A Window Dressers insert being installed. Photo courtesy Window Dressers.

This fall Sustainable Woodstock will make free insulating window inserts for community members, and you are invited to join us! From Thursday October 26^th to Wednesday November 1st, we will host a community build at the North Universalist Chapel Society Church (North Chapel), which is generously donating their space for this project. We will construct the window inserts at this build, first gluing and screwing together the wooden frames for the windows, and then wrapping them in this insulating plastic and foaming the outside. No experience is needed to volunteer, and you will be thanked with snacks and lots of community good-will, much like an old-fashioned barn raising. If you are interested in volunteering at our Window Dressers build, please sign up at: https://signup.com/go/ggjUKii

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 recipients through our low-income food security and energy work, as well as by advertising on local listservs. We also found interested families by advertising at the Woodstock Area Food Shelf. The inserts are free of charge to all due to generous funding from the Canaday Family Charitable Trust.

We will construct ~230 inserts for 28 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. Last year we were joined by over 80 volunteers–we hope to see you again this 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 saw last winter for heating oil and propane. A tighter, well-insulated home is one step towards reducing a home’s energy burden, and to making it a more comfortable space. Window Dressers estimates that on average, 10 inserts will save 105 gallons of heating fuel which, at around $5.50/gallon, amounts to more than $550 in savings per year. This means that our 2023 build saved ~2,467 gallons of fuel, or $13,571 for homeowners.

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. We heard great things from recipients of last year’s build, including: “The inserts were a breeze to put in and definitely make a difference. Thanks so much for the game-changer!” and “I must tell you that those inserts made a profound quality of life impact! It was so toasty warm inside, that we routinely went outside unprepared for the real cold. And our lpg consumption is way down.”

We invite you to join us anytime October 26^th through November 1st to volunteer at Woodstock’s Window Dressers Build and build community at the same time!

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

If you are interested in volunteering at our Window Dressers build, please sign up at: https://signup.com/go/ggjUKii

Contact Sustainable Woodstock with questions at programs@sustainablewoodstock.org or 802-457-2911

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

Electric lawncare equipment looks and functions much like gas-powered counterparts. Photo courtesy of Rooted Gardens.

With summer comes the near constant drone of lawn mowers, weed whackers, leaf blowers, and other lawn equipment. This summer Sustainable Woodstock partnered with Rooted Gardens, the Upper Valley’s first electric-powered landscaping service, to demonstrate alternatives to gas-powered lawn equipment. Our partnership brought an all-electric lawn care contractor to Woodstock for the first time, mowing the Ottauquechee Health Center, Faulkner Park and four private residences every Wednesday. It has been a very successful season, and next year we are looking to expand this partnership to more businesses and residences in Woodstock.

How does Rooted Gardens mow without using gas or diesel? They use a combination of push mowers, riding mowers and smaller equipment such as weed whackers, just like any other landscaper. The only difference is that this equipment runs on electricity in the form of batteries. Rather than fill up the gas tank, Matt, the owner, and his crew replace and recharge batteries to mow all day. The Electric Lawn is one of a list of contractors across the state who are using all electric equipment, and is the first in the Upper Valley. Visit https://www.mowelectric.org/find-a-contractor to see other electric contractors in Vermont.

Electric lawn equipment has advanced quickly– companies are now making commercial grade riding lawn mowers that for 8 hours of run time. Little to no maintenance is required, as there are far fewer moving parts in electric machines compared to gas-powered machines. The low maintenance costs combined with a very low cost to run electric machines (it costs less than $2 to charge a commercial mower that will run for 8 hours) means that the machines cost much less to run.

There are many other benefits to electric equipment. Electric lawn equipment is quieter than gas-powered machinery, which produces constant noise, and which the CDC reports can create long-term health effects including hearing loss, tinnitus (ringing in the ears) and even cardiovascular issues. Noise is considered hazardous when it is 85 dBA or above– If you must raise your voice when talking to someone about 3 feet away, the noise level is probably at least 85 dBA. Consider how often you must raise your voice above the noise of gas-powered lawn equipment, either when you use it yourself or when you’re nearby. Electric lawnmowers are about 30 dB quieter than gas-powered models.

Electric equipment emits no harmful pollutants or smog-forming air pollution. Most gas-powered lawn equipment uses 2-stroke engine fuel, which is a gas-oil mixture that is especially toxic compared to automobile emissions. These emissions include hydrocarbons, nitrous oxides (components of smog), carbon dioxide, and VOCs (volatile organic compounds). These pollutants and fine particulates linked to cancer, asthma, heart and lung disease, and create smog-forming air pollution. This was the primary motivator for the Ottauquechee Health Center to use Rooted Gardens to mow this summer; in Executive Director Hali Robinson’s words, “we decided to go the electric lawnmowing route so we could encompass the full spectrum of health – which includes environmental health!”

Are you interested in getting involved in the electric revolution? Rooted Gardens has openings for 2024 with neighbor discounts! Contact matt@myrootedgardens.com for more information. Be the leader in your neighborhood.

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Traditionally, during the early spring, maple sap was gathered in birchbark buckets. Sap was boiled down in clay pots until it formed syrup. Much of the syrup was made into maple sugar—an energy source that stored well and provided sustenance on long journeys. Maple sugaring remains an important cultural tradition and source of food in today’s Abenaki communities, even as contemporary methods have been adapted.

Sap from winsak, the “sweet birches” of yellow and black (Betula alleghaniensis and B. lenta), is also boiled down to form an elixir with a wintergreen essence. Tea extracted from the boiled twigs and inner bark can be used as an astringent and a wintergreen mouthwash.

When Kikas, the “planter” moon rises, activity shifts to gathering early greens, groundnuts, other edible roots, and tree barks flush with vital nutrients. Food from wild plants offers greater nutrition than many domesticated varieties, including more energy, fiber, trace elements, and essential vitamins and minerals such as vitamin C, vitamin E, calcium, iron, and folate. 

A nutritious native harvest is foraged from woodlands, wetlands, meadows, and fields. The prolific, earthy-tasting roots of groundnut (Apios Americana) lay exposed along eroded vernal riverbanks, revealing strings of inch-wide nodules. These are cleaned, pealed, and boiled or roasted for about 30 minutes to make bite-sized, potato-like tubers.

Familiar spikes of cattail shoots (Typha latifolia and T. angustifolia) and the lance-like leaves of arrowhead or duck-potato (Sagittaria latifolia) sprout  in neighboring marshes. The swellings on arrowhead roots are dug and cut away, then processed and cooked like groundnuts. A tough, fibrous covering surrounds the starchy cattail roots, which are difficult to gather but have a tender, nutritious center.

Wild leeks or ramps (Allium tricoccum) are harvested from dark riparian soil; scallion-like roots bearing intense onion flavor. This plant is so prevalent along the banks of one waterway in north-central Vermont that it is still known by the Abenaki name Winooski, “Onion” River.

The inner barks of many species contain medicines. Dried willow bark contains salicylates, which metabolize into salicylic acid (aspirin). Willow-bark tea is a painkiller and anti-inflammatory used for treating colds, diarrhea, and rheumatism, without irritating the stomach like aspirin. Bark from basswood (Tilia americana) and slippery elm (Ulmus rubra) are used to treat infected wounds, and that of striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum) to create a poultice that reduces swelling. Slippery elm bark tea coats and sooths the throat and stomach and eases gas, heartburn, and diarrhea.

In the forest understory, newly melted snow reveals the tiny teaberry (Gaultheria procumbens)—also known as wintergreen or checkerberry. The roundish, evergreen leaves and red berries from last summer emanate the ambrosia of wintergreen. Tender spring leaves are nibbled raw. When eating the leaves and berries, saliva and digestive juices transform the wintergreen compound into salicylic acid—nature’s chewable aspirin.

As the season progresses, the scent of wild strawberry (Fragaria virginiana) wafts from underfoot—crimson gems of sweetness and flavor. The berries are eaten raw, put into food for flavoring, and dried for later use.

If someone contacts poison ivy while foraging, he or she simply rubs the stems of jewelweed (Impatiens sp.) or the leaves of sweetfern (Comptonia peregrina) onto the skin to quell inflammation. Sap from milkweed sprouts is applied directly for treating warts. 

Historically, the Abenaki viewed edibles as forming a continuum that transitioned from formal vegetable gardens into wilderness. When soil became depleted after 10 to 15 years of gardening, villages were moved to new ground where piles of acorns, butternuts, chestnuts, hazelnuts, dried blueberries, and seeds of other important foods were placed around the lodges. Squirrels gathered this largess and buried the fruits and nuts in secret caches. The forgotten stores became seeds of the groves of “wild” fruits and nuts that surrounded many villages. Many other desirable species were encouraged by cultivating those seeds and plants, such as rose, dock, choke cherry, grape, chenopodium, wild beans, false buckwheat, hog peanut, hawthorn, false Solomon’s seal, dropseed, bramble, and grass.

Showing respect is a strong part of Abenaki tradition. Permission is asked of the plant and of the Great Spirit, Kici Niwaskw. Patches are thinned, leaving some plants behind to continue the next generation. The tallest “Grandmother” plant is not picked—it is left out of respect for that progenitor of all others and to assure regeneration. Finally, thanks is offered, and a gift of seeds from that plant is left for future propagation, or a symbolic gift of sunflower seeds or tobacco to complete the circle and restore the balance. 

Michael J. Caduto is the author of A Time Before New Hampshire: The Story of a Land and Native Peoples (Brandeis Univ. Press/Chicago Univ. Press).

The waxing Sugarmaker Moon (Sogalikas). Photo: Michael J. Caduto.

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