“Fortunate to be stewards of this land”
When Emily Cayer and Robert Small began exploring their just-purchased forested property on snowshoes, they quickly came to the same conclusion. “You know, this land is not our property,” Robert recalled, as Emily agreed and added “We’re fortunate to be stewards of this land now.”
The idea of conserving the roughly 300-acre parcel in Stannard came naturally to the two naturalists and adventurers, who had worked as state biologists in Alaska and Montana for decades. The land abuts the Steam Mill Brook Wildlife Management Area (WMA), an area of about 11,000 acres of forested and open land managed by the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife to benefit wildlife and their habitats.
Emily and Robert had first walked the property in October 2018, made a preliminary offer in early November, and were driving west to spend the winter in British Columbia when the seller called them back with a favorable counter-offer. “We just looked at each other and said, yeah,” recalled Robert. “We had a real good feel for what we wanted, and this land pretty much checked all the boxes: the richness, the biological diversity of this area, that it’s in an area that has a lot of big, forested tracts of different ages, and the wildlife was definitely a big draw.”
They bought the land in January 2019, with a plan to conserve it, and “moved in” that February, snowshoeing supplies in small sleds behind them up the mountain with five feet of snow to their 300-square foot cabin with no running water or power. Over the next two years, they built a homestead while living off-grid. They also began tending the land and working towards its permanent protection.
A photo of Emily and Robert ‘raising’ their timber frame machine shed last October. Robert is holding the strap secured to one of the last rafters that was hoisted by the crane.
Courtesy Emily Cayer and Robert Small
In December 2024, they fulfilled their vision to protect the land for the future by donating a conservation easement on 269 acres to VLT. “It was a pleasure to support Robert and Emily’s commitment to conservation and biodiversity,” said VLT’s Kerry O'Brien, who worked on the project. “Being avid land stewards and next door to a wildlife management area, they are expanding the impact of protected land.”
Meet the animals: expanding a wildlife management area’s hospitality
The land includes wetlands and streams, including headwater tributaries of Stannard Brook in the Lamoille River watershed, that now have special protections for clean water and flood resilience. Along with the forest, these areas also provide excellent habitat.
“This property is shaped like a bowl that feeds into Stannard Brook,” said Emily. “It’s also a movement corridor for wildlife species. We have wildlife cameras set up every year, year-round, and we get moose and deer and coyotes and bobcats and fisher and porcupine, raccoons, everything. They move up and back through the WMA.”
As Tony Smith, a Fish and Wildlife scientist and manager of the Steam Mill Brook WMA, said, “Wildlife doesn’t see property boundaries.”
The large WMA has been managed by Fish and Wildlife since 1971 for a variety of species such as moose, deer, turkey, pollinators, bears, snowshoe hare, and ruffed grouse.
Moose on Robert and Emily’s Stannard forestland, captured on a wildlife camera
“Wildlife needs large blocks of land to call home and move around the landscape,” explained Tony, “and we collaborate with partners and private landowners like Robert and Emily who have similar goals to help us conserve all species of fish, wildlife, and plants as well as their habitats.” The parcel’s protection expands the block of forests connected to the WMA and gives wildlife more space to thrive.
Caring for the land to enhance it
Not surprisingly, the couple have been stewarding the land to enhance its ability to support an abundance of life. They have begun restoring some old logging landings where the ground was really compacted and not very productive. Since those areas were already open, Emily and Robert decided to transition them to grass pastures.
“We brought two donkeys and a draft mule onto the land as our pets and work animals,” said Emily. “We call them the Three Amigos. They create a lot of manure, which is great for improving the soil health.”
Robert and Emily have been planting grass seed and rotating the Three Amigos through those areas for grazing. “Now they’ve become these beautiful pastures,” said Robert.
Their wildlife cameras have captured images of turkeys, deer and moose moving through or browsing in those spaces. “Oh, and black bears, digging up roots,” added Emily, “not to mention all the songbirds that are using those edge habitats.”
There’s more the couple wants to do. “In the future we’ll probably explore what we can do to enhance mature or older forest characteristics. That’s something that we’d really like to see happen,” said Robert.
An unexpected gift: appreciating the interaction between humans and the natural world
The nearly six years Robert and Emily have spent living in the Stannard community has broadened their naturalist vision to include how people live with the land.
“The more we’ve become part of the community, we see how people can sustainably use the forest. It supports their livelihood and it provides all sorts of things that people want and need,” said Robert. Knowing that the logs for their new timber frame machine shed came from a small hemlock forest nearby and were milled in Hardwick heightened their awareness of needing productive forests that can be managed sustainably in a way that enhances both the property and the local community.
They have grown to appreciate other connections between people and the land: the forests support many nearby sugarbush operations that produce maple syrup, offer hunting opportunities for deer and wild turkey, and provide food — the couple harvests wild ramps that grow on their land and the WMA.
Robert and Emily are also considering ways for the land to provide educational opportunities and benefit the community.
“We’d like for this to be a place where people — especially young folks, disadvantaged folks, less privileged folks — can come and appreciate and enjoy nature. That’s our dream,” said Robert.
It all ties back to their goals to be stewards of this land, for the forest and for future generations.
