In partnership with the non-profit organization Abenaki Helping Abenaki and the Seeds of Renewal Project, the Rian Fried Center is establishing a heritage garden on the Sterling College campus in the 2018 growing season. The garden will feature traditional and endangered Abenaki vegetable varieties and agricultural techniques toward the end of achieving three primary goals:

• The preservation and dissemination of Abenaki seed diversity and associated cultural knowledge and histories;

• The reproduction of traditional agricultural methods, including multi-cropping, mound, and agroforestry systems, as well as ritual calendar observances;

• The enrichment of agricultural education opportunities for both Abenaki tribal members and Sterling College students.

Active work toward the achievement of these goals has been underway over the last year through participatory collaboration with Abenaki consultants as well as through coursework at Sterling. Interpretive signage developed for specific crop varieties and overall project orientation, a seed guidebook, a recipe book, primary school curricular materials, and a Seeds of Renewal website were developed by Sterling students in Spring 2018 for a class project focused on indigenous seed sovereignty efforts. Mound

preparation, direct seeding, and ceremonial observation will be incorporated into Summer 2018’s Integrated Farming Practicum and guided by community partners from the Nulhegan Band of the Abenaki Tribe. Through additional partnering with faculty in UVM’s Department of Plant and Soil Science, the project will also contribute to statewide research on soil microbial communities associated with landrace crop varieties.

This project is reflective of the Rian Fried Center’s commitment to community outreach and collaboration, as well as our support for local, regional, and global agro-biodiversity and seed sovereignty efforts. In larger context, as reported by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, since 1900, around 75% of crop genetic diversity has been lost globally. Erosion of agro-biodiversity has been accompanied by a loss of cultural and culinary knowledge associated with particular locally available varieties. In this way, traditional foods and diets have been displaced by processed and commodity foods. In some instances, this transition has resulted in the onset of diet-related illness, a trend that is especially acute among Native American populations, who are almost 2.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes than their white counterparts.

Despite this erosion of plant genetic resources and associated cultural knowledge, local landrace varieties have managed to survive as a result of individual and/or cultural dedication to their preservation. Through the Abenaki-Dawnland Garden Project, the Rian Fried Center hopes to serve as a node in a revitalized network of seed savers, traditional culinary revivalists and food sovereignty advocates working toward local resilience and dietary decolonization. Thus the project seeks not only to preserve rare and often highly endangered crop varieties indigenous to the Northeast, but to get them in the gardens and on the plates of tribal members and more generally, to educate the broader public about their historical and contemporary importance.

Rian Fried Centerfor Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems

Abenaki-Dawnland Heritage Garden Projectby Tony VanWinkle, Co-Director of the Rian Fried Center & Faculty in Sustainable Food Systems

Installing the Abenaki-Dawnland Heritage garden

Maia Usher-Rasmussen ‘20: Food Systems Analyst

The Rian Fried Center team interacts closely with student leaders in the Work Program, to the great benefit of Sterling’s farm and food system. In the arena of Sterling’s larger food system, the Food Systems Analyst work program position has played a key role in connecting the dots and facilitating dialogue between the farm, the kitchen, and the student body.

In Spring Semester 2018, this position was held by Maia Usher-Rasmussen ‘20, whose enthusiasm and strong leadership resulted in several notable achievements. Maia’s weekly facilitation of the student-led Food Policy and Action Council saw steadily increasing student participation and the development of several action projects. Perhaps most notable among the latter was the execution of a week-long lunch survey concerned with assessing the eating habits and dietary preferences of the Sterling community. One immediate outcome of the survey was the institution of Meatless Mondays in Dunbar Dining Hall. Data analysis followed from the survey as well, and the results were subsequently displayed on the Dunbar bulletin board.

Through her leadership in both the Work Program and in the classroom, Maia will continue to work toward the improvement and transparency of Sterling’s food system in the 2018-19 academic year.

Mushrooms: Value-added Product from the Woodsby Charlotte Rosendahl, Faculty in Sustainable Agriculture

The forest is all around us, and for many of the creatures that we share this landscape with, the forest means food. As we continue to try to eat more in line with what the landscape can produce, Sterling is looking to the forest for ideas for more ecologically and place-based production systems.

Mushrooms are one of the best plant-based protein sources available in the Northern forest. Not many organisms can master turning lignified carbon into protein within a year. Often, mushrooms can be grown on less valued wood, such as branches or other small pieces that would not be valued as a timber product. The carbon contained in this wood is valuable to the ecosystem, and the majority of it will be returned to the forest after mushrooms are produced for eating in the Sterling College dining hall.

Everything we do at Sterling is first and foremost about education. As so many stories at Sterling, this one also begins with a student taking initiative and getting engaged with a project that is driven by passion. Savanna Storch ‘19 started a small project on mushroom production in the Agroforestry class two years ago and has now turned her passion into her Senior Project. Her goal with this capstone project is to leave a trail of mushrooms for us all to enjoy after she graduates by integrating mushroom production into the curriculum and, ultimately, into the menu in the dining hall. Savannah understands that feeding the community can only happen if we also educate at the same time. This semester she has focused on integrating shiitake mushroom log production, and next semester she will tackle oyster mushrooms. Next year we hope to enjoy the fruit of Savannah’s effort with 15 or more pounds of Sterling-grown mushrooms every week, from May to October, delivered to the Sterling kitchen.

With Savannah’s guidance and planning, classes such as Woodlot Practices and Agroforestry, along with the Integrated Farming Practicum and the School of the New American Farmstead (SNAF) programming, will all be a crucial part of keeping the production going in the future. This summer we will also have Steve Gabriel, of Wellspring Forest Farm and author of “Farming the Woods,” and Tradd Cotter, of Mushroom Mountain and author of “Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation,” as SNAF faculty. Students in these SNAF classes will take home logs to begin their own journey into mushroom production, and Sterling will be left with an increasing variety of mushroom strains and species that we hope to see on the plates in the dining hall in future years.

Students pack a log with mushroom spores for cultivation

Community Food Action Course to Explore “Practivism”by Allison Van Akkeren, Faculty in Sustainable Food Systems

Fall semester 2018 at Sterling will see a new course called Community Food Action. This course will emphasize “practivism”— a word used by some of Sterling’s Environmental Science students to describe everyday practical actions that make a radical statement about how the world can be changed. Practivism chooses to take action close to home— in places we can walk, bike, or ski to— which empowers students to put energy into the local community, making a difference for neighbors, and living a lifestyle that reduces our environmental impact.

A practivism example from this past fall includes making local connections with a farmer to donate sweet corn, bicycling to pick the corn and carrying it to Sterling College to be processed with student volunteers, and then serving it as part of the meal at the free community October Harvest Dinner. In these ways, students will be involved in hands-on direct food action.

In this course we will:• Prepare community dinners, which includes working with the Craftsbury Elementary students to help prepare the food for the traditional Farm-To-School Harvest dinner.• Analyze, bake and prepare recipes for the Universal Breakfast program in conjunction with The Vermont Campaign to End Childhood Hunger.• Design and execute Grow Your Own workshops for the community as part of an initiative of the Center for an Agricultural Economy.• Support the Hardwick Area Food Pantry and the Pies for People enterprise.

The Community Food Action course (CFA) introduces students to this local form of action and to the players in the community who are involved. The CFA course investigates the intersection of food justice and a local food system in part by involving students in successful community initiatives to bring local food and food awareness to people in the greater Craftsbury community.Through readings, reflections and meetings with the playersinvolved in local food action we will address hunger issues in Vermont and the impact of food insecurity as we support, examine, and critique the network of players already providing food support programs. This actions-based course will involve students in multifaceted solutions to food justice in our local area. They will share some of what they learn in class with the Sterling College community by designing tabletop presentations to be displayed in Dunbar Dining Hall.

The objectives for the course include:• To engage students in local existing food justice initiatives.• To engage students in thoughtful discussions around food insecurity and food aid.• To be involved in a resilient, health-promoting and sustainable local food economy while meeting local food needs, and at the same time looking critically at the value these programs provide.• To involve students in preparation of whole foods.• To expose students to the depth of volunteerism that supports local food initiatives and transfer that learning to communities beyond the greater Craftsbury area.

Faculty Allison Van Akkeren makes pasta with students

Making healthy snacks in a Grow-Your-Own workshop

Recently, I have been asked this question: Why oxen? This past summer I added Mike and Jake, a team of Milking Shorthorn 10-year old oxen to the lineup of draft animals that help power the Sterling College farm and timber production systems. Having thought deeply about this, I’ve decided that perhaps a better question is: why not oxen?From the perspective of a traditional New England farm, oxen were the logical power source for settlers to meet the demands of a challenging landscape. In Ann Greene’s book, “Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America,” she writes, “In 1819, the draft animal of the

future was the ox, not the horse.” Her statement is based on the proceedings from U.S. President James Madison’s speech, as it appeared later in “American Farmer,” to the Albemarle County Agriculture Society where he asserted that, “…(it is) an error in our husbandry that oxen are too

little used in favor of horses.” Madison built his argument from both an economical and practical viewpoint stating “…oxen do not require high feed such as corn and oats which require the most labor and greatly exhaust the land, by using oxen, farmers can reduce their expenses while releasing acreage to concentrate on more profitable and productive crops.” Madison further stated that oxen “produced not only power for the farmer but also beef, tallow, and leather.” William Cobbett, a journalist and farm reformer who was instrumental in publicizing the notion that continual tillage of highly erodible lands may be “the greatest agricultural sin” took up Madison’s support of the ox by penning an article for the same edition of “American Farmer” where he brought attention to the advantages of the ox stating:

“Horses, if they are strong enough, are not so steady as oxen, which are more patient also…without any of the fretting and unequal pulling, or jerking that you have to encounter with horses. And as to the slow pace of the ox, it is the old story of the tortoise and the hare.”

Cobbett highlighted something for which I am continually intrigued, and that is the simplicity of rigging equipment required to work oxen versus horses. The carpentry and blacksmith tools from Madison and Cobbett’s time period (and certainly much earlier) were well suited to construct a well-fit neck yoke and strong chain, when bows were easily bent to shape by simple steam boxes and jigs.

Cobbett firmly concluded, “…an ox goes steadier than a horse…and he wants neither harness-makers nor groom…all the food and manual labour required by such horses, ought to be considered as so much taken from the clear profits of the farm…I want no horses.”

From my perspective, I am not willing to abandon horses but instead, combine the strengths of both horses and oxen and develop a power system that is highly adapted to the specific need of any farm-related or timber harvesting operation. For example, in timber harvest operations, oxen are ideal for the short pulls from where a tree is felled out a skid road where a team of horses can forward, at speed, to the landing. I find the maneuverability of cattle suits this format well since there is often very little room to turn around to gain the hitch point for skidding; likewise, oxen seem to care little about tramping through the debris of limbs and course wood at the felling site, where some horses take great offense at this demand. The simple hitch system of a chain, a grab hook, and a hitch point on the yoke make the process of choking logs simple and efficient. I can hear Cobbett’s argument clearly as I work in the woods with a pair of oxen, and the beautiful rhythm of the system makes perfect sense to me. This power system moves easily from the forest to the garden where the oxen can lean to the bows and pull a plow slowly but steadily through tough ground. If a rock is encountered, as is often the case, the oxen are moving slowly enough to respond accordingly and allow the teamster time to react and stop the team to address the problem. The horses are well suited to come behind the plow and fit the land back together with disc and harrow.

Consideration of Oxen in Farm & Timber Harvesting Operationsby Rick Thomas, Co-Director of The Rian Fried Center & Faculty in Sustainable Agriculture

Our oxen, Mike & Jake

Student Sam ‘19 with Mike & Jake

Madison and Cobbett were part of a generation focused on improvement of farming practices for a new nation. Greene writes, “they (Madison and Cobbett) were men with a vision of destiny and the belief that every decision was of utmost significance, their focus to increasing the use of animal power for production and mobility fitted the kind of development they wanted for an agrarian and commercial republic.” There is a growing interest among farmers and loggers to evaluate the power systems used on today’s farms and timber harvest enterprises; really, though probably unbeknownst to them, using the same thinking as Madison and Cobbett; that power systems should be economically and practically matched to the exact demands of a specific farming or forestry enterprise. Now, at Sterling College, we have the opportunity to learn both how to use horses and oxen and when one or the other is better matched for any given farm or timber harvesting task.

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Rick Thomas and Tony VanWinkle to Co-Chair Rian Fried Center for Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems

Sustainable Agriculture Training for Military Veterans

Faculty members Rick Thomas and Tony VanWinkle have been appointed as Co-Chairs of the Rian Fried Center for Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems (RFC). Rick and Tony will bring expertise, passion and vision to this critical role at Sterling. This summer they will share details about the implementation of the RFC Vision, authored by the team several years ago.

Please also join us in expressing our collective gratitude to faculty member Charlotte Rosendahl for her service as Chair. Under her leadership, Sterling added Sustainable Food Systems as a new major and, with the naming of the program for late trustee Rian Fried, she led the new Center during a time of programmatic growth and facilities improvements. Charlotte will remain as a member of the RFC team, will expand her teaching, lead Global Field Studies courses, and resume her research interests.

RFC Co-Chairs Tony VanWinkle & Rick Thomas

In partnership with the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT), Sterling College will host the Armed to Farm training program in June 2019 for veterans of the U.S. armed forces. The week-long training combines classes on marketing and business planning with hands-on workshops and local site visits with both small-scale farmers and agricultural businesses. The program provides veterans and their spouses the opportunity to explore sustainable farming and ranching enterprises as a means to assess farming as a career option.

For more information on Sterling’s 2019 Armed to Farm workshop, contact Heather Jerrett (hjerrett@sterlingcollege.edu). For information on NCAT’s na-tional programs for veterans, contact Margo Hale (margoh@ncat.org).

SNAF

NEW AMERICAN

FARMSTEAD

School of the

S U M M E R 2 0 1 8

S T E R L I N G C O L L E G E . E D U / S N A F

Thanks to our generous underwriters:

AFFINAGE The Art of Ripening Cheese Eric MeredithSEED SCHOOL Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance

CHARCUTERIE Artisanal Preservation of MeatJules GuillemetteTHE ART & SCIENCE OF CRAFT BREWINGJan Paul & Anders Kissmeyer

BREAD MAKING & HERITAGE GRAINSRichard Miscovich

The Rian Fried Center for Sustainable Agriculture is named after the founder of Clean Yield Asset Management, a company that believes you can make financial investments without compromising your principles. Rian was an enthusiastic Vermonter and believer in environmental stewardship. Sterling College, with its emphasis on exploring and teaching best agricultural and ecological practices, embodies Rian’s vision. Your support gratifies his family on a personal level, but more importantly, it announces in the best way possible your commitment to our good earth.

Words from Rachel Hexter Fried

Sterling College holds a unique place in the ecosystem of liberal arts colleges because of its hands-on educational model in combination with its natural, rural, and agrarian characteristics. Our motto—Working Hands, Working Minds— succinctly describes our belief that neither narrowly trained technicians nor uninformed idealists can prepare society for the changes ahead. The Rian Fried Center for Sustainable

Agriculture is the container for such work, the place where students gain knowledge and understanding of agricultural systems that are restorative and resilient, diverse and distributed, innovative and inclusive, natural and just.

The good work demonstrated in this edition of the Rian Fried Center for Sustainable Agriculture newsletter has been made possible with your support. Together we are addressing the most critical issues of the day: food, water, health, energy, and community. Your support will continue growing and fueling this instructional laboratory in Rian Fried’s name that unites the farm, forest, and kitchen in a whole-system approach to eating and living.

To make a tgift, please be in touch. Together we will shape the future of agriculture.

In gratitude,

Moving Forward

Christina Goodwin ‘02Dean of Advancement & Alumni Relationscgoodwin@sterlingcollege.edu802-586-7711 x128

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