 Well, we're live, so I'd like to welcome everyone to the meeting on Wednesday, February 15th. This is the Senate Agricultural Committee, and so we'll run around the table here and introduce ourselves. And as you folks each speak, you'll be introduced yourselves and you'll get started. Good morning. Brian Collamore representing the Rutland District. Hi, I'm Rene Renner. I'm in Northwest Fairfax in Brighton County. Brian Campion, Bennington County, Wilmington, and Lindenberry. I'm Lee Chwestman. I'm from Wilmington. I'm Bobby Starring. I represent Orleans County and four communities in Caledonia County. So, again, welcome you all to the meeting. It's right here a little bit about the working landscape. And who lives here when we set that up? Well, years ago, most of you, we know it's done very well and generated programs, generated what we put in Lindenberry, something like that. But what is generated out in the business world has been remarkable. And it's all we are anxious to hear from you folks. And we have the deputy dog Alison Eastman from the Agency of Agriculture. Good morning, Alison. Morning, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, Senators. Thank you for this invite and opportunity to talk about the wonderful program that you all created just a decade ago. It's a program we're proud of at the Agency. I'm Alison, deputy secretary. I serve as Anton's designee. If you would like, I would be happy, Mr. Chair, to do the run of the show and call on speakers if that's your purpose. Will that work throughout to keep us on task? Well, I guess if I don't like your schedule, I'll take over. Excellent. That sounds good. And if we could, not everybody that's in the room will be speaking. I would like to quickly just go around the room and especially make sure that everybody understands who represents on the board, as well as our staff that worked so hard on this program. So we appreciate the work and the time that they give. So if you wouldn't mind, I'm going to turn to Elizabeth in the room to make sure that we recognize the folks that are with you today. And then we'll have the individuals online introduce themselves. So your name and the seat you represent would be helpful. Yeah, I think actually the majority of, we have what we call the gauntlet going on that side. So we're going to have people rotating in. Four members. You have more out there? We do. Ten. I'll be four or five at least. Maybe a couple in the corner. Yeah, and we were prepared for that. We knew the room limitations. We just decided that it was better to have that face-to-face contact. So they'll introduce themselves or we'll introduce them as they speak. But I think, you know, as far as the folks that are in the room right now, we have three grantees with us today who will be speaking at the end. And are really the star, you know, the most important speakers of the day. Abby, do you want to introduce them? Yeah, so I'm Abby Willard. I'm the Director of the Act Development Division at the Agency of Agriculture. So the Working Lands Program is nested within the Agricultural Development Division of the Agency of Agriculture. And I'm here to help do a run of show with Deputy Secretaries when that's needed. Yeah. And then on the screen right now, I'm going to be introducing Diana later. I have a colleague, Kristina Sweet from the Agency of Agriculture, and Bob, who is a board member, who will not be speaking today. Nobody on the screen will be speaking today except for Allison. Yeah. Thank you. So I appreciate that if we omit introducing somebody, it's likely because of the capacity limit. So we're not going to be speaking our apologies in advance, but we'll try to make sure that you get to know the who's who sitting outside of your committee room as well. So, thank you all. As you're aware, 2022, Mark, 10 years of the Working Lands Enterprise Initiative, Vermont's Working Lands. In 2012, legislators passed Act 142 allowing the creation of the Working Lands Enterprise Initiative, a public-private partnership empowered with a broad range of levers to invest in the economy, environment, and culture of Vermont's Working Lands. Legislators in 2012 had the foresight to understand why a program like Working Lands Enterprise Fund needed to be created. Working Lands Enterprise Initiative has been a central resource for many of Vermont's Working Lands businesses, and moving forward, we'll be a critical resource as Vermont responds to challenges such as climate change, food insecurity, and global market pressures. Program readiness for fiscal year 2022 recommended appropriation. So I'm going to turn it over to Elizabeth Sipple, our program lead for the Working Lands Enterprise Initiative. That's me. Yeah. Yeah, good morning. I am so honored really to be leading the Working Lands Initiative, a program that is benefiting so many working lands businesses and the communities that they serve. I recognize my colleagues from the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, Diana Ferguson and Claire Salerno, who is outside the door, who work day in and day out to support the board's work and nimbly get dollars to Working Lands businesses and service providers. I think I'm also really lucky to be working with Paul Fredricks and Catherine Servideo from Forest Parks and Recreation, and with Rendo Scots from Commerce and Community Development. I think that's a unique part of this program, the interwoven. What you'll see today, how many different entities, agencies, and industry sector experts are involved in making the Working Lands Program tick. We are, the Working Lands Program is uniquely committed to being a very accessible grant making program. We are engaged on keeping the application process as clear as possible, and we also accompany applicants through the entire navigation process on a day-to-day basis. We work whenever possible to connect applicants to additional resources, whether that be business advising resources or additional funding opportunities. And we also, to advance learning, offer individualized, constructive feedback to unsuccessful applicants, which is quite unique. Today, what you are hearing today is evidence of what the Working Lands Enterprise Board does best, which is deploy capital and business assistance to farm, food and forest enterprises. They create new jobs, they protect jobs, they generate revenue for the state, and they also keep our working landscape vital and vibrant. To date, grantees have created over 500 new jobs. They have also generated over 55 million dollars in revenue in the two years following the completion of their grant. And they also steward more than 24,000 working acres, or acres of working land. And the Board also works strategically, the Board strategically allocates the appropriated funds and then measures the impact of those funds. And that is ultimately what we are excited to be sharing with you today. And that is also in the book. So we're going to be talking about that today, and it's also in this impact report, which captures 10 years of impact. That's great. Are there any questions at this point? So I think now we'll invite in our first speaker, our first witness, or second witness, I guess. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, then we'll sit right at the table. Yeah, now we're going to invite in our fearless Vice Chair, Charlie Hancock of Northwood Forestry. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, Alison. So for the record, my name is Charlie Hancock. I'm a consulting forester based out of Montgomery, and I currently serve as the Vice Chair of the Working Lands Enterprise Board. It's good to see you all again. Thanks for having us today. So as I said, I currently serve as the Vice Chair of the Board. Most of the work of the board is around governance. The coordinating committee of the board facilitates planning and analysis that supports effective and efficient board decision making, which in turn, amplifies our impact. Each year, the board gathers at an annual symposium to look at the landscape both figuratively and literally to determine the areas of greatest need and the greatest potential impact of limited dollars that we have to make. The thought partnership between practitioners, policymakers, funders and individuals from across the working land spectrum has catalyzed significant program changes over the years, which have continued to really rise to the moment. And that's really the key of what the board does, looks at the landscape and says, what is Vermont need from us now at this time? As you'll hear later, these changes have included things like strategic investments in low grade wood markets, developing supply chain and market level impact grant categories, acknowledging the impacts required here and in specific areas such as that are really needed at a uniquely large scale. We have large problems that are going to be large investments. The grants review process brings together individuals beyond just the board itself, from both the public and the private sector, all deeply rooted in this work. We make investment recommendations that proactively address WELIB's strategic considerations and opportunities, enabling the initiative to be both innovative and responsive. I can't say enough about the teams that come together annually to do this work. Not only the depth of their knowledge around the table and thoughtfulness of the deliberation, but the clear commitment to the success of working lands businesses, which often has a sign into conversations which go beyond the grant dollars at play to really how WELIB can build better support networks and get enterprises the tools that they need for success. Since 2012, the Working Lands Enterprise initiative has invested $13.6 million in grants and contracts to 418 farm, food and forestry businesses and to the service provider organizations who directly support these businesses. These investments have leveraged another $22.5 million in matching funds. So for every $1 in grant funds invested, another $1.6 in matching funds have been brought in to support these projects. As Elizabeth pointed out, where 500 new jobs have been created with grant funding supporting over additional 1,100 jobs, we've impacted over 24,000 acres of our working landscape, and businesses can attribute more than $55 million in annual sales because of these grant supported projects. These investments continue to make an impact in all 14 counties, and there's a really great map in the impact report that shows at county level where the impacts are being made. These investments are designed to support businesses at critical stages of growth. The specific focus is on maintaining an active, working and vibrant landscape, the foundation of Vermont's rural communities and economies. As you'll hear later, the impact or the need is great and it's growing. Each cycle we see a request for public support outpacing funding by four to five times. In 2022 alone our business grant round received 130 applications requesting nearly $10 million in funding, and the program is only able to make 55 awards totaling $4.3 million. Wheelhead was an established program that has a competitive application process and a vetted review process with a track record of success. We can deploy more funds if you give it to us. So, thank you very much for the time, and with that I'm going to hand it over to Commissioner Danny Fitsko from FPR. Questions for Caledonia? If you were referring to the map on page eight, I'm just curious how Essex County got zero money last year and Caledonia got almost $900,000. Is there a rhyme or reason to that distribution and why it's so varied? Yeah, so every year the grants applications come in from different kinds of different levels. Sometimes we get more from one county, less from another, and so it's really kind of what we get in the door that we're able to react to and then deploy. I will say that through the grant review process we do make a deliberate effort to think about how we're allocating the dollars equitably across the state, and also thinking about kind of track records for counties that might have been underserved in the past. So, for example, this past year we thought about the Moile County and how they represented in the past were Caledonia counties. So, we do make a deliberate effort to kind of deploy funds equitably, but it all depends on what comes in the door. So, Essex may have received my idea before? Yes. On page six there's a cumulative funding map. Okay, thank you. So, the page eight is 2022 funds, but this is cumulative funding per county. But you'll still see, you know, an equity receipt. Okay, thank you. I think too it's important to notice that some of the grants that we do provide are upwards of 250,000. So, you could have one grant in a county of 250,000 and 10 grants in another county that, you know, in the other counties that are small, 20, 50,000. So, just keep that in mind. Thank you. So, the matching one, you said one to 1.6, I think those are federal funds I assume. So, the funds that get matched come from the businesses themselves, cash investments, they come from debt equity in the businesses, they come from other grants, state, federal, nonprofit. Okay. So, it's a variety of funds that are being drawn in. Yeah. I was impressed, Elizabeth mentioned that if you don't receive a grant that you still stay in touch and say, hey, by the way, sorry we couldn't help. Have you had people come back a year later and been successful? Yes. Yeah. As I said, you know, the deliberation process for grant review and selection is both, you know, about dollars and cents. How do we deploy it? But it's also looking at these businesses and saying at this stage of growth, what does this business need? Oftentimes, it's business support services, it's business planning, it's financial literacy. So, we often look at kind of, okay, maybe they're not ready now. How do we give them the tools to be ready? And then they come back the next year. That's very common. I'd say I have not seen a grant cycle where we have not seen applicants from previous years show back up. And the great thing is when they show back up, they show back up stronger because of the resources that we've directed to them. Excellent. Thank you. Thanks for sharing. Charlie, do you guys do outreach to areas also? So, in terms of like, sure, grants will come in or applications will come in, but is there any outreach saying, hey, I'm going to be creative. We've got an application from S6 from this area. Does that kind of thing happen? Yeah, I wouldn't say that we proactively, at least in my experience, kind of say up front, hey, we should really kind of do some digging in S6. The one thing that we do rely on is the networks across the state that we have through the ag community, through the forestry community. The Working with Enterprise Board is a small group of people, but the entity itself reaches across Vermont with, I'd say, hundreds of people involved in the greater family that are talking to folks on the ground that might not have the capacity or the time or the knowledge to know this program exists. But, for example, when a county forester meets with a firework processor and says, hey, did you know about this program? Right. We've got consulting forces on the ground. We've got folks from Agency of Ag working with farmers to kind of direct them to how the program could best support their needs. Thanks. Great. And could you tell us anything about one particular applicant that got the money and how it went? Yeah, so I'm actually psyched that Levi is here today from Bridgeford Natural Wood Products. She has a phenomenal story to tell that isn't just about, you know, one enterprise making some infrastructure investments and then producing a product. She's got a story to tell about a community, which I think is so important because so much of the work we do, it's not just about this one business. It's really about lifting up a community of people around that business and the community itself. And in certain instances, like with Levi's story, where you can kind of see these successes and hold them up. It really just kind of catalyzes enthusiasm, effort and engagement in a broader community of people. That's really the outcome we want. So if you had, like someone with a psalm, there was one or two people working and if they could add to that psalm, a couple more employees to put out more lumber and air dry it or something, because like lumber now is so expensive, this West Coast Canadians. So is there any of those? Oh yeah, we've got an applicant we're working with just south of me in Fletcher, laughing stock farms, Tucker Riggs. They do a lot of custom sign for local markets, a lot of timber frame work, and they treat their yard in a way like a lot on a log yard, like a timber yard you'd see, you know, sticks and stuff and things like that, where people come in and they'll toss a few two by fours on the roof and take off for a certain project. So it's different scales. But yeah, we're seeing projects like that where certain infrastructure investments can allow them to bring on more employees. That's one of the metrics that we really use is kind of how are we impacting employment, moving from part time to full time, adding full time. Any other questions? And all of the grantees that speak today, you'll hear that their project is impacting more than their individual business. You will hear more of those examples. Yeah, and it's just one of these needs. The Sommel one is a great example of how during COVID we saw the demand for things skyrocket and in a way that was an opportunity for laughing stock farms to ramp up production so that folks in Fletcher who wanted to build that deck didn't have to buy wood that's coming back from Canada. They can buy it from Fletcher. Yeah, we ship our logs up there. They saw them and then bring the lumber back. Yeah. Yeah, well that idea of keeping dollars local is phenomenal. And it's something that I'm sure you'll hear from the folks here today. Yeah. Thank you so much. Mr. Mr. Chair, we have one of our speakers that needs to be in another room at 945. So the next two speakers, if we could hold questions, that would be fabulous just to get them to their next room on time. Where are you going at 945? One of our speakers that's coming in next into your room needs to be in another room at 945. So if we could hold questions and get through to our grant recipients, that would be amazing. And then we'll take questions. Yeah, very good. Good morning. My name is Danielle Fitzgoe. I'm currently serving as the Interim Commissioner for the Department of Parks and Recreation. Thank you for having the team here today and to share the really amazing work of the Working Lands Enterprise Initiative. I get to highlight for you today some of the 2002 impacts of the grants. In 2002, we had historic investments in the Working Lands Enterprise Initiative. Special appropriations from the legislature increased the grant making from around $600,000 to an unprecedented $5.3 million. And it's making a huge impact across Vermont. One of the things I really love about the Working Lands Enterprise Initiative is that I really know how to make strategic and smart investments and I really know how to get the money out the door, which I can't say that's across the board. These funds were used to target bottlenecks in the local meat supply chain, which resulted in $1.1 million in grants out to support meat production and processing businesses. We also leveraged the special funds to make transformational large-scale investments up to $250,000, which is huge for these industries. These initiatives resulted in supply chain and market-level impacts. These much-needed, larger grant supports businesses in forestry and in value-added agriculture, which projects create opportunities for multiple businesses across the supply chain. I'm going to give you an example of a project from last year. Farm Context, which is at the Center for Agriculture, Economy, and Hardware, delivers $12 million in food to from 100 of Vermont producers across the state that are too small or too rural to actually connect up with traditional delivery firms. I love their slogan, We Go Where You Grow. Their bottleneck? It's good, right? Their bottleneck was their space, 1200 square feet. They received nearly $250,000 in the impact grants to really scale up that business and grow their infrastructure. The investment will now allow Farm Complex to support more small farms to get food from the farm to shelves and connecting more of Vermonters with fresh local food. The costs needed to make real impacts in the forestry sector are high. It's just the nature of the industry. And forest-based businesses this year had a historic investment of $1.4 million. Forest-based businesses help keep Vermont's forests, which 75% of the state is forested. These businesses actually help to conserve forest across the state. I am excited today that you're going to meet two forestry grant recipients. We have Ethan Jeffery from Jeffery Firewood and Levi Irish from Vermont National Forest Products. So you'll get to hear directly from grant recipients. Also in 2022, the initiative prioritized funding for service provider organizations. The board recognizes that to make historic investments, businesses need to be ready and they need to be supported. Investments went to support business vitality and organizational and governance for producer associations. There were 11 farm, forest and value-added food associations that received awards this past year. One recipient was Vermont Woodlands Association, an organization supporting private forest landowners in Vermont. We look at our forest and landscape, 80% is in private land ownership. And if you're thinking about forest businesses, that connection to private landowners is just crucial. $10,000 grant went to Vermont Woodlands Association to really support a robust strategic planning initiative, which was for succession planning for their executive director, retired this past year. Some of you probably know Kathleen Water who retired. This investment allowed them to strategically plan for that transition. And it resulted in an increase in both membership and donor support of 10%. The $5.3 million awarded in 2022 leveraged $11.3 million in matching funds. And the investment that the working lands, investment the working lands is about Vermont's culture, our community, our economy and our environment and for Vermont for the future. That's my roundup for 2022 grants and I'm due to pass it to Tate Brooks next. Thank you. Any questions? I should have waited. As commissioner, we've got to have a question. We know they're on a schedule. You're enjoying the job? I'm enjoying the job and I'm happy to come back and talk to you anytime. Thank you very much. Pretty bad when you have to take turns out in the hallway, huh? It's a beautiful hallway senator. Maybe a little additional artwork would help. We were going to lend you a photo. Exactly. We got the artwork in here. Welcome. Thank you. Good morning. For the record, I'm Tate Brooks. I'm the deputy secretary for the agency of commerce and community development. And just as a reminder, the working lands board has designees for the secretary of commerce. So I serve as secretary Curley's designee. Again, the commissioner, secretary of ag and the commissioner of forest and parks. And so, you know, it was great catching up with secretary Curley about a year and a half ago and talking about my interest in serving on the board. Just for background, I grew up on a seventh generation dairy farm up in Franklin County. So certainly could understand the value and see the importance of the working lands and the importance to roll for a lot. So with that, just have a few remarks I wanted to share with the committee this morning. Vermont's food, farm, forest and wood product sector are critical economic engine for the state and especially crucial for rural Vermont. These grants encourage innovation and risk taking to bring these companies to the next phase. The working lands enterprise initiative is unique because it invests in the businesses and organizations that are the keystone to support our working lands economy. The Vermont working lands enterprise entrepreneurs are the heart of our rural communities. They are the backbone of the Vermont economy and are certainly critical to the $3 billion tourism industry. And they're certainly a very important source for rural job creation and an integral part to what continues to make Vermont a quality place to live. So thank you. So one question, like people get these small, some big grants, but mostly small grants. Does that put them eventually, have you seen any, now we've been at this 10 years, going to ACCD for larger grants to even grow bigger? Yeah, there certainly have been some examples over the 10 years where, again, working lands kind of offers up some additional smaller dollars to kind of jump start things without a doubt. And it's great, again, a lot of credit to the legislators. And I know Senator Starr, you played an important part on this years ago to include the Agency of Commerce as well because the agricultural sector is unique. So it's good to have that cross agency, cross department, colonization. And this board certainly accomplishes that. Alright, thank you. Thank you. Next up is Helen Taylor, our Executive Director of Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund. Seems like we've seen her before. I'll keep it very short, Senator. But please say your name. Helen Taylor, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund. Great to be with you again. So my job is to give you a quick overview of the ex-officio seats. As you may know, of the 20 members on the board, three of them are ex-officio. The Sustainable Jobs Fund Executive Director, the Director of Mount Housing Conservation Board and also somebody from VEDA, Designee from VEDA. And so Gus Selig and Sarah Isham and I are all ex-officio members. It means that we do not actually vote on any of the grant applications. We help with review. We help with background information. And the reason that you all did that when you passed the bill in 2012 is because you recognized that this program was something that was going to survive administrations. And there was going to be people rotating on and off the board. There were going to be administration staff often on the board. So this was an opportunity to have some both subject matter expertise on the board, but also somebody that could hold the historical knowledge of what we've done over the years. So that's a big part. And also, my position was added because of the front of plate investment program to provide both some of that ag sector based knowledge. But also we do forest products work. And so that also is something I bring to the board. The board is empowered to by statute to to prioritize what it will be taking the funding that we get in the after given fiscal year. Then we're we're tasked with figuring out how best to put it out into the world. And so we get together as a board for retreat every year where we take a look at we hear from different constituents from different subject matter experts. We figure out what is the need for the year ahead. And then we say, OK, let's put this amount in service provider grants, this amount in the business grants, this amount in the larger. Oh, let's have, you know, up to 75,000 this year because we didn't get a big allocation from them from the state. But this year we have a bigger allocation. So we'll go up to 250. So like we sort all that out. And then that is what then the staff goes forward with putting out in terms of our fees and managing that whole process. But it's the board that sets what those programs are and the dollar amounts per year. Okay. And so one of the big things just for to take away and remember about is this is a very popular program, as you know, and we're always over subscribed. Meaning there's always more requests than we have funding for. And just as a point of reference in fiscal year 22, we had close to $5.3 million that we were able to put out. And a lot of that was because of pandemic era, ARPA funds and others funding. And we had 11 million in requests. So we put out 5.3. We had 11 in requests from 181 applicants. Now, not all those applicants are always ready to go. But one of the things that is what I've seen over the last 10 years is that the oscillation of the year over year, how much of an allocation we get impacts what we can do. And it impacts the calculus of various businesses about when they might apply. So if you think about somebody that wants to do an expansion project, they want to add on capacity and add jobs or they want to change out some equipment or something like that. You think about it. You know that there's always a bank available to you, right? You can always go to the bank has always got money. But if you need some grant funds because you don't have enough equity and you're going to go to Vita and get a loan at the normal 80-20 loan to value ratio, you've got to have 20% of equity, right? That you want to be able to cash you want to put in. This money, we love money, counts like equity. It serves the role like equity. As if the owner, it was their cash, right? It is. Exactly. So when you think about it, if we go from fiscal 21 where we had about 600,000 to work with in grants, then we went in fiscal 22. We had 5.3 million that we gave out. And then in fiscal 23 currently, we're going to be giving out 2.1 million. And if the governor's recommended budget goes forward with you all next year, fiscal 24, we will have about 5 million. So we have the governor put forward 4 million. And then we have a million left over from last year's extra last minute money that you guys provided. So we'll have 5 million next year. But think about it in terms of like, if you're a business owner and you're trying to plan for when you want to expand, you're like, well, should I go this year? Should I wait? Is there going to be money enough next year? And so from a business perspective and planning out when is the best time for my business to be applying? Knowing that there's a steady level in WeLeb is very helpful. So that's all I wanted to let you know about. It's a great program. As you all know, we still appreciate your support over the years. Well, it's gone pretty well. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So those of us in the legislature, whether we like it or not, are always at meetings. That's what we do. Just meeting after meeting after meeting. How many times does the board meet? The board meets monthly. Sometimes we get a month off in the summer, depending on how busy a year it is. But during the summer months is when we do our planning for the year ahead because basically by September the staff has to be putting out the RFPs or getting them ready to go out. So we spend July, August, usually having a retreat to figure out what we're going to do for the coming year. And then it's a steady stream. You can get the gory details from Elizabeth on all the review meetings and how we do the process. Have you ever talked about a way to set up for a steady stream of money year after year that we could do to make it more steady so you could plan for one year to the next? So BHCB had a funding stream and we even took some of that away back while it's up here and it's down here. So you've got a view of the board. Well, the board, we're not supposed to be advocating for things because we're just administering the program. The Working Lands Coalition that Vermont Council on Rural Development supports, they have been pushing for many, many years to get up to at least 5 million a base. So that's a million. Any other questions? Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I told you it'd be short. You did well. Thank you. Next up is Gus Seelig, Executive Director of the California Constitution Board. And the base that increased to a million this year, FY23. It was 594,000. Last year. Good morning, Gus. Good morning. Pleasure to be with you. Good morning. I'm going to try to be really brief today because there are people more important for you to hear from than me. But for the record, Gus Seelig, Director for the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, I am usually sitting here talking to you about our programs. And today I'll talk a little bit about our programs as they relate to the Working Lands Initiative. So as you all know, we have bought land in fee for recreation, for wildlife habitat, for conservatory by development rights for farmers regularly. And about 20 years ago, we went off to a conference in Maine and learned about how they were doing business planning and technical assistance for the ag community. They had a farm viability program. And we brought that idea back to Vermont. And the governor at that time asked us to get that going. And so this committee actually established the Vermont Farm and now Forest Viability Program. There's a statute for it. The Massachusetts program had always had a portion of it that when you completed a business plan, you would get a grant at the end of it to help implement your business plan. But we hit a point where state revenues got really tight. And so we were only able to do the business planning part of that work. So I was really pleased having been on a ton of community visits with Paul Costello when he came up with the idea that there ought to be this kind of program. He actually asked if we'd take it on. And I said, this needs its own life. And I served on the board the first three or four years. And then had Ella Chapin represent us. Ellen's just talked about the role of ex officios. And I've come back to the board this year. And what I want to say to you is I'm a wholehearted supporter of this initiative that we know that it takes more than a good plan. It takes more than buying development rights or our rural landscape to be vibrant. That I think this is a program that addresses some of the concerns that Senator Westman mentioned when we were here. We're working with lots of small entrepreneurs getting started or trying to grow their businesses to the next place. And so we are very happy that this program is caught fire. Coming back to the board, it is a much more sophisticated operation today under Elizabeth's leadership than it was when we were inventing it back 10 years ago. And I think you'll see that in the annual report. And really, rather than me spending much more time talking today, I want to stop talking. I'll answer any questions you have. You've got three witnesses today to tell you about their businesses. And that's the most important part of the story to be told. Yeah. Well, and we add you in. I will say there is a lot of back and forth between the viability program and the working lands program. Sometimes people are not successful in getting a grant and they get referred to our program, which has now touched 900 businesses to help them get ready. Sometimes there's follow up for a successful enterprise through the Rural Economic Development Initiative. So last year we helped five different farmers win value added producer grants from USDA. So there's a lot of back and forth between our programs, a lot of mutual support. And this is a great extension of what we all need to do to have a vibrant rural economy. Well, what I am hearing today and liking is that you all work together. And you may not even work on one deal, but six months later or a month later you're in on working with the group. And working together you accomplish a lot and working independently you never know. So that's a good sign. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you guys. One more speaker before we get to the three most important. Sarah Eicham, director of agricultural lending at Vermont Economic Development. Good morning. Good morning. How are you? Good. Good to see you. Thanks for having us in here. So the Vermont Economic Development Authority is an ex-officio member of WELAB which is allowed for partnering and leveraging opportunities. And Vita's role in providing financing to farm and forest-based businesses to enhance Vermont's economy has allowed WELAB and Vita to work together collaboratively to provide financing options. By consistently providing grants to businesses, WELAB complements the day-to-day work of Vermont lenders and capital providers. From time to time WELAB has symmetrically supported financing institutions to provide innovative financing tools that effectively leverage public dollars to address system gaps and opportunities. Sarah, do you ever get applications later on like say a few years after people have started with a working land grant and they want to expand? Yes. Do you see applications coming in from some of the same people? Oh yes. Yes. Yes. It's very common that we do applications for businesses that get working land grants. Sometimes it's at the same time. And like it's kind of a partnership. And then sometimes one or the other of us could have been in there before the other. And so it's always a nice access story to see it from both sides. Brian, how long have you been working in this area? About 27 years. Oh that's great. That's great. Thank you Mr. Chair. So just ballpark figure, what's the average amount that someone might borrow? The average is around 100,000. We make many of our loans to small to medium sized businesses. And then we can go up in excess of a million but that's less common. So on the small side, that's good to know. Yeah, it's really to fill gaps in finance. Yeah. So it works well. Goodbye you sounded tire straight. There you go. And some lumber. You have no tires right now. Pretty expensive. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you Mr. Chair. It was nice to see you. Next up we will be hearing from our government land enterprise farm grantees and first is Brian Leach of Haystack Farm. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. So let the record show I am Brian Leach, owner and operator of Haystack Farmstead in Paulette. So good to see you Senator. Same here. You must be the son of our friend Perry Wates. I sure am. Yeah. Our thoughts are with Perry's family. Yeah. He just recently lost his wife. Yeah. We were airing our work. We spent a lot of time here. Yeah. Perry was called Sunday morning. It was kind of sad and illness. Yeah, yeah certainly. When I was chairing the House of Corporations, Perry was like, yeah, I'm gonna help this committee. So thank you for having me. I'll just tell you a little bit about myself. As I mentioned, owner operator Haystack Farmstead, I am a seventh generation farmer raised on a dairy. Went to school for mechanical engineering at the University of Vermont. Worked in the field of renewable energy for a few years before coming back to the dairy and co-managing it with my father and brother from 2012 to 2019. During that time, my wife, Breya, and I were working on setting up Haystack Farmstead, which was located on a satellite cropping farm that my parents had purchased in the 80s. That had some unused, but maintained, upland pasture that seemed like a good fit for starting a diversified enterprise. So we leased that property from my parents for close to 10 years in order to finally be able to purchase it. We closed on into the spring of last year. Congratulations. So that's progress for us as a family. Thank you. That's great. As an enterprise, Haystack Farmstead generates sales through the sale of grass-fed beef. But throughout the years, I've always heavily supplemented my on-farm income with engineering work. And I equipped a shop facility at the farm to be able to do fabrication and repair services. I've even gone as far as Malta, New York to work as a semiconductor process tech and the Global Foundries, Chip Fab and Malta to just make ends meet, pay the bills. That proved to be a little too much of a grind. That was two and a half hours of commuting each day. Is that round-trip over that quarter? Yeah. Yeah. And that's just been my story. And I know I'm not alone in small-scale agriculture just doing what I can to try to make ends meet. But as an engineer and farmer, my career goal has always been to develop intelligent and small-scale solutions to help farmers develop and evolve and to focus on adding more value on farm. And so one such system is what I call the refer to as a modular meat plan. And this is something I've been working on for several years now. This is a cross-section of the facility as designed that is currently under construction with the help of Working Lands. We were able to secure a Working Lands grant to contribute to help us construct this facility. So this type of system is designed to provide small-scale, affordable, yet efficient and functional processing capabilities for farmers that want to add value on their farms. Now, small-scale, are you talking about animal numbers or size of animals? Well, I mean, it's a loosely defined term. So the farm that we operate is, I would like to think that it's kind of a typical Vermont dairy farm, 350 acres of mix of crop land, pasture and woodlands, managed woodlands. And so on that farm, we are able to, you know, through the years, we've been able to produce 30 to 40 finished beef per year, which isn't a lot because we're a cow-calf operation, which means we generate our own replacements. And so we have to carry pregnant cows through the winter. And that, you know, that is, that's a challenge in itself. So the aim of this particular facility is to provide that small-scale processing capability. But also, there's some, there's some unique things about the way it's being built. I've tried to focus on incorporating as many locally sourced materials as possible. This has been a really interesting pilot project where we sourced, we sourced a load of beautiful hemlock from a local logger and milled it all on farm and incorporated it into these modular build sections. So it's just an illustration of some of the creative things we can do and we really focus on valuing our working landscape. But another really interesting facet about this project is it's not just our farms, it's not just Haystack Farm said this is a collaboration. We've got two other livestock farmers from Pollitt. To my knowledge, there's something like eight, I think there's eight farmers in Pollitt alone that are marketing animal proteins as part of their business. So it just gives you an idea of how much potential there is in Vermont, our small towns have so much potential to provide the state's protein needs. I think the guy on the farmer on Perry Wake bought Perry Wake's farm. He's doing beef. He is. I mean, my brother's doing beef, my cousin's doing beef. I mean, it's people are, you know, we've seen just the challenges and dairy have forced farmers to think about what else can we do and that's why I went down this path in 2012. And just as far as the working lands impact on this project, you can see here that, you know, this is a pretty ambitious, I'd like to think that it's kind of forward reaching some of the elements of this project and there's a lot of facets to it that are difficult to financially justify when we're talking about financing this with conventional approaches. So just being able to finance a smaller portion of this build is a really big deal and working lands has helped me make this possible. We've also had support from Northeast Sustainable Research and Education and ESAIR based at UVM and we've also had some support from our land trust for this as well. And so, I mean, another example of why the help from working lands is so needed is because while I believe that there's a future for livestock farming in Vermont on this scale, the current climate for it is really challenging. I mean, it's not like we've had an easy go of this since we started. Vermonters are on a tight budget, at least in our corner of the state. Working, you know, every day working, Vermonters really struggle with every part of their household budget and food is part of that as well. And so, there's a long way to go just in terms of what we have to accomplish with marketing opportunities and good policy to make something like this work. Right now, I'm just focusing on, this is a tool, this facility is a tool, it's means of production for a farm. So that needs to exist within a healthy framework for farming as well, but that's beyond the scope of what I'm trying at right now. Are your neighbor farmers, has this been built? It's under construction right now, this is an active grant. So you'll be able to take care of your own animals plus seven or eight maybe more? Well, it just depends, there's flexibility, but with our current working model, the two other farmers that I'm working with, we will be slaughtering livestock in this facility, but we'd be working as a team, as a unit on those days, when a lot of hands are needed. That will happen once or twice a month, and then throughout the rest of the month, the individuals will be coming in and doing their own packaging, processing that sort of thing. Will you be able to do small animals like goats and lambs? Yeah, that's actually quite a bit easier. If you look at this facility, you can see it has to be double height because in order to process cattle, you need a lot of ceiling height. So actually, facilities that were specifically designed for small ruminants would actually be quite a bit easier to build and lower cost. So as far as this project's impact on our business and other businesses, the desire to add value just comes from the fact that processing and packaging meat adds over 50% of the perceived value of the packaged protein product. And it's a natural desire to want to bring that activity to the farm when we're talking about viability of small scale farming. So in general, we want to be part of the trend of Vermont farmers that are adding more value, not volume. We want to create more space for other farmers knowing that there are other people just like us that are out there trying to make this work. And in addition to that, we've got immediate direct impact. As I mentioned, over 90% of the materials budget so far on this project has been spent in town. So we're very proud of that. And then obviously thriving farms in our small towns is just good for the local economy. Farmers would gladly spend some money to replace windows in their old farmhouses or buy takeout at the general store. I mean, it's just... And then, so it's sort of at a higher level. Our impact to other farmers is that this facility wants to complete in the working model. We are going to encourage other farmers that are interested in making this transition. This will be a place where they can come and train to learn more. As you can see, the design is being shared. It's being web-hosted. It's what we call an open-source project and that all the blueprints are available to other farmers. So it's unlikely that people are going to want to duplicate this exactly, but there's so many other lessons learned through this project that other farmers that are interested in this can benefit from. Did you design it for it? Yes. Oh, you did? Oh, that's great. In a different area, they may want to duplicate the same thing. Yeah, I mean, I actually... So this design is posted on Sarah's website, which is just this database for farmers that are interested in sustainable ag. And I got an inquiry from someone in Washington State who was like, hey, what's the deal with this? Can you build one and send one? No, not really. Yeah, so we're not going to get ahead of ourselves. I'd be interested to access that link and be able to send it to people, because I can't think of people that would be interested. Yeah, absolutely. We can get you that link. And there's quite a bit more detail. There's a detailed design report there. Okay. Yeah. So as far as hopes and dreams going forward, we really just want to support our... I think like many farmers, we would really just like to have a simple, less stressful living. We just want to support our families and have some of these missing pieces in place for the next generation. I mean, like I mentioned, I've always been doing this or that, fixing someone's car, driving to Malta. I will continue to have to do this off and on. And that's just... That's the story of our generation. But I think that we can... If we build towards the future, we can be serious about making sure that my children, if they want to, can earn a living on that farm when that be something. That's what my daddy told me. Yeah. Since your dad taught you. Yeah. Well, it's painful for my father's generation, I think, to see what's... So my brother currently runs the family dairy and does a terrific job with it. But these are just trying times to be in the space. Yeah. So I'll just state the obvious that the Working Lands Enterprise Initiative is the program that's best positioned to intelligently and strategically support work like this to build a future for Vermont agriculture that we're really proud of. And I'm beyond thankful to have support and the opportunity to work on this project. So thank you. Yeah, thank you. Would you have any permitting issues as you went through with this? Well, it's ongoing. This particular facility, as it's designed, is actually not technically a permanent structure. It's not actually anchored as a foundation because it's built in modular units. But I think that in all likelihood, our farm is zoned for agriculture. And so processing it on farm is not going to be an issue with that zoning. I think as farmers like me want to do more processing for hire, when that amount of activity exceeds the volume that we're doing on our farm, then it becomes a commercial facility that you'd have to be seeking zoning approval for that activity. Just curious point. The two neighbor farms, do they help with the cost of this? And what about when they're bringing animals into the process? Do they pay you? That's a terrific question. So currently as it's set up, we're going to be taking out a small loan to equip this facility. I believe right now, we've got it figured to around $30,000. It's pretty reasonable. So right now the expectation with my collaborators is that once we're up and operating, their processing fees are basically going to go towards that payment. And it's going to be allocated by a percentage of usage. Does that make sense? Yeah. Does it make sense? Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Sounds like a lot of sweat equity on your part already. What type of loan did you receive from working lands to get started? So it's interesting. We've received $95,000 through a meat and slaughter processing business-specific carve-out. So I believe that working lands in this instance was acting as a conduit for federal funds that were coming out from COVID-related meat processing. Great. Part of the special appropriations that were given to the program in FY22. But it's also just a carve-out. It's not a loan. It's a grant. Right. Okay. Thank you. Just one more. I know we're getting short on time, and I can't wait to hear from our other two. The process, the grant application, talk a little bit about that. Is it something that you... I mean, I've been through a lot, necessarily lately, but you know, page after page after page after page. And I assume, since we have such a successful program going that they make it as easy as they can to fill this out and move along. Yeah. And actually, you asked the question earlier about applicants that are denied and, you know, come back, being better informed. I actually am an instance of that. So the prior year, I applied for, I think the general round of business grants and was denied. And I got feedback for the reasons why I was denied, which I, of course, disagreed with, because I'm the applicant, right? But what they did say is, you know, keep your eyes peeled because there could be these federal funds coming in specifically for meat processing and this might be a good fit for that. And so then I applied for that subsequent round and was successful. But as far as, I mean, I've been applying for working lands projects since the beginning. So this is the first time that I've been able to put through a successful application. But it's a pretty significant, I mean, you know, we're talking a really significant amount of money. So I think there's an understanding that you've got to put in the work to do it. But I have noticed an improvement in the procedural improvement through the years in terms of how easy it is to do the application, the format, the working format, and all that. Yeah, yeah. Well, it takes a while to work the funds out and, you know, to get things going. Yep. The worst thing that anybody up here could do is put together a plan and have it locked because then you'll sort of lose your credibility. Certainly. And so the Ag Committee up here is a pretty good track record of putting together good, you know, solid programs. And yeah, you get rejected sometimes as the applicants, but I mean, it's based on real sound, Ag, you know, history. And that's important for the future. You know, when your children come along and I said, this is still going on, we've got CELIX, VHCB, and, you know, the current use program, and things like that basically got put together in the Ag Committee and they, you know, we never had a offer, as I would call it. And so, you know, we all work hard to make that work. And it sounds like, I mean, you had the way since the beginning to get a grant that worked out for you. And hopefully other areas will you know, go from your idea and your plans to doing this. You know, we've got a big beef market not that many miles away that we should be supplying with locally grown oats on meat. So, thanks for Thanks, Brian. I just want to point out these are the co-owners. Oh, yeah, yeah. A future. So, Allison, who's that? Next office is Jeffrey, Jeffrey Firewood. Yeah. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Ethan Jeffrey. I am the co-owner of Jeffrey Firewood as the owner and operator of Champlain Valley Fireman Addison. I'm a fifth generation farmer and a third generation firewood producer. Jeffrey Firewood is a family-owned and operated firewood business in Addison, Vermont. We serve Rutland, Chittenden, and Addison counties as well as in years past the entire state of Vermont for the state parks. We also send firewood, Texas, Rhode Island, and into New York City as well. My grant funded project was an expansion of my firewood business to allow me to be able to purchase more wood to meet local and regional market demands. We started this business in 2021 and 2020 when COVID and everything started. We were doing it very, very small scale and using firewood we had purchased years and years ago when he did firewood for 25 years before his passing. And during 2020 we just saw huge demand with everybody home because of the pandemic and we saw more demand. We were getting a lot more calls from other areas of the region including Massachusetts and Connecticut. And we also noticed a large draw for kiln dried wood. So we went out me and my father took money out of both of our existing businesses and went out and bought a brand new firewood processor, a kiln some delivery trucks started to grow our business and we got to a point after we took on this initial project of our own of that first stuff we were at a point where we turned to the working lands board to help us grow to meet the next level of production that we were looking for that the market was calling for at that time. So in before we applied for our working lands grant we had three employees total and we were purchasing about $180,000 of raw material from Vermont loggers in our first year of business in 2022 once we had started our expansion project with the help of the working lands fund we were able to purchase around half a million dollars in logs from Vermont loggers last year and we had five full-time employees and three part-time employees. That was good name Chris. Yeah absolutely it's an ever-growing market it's an ever-changing market you know every time we do something we look at five steps ahead of us and we're like okay well we're gonna have to switch this and this to make this how we want it and make the product better for people one thing we do is we ultra tumble our firewood so our firewood gets screened three times before we deliver it. So we have tumblers through the help of working lands we've got a couple tumblers and what they do is they the firewood comes off our processors and goes into these barrel-style tumblers that spin and it screens the bark, the debris the splintery stuff off so we screen it prior to going into baskets to be dried and then we load it in the kiln, dry it and then we screen it again when it comes out before it goes on delivery. We are in the process of moving in that direction as you can see in my photo right there that's my facility next to that hoop barn across from the other ones you see that pile of material that's a pile of arc the the mulch the mulch section of the business is another business in itself and the machinery to make mulch is very very very expensive no no that it's like quite a pile well in the barn people don't really like that anymore some people like it, some people don't if they request for kindling when they call and make their order dried kindling that came out of the kiln that we just screened out put it in a bag for them as a good will to go with their firewood order with our current sales and our projected sales in new markets we're working on and just being able to grow like we did with the help of the working lands fund we're actually able to build a couple buildings this coming spring to allow us to store more dry product and more split product so we can have 1000 cords of dry wood going into October or going into September and that'll better allow us to compete with larger firewood companies across the northeast that have this storage versus us being able to just cut to order and dry to order I mean currently we have 18 cord of drying capacity a day and there is times of the year where if I had four times that I would still be weeks out Thanks Mr. Chair so that's incredible that you were able to hire create ten jobs was it hard finding those people just because you know right now we're hearing from everybody it was thankfully three of my I've had three employees on my farm since they were they're my cousins and they've worked for me ever since they were old enough to work and the way I have my farm set up you know it's I have I raise pigs so it's all automated and I was able to dedicate them to they could split their time between the two as we grew though we have experienced very a lot of hardships hiring people and retaining employees just because of the production you know it's their the repetition that they don't like it's the same thing every day you set the firewood processor and you cut wood for ten hours um we are actually looking at going to are incorporating some migrant labor into our workforce because that's what's available to us yeah yeah so you do some farming as well as I currently raise about 3,000 pigs a year of my supply block of a produce with all their pork I also supply several other smaller markets and I do the we do the pigs and then we actually added the firewood as more of a more of a family business me and my wife had a son in 2020 and we decided if she was going to work for somebody she might as well work for a family business so that's kind of when we started digging into the firewood more and saw the need my wife actually runs firewood processor usually every day or she delivers wood or whatever whatever is needed our goals for the business are to be at 8 to 10,000 cords by 2025 and we're pretty confident that with what we've done with working lands and you know we continue to do on our own as well as help with Ramanaya Cultural Credit Corporation in Vita who we do all our work with that we'll be able to attain that goal pretty easily as long as we can source enough wood at the end of the day everything on the firewood business rides on the ability to get wood yeah how is that I mean you're doing the woods a great service by getting that mulberry wood out of the firewood do you have people in their area that that say of work all are yeah everything we buy comes from 8 or 9 loggers within 60 miles of our facility so they're doing bigger log job but they're cleaning out as they go exactly you know a lot of these loggers work for the you know contract for the A. Johnson Company or the United States US Forest Service you know orders for private landowners but we have 8 or 9 core loggers we purchase from and we also own our own log trucks and go out and get wood from these loggers versus rather having them bring it in because the trucking is a huge bottleneck on the receiving of the product so it's really equipment heavy in terms of cost yeah absolutely we invested half a million before we went to working lands you know to do the next step and I mean that half a million dollars got us to a point where you know we could sustain and have a very good operation at that point but we were nowhere near even tapping into the current market that was available and what the need for that market was I mean I still know of I mean at this point we're only about two and a half weeks out right now on Firewood but there was a time if you called me in November I would have told Josie in the end of January and that's you know 5, 6 days that's 5 days a week of cutting and our killings are on 7 days a week it's a long time to wait for it yeah it is unfortunately yeah we try not to keep anybody you know waiting that long but it's just it gets insane but I want to thank you guys for the opportunity for this money and for helping me get to the next level in my business well it sounds like it's working well for you and that's good for all of us in what county? Addison do you want to run for center? I'm kidding I'm kidding I'm kidding we love our I live in Addison I live in Addison in Addison County I'd say that you're from anywhere well thank you thanks a lot you're welcome next from Vermont Natural Forest Products hi I'm Levi Irish and I actually wear a couple of different hats I am the director of business development with Vermont Natural Forest Products located in Richford I'm also the co-op and work-based learning coordinator for Coal Hollow Career Center and Richford and Innesburg High Schools so I have a primary focus on forestry and dry programming to meet future regional workforce needs especially in regards to technology and the industry as we're highly dependent on changing workforce and we know that we're losing 50% of our workforce roughly in the next couple of years with only 20% to replace that so BNFP Vermont Natural Forest Products is a soddish shavings mulch and heating pellet mill located in the northern border town of Richford it's co-owned by two former graduates of Coal Hollow Career Center a logger Matt Greigweir and a trucker Josh Jarvis due to their interest in keeping their way of life alive industry and local communities Josh and Matt always forward thinking saw an opportunity with great potential their dedication grit and Yankee ingenuity being drivers of growth for this project Coal Hollow Career Center serves Franklin County High Schools across industries specifically in forestry led by a board of industry professionals one of which is the co-owner of BNFP another of which is Charlie Hancock we heard from earlier today so so this facility was purchased in December of 21 and it was inoperable at the time of purchase historically that's the plant that sets over in the back as you go out of Richford yep right on hardwood hill road somebody from down country yeah that's what I'm getting ready to talk about next thanks for leading me into it so this has been owned by two owners previously who were not physically present one purchased for their son and most recently by two out of state owners they had wonderful theory but limited practical knowledge that's not the case with the current owners there's nights where things have broken and we find ourselves myself included shoveling sawdust until midnight like everybody just jumps in where they need to be the current team is a dream team locals with incredible practical knowledge this team has so many of my personal former students that I've had since like second grade yeah yeah it's awesome and a lot of our employees will say that they weren't super successful in school and that's what we see when kids get to Cole Hollow is that they realize that their industry leaders ended their successful for the first time that's the texan yeah yeah so lion's a chair education here we're gonna get to know each other perfect so I could be more proud or more impressed with the group of people that I get to work with it's amazing because their vision is electric and the owners allow us to not only join in their dreams but they also let us build our own I started as a volunteer grant writer and I made my position to every single thing that I've wanted it to be they have a growth mindset and we hire and grow employees helping them to meet their personal goals so in fact right now we currently have two working on their CDL through a program with pro driver training and Cole Hollow career center started by Josh got our forestry teacher there and we've got funding through the Department of Labor and through past zones for people to increase their career goals and we're looking at tier two IRC funding as well now so first program like that in the state and we're serving both students and adults in that now so the working lands grant of $250,000 it's allowing us to update the faulty, updated and inefficient equipment we've been able to replace it to Parker using four motors to one utilizing only one motor we've been able to update the yard increasing efficiency and reducing waste as well as increasing storage we've also made technological updates in the pellet mail including an electrical room and operating system all run from a computer room due to this we're now able to employ six part-time employees two of whom are current CHCC students and eight full-time employees of these six are graduates of Cole Hollow career center including the owners as well as host multiple students for learning experiences on site one amazing opportunity is when we were able to host both our secretaries of ed and secretaries of ag Dan French and Anson Pevitz I don't want to minimize the mail experience but I think a highlight for me would be real went off and there was generations of people doing be real at the mill from Anson to my students and it was just such a cool opportunity to have technology play a role in what we were doing that day without this grant as a business we would not be where we are today this grant has allowed us to get all aspects of production online but further it's allowed us to create meaningful relationships with the next generation of industry professionals and create work throughout the state and region we work with consultants from Hancock lumber in Woodstock main connected with the northern forest center farm and forest viability and we get to work with Jenny Ho through follow a farmer and interestingly it sounds like Tucker Riggs is up this year potentially so he's got something in laughing stock farm is another place that we're starting to work with and Dr. Steve Bick I believe is a recipient as well loggers and Ryan Whitaker just to name a few people that we're working with now because of this grant we've been invited to present at the northern forest center to be part of their forest future sorry at the northern forest center webinar with students and participate in statewide research we're related to have been part of the forest future both Vermont and the region and I personally have found myself learning all aspects of forestry not to mention that I have gotten to operate heavy equipment including payloaders, dozers forwarders, harvesters, I've got to drive truck now and I love this team because they're always ready to teach anybody anything we're able to keep local dollars local by providing a source of income for local loggers and landowners as well as a market for previously unusable low-grade wood it was staying in the woods my favorite story of localism is that the only farm left in richford is L.F. Hurtabeeson Sons the farm I grew up on with my uncles and my cousins now run it we truck their timber to the mill and then we get to create the bedding that goes to the herd and it's all staying right in hammock so that's very close to my heart I don't know a lot of other ways that we can see localism so evidently we're able to provide a locally sourced heating pellet at a reasonable price providing a resource for an underserved and isolated community further we're able to support local economy through having this facility and one of our most at risk communities in the state I grew up in richford I'm a single mom I'm raising two daughters in richford and what I can tell you is so hard is to keep the young people here we know that that's a statewide problem and to create lasting change in a community with limited resources and speaking as a former first economic development coordinator I know I wear a lot of hats this is definitely my favorite one though I earned it this mill has the ability to accomplish both of those things this meets richford's historical mill town feel in a way that keeps keeps and advances with the times in the small town of richford with a population of under 2,500 people we're able to create a product that keeps 80% of the money in the state as opposed to fossil fuels which is closer to 40% or less we're able to help Vermont meet its energy goals through reduction of fossil fuels as well as decreased transport of timber and products but another amazing aspect of this grant is a natural relationship that's developed between VNFP and the local education system we are elated to call ourselves the first demonstration mill in the state of Vermont and possibly New England due to the connections built between the owners and I with the support of Cold Hollow Career Center and Franklin Northeast Supervisory Union specifically the forestry program under Josh Goss and Richford Junior Senior High School we're not only able to support learning but students are knowledgeable enough about our practices that they can co-lead tours with our staff where others may talk about wanting to encourage the next generation we're actively engaging in it already along with continuing the work we're already doing we look forward to becoming a regional supplier of heating pellets and mulch continuing to update the mill and increase hiring and the skill level of the workforce continue to work closely with Cold Hollow Career Center to offer industry training and accreditation in a real intangible way that can lead to increased numbers and adult ed in Franklin County in a way that's valuable for local employers so having the local employers drive that whether it's skid-steer training or log loader training something like that offer on-site operations safety trainings through to our students through Cold Hollow Career Center so we are incredibly grateful to Working Lands and we are incredibly grateful to you all for the support that you have given because it is it's changing lives so thank you thank you now you mentioned wood pellets so you do wood pellets sawdust shavings and mulch so you do four different products we do it's great it's awesome yeah thank you Mr. Chair so all I want to know is when does Brian and Ethan and you sleep no we got all we got it's not a thing that we do it sounds like you're going 24 hours a day yeah we're definitely passion driven our entire team is passion driven it's clear that this is what you guys are dealing with too I don't think y'all sleep no we never guys so no it's great to hear these stories and it's all we have to do is set the help set the program and find a little money to make sure it went in the right direction and of course that's an ongoing battle but with stories like we've heard this morning if we could get all 180 of us our colleagues to hear those same stories it wouldn't be hard to get the money that we need to put in the budget but we've always I guess we've always been used fairly well without losing an arm but it's rewarding to hear your stories how this helped you get started and going and it'll put a lot of these young people that you're all helping it'll give them a leg up to hopefully make it a little easier for them in the future and it would be great to talk about CTEs yes let's please it would be great we're working on some things related to that trying to make it easier for young people to access these career opportunities and not just really for everybody no matter what you want to do if you can learn something else it's a huge asset and I think I just want to make sure that I let you all know I know that you're all busy but any time that you would like we'd love to have you up I would then get in that power in there so they could do four phase yeah three phase power because it was off in Timbuktu and they couldn't run the mill efficiently in a few years back maybe five or eight I mean you lose track of the years but I know the owner was from Connecticut or Massachusetts or some ways but we got the co-op in here so you got three phase yes we do and we're grateful for that thank you thank you very much have your bum your way Farmer's Day at JP oh wow I just had surgery last Friday couple new pieces in my knee that don't belong to me anymore it's about a year and a half of healing time really I did it right I didn't mess around and then I went down on my legs I was not going to let all those farm boys think that I couldn't keep up with them so Allison is that the last speaker that's it you did great senator kept us on time wonderful questions really we appreciate your time this morning and we're going to be moving our crew over to house ag now so thanks for being kind to us we're available anytime it's a good thing you had these folks with you or I wouldn't have been I know thank you take care thank you thank you alright you're running the bathroom alright thanks good to see you