We have launched the VLT Farm Relief & Recovery Grants Program to support farmers operating on conserved land. The grants are for farmers in crisis as well as those adapting their business operations because of the pandemic.
The fiddleheads we savor in spring are the young, coiled up leaves of the ostrich fern, a tall, graceful fern common along rivers and in moist, rich upland forests. They appear in bottomlands in late April, and they last only a few short weeks. Once the fiddleheads have come unfurled, as most have by now, the leaves are bitter and are no longer good to eat.
There all kinds of ways for Vermonters to stay grounded during this pandemic…. Al Karnatz, who works in the Champlain region, seems to be practicing a new form of social distancing. And yes, he reported that there were plenty of bugs in there.
Fingernail clams, freshwater relatives of oysters and mussels, lives in Vermont’s forests alongside fairy shrimp and salamanders.
Carnivorous plants like sundew inhabit peatlands, but relations with their six-legged neighbors can be… sticky.