On a mid-summer morning Fred Pratt sat on his cabin’s front porch, high on a Duxbury hillside, listening to birdsong from the surrounding forest. “There’s a yellowthroat down there,” he said. “And there’s a catbird, and robins of course, and another warbler, maybe a chestnut-sided.”
“When things are insecure, it’s not a bad idea to produce more food,” said Angus Baldwin as he deftly cut and bound flat-leaf parsley. “I wasn’t sure if we’d be selling or giving it away this year, but I figured there would be a need for it.” Angus operates the nonprofit West Farm on VLT’s Brewster Uplands Conservation Trust property in Jeffersonville. The parsley was destined for the USDA Farmers to Families Food Box program, one of several partners Angus is working with this year to get healthy food in the hands of those who need it.
111 acres of forestland were protected last month in the Shutesville Hill Wildlife Corridor, which lies between the Green Mountains and Worcester Range and serves as one of the most important wildlife regions in Vermont.
Dan and Shelley Howrigan, organic dairy farmers, conserved 141 acres of farmland near Fairfield village. They’re using the fields for hay and pasture, and rejuvenating a sugarbush in the woods.
A gorgeous stretch of open fields with long-range views in Barre has been conserved for farming into the future, honoring the area’s farming heritage. Beloved in the community, Gordon Booth had long wanted to see it protected; his children fulfilled this vision.