 righty February 17th and yeah the housing conservation coalition with us this morning and I know some of you must have partake in their coffee and goodies upstairs and so we'll get started and hear from now Abby quite well and I say you're gonna lead off Abby yeah and you introduce your guests we'll introduce ourselves three members on the committee so hi Brian Caldmore representing the Rutlin district this is Brian I'm Rex Westman the senator from oil and I'm more leans County and I also represent four communities in Caledonia and yes he's a slower welcome and it's thank you folks with us today and we are here in the state house today with many housing and conservation leaders from around the state who deploy the resources of VHCB in communities and so we're here to talk to you about our work and the impact of those investments so just a little bit of background as I said VHCC we're comprised about 50 organizations and our goals are to create affordable housing concern land really strengthen the vitality of communities one of the things that's most unique about VHCC the coalition and the HCP the housing the board is that it's always had a mission of uniting housing and conservation recognizing that when you invest in both communities thrive they're not one or the other it's it's both together and especially in this moment where we're experiencing growth we have some some challenges in the state and attracting people to come and live here we have a housing crisis it's always just important to keep in mind that housing and conservation really go together and so of course because this is the agriculture committee agriculture and forestry we're going to talk to you about the work that has been happening in agriculture so the coalition is asking general assembly to this session to fully support funding for VHCB that would equate to twenty seven point eight million dollars in fiscal year twenty four last year we got close you all increase the base budget by ten million dollars and so that that got us closer to full statutory share but again it's less than what's needed to meet needs of communities so I'm gonna step away I'm gonna step out of the chair here and let the the real heroes talk to you about their work so I'm joined today by I don't see Mark yet on the call it does he see here no okay well we'll kind of switch the order but we'll start with Gabby to it who is here from old road floor so Gabby and then Julie Curtin from Champlain Housing Trust and then Mark Laurie from Rupert Valley Holsteins so that's the crew today and thank you for having us in yeah glad that you can make it so Gabby you want to sit at the table and tell us anything about where you're from and yourself yeah my name is Gabby thank you for taking the time to listen to my story today I my husband and I run older farm in Granville we grow on about three acres diversified organic vegetables we have six greenhouses for season extension and we employ about three to four people during the growing season and our market include local grocery stores and co-ops farmers market and restaurants do you I don't want to change your turn no do you sell any to your local schools no we haven't done schools we are working with acorn just like that as in county localization project and they're helping us to get into more institutions it would just be a bigger jump in scale which we're just going into our sports season on this property so still slow yes still growing yeah what would like to get so would like to be able to grow for larger but my husband I started farming and college we had a lot of great role models and we knew that this was something that we wanted to do for ourselves in our community we felt that farming and growing healthy and sustainable food was a great way to be able to contribute to our community so in 2016 we started we leased some land and the land that we leased was super hilly and rocky probably only an acre to grow on so we knew that if we wanted to be able to do this you know the long haul we needed more farmland so we worked on our business plan we had a lot of help from a lot of great organizations of NOFA and then brought our business plan to my land trust and they helped us to find our forever farm in Grandville we have about 24 acres so a lot of room to grow and yeah in 2019 we purchased our land so going into our fourth grinds kind of narrow down through Greenville right so you have to be along the river we're right along the river yeah so did you go to school for agriculture did you just sort of start volunteering and working on a farm so I studied community development and so not so more like the social side of farming yeah that's the most like the technical side of farming but like we had like a lot of great role models a lot of great teachers along the way and you know we're still getting a lot of help from like UVM extension for all our technical so it's great to be in a such an ag state that's where you right yeah that's great and yeah my husband I'm a first-generation farmers we have little access to land and capital so being able to have affordable farmland this crucial in our business growth so you all know you own the land that you're actually farming yeah yeah yeah and you know one of the biggest obstacles for young farmers is access to land and capital and Vermont has such a rich agricultural history landscape and we want to keep supporting that and you know we want to keep seeing that in our state I think it's really important to be able to support young farmers and keep funding these programs like VHTB and PLT that helps you know farmers no that that's been a great program VHCV and we well I used to be in the house he rich used to be in the house and I think you were there when we set that up I was one of the sponsors of you know and yeah yeah I helped organize the trip to Connecticut yeah did you get in on that it was American Firmly Trust on the firm next door to mine and American Firmly Trust paid for that trip for us to go down I knew I that was 25 years ago and I knew I'd made a mistake by not going on the trip Jean Duffy helped organize the trip yeah I sent the vice chair of the committee to I mean I had 50 balls in the air back then and so I sent the vice chair and in the reports that we got back to the committee were you know that was right that was yeah yeah we got to work on this and we worked with others of course it was it was our been a good thing you know that we did that's helped a lot of young people get started and it helped in transitioning from one family you know to a younger generation now then a good then a good grind yeah I just say in Connecticut when we started the program the land and the housing were separate and they had the implosion of the whole program and they reorganized the program in Connecticut to include housing and we and yeah yeah we came just about the time they were reorganizing the whole program and then followed that it makes a very strong group if you put housing in land conservation together yeah you know and we can all count to something and here in the legislature you've got to be able to count in the house six and 76 if you can't get there may as well fold your 10 up go home because you're losing no this is it's been great I I don't know if we ever have done an inventory of numbers of how many young families have gotten started through this and bought homes through VHCV and land trust but those numbers would be high yeah yeah yeah any other good news any bad news well you know you're gonna take the bad with the good well thank you for taking your time thank you good luck to you thanks so Julie we have Mark or my here so we'll come to mark first that's okay yep no that's fine morning mark morning glad to be here well we're glad to have you we're getting a thunderstorm down here in Bennington County so if if you lose me it's probably because we lost power but anyway I'm our glory Rupert down Rupert over on the west side of Bennington County near the New York border I farm with my brother twin brother Mike we milk 400 cows and crop approximately 900 acres my brother also has a 10,000 tap sugar bush we we made a sizable investment in a new parlor five years ago to bring our farm up to speed and and stay in it for the long haul and the next generation would be the fourth generation is is already on board so Rupert's always been a farming community we've got a nice working landscape with two small villages and there's been a fair amount of conservation projects that have that have gone through the town and I think helping preserve its character and its working landscape we were able to conserve 177 acres of the home farm last year with with help from some of the funds from VHCV and that's up along the White Creek and there's a 236 acre wood lot that's adjacent that's that's part of that parcel that we hope to continue the conservation easement on that in the future it's also part of a block here in Rupert that extends over Rupert Mountain into the Meadoway Valley and up through Pollock there's quite a sizable block of conserved properties that I think again are keeping the working landscape and and nice blocks of of forested land and wood lot for wildlife habitat and water and air quality control especially with the climate change that we all know was going on we were also able to purchase a conserved farm next door right on the New York border in 1998 it's part of our crop base and it was an important purchase and and has helped us remain viable I think to the best of my knowledge there's only four farms in Bennington County now shipping milk but there are other farms doing some other things vegetables and stuff but dairy has always been the the core the core farming activity I think land conservation goes hand-in-hand with keeping prime ag land in in farming we have to preserve farm ag land is what feeds our people in the world and that is that's critically important to any farm that that has prime ag land and even though we need housing let's try to find some place else for that the dairy business always kind of been a tough business I've been in it for 36 years and my father and grandfather before that you somehow find a way to keep to keep going but I think these the programs that we've had come along are critically important to dairy farms I think the investment that are made with these tax dollars they're gonna they're gonna benefit future generations and it will it does make a difference in conclusion I've seen like I said a fair amount of conservation projects come through come through our town I I was able to serve on our town select board for for 26 years and the select board has always supported these projects and they have been supported throughout the community I think I again I'll just reiterate the character and the charm of our of our villages mixed in with the farmland sets our town apart and also other towns I'm sure that are extremely similar with that I'd like to thank you for listening to my story and if you have any questions let me know and thank you for supporting the VHCB funding well thank you very much before we ask any questions I'll tell you that if your lights go out from the thunderstorm Brian Campion is a guy that caused that rain so do you farm your farm anywhere near where Bob Graff's farm near his farm or was his farm and the graph farm in Rupa the graph farm is partially in Rupa and Paula it was then down to the next generation the Russo farm and they're over in the Meadowee Valley which is up over the hill from us we're over on the New York border so we're not far apart but you've got a little hill to go over there yeah there's a there's a small hill there that the milk trucks tend to go around it and it runs right through the middle of town but we can't change our geography no no so who do you sell your milk to? We were a member of Agamart Co-op proud members we've hosted open farm Sunday several times and get great turnouts for people that you know want to see what's going on on a farm and we've hosted this we milk three times a day so they're able to watch milking and it's amazing how many people they want to learn where their food comes from and they want to know who produces it and they they're always very intrigued with all the aspects they go into dairy farming and we've been we've had the privilege of helping to educate some of those folks and I think that makes a big difference as well. Yeah now those events are great I've attended some when they've had them up north and it's amazing the crowds that people that turn out for those great so you do dairy you do dairy and maple and some wood do you do you do some wood as well? Of course my woodlots are all under force management we don't do we don't have any cuts in the next ten years so I'm not like in the firewood business or anything like that so so we're not really we're not really in the wood business right at the moment but we hopefully as timber grows we might have something to sell. Yeah good Questions from the committee? No. Very good. Thanks Mark. Well thanks very much for your time this morning I know you must be busy and we appreciate you giving us that time. Thanks for having me appreciate it. Good morning can you hear me? Yeah okay wonderful thank you so sorry I can't be there in person today and I appreciate that this option is available to us so I can join you this morning I'm Julie Curtin I'm the director of home ownership at Champlain Housing Trust. I'm here today to talk about the farm worker housing program that's funded by VHCB. VHCB asked CHT to administer this program a little over a year ago so I want to report on what we've done so far and talk about where we're going. I know you've heard about this program already this year and last year so I'll try to hit the highlights but just we felt it it would be important and helpful for you to hear from from those of us who are implementing the program and doing the work. Before I talk about that I just need to say I did work for Vermont Land Trust from 2011 to 2019 and one of the last I was a in-house counsel for VLT so I did a lot of the farm transactions including Gabby's farm so it's pretty cool to hear how that farms being used now and I remember when VLT purchased the property and held it for quite some time before finding a person who who was a good fit for that to be their forever farm and one of the things that took a little while to make that transition was was the farmhouse. It's a it's a lovely old farmhouse but it needed a little TLC so farm farm housing was something that was very much part of my experience at Vermont Land Trust on the conservation side and clearly now it's a big part of the work that I'm doing at CHT. Also thrilled to have Mark here because Mark we don't have any farms in our farm worker housing program in Bennington County yet and we would really love to see that in round two so hopefully he can spread the good word about the resources we have. I also wanted to note that one of our program participants Bill Soar who is the founder and owner of Champlain Orchards and Shoram had wanted to join us today but had a conflict and so has submitted written testimony that the committee submitted that on Wednesday. So he has provided some written testimony just to give you a sense of his experience as a farm farmer who's participated in the program and what an important impact having these dollars has been for him to improve his farm labor housing. BHCB over the course of the last 2 years has provided Champlain Housing Trust with 2.2 million dollars for farm worker housing and we have 2 programs to to implement those funds and improve housing for farm workers. This followed a needs assessment that BHC be commissioned in 2021 that identified the sort of scope of the need for farm labor housing in Vermont and has been we feel has been successful so far. Last year we received half a million dollars in loan capital to make repair loans to existing farm labor housing. Our loans go up to $30,000 per loan and are forgiven over the course of 10 years. So every year that the housing once the project's complete every year the housing is used for farm labor housing. 10% of the loan principal is written down so that the end of 10 years there's a zero balance. There's no interest and no payments due. So it's a great program in that way. The focus of the funds is to make health and safety repairs to existing housing and when we knew all had Dan Baker in maybe we can have 2 weeks ago. Great. So Dan gave you a lot of detail and I won't go into that today because he's been a wonderful partner for this project and he's great at crunching the numbers and able to look at what types of projects are people in need of and I will say we certainly saw the full range of plumbing, electrical, weatherization, septic replacements, new wells and water lines, all the things that you can imagine old housing in Vermont needs and as you can imagine it's old housing and it's also housing that's in pretty heavy use with people who are working on the farm, night shift, day shifts and new workers coming and going. So we had 45 requests for that half a million dollars and we're able to fund 15 farms. Those 45 requests amounted to $1.8 million in estimated project costs. I would venture to guess that the actual costs were quite a bit higher as we found as we go on the farm as part of our process we make a site visit and use a checklist to inventory all health and safety improvements that need to be made with our funds. We often are finding initial project scopes expand after that site visit and farms are needing the full $30,000 in order to complete all of the work. As I mentioned earlier we did receive applications from almost everywhere in the state except for Bennington, Essex and Grand Isle County. So for round two we're really hoping to see some farms come in from those parts of the state. Good news is eight projects are underway and four are almost done and we're getting ready to close on additional projects very soon. Also great news is that VHCB provided us with a second round of capital for repairs. We have another $774,000 to make repair loans on farms and we've just opened applications for those funds. That application window will be open for another couple of months and we then will essentially assess the applications that we receive to award what we think will be about another 25 repair loan projects with this second round of funding. So we're really grateful to have some additional funds. But if you add up the $574,000 it still isn't even the $1.8 million that we received in the first round and we do know that there are farms that weren't able to apply last year that are expecting to apply this year. So we think that essentially the programs oversubscribed and there is a great need. I also wanted to touch on, I said there are two programs we're doing. We are also doing a pilot replacement program. There are some farms that, for example, have had to make a makeshift department in the barn or have a 1970 mobile home that's sinking into the ground and needs to be 100% replaced. These are much more expensive projects and much more complicated, but we do have $620,000 from VHCB to implement what looks to be three replacement projects to learn how could we have a program that meets the need on farms that need to actually replace their housing. So once we learn more about that program, we'll be reporting back to VHCB. Dan touched on that replacement program when he was in last week, I think it was. The present homes are so bad that it's just cheaper to replace them. And replace them with very efficient energy efficiency and new watering and new water and electrical is just better than trying to replace what's there in some cases. So that's good. I think Brian had a question. Thanks, Julie. So the counties that you haven't heard from, do you do much in the way of tell us a little bit about the outreach to get people to apply? You mentioned I think Bennington, Essex, Franklin, possibly. Grand Island. Yeah, we we've partnered with other home ownership centers around the state, for example, rural Edge based in St. John'sbury to to so that they're informed of the program and as they're out in their communities doing home repair loans, they're also for the first round, we're able to post flyers about the program. Also, in our partnership with UVM Extension, Dan has organized, I believe, five stakeholder meetings statewide, stakeholder meetings over the last couple of years, where we've had attendance from folks from Farm Bureau, from Champlain, the Champlain Valley Dairy Association. So a variety of agricultural related groups have come to those stakeholder meetings. They're all on Zoom to learn about the program of the agency of Ag is participated in those meetings. And then they've been able to disseminate information about the program through their their listservs and other channels. And then thirdly, I'll add, UVM has regional coordinators. They have bilingual staff, a UVM extension, I should say, who spent a lot of time on farm. And so regional coordinators were on farms, talking both with farmers and farm workers about, Hey, there's this money for repairs. How's your housing? Is there a need? And either those farms reached out to us or we also were able to identify some farms where farm workers said we need some help with our housing and we were able to reach out to those farms just to make sure they knew about the program and had the opportunity to apply. The conservation districts might might be able to help to get the word out. You know, we have those in every county. And, you know, they're on all types of farms, so they might be able to help out on getting the word out. I'm wondering, did you folks work with the Paul Stone turkey farm on replacing their farm labor housing house? Is that No, because right now they efficiency for law enforcement. Our program was not part of that project. Yeah. Irene, okay, Joe. Yeah, my math skills are really rusty. Can you help me understand when you say you loan up to $30,000 that you're forgiving 10% of the principal per year? What what is one of your clients paying? Are they paying just interest? Are they paying interest plus principal until those 10 years elapsed? Yeah, actually, they have no payments. So there are no payments due. It's a zero. There's no there's no interest. There would only it's essentially yes, it's an it works essentially like a grant, but it's secured because we want to ensure that the housing is being used for farm worker housing. That's amazing. So you just want them to stay as long as it's an active farm with farm labor labor using the housing. And we want to also make sure that the housing is maintained for the term of the law. And Irene, we've been working the agony worked on this for maybe the last five years. And then finally, between Dan Baker and Buster, somebody, you remember, Caswell, Buster, I mean, he used to be here every day. And when are you when are you going to start on farm labor housing? Next week? Well, we got to get going. But he was a very strong supporter. And, you know, he he kept us on our toes to get that done. And not that we just had too many balls in the air to get to that. But we finally got to it. And VHCB was, you know, a great player, positive player and all that. And, and so I think it's worked very well from what I understand. And I think from your remarks, and it's worked well with for you folks at Champlain housing. So keep up the good work. And we're going to get our farm labor into some decent housing. If we keep moving forward. So any other questions? Thank you. Thanks, Julie. Thanks, Julie. Thank you for your support for farm labor housing and for VHCB. It's really the support for VHCB that's made it possible. So thank you for for your continued support. And thanks for having us in today. Well, yesterday, well, no, yesterday, we added that was earlier last week. But I think today, we're going to vote on giving VHCB a couple of bucks for housing, 20, an additional 2075. We voted it out of committee. Yeah, voted out a committee and it's on the floor in the Senate today. And two of us are, two of us Aggies are on appropriations. So that kind of helps when those issues come along. So hopefully, there'll be some adequate funding for in the future to help correct this issue. So thanks, Abby. So thank you. Well, I think that's it for us. We had one more witness lineup who unfortunately had to cancel yesterday. So I think that I think this is awesome. Unless you have additional questions. Great. Yeah, you've got to go up to the house or we're going to go up to the house when they're off the floor. Yes. Yeah. And thank you for the additional support. You know, we didn't have a chance to talk about this today. But also, I know you've been a support for the additional 10 million for organic dairy farmers. And that's something that certainly interests us to support it. So hope to see that. You must work with quite a few of those farmers. And it's hard in the BA, you know, you don't fire up a new program. And we haven't set that up yet. But the chair of the probes has given us that that request to figure that out and how how to do it in an equitable and fair way. And but I think the you know, the support is there. We just got to figure out how to do it and where it's going to be managed. And so next, I think next week, we got quite a bit on that on that subject to start and the old, you know, the old story chase the money. The what we need to figure out for the future is we want to fix it so they don't have to come back next year and and ask for more money. And I don't I haven't had one negative senator speak up on against helping. It's just trying to figure out who's who's getting what share of the money. And as somebody keeping more than they should. And, you know, do we figure out how to get some of that extra money if there is any extra back to the farmer and it's it's always a difficult issue to figure out. I mean, we've done it before. So we ought to be able to but it was 25 years ago. And the obvious you got 100 pounds of milk, you got 10 gallons, 10 gallons in 100 weight. And, you know, the farmer gets 32 dollars. If you if the average selling price, which we gotta figure out is $10, you've got $100 in the pot to start with. And if the farmers getting 32, where's the other 68 going? And you've got the processor and some trucking and then the retail sales. And when when we did that study 25 years ago or so, what we found out was the retailers keeping way more money than they should have been. And so then you've got to fight with those folks, but it'll be interesting to see. I think the money will go to the farmer way before we get that part all figured out. We need to report that back to our appropriations committee. The chair has basically said that we would do a bill and have it take effect upon passage. So, you know, we haven't got to wait until June to stop the bleeding. That's good. Yeah. And so we're, you know, we're coming together on it. It looks like it's, it's gonna work its way out. We've got a little lifting to get it done. And so we didn't talk about universal school meals, except for asking, asking that Abby, Gabby whether or not they were selling into the schools, but it's a program that the Senate Ed committee worked on. And we was kind of instrumental in making sure local foods were part of that process. And the reports that we've heard back from the school people is that the local foods is really made a big difference for the farmer as well as the children eating wholesome, fresh food. So hope hope that you get into that market eventually and help help your sales issue. Yeah. Well, if there, there are no other questions from the committee. Thank you. Thank you. See you. So thanks, everybody. Nice to be with you. Thank you. Have a good weekend. Yeah. Drive safely. Yes, you all drive safely as well. This is thunderstorms. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I know I'm like you've got to take the bad when they build that monument. That's right. Here says it. You are. You've got to be the guy that stood there strong and run it. We got others. Yeah, right, right. We got 10 minutes. Thank you. Take a little break.