Our Nut Research Featured in Sunday’s Free Press!

We were honored to have our research and breeding trials featured in this Sunday’s Burlington Free Press Article:

 

Nut farming hard to crack in Vermont

Nut trees serve and protect.

Lynn Monty, Free Press Staff Writer8:19 a.m. EDT September 8, 2014

(Photo: LYNN MONTY/Free Press )

ELMORE – Pears dropped with a distinct plunk as David Fried ambled through a varied crop of fruit and nut trees. Kiwi vines, black walnut trees, and hazelberts lined the path.

Squirrels hoard the nuts, and deer eat the drops, but Fried, 56, isn’t easily goaded. “For us it’s something we like, but for them it’s survival,” he said.

His 18 acres, once an abandoned hay field, is now an abundant Eden in Elmore. After being told only apples could grow this far north, Fried has discovered, over three decades of experimenting, what is possible for Vermont.

His Elmore Roots Nursery has sold about 50,000 fruit and nut trees since he opened for business in 1979.

These trees also protect Vermont’s changing landscape in the face of extreme weather patterns. One tree in particular, the Hazelbert, saved one farm during Tropical Storm Irene three years ago.

Vermont hazelnut trees are called Hazelberts, created by Fred Ashworth who was a fruit explorer in upstate New York in the 1800s. “He crossed a European filbert with an American hazelnut,” Fried said. “We carry on that lineage of his trees.”

A line of Hazelberts on the edge of the Lamoille River saved Willow Crossing Farm in Johnson from heavy damage during Irene and the flooding that preceded that storm. “The trees caught four feet of flotsam,” owner Keith Morris said. “Hazelberts bend and slow the water, then they bounce right back.”

Morris, 36, also owns Prospect Rock Permaculture, a landscape design and build firm that helps people plant protective infrastructure into their homesteads. Morris is on a mission to see more nut trees as shelter belts around vegetation, as wind breaks, animal fencing, and on river’s edges across the state.

Photo Gallery: Eden in Elmore

Nut farming in Vermont is a frontier largely unexplored, Morris said. “We look at how we can make farms more resilient,” he said. “Nut trees and can do that.”

Fried’s certified organic nursery boasts eight different kinds of nut trees. He sells about 600 hazelnut, black walnut, pine nut, bur oak, shagbark hickory, butternut, buartnut and American chestnut annually.

Willow Crossing’s Morris started collecting nut trees in 2000, and Morris experiments with about 3,000 species now. The Hazelbert is the most exciting, he said. “There is a huge market for it,” he said. “Nutella is a great example.”

Nutella is a sweet spread made from hazelnuts that has replaced peanut butter in many homes across the nation recently.

Hazelberts produce nuts within a few years of being planted as opposed to other nut trees that generally take about 10 to 15 years to produce, Morris said.

While Nutella is a fairly new item in Vermont kitchens, the butternut pie is a long-standing tradition. “Butternut trees have a dear place in my heart, on my farm, and in the entire state for that matter,” Morris said. “Butternuts were a staple crop for most homesteads here for generations.”

Now Butternut trees are endangered. There is a fungal blight in the state. “The outlook isn’t good,” Morris said. “We are working with the state, and with some hybrid trees that are blight resistant.”

Shelburne Farms Head Market Gardener, Josh Carter, has been growing Hazleberts in Shelburne for three years. “We’re thinking our Hazleberts will start producing enough nuts to sell to the Inn next year,” he said.

The Hazleberts were planted to add interesting, non-traditional crops that fit with the farm’s educational mission. “Since we run a farm-to-table restaurant on site we diversity our market garden operation as much of possible for greatest variety in the menu,” Carter said.

 

Nut farming is not economically viable, Carter said. “We don’t grow many nuts around here in the Northeast,” he said.

Black walnuts from last year’s harvest at Elmore Roots Nursery.(Photo: LYNN MONTY/Free Press )

Growing nuts is similar to growing hops for beer, Carter said. “People like the idea of growing local hops for local breweries, but there’s a lot of infrastructure involved for starting up and brewing for this refined and processed product to make it viable.”

Carter admits he doesn’t have a passion for growing nuts, in particular, but does have a passion for trying different crops and learning as he goes.

Five years from now, everyone might want Hazleberts, Carter said. “It’s always nice to be ahead of the curve,” he said. “We’re building a pool of knowledge to cash in on in the future.”

Morris said he doesn’t think Vermont will ever have a competitive advantage with nut growing, but nut trees are important to the state’s landscape. “With more growers on board, it makes sense to look into nut butters and oils,” he said. “Hazelnut oil from Europe is a very valuable high quality commodity.”

Morris is also working on a hybrid pecan and hickory tree called a hickan tree. “People say pecans won’t grow in Vermont, but they do,” he said.

It might take 15 years to see nuts grow on a hickan tree, but there will be 500 years of nut harvesting after that, with no tilling, weeding, or seeding.

“I hope my work will build a legacy, so that generations of Vermonters to come might have plenty of pecans,” Morris said.

 

 

Contact Lynn Monty at LynnMonty@FreePressMedia.com and follow her on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/VermontSongbird.

 

Thank you Lynn for a great story!

 

Here is a link to the original article:  http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/local/vermont/2014/09/06/nut-farming-hard-crack-vermont/15214289/

I will return and annotate/ correct this as there’s even more to the story!

 

Stay tuned for an audio file of our Nuts for the Northeast presentation at NOFA MA- we’re also looking for someone who wants to collaborate on making a simple video from the slides or who would like to edit the audio.

Thanks to everyone for coming out and sharing our event with DARREN DOHERTY!  It was a great success.

Out ROOT CELLAR DESIGN BUILD WORKSHOP will be October 18-19- stay tuned for more details or email to register!

2013 EARTH ACTIVIST TRAINING Sept. 7-21

2013 Earth Activist Training (EAT)

At Willow Crossing Farm and Wildlife Refuge

Johnson, VT

September 7 – 21, 2013

with Starhawk, Charles Williams, Keith Morris, Lisa DePiano, Skotty Kellogg, and Special Guests

Permaculture, earth-based spirituality, organizing and activism… with Starhawk and a team of stellar teachers and designers.

An Earth Activist Training can set your life on a new path…or show you how to save the world. Green solutions are sprouting up all around us, but permaculture shows us how to weave them together into systems that can meet human needs and regenerate the natural world. EAT is practical earth healing with a magical base of ritual and nature awareness, teaching you to integrate mind and heart, with lots of hands-on practice and plenty of time to laugh.

Our two-week intensives are Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) scourses, offering the basic, internationally-recognized 72-hour permaculture curriculum with an additional focus on social permaculture, organizing tools, and spirit.

To Register, please click here.                                                                                                                                                                               For more information about Earth Activist Training (EAT) please visit here.

Starhawk is a world-reknown author, activist, permaculture designer, and one of the foremost voices in earth-based spirituality. Her twelve books include The Spiral Dance, The Fifth Sacred Thing, and The Earth Path, and her first picture book for children, The Last Wild Witch.  She has lived and worked collectively for thirty years, and her book on group dynamics is just out: The Empowerment Manual: A Guide for Collaborative Groups.

Starhawk is a veteran of progressive movements, from anti-war to anti-nukes, and is deeply committed to bringing the techniques and creative power of spirituality to political activism.

Earth Activist Trainings were founded by Starhawk as intensive seminars that combine permaculture design, political organizing, and earth-based spirituality.  With over ten years of experience in permaculture design and teaching, she has pioneered the application of permaculture principles to social organizations, policy and strategy.  Since its first course in May of 2001, Earth Activist Trainings has graduated over 600 students who now shepherd projects that range from community power-down strategies in Iowa City to water catchment programs in Bolivia, from inner city gardens in San Francisco to women’s programs in the West Bank of Palestine.  Starhawk’s own expertise is in the communication of ecological systems thinking through images, writing, and innovative teaching techniques.

Starhawk is perhaps best known as an articulate pioneer in the revival of earth-based spirituality and Goddess religion. She is a cofounder of Reclaiming, an activist branch of modern Pagan religion, and continues to work closely with the Reclaiming Community.

Charles, a certified permaculture designer, comes to EAT through a love of the wild, faith that healthy communities can solve complex problems, and a belief that working with one’s hands is sacred work. Over the past two decades he has stewarded many pieces of land throughout the United States, including Diana’s Grove in Missouri, Farm & Wilderness summer camp in Vermont, and Golden Rabbit Ranch in California. His approach simultaneously promotes both preservation of wild spaces and conservation of the domestic. His deep respect for and relationship with the divine in nature informs all he does, integrating spiritual practices with land management. Charles also understands the need for healthy community and knows that skilled human implementation is an essential part of any design. In these challenging times, he finds hope for the future through the interlocking, symbiotic relationship of spirit, community, and action. Charles is a talented facilitator and conflict mediator. He has worked with many groups, from mass mobilization meetings with over 100 people to a handful of people working for progressive organizations, from Quaker-style Unity to anarchist-style consensus, from inexperienced teens to highly trained professionals. Through a rough and rugged process he has gained an eye for what helps build community and support.

As an accomplished tinker Charles brings a wide range of practical and somewhat obscure hand skills. He has installed complex systems such as solar electric arrays, gray water filters, and veggie oil diesel conversions. He has implemented simple systems such as emergency water filtration, humanure composting toilets, and rotational grazing plans. He is talented in wilderness tracking, solo canoeing, gathering and tending wild edibles, starting fire by hand, and mapping. He loves to work with his hands, whether he is tanning hides or repairing a generator, and this love is reflected when he teaches EAT’s hands-on segments. Charles believes that no problems are unsolvable as long as we work together to develop and implement our plan effectively and honor the holy in our work.

Keith Morris has been applying his lifelong love of nature and culture and experience as an activist to permaculture and ecological design since 1996 — working as a designer, builder, grower of ecologically regenerative, socially just, commercially viable, and culturally appropriate whole-systems around the world.

He is the founder of Prospect Rock Permaculture (www.prospectrock.org), Willow Crossing Farm (www.willowcrossing.org), co-founding board member of the Permaculture Institute of the NorthEast (P.I.N.E. ), and teaches permaculture and ecological design The University of Vermont, Sterling College, the Yestermorrow Design/ Build School, and with other community organizations.

He specializes in farm infrastructure design/ build and is an accomplished beekeeper, nurseryman, and social entrepreneur.  For the past 17 years, he’s been consulting with forward-thinking landowners, community organizations, schools, towns, farmers, homesteaders, watershed organizations, land trusts, and others to interpret ecological context and make human-managed ecosystems more connected, beautiful, and productive-   assisting people to better grow food, build soil, secure fresh water, harvest the sun, and harmonize with natural communities.

While his expertise is integrated farm infrastructure and tree crops systems for cold temperate/ arctic climates, he works regularly in New York City and has designed and implemented systems in New Zealand, Colorado, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Quebec, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nigeria, Ghana, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

Productive Riparian Buffers and Tree Crops Tour

The female flowers of a ‘Buartnut’, which have been hand pollinated by Butternut- giving us Vermont’s first ‘ButterBuarts’!

Hi Friends and Colleagues,

Here is a last minute invitation to any of you who may be interested in joining a small group of students, researchers, and folks with NOFA and UVM Extension for an informal tour of the ‘productive buffers’ and Tree Crops collection at Willow Crossing Farm in Johnson, VT.

As our rivers, riverside farms, and riverside towns are increasingly put to the test with erratic weather we look forward to contributing to the conversation about the health of our rivers and agricultural economy with over a decade of experience testing 100s of species of plants suitable for ‘productive buffers’ and productive floodplain reforestation.  This event is to prelude a larger event this fall, and a multi-day ‘Tree Crops Symposium’ scheduled for the late spring of 2013 with some of the world’s foremost experts in tree crops, nut production, agroforestry, and non-timber forest products.

Willow Crossing Farm (Prospect Rock Permaculture) has been dedicated to making floodplain reforestation profitable and ecologically regenerative since 2001.  Through combinations of native riparian plants with both native and rare nut, fruit, sugar, timber, and firewood producing trees, berries and medicinal herbs, we’ve worked to reforest our river’s corridors and flood prone sections of our farm aiming to prevent erosion; conserve soil and nutrients; shade waterways and improve water quality; create fish, wildlife, and pollinator habitat; and offset atmospheric carbon- all while adding to our long-term bottom line.

We grow many different varieties of plums, apples, cherries, pears, apricots, peaches, berries, paw paws, and over 17 species of nut trees.

Last summer, our systems were put to the test with two 500 year floods within 4 months and largely performed as designed- catching and diverting flotsam and protecting cultivated areas, greenhouses, and other farm infrastructure.  Now, we are inviting other farmers, and anyone interested in watershed health and the potential for ecologically regenerative and carbon-negative farming systems to take inspiration from our trials, and share in our mistakes, successes, and other information gained.

Please be in touch with Keith Morris (Keith@ProspectRock.org or (802) 734-1129) if you are interested in attending.

Please feel free to share with students or other potentially interested contacts or networks.

Best,
Keith