 Good morning folks and witnesses on on Zoom. It is Thursday morning, April 7th and we're going to have a conversation with some diversified agricultural producers this morning and trying to hear what their issues are and how things are going with their particular operation and if there's anything that we might be able to do to assist them. Pardon me and another issue that I don't know if any of the witnesses have have been in the natural resources or heard from them in regards to testifying on H466 which is a surface water bill that if you draw water from a stream or to take care of your plants about reporting on that and keeping track of the amount you're using so we we've got we have four witnesses scheduled and I believe Hannah's with us and Chuck Wooster and so good morning Hannah and maybe you could tell us a little about your operation where you're located and and we'll we'll ask questions maybe at the end or as you're going through but it's kind of a we run kind of a loose committee and try to make everybody feel like it's a roundtable discussion if at all possible so hopefully we'll we'll operate in the same manner so welcome and good morning. Thank you very much and thanks for your time this morning my name's Hannah Doyle I own and operate Boneyard farm in Fletcher Vermont we're right on the Franklin County Lamoille County line literally on the town line and I raise non-gmo pastured eggs chicken pork and lamb eventually I have breeding used right now that will be a flock of sheep eventually breeding and we hope to sell lamb and wool at our farm stand and farmers market. I also grow vegetables and cut flowers and herbs and I make a line of value added products mostly canned goods like jam and pickles and chutney so I do a little of everything and I think that's sort of what you want to talk about today and I'm definitely interested to hear questions because I'm not sure exactly what how I can advise you know or what what you're looking to know but I'm happy to tell you a little bit about where we are at we just purchased 180-acre formerly conventional dairy last year about a year ago and we are sort of rehabbing it into a diversified operation so we're at the very beginning of a startup phase here on our property we've been farming for five years or so but but now at a much larger scale my husband also owns a construction business so we have two small businesses and two small kids and we are we are definitely overwhelmed with all of the work and the potential but we've been met with a lot of support and demand from our local community so we feel really grateful for the opportunity to be producing food and hopefully stewarding this land in a way that improves environmental conditions and provides a good life for our animals and our family so right now you know just this spring we are renovating that that former dairy barn into a multi-use facility so we're jackhammering out curbs and removing stanchions and putting in a walk-in cooler last year we built a farm stand into the front of the dairy barn so the big sliding door opens to the public and on weekends people can come and get a wide variety of food from our farm stand uh so we're you know we're building perimeter fencing we're constructing greenhouses we are building mobile henhouses so that our laying hens can be pastured and rotationally grazed we're really just establishing lots of systems right now and it's a really exhausting phase to be in but it's also very exciting uh and you know I think because we have so many small enterprises we often don't feel like like we fit as farmers um you know like where we were in bakersfield prior people would see me at the farmers market and say oh I didn't know there was a farm on on which cat road because they don't see holsteins and they don't see a tractor and they don't see big barn and now we have the big barn and we have the road frontage but I still don't own a tractor you know I do most of the vegetable work by hand and it's all drip irrigation I don't have employees I'm a very small farmer with many different enterprises so you know I'm moving pastured fences for my sheep every day and I'm out there collecting eggs and washing them by hand and I don't always feel like I look like a farmer to the typical um Vermont consumer maybe so I think one of the things I wanted to just address is is maybe that that sort of public education about what diversified farming looks like in Vermont I think especially as we kind of shift toward a model that maybe includes more diversified agriculture in Vermont and you know it's in our agricultural history there used to be hill farms all over the state that produced a little of this and a little of that for their immediate communities and to me it seems like we are going back in that direction a little bit and I'm proud to be part of that change um but I think you know just just the fact that diversified farming is farming and a farmer might look different in 2022 than 1980 um that's that's an important component I think um I also would say that affordable health care and affordable child care would go a long way uh to help all farmers um myself included here with two little kids and trying to kind of do it all seven days a week um we're definitely feeling the pressure of that and we're self-employed so health insurance is very difficult uh but you know I think I think a lot of technical support exists and I feel grateful to be farming in Vermont there are so many resources available to us we're still just sort of sorting through them all honestly and and saying you know okay if it's almost like um it's almost like a flowchart is needed you know okay if you want to do this you talk to NRCS and if you want to do this you talk to UVM Extension and there there are this there are these resources and here's how you access them so we're you know we're very grateful for all of the resources that do exist and all of the funding opportunities that do exist we're just really in this unique and not unique but um pivotal uh starting point for our farm business um and and then I think another thing that we've noticed I've noticed is there seems to be a lot of funding for larger farms that have an environmental problem already um and not a lot of funding for farms who are starting out and implement designing and implementing infrastructure systems so you know just as an example um I reached out and and talked to the pasture and surface water fencing program about perimeter fencing and a main line of water for our rotationally grazed sheep and they said the cutoff is 15 sheep and you have 13 you know so we're like not quite big enough to access those those pools of money in lots of cases and we also as we're new on this property we don't have water quality concerns yet you know our livestock are not grazing in a stream so we don't need to fence them out we don't have manure management problems because we're small and starting up but we want to set off on the right path and design systems that are going to work for the environment and for our farm business from the get go so Heather what was the deal on the fencing you were too small what was that could you repeat that again sure it's Hannah um I I reached out to the UVM and um I think department of ag there's a program called pasture and surface water fencing and so they they help you to establish perimeter fencing if needed and uh sometimes run water to animals so you know I was I was interested in some funding to help us build a perimeter fence for our sheep pasture and lay out a black pipe basically to bring hoses to our sheep so that when we're moving them daily or every three days or so we're not dragging hoses all over the farm and and they told me that they're happy to talk about it and we might be able to work something out but for right now the cutoff is 15 sheep and I have 13 so that's just you know a small anecdote to sort of illustrate that that sometimes we're not quite because we have many different things you know I've got I've got 13 sheep but I've got two pregnant sows right now so they'll have piglets soon but I don't quite qualify for this and you know I've I've got laying hens that are on pasture but sometimes the bureaucracy doesn't really see laying hens as grazing stock so it doesn't count if I'm applying for rotational grazing programs and things like that just you know just diversified agriculture sometimes can buy its nature put you in a tricky position did you check with ASCS on the fencing because they have a fencing program as well I believe and that's your yeah your county USDA your county organization yeah are you thinking of an equip program through NRCS no it's it's through the USDA your agricultural services organization within your county it's a federal issue a federal program and they they may have I know they have a fencing program especially for perimeter fence and so you may want to check with them in regards to to you know what they what they give and and what you have to do to qualify sure okay thank you I wrote that down and I'll look into it I that's a great example of me just not knowing what opportunities exist and the other thing is you know we feel pretty strongly that it's not necessarily government's role to fund our business you know it's it's a business and so we tend to cash flow things ourselves and build the fence ourselves build the greenhouse ourselves you know so yeah I'm not I'm you know personally just not sure what the role of government in a business like farming is so happy to be part of this conversation um yeah if I if I might just say one thing this is the second time I've testified to this committee this year and the second time I've been listed as a co-owner of my farm while all of my male counterparts are listed as owners and it is likely just a clerical issue if so we can absolutely correct that but I just you know my husband and I own this land together but boneyard farm is a single member LLC owned by me and I wonder how many of my male counterparts are co-owners in fact so I think you know it might just be worth mentioning to consider the role of women in agriculture yeah well that must be a clerical issue that our clerk you know just thought being in two names it was both but we'll uh we'll get that square to right for you and Chris had a question I believe senator Pearson yeah um thank you Hannah and I was the person that passed your name along I think it came to me from NOFA that way as co-owner so we'll we'll run it up the food chain but thank you for pointing that out I don't really have a question more of a comment I just want to say um you're you're uncovering a lot of just the cultural dynamics that uh you know I'm interested in seeing challenged in in the sense of what is Vermont's agriculture today what is it going to be in the future and and um you know I think there's an incredibly important role for farmers like you diversified ag you know in many cases I hear wonderful examples of of reclaiming land that had been held by dairy in many cases conventional dairy so so maybe we would argue some of the those natural resources depleted and and folks that are trying a new model that will actually be very good for soil health likely for water quality and contribute to the ag economy um this is not to burden you because you're a one player in actually thousands of similar farmers but the fact is here in senate agriculture I've been on this committee now for five years Mr. Chair I'm losing count maybe it's three years we hear a lot from dairy they are very well organized they have lobbyists they have you know and there's what uh are we lucky to still have 700 dairy farms more like five or five yeah as I understand it Hannah maybe you can correct me there's some three three four thousand smaller diversified producers like you guys and and and you know I I just think it's really important and and NOFA or Role Vermont and others there's a very grower's association you know they're they're getting more regular in our process but the fact is we hear from dairy not because of uh of anything other than just that's the way it's been and and so I just want to encourage you and anyone else we talk to along these lines to just just just remember us and tell us what's going on we we just you know a few years ago when the pandemic hit we scrambled to figure out how to help farmers and how to help dairy was sort of straightforward in terms of money and connecting to the farms and the agency of agriculture told us that they didn't know they simply did not have a list of people that were farming that were not dairy I mean that was I was gobsmacked by that and and so we're making inroads we push them they they are now starting to to have that registry just in in sense in the in the sense of a communication availability but you know so it's not kind of fair to ask you of this but I'm going to ask it anyway just just please keep leaning on us please keep telling us your stories tell us you know we've set up a lot of programs in a recognition of the growing diversity and need for our food systems you know whether it's working lands and other kinds of grant programs my sense is those tend to be slightly bigger awards and folks like you as you're talking about a fencing award is is small too small for working lands and and uh you know but but a key need and a way for you to contribute to the ag economy and and and stewarding the land and so just just helping us hear those stories is is incredibly valuable I just wanted to say thanks thank you very much yeah we're we're in a phase where you know I'm applying for grants that are in the five to twenty thousand dollar range and some I'm getting and some I'm not um but but those are the kinds of scales of the project you know I I can build a wash pack for my vegetable operation for less than twenty but it would make a huge difference to the overall viability and future of my farm right we used to have well go ahead sorry no that's fine Chris go ahead well there there was a I looked into this a little bit there was through the agency a wash pack is that what we call it um yeah uh grant program that was federally funded it's sort of hangs there in limbo because there's no money and I actually do think that is a place we could look to put you know a real modest amount of money could go a long way for farmers like Hannah you're a washing station you didn't get you didn't qualify for that grant Hannah I applied for a different I applied for a different grant through NOFA for funding to do that project this year and I will reapply um but I think what senator Pearson is talking about is the um food safety grant like that used to exist for farmers like myself yeah yeah you should just an example of a project yeah yeah that program mr chair is still there you can still go to the website but there's no money so it's it's effectively on hold they've never come to us you know the agency never even told us that they ran out of money for that I mean uh but anyways um we'll get that on our list of things uh you know to ask them about uh it's really weird how everything operates the agency can't come and ask for anything that's not in their budget or they get the hand slap from whoever they present their budget to before we ever get to see it so sometimes people like yourself Hannah have to tell us or they told us we were all they are all out of money and then we can add it but they can't come and ask for it it's uh it's kind of a crazy process but um I believe Brian senator column or have a question yeah thank you mr chair and again much in line with senator Pearson not so much a question as a comment although I do have a question um so I'm just admiring um your whole presentation um as you're related I'm getting tired myself because you must be exhausted to try to do everything you just told us you were doing and your husband has this other business going so I'm sure the the bulk of the load kind of falls on your shoulders and uh I'm heartened to know that there are at least avenues for you uh you know to go to try to get help whether that's uh funding help or advice or just informational kind of situation so it's good to know that those are out there for you and don't feel badly that you haven't found every last little resource you might have because I've been on this committee for six years and I still have no idea in many cases someone will mention something I'll say geez that's the first time I ever heard about it so uh I just want to say way to go and uh yeah as Chris said uh the diversified section of our ag is incredibly important as we begin to uh kind of move away from what was you know uh all dairy at one point so here's my question because you are in essence doing all the work are you hopeful that you'll reach a point because you did make a point about you know you're just sort of starting out and you're systemically trying to push things in place are you eventually hoping that you'll be able to hire some help and uh that you won't have to do the whole thing yourself or are you really intent on staying as uh the same size I guess that's a great question we've been doing quite a bit of uh looking within and farm planning and business planning um right now we're taking it one year at a time our kids are four and one so you know um this year I hired some childcare three days a week and I hired one farm employee one day a week and that's a big move for me um because up until now I've done both entirely myself so yes we intend to outsource some of the work um but you know my husband's construction business he stopped hiring folks in 2020 when the pandemic hit and it was so hard to find anyone and and follow all of those precautions and found that just staying small and lean actually increased his profitability and you know we're we're figuring all of that out um and each year it's kind of a juggle to figure out how much time and resources we can put into this business and that business and our family and how we're going to make it all work so yes hopefully I you know I would love to have employees attract and retain great employees um over time but for right now I don't intend to grow so quickly that I need them um until my kids are hopping on a school bus you know uh but but we'll see I yeah it's I'm not sure it's a good question it's it's almost like you know as we talk I'm I'm thinking like just navigating all of these programs could be a full time job or doing some marketing for my farm could be a full time job and I'm I'm doing all of that plus plumbing and there's the actual production of food and you know um it's it's a lot so yeah we we try to outsource what we can and we're getting better at that over time but all of that takes quite a leap of faith that it's going to pay off you're making me feel tired and please senator pierce it said stay in touch with us um if there's things that you can say hey you know those five people in that committee maybe they have an answer for you kind of answering just excuse me I'm just wondering with all your diversification um what's the one is there one piece of your farm that part of your operation that you think has the most potential for growth uh yes I think I think our grass fed meat has the most potential for growth um because we have so much grass we have you know 80 acres of good forage and we just came from a place that had four acres of scrubby forage so uh when at our prior location we were more focused on pork and chicken um pretty grain intensive meats and we are shifting now into more rotational grazing and grass fed meats and I think the demand is there we see it all the time we're selling out of meat like crazy um but person yeah yeah yeah if you have any issues with slaughtering and access to slaughterhouse and yes processing yes absolutely and I could go on about that for another half hour but I I want to give other people some time too um but but yes we definitely feel the bottlenecks of the slaughterhouse processing industry very much so this year you know we're away from selling half whole pork shares to only selling retail cuts we've shifted our business model quite a bit because of it so do you do on crime slaughter or custom slaughter or can our slaughter or how do you do that and we we process all of our chickens ourselves on farm and just recently we've run into some insurance snafus but we have uh now I've written a lengthy SOP so that we could be covered by our insurance um to process our own poultry on farm and we we follow all of the ag regulations and um uh so yes poultry on farm but we bring our pork to a slaughterhouse a USDA inspected slaughterhouse so that we can sell retail cuts yeah because we had a lot of discussion um earlier this year in regards to on farm there is a a law and a rule on on farm slaughter um and you know we didn't know it how if you saw like a a pig to two people and you just take it to the slaughterhouse and have it cut in half and each person gets a half or do you sell just small pieces do we we used to do the former what you're just saying um and this year we're shifting away from that model last year so you know I set my price in the winter for the coming year and I I used to sell whole hog shares and half shares and what happened last year is I set the price in the winter and then grain prices went up so much and slaughterhouse prices went up so much and then two days before we brought the pigs to slaughter the the processing facility said oh by the way we can't smoke anything this year and we can't make sausage which is of course what everyone wants when they're buying a pig so uh we we can't take that risk anymore so now we are only selling retail cuts um so that we can control the price at the point of sale and we don't get burned um by by forces outside of our farm business other questions well which you talked a lot about the different stresses that you're under which is totally understandable and I want to just mention that part of what you pointed out before was that we do give a lot of attention to dairy as we've all mentioned and part of the dilemma with that is we're giving a lot to dairy because dairy has a lot of problems you know pollution problems water problem problems you know problems and we find ourselves stuck in a position where we're basically propping up an industry that is too big to fail in some cases given the situation of our economy as opposed to small diversified operations like yours which don't get the attention they deserve because they you know you don't rise up to the limits as you mentioned but I'm wondering which of these which are the parts of your farming operation keep you awake the most at night uh that's a good question I we're we're so early in setting up infrastructure here that um this the setting up of systems keeps me awake at night and that's that's not maybe answering your question exactly because I think you're asking me which enterprise keeps me up at night um I'd say that's a legitimate answer yeah I'm just just like the fact that we have to renovate this dairy barn and learn how to pour concrete over an existing slab and then figure out how to install frost-free hydrants and you know trench that line out to the garden and put up a greenhouse this year and all these things we are we are doing ourselves and we're right up we don't necessarily know how we're just learning as we go um while also running the business so we're in all of it keeps me up well anything else chris any other questions and hannah you're more than welcome to stay on uh we're gonna uh call on uh new patrick no chuck I guess is up next or patrick uh chris yeah I I'm I feel like this is a nosy question hannah but but um I'm always interested in how small operations and you started on another plot of land how you are able to secure land and the and the reason I ask is um because I worry that as we see particularly small and mid-sized dairy go out of business too often they get gobbled up by the bigger dairy down the road and in my opinion we need to interrupt that cycle and and and shift so that more producers like you are able to access land is this conserved land did you work through the the um land trust can you what I don't want to be prying into your finances but what can you tell us in terms of lessons that might help us uh you know help the next farmer in your situation no that's fine um I'm an open book we uh we this is conserved land it was conserved through the vermont land trust um and the quick story of the farm is that it was farmed conventionally as a dairy by um by one man for his entire life um he died at 98 and his children did not want the farm they wanted this land to turn into a housing development and so kind of on his deathbed he signed away the rights uh I mean he signed it over and said that it must be conserved because he wanted it to stay in the working landscape so his children are not super happy with us um but it went the land went into a family trust and the some of the family members um reached out to the land trust to identify a farmer that would be a good fit with this land and location so we were contacted by the land trust because we were in touch with them already looking for a farm that would be appropriate for us and we saved up a lot of money and um you know bought this land for a affordable price considering how much land we have and the huge value of it but we bought it at agricultural value as conserved farmland okay thank you that's great 180 acres of farmland is you know that's pretty good um yeah you should be able to grow and grow and grow some more yeah I don't think you'll be able to outgrow this place and I hope to leave you my signs well um if there are no other questions we'll we'll move to Patrick um and you're welcome to stay on Hannah if you want to listen yeah uh good morning Patrick good morning everyone uh thanks for having me I I run and own a farm with my wife about 10 minutes from Montpelier I will write up route 12 uh we grow mixed vegetables and we provide uh vegetables weekly for eight months of the year to 150 families in Montpelier today yesterday was our first delivery day so we go around delivering to homes of a lot of elderly people a lot of people that are too busy to come to the farm and then the other half of our csa people come right to our farm and pick up and that's what's happening today the first one of the year so we're able to do that eight months of the year right now um we also bought an old dairy farm it's uh originally we bought 19 acres and we've just added to it so we have about 35 acres right on brightsville reservoir and three or four years ago we we and when we purchased this farm it was the house was falling down the barn was in really bad structurally the barn was okay but it had been abandoned when the bulk milk tank law came into effect and it was a small dairy so it was no longer um viable so it had 20 or 30 years of decay um and we applied for a produce safety grant in 2019 and and received $10,000 uh we we got an additional $12,000 from NOFA as the farm of the month and then we've put about that much money into uh transitioning that barn into a place where we wash and pack all of our produce uh that $10,000 I mean we've also been able to get $500 grants here or maybe a thousand dollars there but 10,000 is a sizable chunk for us uh to really make an impact and a difference we couldn't have done that by ourselves we were able to insulate part of the barn uh and come yeah bring electricity there water there so our next jump will be to serve the community year-round uh with another grant like that in the 10 to 20 thousand dollar range we could really build the facilities we need to do that so I I think 10,000 with 10,000 dollars that made a huge impact for our farm we're able to employ six people for eight months of the year six local people uh we're able to do a couple hundred thousand dollars of business and provide a service to our community that is not being provided by their farms which is a home delivery of fresh harvested that day very healthy produce and that's my my sentiment would be that to really achieve the state's goals of I think it's 25 percent local food being consumed here coming up we really need to support vegetable farms as well uh because it's a it's an integral part of a healthy diet and um you know we're we're operating at a small to medium scale and we're able to feed families and provide uh to restaurants as well in the area do you sell to any of the schools Packard uh we don't no because we do have a you know we do have a program where uh local producers can sell directly to uh school food systems um I'm not sure if you deal directly with the with the kitchen you know the guy that runs there the woman that runs the kitchen or if you deal through the superintendent's office but we we really encourage hot lunch programs to buy local foods and help subsidize that to a you know to a certain point to get fresh and wholesome Vermont grown produce into our schools so maybe that's an area you could check out yeah and I think that's a great point it's another really important um to meet the state's goals it's a really important area because I think the national lunch standard is that a cheese pizza meets the vegetable requirement so to really get I mean the the freshness of what we're producing and get that into school get kids eating that is just critically important for a local food food future we have sold to Harwood High School a little bit um but that was kind of through someone we knew reached out to us so we haven't had too much luck selling to other schools yet and we also really concentrate on selling yeah growing what we know we can sell so we built customers like Red Hen and Woodbelly and Farmers to You in Middlesex uh that we can really plan on a couple wedding caterers uh that we can we really know because of our scale we're only growing two and a half acres of vegetables very intensively so because of our scale we really want to know we can sell it before we plant it yeah yeah answering let me talk about wanting to know you're going to sell it before you grow it I'm just wondering what's the biggest demand you're seeing what are some of the vegetables that there seems to be growing market for that's a great question um you know there are a lot of great farms in our area and I think the area where we could grow the most is providing um produce in the winter you know our same customer base that we've built up if we can provide to them year round that is the best way to build our our particular business so that would take um yeah maybe we've got we've built up a lot of greenhouse space but being able to effectively heat some of that greenhouse space to grow greens in the winter and there's such a demand for fresh vegetables when um all the vegetables in the winter here are coming from California that you would find in the supermarkets so our biggest opportunity is fresh greens in the winter um and if we have the greens then we find we can sell the other roots that we can produce in store as well but if we don't have the greens then um it's harder for us to sell the other things huh that do you your you have converted your brand to some degree do you have is there any possibilities of indoor grow in that or or like uh fast freeze or do people really require and want fresh veggies uh well we produced so many excess greenhouse crops last year that we did um just freeze raw cut peppers and tomato sauce that is uncooked and and this actually today will be the first trial of putting that out for our spring csa um so things that we processed last fall but definitely if we could figure out how to to build um it's in our plan to build a farm kitchen and if we could have some funding to help do that uh that's another way that we could get more local food to our customers and build our customer base even more because there's definitely a demand for um all the things that we can't keep fresh all winter but if we can freeze it um there's a demand for it other questions um Anthony what role has the ag department played in supporting you as a startup and I'm just wondering I mean we we know some of the issues around meat production and slaughtering and whatnot and the problems that people run into there I'm wondering whether or not you have a relationship with the ag department whether they come out and test your not test your products but try to get a word but um we never we we've never had the ag department out here um yeah to my understanding there's made a threshold that we're not quite out where they would come and potentially test our wash water and see our wash station last time I checked I think it was if you're doing over a half a million dollars of sales um where the ag department has really helped us was with the produce safety grant uh I always check about working lands grants value added grants but the admin burden is pretty hard because it's just my wife and I uh doing all the marketing all the csa management all the production management so we don't have anyone to help us write grants uh and the produce safety grant was through the state's portal and it was relatively easy to have everything prepared and just plug it in when it opened up um but some of the other grants uh are more complicated we also have applied for a cover crop grant but the the compensation we were going to get was for our scale so such a minimal amount um that I didn't even pursue it I think we were awarded a grant if we continued to do some paperwork for that but it wouldn't have covered the seeds that we needed to we we plant two to three acres of cover crop a year and spend yeah in the realm of a thousand dollars of seed uh cover crop seed and I think the grant was for a couple hundred dollars the uh have you ever dealt with BHCB Vermont Housing Conservation Board we have well they they have what they call a ready program where grant writers are employed by BHCB that could that's supposed to help small grant uh applicants get through the application process so you know there there's a possibility there where if you were looking for a grant of a certain type you could call their BHCB and ask for their ready program director and see if they might be able to help you with a grant writing proposal wonderful yeah we I didn't mention that we did go through the BHCB farm viability program uh that is you know run in coordination with NOFA and that really provided help uh yeah with our long-term planning our business planning through that we were able to access some education funds and have some uh older farmers mentor us yeah farmers with more experience that was a huge help and then BHCB did also uh come out to our house and do a bunch of lead testing our house was built so we live uh where the conservation corps lived when they built the the rights built they were on the property that housed a couple thousand people to our knowledge and and our house was where some of the officers uh lived and it was just riddled with lead paint and lead dust and BHCB sent someone out to do thousands of dollars of testing which we never could have done on our own and that that really was a huge help and it informed us and uh because we have two little daughters a two-year-old and a seven-year-old so at that time my wife was pregnant and because of the results that we got we really decided to just completely gut the house take everything out and you know make sure that our family was safe you know um what about uh do you have to pump any water from uh streams or anything for your gardens uh we do not at this point uh we just run off of our of our house well yeah yeah it's a vulnerability for us uh and moving forward it's something that we need to have a backup because we're at the end of a washington co-op electric line and we're often the last there's only four houses past us on the line so uh our our power has been out multiple times for multiple days so that's a one vulnerability for our farm is being able to function in a power outage um if we have you know our greenhouse crops really need water our wash and pack operation needs water and all of our seedlings that we grow to plant out so we're go ahead what utility are you associated with uh washington electric co-op and they don't they don't do battery packs or you know a lot of people including myself years back didn't have battery packs so we put propane driven generators in for backup to poor utility lines but now they have these battery packs that um you know the utilities are pushing have you looked into having one of those installed uh at your farm to uh supply you with electricity if the line goes out we have not yet we just have a small generator we can as a kind of a lifeline we can take from place to place um but nothing to run our water pump uh because of the cost we've just put so much um of any of our profits into uh building the farm to where it is that that's really in the next phase making sure that all of our backup systems are in place when we purchased the farm we looked at doing solar panels but the cost was just so prohibitive and we we were in a situation where we just don't want to take on any more debt too so we haven't I'm very interested in a in a battery pack system or a backup battery rather than installing a propane generator yeah well of course these are relatively new and I but we haven't looked into as a committee of ways of helping you know helping to get these small uh these small agricultural production facilities uh maybe grants for you know to help to help put in something like this but it sounds like it's something that we should put on our to-do list and and to look at to see if there's some way that we could do some cost sharing somehow uh to you know because if you can't get water on your farm and your plants are out there choking uh it's pretty disastrous I will mention that um it hasn't been the foremost concern for us yet because we uh have decided to really build our soils uh the resiliency we look at um is in our soils as much as any kind of technological solution we have uh so we've we've built um our soils from four to five percent organic matter up to over 10 percent organic matter uh and every percentage organic matter that you improve in the soil sequesters an incredible amount of carbon and also holds I I off the top of my head I think it's 40 000 gallons of extra water that is held in the soil for every one percent per acre of organic matter so in the last couple really dry years we really just water when we are transplanting or to get seeds to germinate and then we don't have to water again um our soil stays so moist because of all of the compost all of the cover cropping and our farming practices so I think that's a benefit to yeah the you know the science about soil is is growing and changing so much and we know so much more now and so we really look at the resiliency of our farm is how we take care of our principal resource which is our soil yep that's for sure um other questions for uh Patrick also yeah um Chris well just a word of thanks Patrick we've been funding uh they I can't remember the name but I think we call it the ecosystem payment group services I can't remember but the concept is promote soil development and restoration and and find a way to remunerate farmers and it's always heartening to hear people that are doing it I think a lot of farmers are doing it just for the intrinsic value for the the straight return on investment that you're getting and I just want to say as one voice here thank you for for doing that I I think it's not really a question it's clearly vitally important for a state in any number of ways but especially that is seeing increased rain increase intense rain events to protect our downtown Montpelier has a history of flooding trauma so I just want to say thank you and keep up the good work it's kind of inspiring yeah uh there are no other questions um we have Chuck on one yes uh we'll move on to uh Chuck or can you hear us Chuck thank you Patrick yeah thank you all very much uh I need to run but thank you senator Pearson and thank you everyone um we're really grateful to be able to operate in our community and serve our community so thanks for all your work too yeah great this is uh Chuck Worcester can you hear me uh yep great thanks very much Chuck and um have you been on the line saw you heard uh what we're doing and things yes I have I heard uh the testimony from Hannah and from Patrick yeah very very good and that was good testimony that we received uh well welcome to the committee and um glad you could hang on and and make it well thanks so much and thank you to the whole uh committee I really appreciate this opportunity and I appreciate your interest um and it was fun to hear Hannah and Patrick because our farm uh started at their scale maybe even a little bit smaller than their scale and we have grown uh quite a bit we're now in our 23rd year uh my farm named the Sunrise Farm we're just south of the VA hospital in White River so town of Hartford Windsor County and our sales this year we're up around a half a million dollars of sales so that by Vermont standards I think puts us kind of in the middle uh on the on the vegetable side of things so I might have a slightly different perspective um than the other two which I think will be hopefully will uh add to what they've said um I'll give you just a quick thumbnail of our business which will I think set up what I really want to speak about um but as I said this is our 23rd year about a half a million dollars of sales I have three uh employees who work year round uh and at the full season there'll be 10 of us you know June July two-thirds of our business is certified organic vegetables we're certified through uh DOF NOFA and all those vegetables go into a 400 family CSA uh that's all on farm we're quite close to White River also we're very close to Lebanon and Hanover New Hampshire um so we've got about 40,000 people kind of in our immediate neighborhood and we're lucky enough that people are willing to come to our farm every week they can choose what they what they take home but once they get there and we have pick your own flowers and herbs and and things like that um so as I said about two-thirds of our business uh is these organic vegetables the other third is a variety of things we raise chickens on pasture for meat we raise chickens on pasture for eggs uh lamb on pasture for meat we do a bunch of sugaring at least at a small scale to keep us busy in March and we also have a farm stand where we sell other farms products mostly from our neighborhood but kind of if we can get a good cheese or something from you know Jasper Hill or another producer in Vermont we'll definitely bring that into our stand for our people um over the years I've been a very grateful recipient of several grants that you folks have helped set up one was a produce safety grant that we received a few years ago for about $3,500 to repair a well casing on the well that we use for washing our vegetables so that was an excellent upgrade we also received a working land grant of $20,000 a couple years ago to build a on-farm compost facility and we now take in food scraps both from our CSA members and also from the community at large and we turn that into compost that we can use on our farm so that's been a absolutely wonderful project that was made possible in the in large part by the working lands program so my applause for that program and your work in helping to fund that every year in a larger perspective I'll tell you a little bit about our land so we actually we started on a abandoned dairy farm sort of keeping that theme going here this morning the land base had been reduced to 20 acres and it was not an active farm so my wife and I were able to purchase it with a normal home mortgage as a place to live so we didn't have to go through any agricultural funding sources for that after 15 years the business had gotten had become large enough that that site was too small so we purchased the second farm site which is right on route five and it's quite a prominent spot in our town and we were able to get a excellent loan from Yankee Farm Credit to make that purchase and to expand our operation so we have two sites we have about 40 acres of cleared land and of that 40 only six is flat enough for a vegetable production so I think as Chris mentioned we have more intense rain these days and the land that we can grow row crops on it needs to be really flat or close to it because of the risk of soil erosion so out of all this wonderful land that we own only six acres is good enough to grow vegetables on so we've got about 30 acres of grass and we've done a variety of things we graze all of it we have at various times attempted to make our own hay although we've discovered that our scale is just too small to afford that level of capitalization for the hay equipment so now we buy hay from our neighbors which is also good so your question today about diversified farms I think it's a great one and I'll give you an example here so we've been raising sheep now for over 20 years and unfortunately we've lost money on sheep for 18 of them I think we've now moved into the black but we were in the red for a long time and so sheep is a great example so these days if we can we need to sell a lamb for somewhere north of $400 in order for us to make any money doing it and if we can hold on to 50 bucks at the end of that of that 400 then I'll feel like we're doing a good job so you can see that you know 50 bucks a lamb is tough to make that into a freestanding business and in fact for many years we've taken advantage of the on-farm slaughter law although of late we haven't and I'd be happy to talk more about that if that's of interest um but right now we're selling about 80 lamb a year if we can make 50 bucks a lamb that's $4,000 so that's great it's you know we're in the black it's net positive but $4,000 doesn't support you know me let alone employees or anything else so it brings me sort of into the structure of our business which is to say we almost have a bunch of businesses none of which could stand alone you know the chickens the eggs are similar the margins are thin they're all profitable but they're but not enough there's not a large enough scale to turn it into a business so our solution of course is to bundle a number of these things together and turn it into a business so as I mentioned you know mostly vegetables but also the chicken eggs lamb and syrup it all comes together into a business that's viable but in order for that to work each of the individual pieces has to work and this is where I want to talk a little bit about the meat side of it in particular and that's because meat um well I'll step back one I'll take one step back so vegetable production is kind of the same no matter how you do it if you do it in California you're doing it with machines if you're doing it in Vermont you're doing it maybe with some trackers some by hand but the general process is the same you put the seeds or the plants out there you stick them in a row you weed them you water them you feed them then you go back and you harvest them and so it's kind of the same thing at whatever scale you're talking about meat however is totally different um in the industrial model the animals stay indoors and the and the the company is bring the food to them and they take the manure away in the Vermont setting most of the Vermont setting the animals wander around outside and so we the farmers have to go out and bring them food water food their fencing things like that so we're creating fundamentally a different product but we're also doing it in a fundamentally different way which leads to the problem of price on the vegetable side my organic veggies uh you're depending on time of year and other details they might be comparable with conventional prices they might be half again more they might be twice as much something like that that's kind of the spread but the meat that we're raising out past year um is three or four times what you can you sort of get you can get ground beef for you know maybe a quarter of what you can get it for from us so and that's because fundamentally we're raising meat in a much different way and I'm sure you are all familiar with the advantages of pasture raised meat the health benefits the environmental benefits the tourism benefits the beauty benefits the carbon sequestration benefits are all there but it makes for a much much uh different potential market and I sort of think of it in my own brain is honestly there really isn't a competitive market for meat because the price spread is so huge we're lucky that we have customers who value this product who purchase this product um but it's not something that most for monitors um you can afford honestly um so that puts us into a tough spot and the way sort of the you know the marketplace of meat is set up nationally and internationally that's not likely to change anytime soon um and so my testimony today I really wanted to try and zero in on this question uh with you folks and put it in front of you because as you look around Vermont um especially if you step outside of the Champlain Valley there's a lot of land that's not flat enough for vegetables so despite the great success of uh you know of the vegetable sector in the last two three decades we're never going to be able to use that your dairy land that land that's coming out of dairy farms um because we can't grow vegetables on the steep hill sides like that so if we're going to keep all that land somehow in agriculture it's got to have some animals on it in some way um it's just we can't do a veg so we got to get some animals out there and as I said it's incredibly challenging to try and you know create a business on on the basis of meat production in Vermont so I don't have any magic solutions to this of course and I'm sure you guys don't either but I thought it might be worth a quick conversation about like how could how could we do that um because it would certainly benefit our business because we do raise animals on pasture and because we do need a way to use our 30 acres of non-vegetable land in some way that adds to the bottom line but I think it's very emblematic of the whole state you know especially at the eastern at the eastern two-thirds this is the kind of land base that we have so you know a couple of things uh one was mentioned a few minutes ago the payment for ecosystem services model um I've been following that only sort of peripherally and it's super complicated on you know who gets paid for what and where the money comes from but that idea is so important and so central um to what we're trying to do in Vermont here you know the ecological damage from industrial meat is enormous ecological benefit uh of of pasture meat in Vermont is enormous but there needs to be some way economically that we can capture that that benefit so the ecosystem services group that you guys have been funding is is doing great work on that I I have no idea what the final outcome will be and I hope that it's actionable but I would certainly point all of us in that direction um there's also work I think that could be done at the state level in trying to promote the idea of grass dead pasture raised meat um and for you know that quick list I ran through half jokingly which is you know the health benefits the beauty benefits the tourism benefits um the local economy benefits are all are all there and if we could really focus on that you know kind of Vermont brand that we are creating the meat that that people want and need um you've I'm sure read many articles and sort of um you know in the media that talk about how meat is terrible for the climate and terrible for you and all those articles make the same mistake which is they're all talking about the industrial meat that's locked up inside and so there's great work for us to do as individual farmers and I think as a state to really say hey we can do this we've got this land base we grow some of the best grass in the world here in Vermont and and animals are the way for us to take advantage of that and then the final thing I want to touch on too which is the slaughter side of it which I know you all have done great work on you've taken advantage of the on-farm slaughter law for a bunch of years it solves a number of problems mainly the problem of transportation of having to have a vehicle and a trailer to move animals around it also gets you out of the bottleneck of scheduling which I know you guys are also aware of and I think you're from the humane standpoint it's nice for the animals to never have to leave their home base so I'm in favor of it there's one there's one aspect of it that hasn't it's always kind of stuck in my craw which is we have to have an itinerant slaughter or do it I understand that that might be language that's coming from the USDA and I can see in the abstract why you sort of want a third party there but as a practical matter I'm telling meat directly to the people that I'm putting into their hands and it would be much more beneficial for my farm if we could actually do the slaughter and all that ourselves because as I said we're trying to you have 50s little businesses together so I'm looking for work for my people to do so having to then hire someone else to come in you know I'm in some ways I might as well hire the slaughterhouse to do it as long as I can get I can get the date then the other piece of on-farm on-farm slaughter it's a great program and by design and probably importantly it's it's very small it's for small producers it's already sort of it's not big enough for us even at our medium scale which is fine but I think that as a committee and as a state we need to figure out ways to make that slaughter more affordable you know I understand why the agency is really focused on facilities because the USDA is really focused on facilities and they don't want exemptions and they don't want alternatives and I totally understand the reasoning for that but it creates an almost insurmountable obstacle for someone to move you to become a larger producer as I said if I can sell a lamb for you know 400 bucks I'm happy but 125 of that is going to go to the slaughterhouse another 25 to 50 of it's just going to go for me moving the animals back and forth so you know maybe 40 percent of my expense is being incurred at the last minute there and so you can see it's a really really tight margin and so I don't know quite how the state can help if indeed we're going to go the facilities approach and I think you can paste them what the agency has said we are are there ways that we can make that more affordable for kind of small to medium producers are there transportation services that the state could set up or subsidize is there some payment that the state could be making to slaughterhouses to keep slots available for small producers or to subsidize the small producer in some way I don't quite know I'm just throwing these ideas out randomly but I think the important thing to focus is on is the slaughter thing continues to be a huge bottleneck and the on-farm piece is great as far as it goes but that by itself is not going to be enough for us to figure out how are we going to use this incredible grass that we have in Vermont as we continue to see this transition away from dairy so I think that's a that's the list of what I had pre-prepared I'm happy to answer questions but I hope I didn't move any random directions here no we we appreciate the well-rounded issues that you brought before us and I guess to start where you left off we spent quite a lot of time even this year on the issue of on-farm slaughter and you you don't have the the owner of the animal doesn't have to have an itinerant slaughterer but the farmer the way the federal law was handed down what they would allow is the owner of the animal to perform the slaughter or they could hire an on-farm slaughterer to slaughter the animal and but the farmer it's very clear that the farmer in no way can take part in the slaughter of the animal and it's it's kind of a crazy thing you know and I don't I don't know of any any way around this because you're the farmer and the owner is somebody from say Hanover or White River and they certainly don't know how to slaughter an animal and do it in a you know you want this done in a humane and safe way the only and I don't even know how to get around that other than early on you said you and your wife I think on the farm is that right yes we we co-own it as a practical matter I I'm the farmer and she has some off-farm income but yes we do co-own it yeah so your wife couldn't be the owner the animals and sell the animal to the to the people and then and then you could do this but I I don't know yeah that there may be a creative way around this but we haven't come up with one at this point yeah I appreciate you're looking into it and it's interesting that it's sort of just that one little line in the statute but for us it makes all the difference you know I need to have someone there because we need to you know we we compost all of the you know all of the parts that aren't going to get turned into meat so you know we need someone there to assist but you know most of the time you're just kind of standing there yeah and and honestly you know we we do some slaughter for our own purposes purposes and you know we certainly could do it but so I understand that may be outside of your control but I would just again flag that as an unfortunate an unfortunate piece of this yeah we have we have sent one or two letters off to our congressional delegation and one directly to USDA trying to get clarification to make this you know more convenient and better but it's certainly a rough not to crack because they have these you know very stringent rules and regulations and so anyways we're still beating away at this but to take a sheep and a lamb and raise it and then get it to value it big enough to sort of values out at $400 and only end up with $50 is not a very big profit when it takes you know all year to do this yeah and I think that's you know it's tough in the marketplace too that you know people say holy smokes like look at these guys they're making bank you know $400 for a sheep you know good work if you can get it and then I'm sitting on my side saying you know I sell to you for 350 but then I'd make zero yeah the our tenor slaughter is charged $125 no they uh it's more like 50 bucks 60 bucks something like that but then we then need to take the carcasses to a facility that can cut and wrap them yeah so you know a possibility for us would be that we could build our own you know cut and wrap basically our own butcher shop and then we could do that second part of it and I've thought a bit about that and you know as with any piece of equipment that you build or buy you need to use it a certain amount you know in order to pay for itself and so it gets you into that scale problem of you know are we going to raise 200 lambs you know in order to justify a building like that so we're sort of in this you know we're kind of in an in-between spot that we're we're big enough you know that we've that's in you know we have a real business going but we're not so big that we can afford our own you know dedicated slaughter or or butcher facilities cut and wrap Chris Chuck thanks for your time today and then I suppose if you did that facility and invited others in to use it you'd be in a whole nother universe of of regulation right that's correct yeah especially on the wastewater side and and this is really where you're the building gets expensive you have to really have to have a USDA certified facility you're essentially building a house you know a small house you need obviously clean water coming in you need some kind of septic or town you know sewer on the other side and you know and wiring lighting and everything to code so it's kind of like building a small house and so you can see the amount of money that either would be needed to subsidize that or the amount of business that the farm needs to afford that is you know it's considerable yeah yeah we we run into these federal problems that just drive us all crazy but anyway i'm glad you're finding finding ways to piece it all together Chuck yeah go ahead Chuck yeah I think this you know the focus is I hate I hate to move the focus over the subsidies because I think like all of us the idea here is to compete in the marketplace and but as I pointed out I think the marketplace on the meat side is so distorted that it's sort of not possible and so I think your work exploring things like payment for ecosystem services or maybe you know is there a way for there to be I don't know like the transportation is a big bottleneck you know maybe there's ways that you know slaughterhouses can be can be encouraged to keep spots open you know with some sort of a subsidy and you know I hate to go down that road but if we can't change the regs if it really does mean we all have to go through a slaughterhouse then we're gonna have to figure out an economical way for us to go through the slaughterhouse I I like the idea that your customers that come to the farm I think you said they they bring their scraps and it goes into your compost pile that's a really good way to get off farm nutrients back to the farm right through the compost system and put back on your soils that's that's a very good plan you've got there well thanks yeah it's been it's been very successful of course it's a wonderful educational piece right people can pick up their vegetables one week and bring back the scraps the next and then instead we're capturing this great essentially free nutrient source getting it back on the soil and you know a lot of that is thanks to the universal recycling and waste law that the legislature and the governor put through so it's been a really really great thing we just started you know applying the compost last fall so it's a little early to see you know great gains in the soil organic matter but we're going to see them and so it's just a perfect it's a perfect program and and again thanks to you know the state both for helping to fund it but also to putting the putting the right regulations in place to make it possible yeah other questions if if we got that neat thing straightened out how how much could you or how many more could you handle saying your operation to and get rid of it we could get something like that you know more streamlined yeah it's a good question I think as Hannah said you know the demand for local meat is big you know people really do want it and the problem is the price point so there's I have no question that I could sell I could sell probably two three four times more lamb that there's a market for it but but again it's at what price yeah so we could make that possible but I think you know in in theory there's an enormous market it's just that we can't we can't meet it at the right price at the moment and and to do that of course it's the slaughter the cut and wrap and in that part of it that makes it sort of unaffordable or is that they're growing in general that makes it unaffordable yeah it's a great it's a great question and observation I think there's two sides of it one is kind of in the national scale right it's artificially cheap to raise enormous amounts of grain and pump it through animals in feed lots so if we had kind of a if we had a real approach to carbon and climate and things at a national level you would see the price of conventional meat shoot up rapidly which would indirectly help us because it would get us closer to the vegetable thing where you know it's going to be more expensive to raise stuff outside but it's not going to be four times more it might only be twice as as much so so that would certainly help and then then on our expense side of course we have to try to be as efficient as we can but the slaughter you know all of the logistics of slaughter are a huge issue as I said that can be like 30 to 40 percent of your expense can happen right there at the end and you know maybe I know there are grant programs and as I said I haven't quite made it to help what kind of a scale that we would be on in terms of how you know if we're going to build a if we're going to build a room I want to make sure that we're going to use it you know I don't want it to be just something that we you know twice a year go in there and you know slaughter a few animals so but one thing I would say Hannah mentioned chickens as well so chickens the USDA you know gives us some great flexibility under 20 000 and I think the legislature and the agency have done a good job of setting thresholds at 1000 and 5000 and as you sort of get bigger the regulatory burden gets heavier which I think is appropriate because you know you start to achieve some efficiencies and and you have a better sense of your business and but the chickens you can really start you know the first one there's very little regulation as you're learning about it and so it's a great way to get started vegetables it's the same thing even with the food safety and modernization act you know that doesn't really kick in until half a million in in vegetable in in total revenue so again you have a chance to start at a smaller scale and kind of ease your way in which is sort of a great kind of Vermont way of doing it but if you're looking at red meat it's like you know the full weight of the regs lands on you at animal number one so there's no there's no chance to tiptoe in there and especially when it comes to slaughter you have to be a big impediment any other questions for chuck is it I guess there's no other questions chuck and we want to y'all thank you a lot for your time and appreciate your your work and your knowledge and sharing it with us so stay in touch thanks senator and thanks to the to the committee for your interest in taking this testimony I appreciate the opportunity yeah thank you so um we have joe cabbage uh good morning joe good morning calling you from talking in now today from sunny columbus ohio oh yeah it's one of those business meetings that you have to do with farm bureau every now and then and you know just just went through three days of really great meetings on a lot of different subjects none of this on small farms though right now a lot of diversity and and pieces of helping us grow as individuals which was really good yeah so um as a small so my name is joe tisbert I am owner and operator of valley dream farm and came to vermont I am also the state president of vermont farm bureau it as gives me a unique perspective of how things I think of how things are and and where we have to stand as small farms large farms medium farms we're all in this together we need every one of us to create the markets I think that a lot of the question here was about you know how how do we help out the diverse small diverse farms on our farm we grow we grow we've grown a little hemp we've grown we grow mixed vegetables we ship mostly wholesale we do agritourism for farm to table dinners my daughter is coming back to the farm has come back to the farm and she created a cut flower garden as her portion of the business we also rent some land to a young farm family we rent five acres so they can increase their vegetable production and which I think is very key for us farmers that are young but older to to help out some youngsters and and keep a vibrant vermont farm about vermont farms um well I think it's very important that you know we keep the regulation for these farms as low as we can they already have a lot of you know somebody just mentioned fismar and you know fismar yeah it doesn't kick into a lot till you have a lot of produce but if you have to find a market out of state then it kicks in much earlier so you know finding the regulations grant funding that we can you know keep keep those guys in the ball in the ball game I think is very important as I was thinking about this testimony I I was thinking to myself you know there's so many bills going on now kind of like the surface water bill that's out there you know we cannot see they cannot we cannot as young as small farmers we cannot compete in the world that we're going to have to pay for equipment uh because we irrigate on such a small level of um a small level of taking a 5000 gallons out of out of a river is nothing and it would take it doesn't take very much water to to get that out of out of sight but what we would like to see is you know I mean I've talked with every state in New England um on what their regulations are and how they're affected and most of them so a lot of them have that rule that you know you register and how much water you take you you um report it um some report it yearly uh some report it uh more uh you know monthly but um you know the thresholds are all over 50 000 gallons so 50 000 to 100 000 gallons is the threshold and as a small farm and having to buy equipment that would meter um that would meter water intake out of the river I'll take out of the rivers and then having to record it you know where's it going who's taking the who's taking the information is it a yearly thing that we're going to have to have to do uh I think that's a very important piece that we we have to think about when we're talking about small farms how much regulation how much burden are we putting on them so there's lots of you know there's lots of issues out there um you know uh fuel prices right now uh through the roof I just filled my my oil tank for my greenhouse and we do some bedding plants in the spring here we have uh flowers and um bedding plants we we work really hard at trying to diversify our operation from early spring late spring summer fall uh winter and how we how we how we make things work well I'm going to tell you at 499 gallons for fuel has just uh taken something that we probably spend about $1,100 a year and that one fill up was ended up over $2,000 for that fill up uh small farms cannot afford and will not be in business very long if they have to keep this fuel cost uh up so this is a place that I don't know where we can help on this but it's one thing that's really really going to affect um a lot of young a lot of small smaller and younger diverse farmers because they just just to keep up it just there's not enough margins in their products in order to make in in order to make it all well all flow um you know so lots of other things uh agritourism to me uh it's kind of the glue that keeps our farm together um you know it's like an insurance policy that that helps us get through the summer when when when you don't ship when you're shipping like we are we're shipping mostly wholesale with some local sales in our farm stand but the majority of our product will get shipped out um to deep root organic and and get shipped all over the east coast well excuse me I've gone over the east coast so um I lost my train of thought I'm sorry uh but um go ahead sorry schools job do I ship to schools yes no any any schools no we used to ship um we used to ship to local wholesale in burlington city market healthy living food hub um and deep root and we used to do a csa and we've we have had to we've had to shift our business um because one is I'm I I took on farm bureau and and that uh takes some of my time away and traveling every day to burlington or every three every other day to burlington is not conducive for really getting any work done around the farm but um and we have done we've had done we have sales at hospitals we used to do a csa in northwest regional health center which which was you know was borderline whether it had any success in it at all um so that's why we we've we've chose to go mostly wholesale uh at this point um for you know for for for family and then and life itself you know just uh we needed to slow the pace of running 150 miles to deliver a product uh to get all your margins up so um um so one of the things that been out there that uh some of the grants like working lands has done a really good job of helping folks get grants the department of ag is help folks get grants I think stabilizing uh grant process um so that everybody has the availability of of participating um and you don't really know that you don't really need to be a big grant writer to get it so I'd like to see that um you know the base of working lands be high enough that folks who have an idea and have a business plan and can really show you know just need the little boost to help get this up and running I think will be a really is really key uh for the future not for our future as a state and small agriculture but also uh viability of smaller farms I think is real important uh the agritourism piece I know you guys are going to be looking at or you have looked at accessory on farm business um you know processing uh no matter what it is processing on the farm is very would be a very key role uh to help farms be more viable and regulation around processing would be an important piece not to not to over inflate I mean it's already expensive enough to try to get a processor um in and we've looked at a processor to try to bring in for hemp and I mean the cost was ridiculous it wasn't wasn't going to be feasible for us to do but you know so other folks may have um you know may have a need to do that and and having funds available to help them get through that process and make it grow is it would be really key um but the agritourism piece I don't the accessory on farm business I don't want to see a bill unintentionally hurt what we already have and what we already worked hard for with you guys to have an agritourism to make it even keel across the state I'd hate to see I'd hate to see it watered down or um not enforced as as we already have it I think we had a bill that was pretty strong I'm not sure where accessories where it would even take advantage it seems like through the department of ag if someone wanted to do cheese they already have a process uh in place that they can do it without um too much uh regulation in the way act 250 uh mr chair could I ask a question yes um Joe thanks for joining us and always good to see you um you you just you fit in such an interesting way in the ag puzzle in Vermont because of your own farm experience and of course you know having uh being a critical voice for all farmers uh uh and our sort of history of of particularly dairy but then your own experience is so different so I'm always intrigued by your comments listening to all the farmers today and you I'm struck by the enormous amount of hurdles that that go from hey what do you think about growing you know vegetables and and small scale meat production could we do it you know then you got to find some land and then you got to find markets and distribution and and the business the hurdles to set that business up are frankly staggering but then you layer on top of that the various details of regulation and um I guess two questions do you hear from people that that does them in or that wards them away and the regulation piece on top of all those other hurdles and is there any entity that really helps as a one-stop shop like like if somebody has land they've got some knowledge or access to land get the knowledge and the marketing down is there someone to call and check in and say you know here's what I want to do x y and z what are the rules do we do we have good systems in place to make that as easy as possible I'm not sure I have an expertise that there is there is places to call there's extension you know like you know Heather Darby up in St. Almond does an amazing job of answering questions and trying to get I don't think there's one I know you can call the Department of Ag and get some answers and I know that at Farm Bureau I don't know if we do a good enough job of saying you know all the here's the one shop and yeah you're doing things this is great one of the things that we try to push as Farm Bureau is mentoring trying to trying to help folks under you know we're going to tie you in with somebody that you know can help you and that's what we do but you know the tasks are you know you have to be a really you have to try to be a good businessman even though farming is about passion right it's it's you know if you don't have a passion for it you're not going to do it and you know so I don't think I have a good answer for you senator Pearson but I think that would be a helpful piece if there was that perfect liaison and maybe they're out there I just and I'm you know a little older and a little more stubborn to ask for help but you know we just I'm I'm not sure I'm have the right answer for you well I like that about you and and you know there are different pieces of it right we have the business planning out of VHCB and technical support you know but but to the extent that this is squarely in the future for Vermont agriculture it seems to me that's something we could look into so I'll put that on our own list but thank you I appreciate your thinking so I was also I was also thinking about work and land I mean you know I think that there's talk about raising the yearly minimum and I think that's a great idea to raise it so that you know the funds are there if the people have these progress and I don't I think from what I've learned is that you know they've never run out of money they've always run out of money before they run out of things they could fund and I know that through adjustments and everything a lot of times things get funded but having a yearly base that's you know can be counted on also to relieve some of the restrictions on those funds like we've heard of farms this year that excuse me have you know getting product is tight getting help is tight couldn't get a project done that was even though it was ready to go you know their funds were going to run out at a certain time and to be able to extend those funds I think is an would be an important change to how the working lands all work so extend it out over you know if you do get the funds give you adequate time especially with conditions the way they are today with supplies being tight labor being tight expense the expense you know a project that was signed up in 20 or 21 now the cost of that project has more than doubled just for supplies itself so I think that you know we should be sensitive to that and I think you know we'd like to see that go further yeah we had Hannah Doyle on earlier today I think she and her her funds down towards Fairfax I think my treasure from from New York but she said if there was a diagram set up so that if if you were wanting to do veggies vegetable growers and if you needed advice the line would go to a person that could help you say with fertilizer could go with down further to an agronomist who could help you with soil types and and so if we had a little roadmap for different products that it would be most helpful rather than getting on the phone calling USDA calling the extension calling the ag agency and hoping that the person that says hello can direct you in the right direction so instead of spending a lot of time chasing phone numbers there would be sort of a little system set up where whoever answers the phone would have that readily available would be most helpful and like her kits I don't know if there is such a thing as that and we've missed it or not so I don't think there is such a thing and you know that might be one of the things that you know somebody gets a grant for to set up so that it's it's out there for the state and and the state can work on it and I mean the thing is you got a lot of folks doing a lot of things right now and and you know a lot of what their time like extensions time is earmarked to certain events right because you know they got to get that soft money so that they can do it the water quality that you know the specialty crops has been doing a really good job but I I think that that may be a great way to go and could be somebody's project that but and also getting putting people on you know connecting people to people right it's a a veggie and berry growers does a good job of that they have put pieces out there you know another thing that's hurting small farms is labor I know nationally I'm working really diligently to try to help this h2a program make adjustments that can help small and smaller farms that need to help the labor and housing is a problem you know there's some folks out there trying to help with that but you know a lot of the smaller farms may need to put people in their own home and the repair might need to be to their own home in order to house their workers that's something that we do but when you look at the grant for you know housing repairs or expansion to make it all done and if it's your own home you can't use it I mean that's really a that's really a drawback especially to smaller farms who may not have two houses on their farm and and be able to set one up for for housing for h2a labor immigrant labor it's it's a big it's a big issue it's becoming bigger because one person can do one can do a little bit of work and maybe make some money but if they want to be successful they may have to have a personal to to work with them so that they can do all the business pieces that need to be done and not just all the labor that needs to be done though it's very important do we we look at the whole picture so Joe that that housing program that we set up last year the year before but just it just got going this winter through sampling housing you can't get any assistance if if the farmer hand lives in the farmhouse itself you can't gain assistance to correct that that that's one of the things that would kill your your loan I mean the you know because you can get $30,000 to help with you know making you know maybe you want to expand that place so they have an extra so they have to each have their own room or something that's in your house and you know you're probably you may be living with the farmer full time and they and you may need space and so that is that is definitely one of the pieces that says you don't qualify for the for the grant money I'll be damned see we you know we try to do things perfect by guess we missed that one for sure well we had I guess no one had brought that to our attention and never thought of it so so it's good to yeah I had no idea that that would work a on the surface water bill we're going to be taking that up Joe 466 and the way the way that supposedly set up right now is you take it on 30 day intervals and you can do 50,000 gallons a day through the 30 days but if you go over the 50,000 then you you get boosted into a different category and if you so I guess at the end of the year you would have to make a report on if you went over your see 55 yeah 50,000 gallons a day for 30 days but if you had four days in there that you never you know you didn't use any you average out your gallon uh for the month and as long as you didn't go over the 50,000 a day you would you wouldn't have to do much does that make any sense um you know as a smaller farmer that makes sense that the threshold went as up um is did we put any I mean because you know you're talking about 50,000 a day what do vegetables need vegetables need an inch or approximately most vegetables will take an inch of rain a week in order to be successful so if if that's the case and you have you know an inch of rain today or a half inch of rain today you don't need to irrigate as much as you would have done before so that that piece probably would work um I just uh totally uh I spoke with some of the advocates for this bill um I really feel like it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist here I have I don't feel like I don't feel like um it's one of those things that um when they told me well we comparing this to certain other places in the country when I research those other places we get 23 more rain than those other places um so is this is this again it's a regulation for us for farmers to do and is it is it is it something that we really need or is it something waiting for waiting for a problem and and I'm sorry to say this I'm willing to work hard at you know if this was a real problem then farms should do it and do it well but I mean I've heard prices up which of two to five thousand dollars a meter and I know some farms that have four or five different pumps and in order to have a meter they don't use them all the same time they may use this one today and that one two days from now and the other one down the road you know I mean and you got to set up all those pumps that you know 10 to 20 thousand dollars with meters to to make it go where it's going and where is it going to go from here you know who's going to monitor what what department is going to monitor who's you the water usage is it going to go to the department of ag and who there is going to do it is there going to be is there going to be some kind of fine or or you know we're going to build in some kind of fine and the near future that says oh yeah you use 51 000 gallons um a day for a month this summer now we're going to we're going to kick you to another category we got more stringent regulation you're going to get fine because you were over that limit I mean I just see so many rabbit holes in this whole bill that you know if it was a problem let's do it but is it a problem here and and yes we've had last year when you look at the drought figures the bottom third of the state got way more rain than they have than they have in the past the middle part of the state was almost right and the upper upper northeast kingdom was very dry so you know we're all over the place right and I just don't I am I if we could not have this bill it would be it would be great with me but if we need this bill 50 000 gallons is a way better place to be I just want to know where where's it going to go are there going to be fines what you know what's uh what is the what is the really why do we really need this I guess is my real question next next Tuesday well hopefully they're supposed to get that bill out between now and Monday out of natural resources and we're going to have it either in here Tuesday or Wednesday and so I don't know if you'll be back uh in Vermont Joe but if you're Jackie or somebody from Frank Barrow uh wants to uh be in on on that discussion we'd be glad to have you invite you I would I am back I'm I'm leaving here at two o'clock to come to come home and I am I'll just look a quick look at my calendar I can be done Tuesday or Wednesday I would be happy to be on um I think this is very important especially for our veg and berry growers small farmers I don't think this hits a lot of the I don't think if somebody wanted this to hit the larger farms I don't think it does I'm minimally if it does when you look across our state we don't have a lot of pivot irrigation systems like I've seen out here in in Iowa or in other places in the south especially Alabama and Mississippi where I've been and you and they can't grow anything without that irrigation you know we're not we're not in that ballgame but in order to be successful we have to we have to irrigate no we're very fortunate uh on our climate actually for the most part we're we're in pretty good shape but there are other questions for Joe I was thinking Joe do you have a did you apply for did you receive a wash station veggie washing station grant or do you have one that you you use to wash your veggies before they go we we um had a grant um I'm eight and I eight or nine years ago to build a wash room in our barn we we have an old dairy barn and we converted a piece of it to a wash room and a cooler and ought to do that and we got some grant help to form the room uh that we're working in that we wash in potatoes and beets and stuff we're in the winter yeah so that's working see some of the newer ones I don't know if they newer primers didn't know we have that grant supposedly still still good and and going um but um you know very very important yeah very important and and of course somebody said this morning that they have blind and they were told there was no money left in that fund uh to do that well that was the first I'd heard of it and uh so we we've got to check on that to make sure there is uh money in that um in that uh fund for grants uh for that purpose um I'd be great so well if there there are no other questions I guess uh thanks a lot uh for your time y'all and have a safe trip back and keep us in mind for next Tuesday or Wednesday I will be watching if uh then I will definitely I'll definitely get on definitely be great hey I appreciate your time I appreciate what you guys are doing um I I hope you're all successful in uh during the summer here and going forward and thanks for having me on yeah thanks again Joe we have any others well that uh so that wraps up our our witnesses um um got some good uh feedback yeah that was um interesting and good um yeah Bobby I just want to say thanks that that I that was way more interesting and and useful than even I'd hoped and I appreciate you taking the time yeah that um I thought went very well and and got a few ideas on things that we might be able to do to uh you know that give these guys a hand for future um for future it's amazing you know hearing from somebody's only been added a year or two to somebody like Joel that's been added a long time and and uh another one was I've been doing it for 20 odd years and uh seems like you know they run um they have an idea and and just go for it and they're kind of on their own doing their own their own thing and you know the guy that that bought the old farm on route 12 I think he said 12 uh that had no really no topsoil had all been dormant and now he's got six or eight inches of uh you know good soils uh and they seem to really be tuned in like that guy said well I've got six or eight inches of topsoil and for every inch it'll hold x number of gallons of water and and uh you know so they they've done pretty well at it that the need is you're going to see that every single one of them mentioned that to some degree the Montpeliers the city of Montpeliers flood insurance should send that guy a check every year yeah that's he's just in the wrong direction now he should have been back up toward uh East Montpelier and up in there instead of down on route 12 no that damn neat thing though you know to have to take a lamb and raise it to be a sheet and then get it big enough so you sell it for a four-year box and you end up with $50 yeah I mean the guy that grows that little plot of uh cannabis you know that plants it in the spring and sells it in the fall or whenever I mean go away but it's hard to believe that that's all that would be left in and uh is 50 or 50 bucks it sounds like trucking yeah you work all day trucking if you end up with 50 bucks it's a good job you've done well well thank you mr chair yeah patrols uh anything else uh no I I'm glad uh Joe raised the concerns on the water although I have concerns about as well yeah yeah well that uh I met with Chris again this morning will we have possession or just fly by no it's not gonna fly okay I mean that may fly in uh no I but I told him we probably uh you know needed a day or two to get testimony yeah from people of concern and uh they uh he died earlier he died gate out yesterday today he said maybe tomorrow but if not tomorrow for sure on Monday so he's bringing his crew in to work on Mondays oh yeah there he was yeah they work last Monday you remember don't you you so I don't miss it you're gonna be back there if you don't shape up I won't show up well hopefully uh so hopefully uh you know we can get some people lined up once we know when and uh we'll but any you know if you think about today's meeting uh Joe any of those ideas down that that were suggested where we might be able to help I like your idea of that sort of schematic or I don't know what you want to call it but yeah okay I'm interested in this here's who I call or email or visit yeah it seems like that wouldn't be that difficult to put together I don't think so and uh and just have it at whoever answers the phone you know I have it uh have it there and that would be uh most uh most helpful well if there isn't anything else uh we'll um we'll call it a morning and uh and the journey and tomorrow uh we have uh Ryan Patch coming in of the first thing in regards to the uh uh ego systems and and all that and um so we'll we'll have him in and and see all that goes and how it's been going and uh go from there to there