore Journal. As you begin to learn about food supplies in the area, keep a running list of places you can go to get locally-grown food, the kinds of local foods available at each place and the specific foods available during each season of the year.
• Look for recipes that use the foods raised within your localvore territory. See if you can match the specific seasonal lists of ingredients in your Localvore Journal, with the ingredients needed in the recipes you’ve found. Turn your newfound knowledge into a list of recipes that can be made in specific seasons using locally-grown ingredients. Pick up some of the fine cookbooks that offer recipes for delicious meals made with locally-sourced foods, such as Eating Local: The Cookbook Inspired by America’s Local Farmers by Janet Fletcher, and Sustainable Kitchen by local authors Heather Wolfe and Jaynie McCloskey. (Please support your local bookstore!)
• Ask for local. Encourage your local food stores to sell local produce, dairy, meat and other local food products.
• Order local. Encourage the owners of local restaurants to serve meals made from locally sourced ingredients. Remind them how this will support local farmers, feed the local economy, fight climate change and attract customers who value living sustainably. 
• Read Frances Moore Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet, and Anna Lappé’s Diet for a Warm Planet. 

* This is part 1 of a 2-part article.

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Native gardeners also created hybrids by ensuring that pollen from the flowers of desirable plants fertilized the flowers of other chosen plants. Hybridization was sometimes done by transferring pollen from flower to flower or by planting certain varieties close together so they cross-pollinated naturally. Each new hybrid shared the desirable qualities of both parent plants.

Using these methods, many varieties of Native corn, for example, were developed that had colors of red, yellow, blue or purple; could grow in arid deserts of the southwest or in wet areas; thrived in the mountains or coastal plains and could bear a crop after growing from as short as sixty days to as long as three months or more. Corn was bred with a husk to shield against disease, insect pests and bad weather. Tohono O’odham corn was developed that grows close to the ground and conserves water by having a small amount of leaf and stalk. These practices have given rise to at least 150 varieties of corn.

Native gardeners have always stored the invaluable seeds of indigenous crops for the next growing season, and for future generations. Mayan peoples stored corn in underground grain stores called chultuns. The Pawnee and Hidatsa peoples stored their food and seed in grass-lined pits. Some eastern peoples, such as the Abenaki, often lined storage pits with bark. Many cultures of the dry southwest stored seeds in above-ground containers.

Plants bred and saved for local conditions are known as heirloom seeds, folk varieties, crop ecotypes and land races. Heirloom varieties preserve the genetic “memory” of all the generations of seeds that came before them. 

Three out of every four of our modern foods are native to geographical North America, such as corn, tomatoes, beans, peppers, squash and peanuts. Tragically, our genetic heritage is rapidly disappearing as biological diversity among food plants has plummeted during the past century, largely due to habitat loss, over-picking of wild edible and medicinal plants, relying upon a limited number of varieties of garden plants, commercialization of the seed-producing industry and poor care of our soils. Since 1900 more than one half of all food plant species have disappeared. In the United States alone, some eighty percent of our original varieties of flowers, fruits and vegetables are gone. Despite the fact that some 75,000 plants in the world have edible parts, only twenty plant species now provide most of the calories that we obtain from our modern foods, including corn, rye, millet, wheat and rice.

By saving seeds from our own gardens, and by planting the seeds of native and heirloom varieties, we can help to perpetuate threatened and endangered varieties and preserve biological diversity for the future. 

Photo credit: Photo by Macey Bundt on Unsplash
Portions of this article were adapted with permission from Native American Gardening: Stories, Projects and Recipes for Families, by Michael J. Caduto and Joseph Bruchac.

What You Can Do:

Harvest ripe seeds from each of the crops in your garden and preserve them for planting next springtime.

Materials:

Enough seeds from each of the crops in your garden to plant a new crop next year; clean old sheets; enough small, clean, dry glass jars (the kind used for preserves) with rubber-sealed lids so that you have one for each kind of seed you want to save; sticky labels for the jar; pen.

1. Gather seeds from each of your crops as they ripen. When a vegetable is ripe, the seeds are also ready to harvest and begin drying. Make sure you have enough seeds to plant a new crop next year.
2. Clean the seeds of any remnants of dried flower parts, husks, stalks, capsules and so on that may still be clinging to them.
3. Lay the seeds out on the old sheets in a clean, dry, well-ventilated place for a few weeks until the seeds are dry and hard.
4. Place the seeds from each crop in a preserving jar of their own and screw the cap down securely until sealed. 
5. Label each jar as you fill it. Include on the label: the name and variety of the crop the seed is from, whose garden it was grown in, the date of storage and who is storing the seed.
6. Store the seeds in a cool, dark, dry place until you need them next growing season.

Start researching native and heirloom seeds now to plant in your 2023 garden! Here are the websites of some great seeds sources:

Heirloom Seeds:

• Solstice Seeds: http://www.solsticeseeds.org/
• J. L. Hudson, Seedsman http://www.jlhudsonseeds.net/
• Vermont Bean Seed Company: https://www.vermontbean.com/
• High Mowing Seeds: https://www.highmowingseeds.com/
• Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds: https://www.rareseeds.com/
• Johnny’s Selected Seeds: https://www.johnnyseeds.com/
• Fedco Seeds: https://www.fedcoseeds.com/seeds/

Native Seed Banks

• Native Seeds/SEARCH: https://www.nativeseeds.org/
• Seeds of Change: https://seedsofchange.com/
• Seed Savers Exchange: https://www.seedsavers.org/

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This May, Sustainable Woodstock partnered with the Riverside Mobile Home Park in Woodstock to build six raised garden beds for residents. The beds were given to interested families so that they could grow a garden this season and for many years to come, and are a continuation of the food security work that Sustainable Woodstock has done at Riverside in the past. In 2010 Sustainable Woodstock helped build and maintain raised garden beds alongside individual homes at Riverside. After the park was badly damaged by Tropical Storm Irene, we returned to rebuild those beds. Ten years later, we are pleased to add these six new beds to the park.

Al Pristaw, a resident of Riverside, approached Sustainable Woodstock in the spring with the idea to offer raised beds to residents at Riverside. Al is an avid gardener himself, and was willing to find residents who would appreciate the beds, as well as a community member to build them. He asked around and got a list of community members who would like a garden bed. He also enlisted the help and expertise of Dan Putnam and his brother Josh, who were experienced carpenters and willing to build the wooden beds. The last step was obtaining the funds for the beds, most of which Sustainable Woodstock received through a Community Action Team grant from the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation.* This grant allowed us to build six new beds out of local lumber from Van Alstyne’s Lumber Mill in Randolph and fill them with a local garden mix of compost and soil. 

Residents have already started planting seeds, vegetable seedlings, and strawberry plants in the garden beds. Some residents used seeds and seedlings from Sustainable Woodstock’s Grow Your Own Garden program (GYOG) to fill their gardens. This was the third year we have run the Grow Your Own Garden program, which offers free gardening starter kits to local individuals and families who would not otherwise have the means to purchase gardening supplies. Each kit includes a complete set of quality gardening tools, seeds, starter plants and a how-to book on gardening. The program helps make gardening possible for everyone, providing fresh fruits and vegetables to anyone interested in growing their own. This year Sustainable Woodstock gave away 50 GYOG kits to residents, plus 15 to the Upper Valley Haven, and we are using the rest of the seedlings in our Billings Farm Community Garden to grow vegetables for the Woodstock Food Shelf.  

Sustainable Woodstock also coordinates two community gardens in Woodstock: the King Farm Community Garden and the Billings Farm Community Garden. Last year we were able to increase the number of plots available in our community gardens, and offer plots on a sliding scale. This growth was in response to greater enrollment from families and individuals working to grow their own vegetables and herbs. We have also expanded the garden beds to include a sizeable space for growing food to be donated to the Haven and Woodstock Community Food Shelf. Our new Community Garden Coordinator Amy Wheeler is already working to tend to vegetables planted in our food security plots this year, including tomatoes, eggplant, beans, cucumbers, zucchini, kale, cabbage, and asparagus. We invite anyone to stop by our community gardens to see what is growing!

* Sustainable Woodstock has received generous support for our food security programs and projects from the Vermont Community Foundation, New Hampshire Charitable Foundation and Claremont Savings Bank Foundation.  The 2022 Grow Your Own Garden project was underwritten by a generous grant from the Green Mountain Foundation. Partners include Sherburne Farms, Yankee Bookshop, West Lebanon Seed & Supply, Woodstock Community Food Shelf and Woodstock Area Relief Fund. 

Strawberries bear fruit in one of the new raised beds at Riverside Mobile Home Park. (Photo ©2022 Jenevra Wetmore)

What can you do?

• Grow a garden and share with neighbors and friends. No space for a garden? Fees to use plots at the Billings and King Farm gardens operate on a sliding scale.
• Donate to your local food shelf. Donations don’t just have to be canned items–many food shelves appreciate fresh garden produce in the summer months!
• Donate your time to a local food garden growing for food security, such as Sustainable Woodstock’s gardens, Willing Hands’ gardens or Change the World Kids gardens.

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Gardening is a living process—a part of the natural cycle. Each garden is a tiny ecosystem that will succeed if you watch and take your clues from the natural world. Do not worry about being a perfect gardener. Gardening does not have to be complicated and does not require you to be an expert. 

When gardening is viewed as a fun learning experience, it is a great way to connect children to their environment. What other activity includes so many things that children love— from playing in the dirt while planting seeds, to discovering worms, bugs, toads? And then, as the season progresses, children get to pick and eat the fruits (and vegetables) of their labor. 

Tips for Gardening with Children

Children are natural gardeners at heart. They possess an instinctive enthusiasm for working with plants. There is little that needs to be done to adapt the day-to-day gardening tasks for children, but it is valuable to consider the approach to take when sharing the activities. Forms of gardening that are safe and satisfying to share with children include organic gardening, permaculture and no-till gardening. (These are the same kinds of non-polluting, environmentally safe and respectful practices used in Sustainable Woodstock’s community gardens.)

Help children to understand what they are seeing in the garden by encouraging them to ask questions such as who, what, when, where, how and why? What kinds of connections have they noticed between garden plants, animals, soil and so on? Read more about the subjects that interest children. Some good books to share include: Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt by Kate Messner, Easy Peasy: Gardening for Kids by Little Gestalten & Kirsten Bradley and Grow Your Soil! Harness the Power of the Soil Food Web to Create Your Best Garden Ever by Diane Miessler.

Children love cherry tomatoes. Nurturing the plants and waiting for the fruit to ripen fosters gardening skills and patience. Photo: Michael J. Caduto

Here are a few simple tips for gardening with children:

• Take one step at a time. Explain things clearly and simply and the experience will carry itself. 
• Watch for the tasks that each child prefers doing. Encourage children to participate in each of the different gardening experiences to keep their interest, but allow them to do what they most enjoy whenever possible.
• Invite children to take charge of particular crops or parts of the garden to encourage responsible caring.
• Allow a reasonable amount of snacking from the garden and keep a variety of other healthy foods on hand for snack times. 
• Allow children to mix short periods of work doing different tasks interspersed with playtime. Gardening is an organic experience that is more effective if children learn that it can also be fun. 
• Allow for lots of beginners’ mistakes and approach them lightheartedly. Discuss how things could be handled better next time.
• Teach the children that a garden is an attempt to create a temporary natural community or ecosystem. Use the garden as a way of teaching about natural cycles, such as the water cycle, nutrient cycle, life cycle, gas cycle, lunar cycle and the cycles of night and day, the seasons and the years. During the gas cycle, for example, people exhale carbon dioxide which green plants need to grow. Green plants, in turn, give off the life-sustaining oxygen that animals breathe in.
• Use only natural fertilizers and methods for controlling pests and weeds. This is important for placing a high priority on the children’s health and for teaching wise Earth stewardship. 
• Help children to see the garden as a learning laboratory, with lots of opportunities to experiment and observe results. 
• Promote the idea that everyone can find their own approach to gardening—there is no one right way.
• Share in the sense of wonder, learning and adventure with the children.

Keeping A Garden Journal

Everyone can grow as a gardener simply by learning from what they are doing and what has been done in the past. Keeping a garden journal is one of the of the most fun and practical ways of doing this. Depending on their age, a child’s garden journal entries can range from simple drawings in pencil, crayon or watercolor, to notes about what they did in the garden that day and reflections on the experience.

Schedule quiet time at the end of each gardening experience for everyone to make an entry in their garden journal. Record the interesting and important things experienced that day. Be sure to include the date, weather and time of day of observations. Record the lessons learned in words, illustrations or photographs. This way, knowledge will grow from season-to season, and year-to-year.

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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!

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In Abenaki tradition the waxing of Kikas Kisos, the Planting Moon, marks the beginning of the gardening season. Photo credit: NASA Photo

The beginning of the gardening season is a good time to pause and appreciate traditional Abenaki culture and to honor their homeland, which they call Ndakinna, Our Land. Included in this vast region of the Northeast are the places we now call Vermont and New Hampshire. This beautiful environment that we all know and love is here because of the traditional wisdom and stewardship of the Abenaki and their ancestors, whose deep roots reach back more than 11,000 years.

In the seasonal Abenaki cycle, gardening commences with the waxing of Kikas Kisos, the Planting Moon. How were the early gardens of Ndakinna created? How was it possible for the Abenaki to sustain their crops year after year? Often the garden was begun during the time of Penibagos, the Leaf Falling Moon. Stone axes were used to scarify the bark at the bottom of each tree and a ring of fire was lit around the base. After the fire had burned down, the charred wood was chopped away and another fire lit. 

As with the creation of dugout canoes, the cycle of burning and chopping continued until the tree was felled. Fire was used for clearing throughout much of Ndakinna. Larger trees were removed, then brush was burned along with the branches of fallen trees. Occasionally, in small gardens, trees were only girdled and they stopped leafing out in a year or two when the tree exhausted its store of food. But this practice was labor intensive and dangerous; whenever the wind blew or heavy rains soaked the dead wood, branches broke off and fell onto the garden below.

Soil was prepared by breaking up the roots of ferns, shrubs and wildflowers with axes and hoes. Sharp-edged materials were attached to wooden handles to make hoes, including axe-shaped stones, the shoulder blades of moose and deer and, along the coast, large clam shells. Tired soil was occasionally sweetened with crushed shells and sometimes, after the same soil had been planted for a few years and fertility needed to be replenished, a shad or alewife was placed in each seed hill for fertilizer. But the common, long-term management practice was to move a garden every 10 or 12 years when the fertility of the soil became depleted. 

Traditionally seeds were planted when the danger of frost was past, or when the tender, emerald young leaves of the white oak were as large as a mouse’s ear. Men and boys helped around the garden but women and girls did much of the work. Horticulturalists throughout the region grew many of the same crops, including corn, beans, squash, pumpkins and gourds. Grown together, corn, beans and squash form a simple, elegant garden ecosystem. Corn stalks provide support for the beans to climb while the roots of beans, which are legumes, enrich the soil with nitrogen that fertilizes the corn. In between the corn, the broad leaves of both squash and beans shade the soil, which helps to retain moisture and control weeds.  One variety called pebonki skamon or north corn, produced ears that matured in only 90 days.

Each family grew and harvested 30 to 40 bushels of corn and other crops. A delicacy that was much-anticipated in late summer, when the corn was sweet but had not gone by to the starchy stage, was a juicy ear of roasted fresh or “green” corn. Corn that was not harvested green was allowed to mature until later in the season. After the harvest, corn and beans were dried. The mandible of a white-tailed deer was commonly used to shell corn from the cob. Squash and pumpkins were cut into strips and also dried for storage. Crops were stored in pits lined with grass or bark. Great quantities of dried corn were ground into meal using a stone mortar and a pestle made from either hardwood or stone. Mortars were also fashioned from a piece of log several feet long with the center hollowed out down to within a few inches of the bottom.

Close to where the families gardened, babies swayed from blanket hammocks that were hung just above the ground from a sturdy but supple overhanging branch. These arboreal cradles were gently rocked by the passing hand of each early summer breeze. 

This article is adapted with permission from the author’s book, A Time Before New Hampshire: The Story of a Land and Native Peoples (Brandeis Univ. Press/Chicago Univ. Press).

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