18:31:25 And we are live and people are coming on so is
18:31:35 is time to welcome you to the final of six events for the soil health and community resilience stories from the north series.
18:31:48 This 2021 series is our third annual soil series and tonight's event is called Learning from the original Vermonters.
18:32:00 I am Grace, Grace uni tonight's facilitator. I'm Vermont healthy soils coalition board member and one of the organizers of this series.
18:32:12 And I would like to especially thank the other members of the organizing team, including Melissa Laurita coal.
18:32:28 Becky coal pits, Lauren Weston. avi Bauer, and Kat Buxton. So, thank you for coming tonight, or if you're watching later. Thank you for watching.
18:32:35 We've been reading your survey responses and collecting the resources that you've been sharing with us and working to provide you with the information on all of these topics and all sorts of scales, please check out our website for the series and scroll
18:32:52 to the BIOS for each speaker and to the crowd sourced resource list at the bottom, there is a wealth of information there. Much more than could be shared in a webinar, thanks especially to our incredible partners who made this series possible.
18:33:10 The 50 plus organizations and businesses that you see on the bottom inside of your screen, have helped us fundraise for our speakers, spread the word about these events and shared countless resources with us, that we have been sharing with you.
18:33:28 We'd like to give a special thank you to the Cooperative Education Fund.
18:33:33 The Vermont healthy soils coalition and the Littleton food Co Op, as well as to Cabot Creamery cooperative.
18:33:42 To learn more about all of the partners and to take a look at the resources gathered from the partners, and through the pre event planning survey, please visit our website, this series, and Lauren is adding that link to the chat now.
18:33:59 We would like you all to know that we are recording tonight's event.
18:34:06 Additionally, we are keeping you muted. And we ask that you keep your cameras off. Our team will be doing our best to keep disruptions to a minimum.
18:34:18 Depending on your version of zoom You should also have a button at the bottom of your screen called Live transcript.
18:34:25 If you click the arrow next to those words, you should be able to turn on or off an auto generated live feed of subtitles of tonight's discussions.
18:34:37 We apologize in advance of the transcription service captures any of the words incorrectly.
18:34:45 The entire transcript will be saved and posted with recording. If people want to come back to it later and don't have access to it.
18:34:54 If we don't get a chance to answer your question during the q amp a session, Be sure to follow up on the Vermont healthy soils coalition listserv and check your event right emails and include answers shared from the speakers after the event.
18:35:11 If you have any questions for us at any point, please submit them through the zoom chat box.
18:35:22 So we are opening this evening with a land acknowledgement.
18:35:28 This land acknowledgement.
18:35:30 For what is referred to by some as the Northeast Kingdom of the mind and the North Country of New Hampshire has been shared with us, and others by Chief done Stephen something know Hagen band of the ABA knocking nation.
18:35:48 One of our featured guests tonight.
18:35:51 Many of us are on the land which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange among indigenous peoples for thousands of years. And as the home of the Western other knocking people.
18:36:06 The team organizing this event today honors recognizes and respects, these peoples, especially the other knocking. As the traditional stewards of the land and waters on which we gather today.
18:36:20 And that spirit. Today we will begin by acknowledging that we are guests in this land. We need to respect and help protect the lands within our use.
18:36:35 We will now take a few moments of silence to honor and respect the elders of the past and the present, who were and are stewards of this land.
18:37:01 Thank you.
18:37:05 Making this series we wanted to create a community for all together safely.
18:37:11 We created us list of community values and guidelines that are being shown on your screen now in this space we agreed to respect and recognize all voices lived experiences perspectives and worldviews we seek to create a safe space for learning and sharing.
18:37:32 Now we ask that we all use inclusive and respectful language violations of these values and guidelines will lead to removal from the event this evening by our team.
18:37:44 Thank you for understanding with those in mind, let's get to know each other as you feel comfortable please introduce yourself in the chat box with your name, where you're participating from tonight.
18:38:02 And the response to this question.
18:38:05 What plans are you making based on what you've learned throughout the soil series, while you're doing all that I'll announce the winners of last sessions raffle.
18:38:18 So last week.
18:38:20 The winners are Peter Hague be who is also part of a group working to bring a food Co Op to the address Skog and Valley, and the link to that is in the chat.
18:38:36 Catherine Harris and Tim how and Loretta Nelson.
18:38:42 And now let's get to tonight survey raffle.
18:38:46 We do have a post event survey that shouldn't take more than three minutes to complete and will be sent out with the recording of tonight's event via, and Eventbrite bright.
18:38:57 If you fill out the survey within one week of tonight's event, you will be entered in our raffle for prizes, the prizes tonight are many mighty mini micro coloring book from Ben RCS that's really cool.
18:39:14 The book organic revolutionary by me, Grace, Grace unity, my memoir, and the compost and worm castings from black dirt farm.
18:39:27 And then, as this is the conclusion of our series we have a grand prize, which is a Wolf River heirloom apple tree, valued at $150 donated by Elmore roots fruit tree and berry Nursery in Wolcott Vermont.
18:39:47 This variety is known for its extra large apples, old timers say it takes one to make a pie.
18:39:56 You will be entered into the raffle for each survey you have filled out from all six events so if you filled out all six events surveys, you will be entered six times to win the grand prize.
18:40:10 Pretty cool.
18:40:12 Okay. And in addition, Chelsea green publishing has generously offered, all participants of this series of 35% off discount code for their books and more on their website, Chelsea green.com.
18:40:29 The code is PWEB 35 all caps.
18:40:37 And it is good for all participants here tonight, and watching the recording this spring.
18:40:44 Thank you, Chelsea green.
18:40:46 So, with that, I am excited to introduce our speakers this year, this evening, we will be hearing from Dr. Fred Wiseman of the Vermont indigenous Heritage Center.
18:41:05 The Vermont indigenous heritage and heritage centers, nine day for urban Aki recognition and heritage week. Film Fest.
18:41:15 May 1 through ninth is 25 plus hours of educational films about on the Nike history, culture and ecology.
18:41:25 And it includes all of the 2021 ethno botanist class and much more.
18:41:31 And a link to that is in the chat.
18:41:37 And we also have with us.
18:41:40 Don Stephens chief of the no Hagen band of the Coosa, and Bernacchi nation, and president of a Ha. Think of the Nike, helping the Nike, links to his organizations are also in the chat and following their presentations, we will have a question and answer
18:42:04 period, and then we will hear from Becky Cole pits, Community Outreach Coordinator at the little hidden food Co Op. And one of the organizers for the soil series who will help us wrap up the series.
18:42:23 And I am expecting to see.
18:42:30 Wendell and Hall Smith on the, on the
18:42:36 roster here, and she will be make a little Cameo appearance to talk a little bit about the regeneration revolution and offer you an opportunity to take home an action step.
18:43:01 So, without further ado, we will end, we will have Fred, Dr. Fred Wiseman giving everybody. The benefit of your wisdom.
18:43:21 Thank you.
18:43:24 Okay, thank you. Grace.
18:43:25 So what I'd like to talk about tonight is, since this is, this organization focuses on soil I like to think about soil a little bit at the very beginning and then we'll move on to seeds and and food systems and add some other more, you know, less soil
18:43:51 And, and some other more, you know, less soil things. So the first thing is the key name for soil is Aki, aka AI. And that's the route that is used a lot if you anyone has ever been to Louisiana there's a term for a group down there called the occasions,
18:44:10 which links back to La Casa de or Acadia.
18:44:16 That was the kind of Eastern most part of New France, and that was originally named by Champlain, using the Ave Jackie word for soil.
18:44:31 It also means land, but it means a whole lot more.
18:44:35 It also has an implication of place as well.
18:44:41 So there's various words that will end with Aki, and then might have ik on the end but the interesting thing about the Ave Jackie concept of soil, actually, is land and place.
18:45:00 And so we kind of think of soil is dirt, as a resource as a planting medium as something to build on or, or use in different ways, but the indigenous idea of soil is so much more.
18:45:19 So in a sense, a person is from an area that is from a soil.
18:45:25 So it's almost like I am from USDA soil group, you know, journalism, three or something like that. So I think that's kind of interesting way of starting to think about soil.
18:45:41 But then if we think about soil kind of in the way that I suspect most of you are interested in soil, we can think of it as a planting medium or a place upon which to grow things.
18:45:56 And there are basically two kinds of, I guess, soil manipulation systems. Okay. The first is absolute and complete.
18:46:27 No tell permaculture it's selective harvesting and forest or swamps, and even along Lake river margins. So what you do here is, let's say you have a village.
18:46:26 Okay. And especially in Vermont, it takes a lot of firewood.
18:46:29 to. He individual long houses in a village. So when you're out collecting fuel would.
18:46:38 It's interesting anthropologist called fuel would I still say thinking my brain firewood. Except when I'm going, going scholarly. So if I go back and forth between fuel wouldn't firewood.
18:46:55 It's just two parts of my brain working together, I guess. So what you do is you harvest for fuel What are firewood.
18:46:59 Useless species in other words, you will ignore things that will produce fruits like Canada plum, or a useful for making baskets, like black or brown ash.
18:47:12 And so as time goes on, what you do is you selectively call your forest out as far as a person, generally can travel in about three or four hours out, and then bringing the fuel would back.
18:47:27 So if you think about that, over the generations as these villages move from place to place, and camps move from place to place. When you're having is the soil is is seeing a what we call it deflected succession.
18:47:42 And you end up with a dearth of fuel words, but an extra abundance of edible or industrial usable plants.
18:47:55 Then the next thing you can do is when you're out there, and you see let's say a young Baroque growing or something like that. Yeah, okay, that's seeds out that good they take a lot of leaching to make a cornbread so I'm just going to step on it and kill
18:48:09 it.
18:48:11 So not only now are you selecting by harvesting the trees but you're also selecting against species that are not all that usable.
18:48:23 So assume that you got people using fuel would pretend thousand years.
18:48:33 At least in an area. And these villages camps Hamlet's towns are highly mobile moving from one place to the other.
18:48:43 So what you're seeing here is over thousands of years. A deflected succession that ends up with what we would call a garden forest or agro forest.
18:48:57 And this is a totally efficient system basically all you have to do. You don't have to plant, you don't have to weed, because what you're ending up with is a functional ecosystem.
18:49:08 And I'm going to get back to this guy, this concept of little bit later, but I'm talking about things that we're doing right now.
18:49:16 Another way that you can treat the soil is by modification.
18:49:22 And there are basically three maybe four possible what are called geo intensive agricultural systems.
18:49:31 The first of these, which was first discovered by me.
18:49:45 Known to epidemic ease of course, who had practice this first known to me in 2010 is a agricultural system that uses mountains.
18:49:50 Now, we all know the story of skonto this quantum, and the pilgrims and fish fertilize mounds blah blah blah.
18:49:58 But most archaeologists and anthropologists had said that that was not used in Vermont. One of the things about archaeologists and anthropologists, and scholars in general they very rarely, try to do their own research.
18:50:16 Oftentimes, The research is done by researching other literature. And so through the late 90s and early 2000s. I had followed, you know, have Lynn powers original Vermonters, and all the authors scholars who said that up here what people did was a form
18:50:37 of slash and burn or Sweden, agriculture.
18:50:42 So even some of my early publications I talked about that. Well, I did a project, back in the late 2000s.
18:50:53 That was focused specifically on agriculture agricultural ecology and I learned that yes mountains were used.
18:51:02 First I learned them about them in the Northeast Kingdom.
18:51:06 And then, just like a zoom meeting all of a sudden everybody came online and turns out that people right down the road from me are in Swanton. We're using mounds fish fertilizer nouns, all over the place.
18:51:20 So, Mount systems are really an interesting type of soil manipulation.
18:51:28 Basically, it takes.
18:51:30 If you're going to clear out a forest.
18:51:33 You know you can basically girl the trees, let the sun come down, and then you start raising your, your mountains with a hoe in the area in between the trees as a tree slowly die away, and the nitrogen, you know is released in the soil and the phosphate
18:51:50 from the roots, you can expand these out. But basically, all you have to do to make a typical wacky style melon is on a rodeo tailed surface is just get a hoe.
18:52:04 And then go start pulling toward you, and then do a circle, and just keep pulling the, the soil toward you toward you as you go around.
18:52:14 360 degrees, and eventually you're going to end up with a mound of soil, then you start tapping the top of it with a with a, with your house, and you've got the basic construction of an avid Rocky Mount.
18:52:29 Now what size.
18:52:31 I learned from a colleague of mine Peggy Fullerton, that in the epic Oh honestly tradition was to start with a small amount as your children are young, and as your children get larger, the mountain gets larger because they are the ones that have to kneel
18:52:46 at the edge of the mound, and we'd it.
18:52:50 So when they're only five or six years old, they're reaches not that far, but as they get older, they can reach a lot further in.
18:53:01 And so that's a really interesting way of thinking about it.
18:53:05 There's a more advanced system that is that I hadn't. I didn't have a clue existed. Up here until recently.
18:53:13 That's a platform mound with mounts on it. In other words, what you do is you cut and fill a hillside, or you raise a large maladies can be up to an acre in size.
18:53:27 And then on that you put your mouth, there's one Northeast Kingdom, and browning 10.
18:53:33 There's a cut and Phil agricultural terrorists that has 77 pounds on it.
18:53:40 That is a old traditional system.
18:53:44 Interesting enough it's a system that I learned when I was doing a lot of research with the agriculture, of the Maya civilization.
18:53:52 The third soil manipulation system that is indigenous to Vermont is the linear or ridged floodplain mound, the tropical name for it is Mr saying yo. And what this is you raise a long linear mound, generally about six degrees off of the, the axis of the
18:54:16 spring flood.
18:54:18 And this is a flood regeneration, technology, and so you build all these mounts of the flood is going this way, you orient them about Lake this 1234567.
18:54:33 And what happens is, it sets up a system where harmonics in the turbulence in the water. So it deposits and does not erode them.
18:54:42 And so every spring on this Bernal fresh it comes through and floods the floodplain you deposit, new, fresh soil and new nutrients and if you get it wrong, and the angle is at seven, seven degrees.
18:55:01 The, the hybrid dynamics of the this, the soil movements, will you road here and deposit over here, and it will self correct.
18:55:12 And so every year. These things will correct a little bit the engineering, and the hydro dynamics on these things are really interesting.
18:55:20 So these are some of the fascinating soil management systems from Agra fur industry that does nothing at all.
18:55:30 To fairly sophisticated hydro pentagram pathological.
18:55:37 You know systems.
18:55:39 And so
18:55:42 the question is, now, what do you plant on.
18:55:46 Well, starting in 2012. I founded a organization.
18:55:51 That's called Caesar renewal sees a renewal project. If anybody is interested in the overall project itself, and all the seeds and the crops. We have over 55 indigenous swab Inaki or that first slide that you saw 55 wacky varieties of corn, beans squash
18:56:18 sunflowers ground cherries squashes pumpkins. All kinds of stuff.
18:56:19 There's a book that's for sale at the Ethan Allen homestead at the Marriott Lake Champlain Maritime Museum and the Vermont Historical Society. It's called the Seven Sisters, because there's not just three sisters.
18:56:34 That's a whole new shiny thing, the webinar key said Seven Sisters. So if you're interested in the book. You can get them from any of those organizations that are seeds of renewal partners.
18:56:47 So, what we're in the process of doing now is moving away from collecting the seeds the seeds of.
18:56:57 They're all being now grown out at Sterling college, to be sure that the lineage, the genetic lineage of all the crops will be absolutely pure, And each of these seeds has its own story.
18:57:11 I do in the spring, a class, a full day seminar, based on native seed searches seed school.
18:57:22 Anybody is familiar with Gary nap Han and Barney Barney burns and Martha Ames, and their work in seeds in the southwest is familiar with, with that, That program.
18:57:37 Interesting enough all of those people graduated with me at the same time for the University of Arizona. They stayed there and I ended up, way up here in the cold north.
18:57:51 So,
18:57:54 what we want, I want to move on now because I noticed the clock is ticking. And I have 20 minutes to considering the idea of food systems. All right, now what we've talked about the soils themselves the nature of the spiritual or place based nature's
18:58:10 soil, and we've talked about the creation of these fields.
18:58:16 and we've talked about the creation of these fields. We've talked about 55 varieties of corn, beans and squash, each of which is a different shape different size different growing season, different susceptibility to frost, different amount of nutrition
18:58:28 that each one can have. So you got so many variables to figure out what to put on them.
18:58:33 But here's some rules, okay for planning amount.
18:58:39 In general, if you're planting LABaki varieties of corn, they are except for epidemic euros, and calculus corn. They're too short to let beans run up to them.
18:59:02 So traditionally what you do. You should make a bean trellis basically a tripod. In the middle of your mound. And you plant your beans at the arms of the tripod, and they will trail, up, up the being tripod.
18:59:10 Then you plant your corn at the outer margin of that so the corn will not be shaded out by the by the beans and the sides of the mountain that's where you play it by ear various squashes.
18:59:26 And there was one trail out into the inter mountain areas.
18:59:32 And what you can do is they'll try to go out straight and all directions, is just get the leading edge. Just take a twig as it's going this way just pick up the audience put it over the side put a twig yet and spiral them around, and eventually they will
18:59:54 be in a spiral that will completely shade out the weeds, even grab grass. And so all of your Intermountain areas that will be taken over by your squash.
19:00:02 And so, then there's the whole issue of nurture.
19:00:07 Well, I want to talk about the spirituality of this in just a few minutes but in general if you do a mountain right this is actually permaculture you plant the these things and then you put a fish in the mill.
19:00:22 Traditionally, the fish was about was a fillet, about the size of your open palm.
19:00:28 That is centered in the mount and you planted a bomb deep, you don't put it up the drop carpet you put it in this deep, because as the fish will rot. You get a shadow of the nitrates and phosphates will come out like this.
19:00:45 And if you put your corn too close to it it's too high up for your beans, but you're going to have, you're going to burn your crops.
19:00:52 So, the tripod and your fish goes in the middle. And that works, absolutely wonderfully. And as time goes on, you just keep putting the fish in that over and over again you never read the inter inter mound areas, because the, you will get, you know, various
19:01:12 types of weeds. But, you know, they won't overshadow, especially your more robust varieties.
19:01:20 Things like Penobscot pumpkin and East Montpelier squash, they will, they'll kill, kill crabgrass.
19:01:30 So, the idea is, all you have to do is tiptoe through enough to all your squash to be able to get in and pull the weeds out of the mountain generally the top of the mountain is between three and four feet in diameter.
19:01:46 Now, they're always is a problem or potential.
19:01:52 Now, there always is a problem or potential with crows or raccoons coming to dig up the, the fish or your seeds, so it's always good to try to be very careful.
19:02:05 You know, in the planting plant deep deeper than you expect.
19:02:09 Okay.
19:02:11 That's a tradition because there's an old saying that you know you plant. Three Three seeds. Well, you know, one for one for rock, one for brother grow and one day he.
19:02:26 And so, you know, that's one of the ways that you can think about it is if what you're doing is you're feeding the raccoons, you're feeding the crows you're feeding everything.
19:02:37 And what you do is you come in and you will do what's called hunting the fields, and the old ways. So, even though they might the records might get your corn, you'll get the record and and you eat the corn through the through the raccoon where the wind
19:02:53 Chuck. And so, you know, hunting the fields, is just a way of concentrating all of your, your crops into me.
19:03:12 And interestingly enough, we're raising doing a lot of agricultural work in the Burlington interval. and there is almost and I'm hoping that we can get a movement toward allowing in the City of Burlington, non firearm hunting of our fields and the old
19:03:33 ways using such things as bows and arrows and other levels, and there is an interest in that we'll see how far we can push it.
19:03:32 And then there's harvest.
19:03:35 Now, I'm sure all of you that anybody that goes to antique shops up in this neck of the woods. You see avid hockey baskets, you know, over in the corner there's a stack of them.
19:03:45 They're all over the place, because they've been made by Abba Nike's here for years.
19:03:51 The weird thing is that almost all of those baskets that you see are for tourist trade everywhere else in North America, Central America and South America, there is an intimate one to one relationship between basket tree, and agriculture and foods baskets
19:04:10 are used to store seeds, and they are a sacred part of the ritual of harvest. And so what I'm doing is I'm engaging Abernathy basket makers to make harvest baskets winnowing baskets Civ baskets and stuff like that, to try to train to bring back the old
19:04:33 original.
19:04:35 You know technology. Every now and then, on a, you know, you might be able to find a pre 1850 agricultural avid hockey basket.
19:04:44 I just was able to get three on the Duane Merrill auction, a little while ago. From the early 1800s, but they're very very rare. And so, when you think about agriculture when you think about harvesting, think about baskets, okay, because the spirit of
19:05:02 the ash tree is linked through the basket to the spirit of the harvest.
19:05:11 And of course, harvest is a time of Thanksgiving.
19:05:17 And so our first harvest the agricultural produce now we've had many harvest before, like right now we're harvesting ramps, or alien try call come the, the wild leeks, the upper upper elevation forest.
19:05:31 But don't take them all. Okay, one in five.
19:05:35 If you're harvesting weeks.
19:05:39 Each year and don't go back to the same bat next year. Okay, we've got some alien try call come seeds and we're going to try to raise several thousand of them fairly soon, to see if we can start getting them out.
19:05:55 How much time do I have grace.
19:05:58 Am I over.
19:06:02 Okay, so I'm over. So I just wanted to wrap up, that all of this is nurtured by ceremony of asking permission of the land of the planets and Thanksgiving, after the fact of the Abernathy farmer and the astute have an accurate person lives a life of asking
19:06:28 permission, and giving thanks for everything. And so I give thanks to you guys for letting me talk. Thank you.
19:06:37 And thank you, Dr Wiseman that that was amazing, amazing amount of information in that short 20 minutes.
19:06:51 I think I went over.
19:06:53 Okay.
19:06:55 We were very happy to hear from you. And now it's with pleasured, I will introduce chief Don Stevens. Please teach us acquaint greetings only only thank you for allowing me for speaking with you tonight.
19:07:14 That was great Fred.
19:07:27 Kind of hard, hard to follow that, that, I mean, friend is a wealth of knowledge if anybody knows Fred he's, he's, he's amazing and he's been a good friend for a long time and we've actually worked together quite a bit on different, different things,
19:07:33 but I think we really started working on the ethno botanist stuff him, he was working on seed saving and, and I'm working on feeding our people.
19:07:45 When we got recognized back in 2011.
19:07:51 The following year, we wanted to have a place, as Fred said the aka the land, Jackie. Right.
19:08:02 It's like, it's like your roots right, we had a, we had even though this was our land it was, we were removed from stewarding it.
19:08:12 So we set out to get a little piece of land to try to prove that if if towns can have a forest, why couldn't tribe.
19:08:23 Because we are government towns of government Why couldn't we use the same model. So now he can really set out to work with different partners like the Sierra Club, the open space Institute, Vermont Land Trust from our housing and Conservation Board,
19:08:38 and many, many others Vermont Community Foundation to try to get enough grants to actually purchase a piece of property. We found a piece of property in Barton, which is about a half mile into the woods.
19:08:54 and it was a beautiful location.
19:08:56 And within the core doors for protecting wildlife that the Sierra Club was interested in so anyway we all got our heads together and were able to work together to purchase this piece of property in Barton in 2012, and people want to know what that means,
19:09:16 and like well as the, it's kind of something we hadn't owned in 200 years right i mean since the Philips deed was was done as part of our relations. Back in the 17 end of the 1700s.
19:09:31 So it's giving you a place and I can only explain it as is.
19:09:36 This is where my dad played this is the swing, this is the this is the pasture the are my favorite cow isn't, but you're kind of oblivious to the person or the people who are living there now, it's always in your memory etched in your memory, and when
19:09:59 Fred was talking about land base where land base people that you know owning a piece of property that you could reach down and grab the soil smell it and touch it and know that that is the same soil that hundreds of your ancestors if not thousands of
19:10:16 your ancestors had walked upon.
19:10:18 At one point, and now you were able to steward this land as they were. And you could never be thrown off it again. I mean that's just that that gives you a sense of home a sense of place.
19:10:31 And and like our tribal names now he given means place of the wouldn't traps or the dead and fall trap, where Cisco is place of the Flint and and so on and so forth so we were place based people.
19:10:44 So, getting this piece of property was a real milestone.
19:10:50 So then we said, Well, what do we do with the property because we really want to work with this property to use it in the way that our ancestors did traditionally.
19:11:03 So we set out.
19:11:06 We worked with the UN, the Health and Human Services to get a block grant to start a tribal garden, community garden at inside the forest, like Fred was talking about.
19:11:19 And, you know, in some manner of being able to cultivate the forest, but we also decided to do the mountain gardening inside this force and it's amazing how much food you can actually grow in amount, you can grow a lot of food with very little soil disturbance.
19:11:39 And so we mounted up a bunch of, you know, we create a bunch of mounds, and you know we're close to a Brook, so we could, water, and, and, of course, being in the middle of a forest.
19:11:55 The, the, the animals were very hungry so the three seeds that you plant. I think we got maybe a half.
19:12:04 Because the critters are really the critters really enjoyed it. And, yeah, so that was the first year it was kind of a trying period.
19:12:14 So then, the second year, we kind of planted again.
19:12:20 And and notice that we also grow tobacco so we kind of noticed that, you know, things that were around the tobacco plants weren't really getting touched.
19:12:31 And we're studying this and learning as we, we were able to harvest some of these, these crops.
19:12:39 And it dawned on us we went back to our stories are because we were taught through oral culture. So we were listening to the corn mother story where our corn mother turned into corn and tobacco corn to always feed our people in tobacco.
19:12:57 So that way we would never go hungry again, we'd have something to give for prayer, instead of a life, her life.
19:13:07 So the next time we planted in that, in that area.
19:13:12 We surrounded the garden with tobacco. And lo and behold we got a great crop because if you ever grown tobacco.
19:13:20 It's got a lot of nicotine in it and the in the sap that comes from the plant is really sticky.
19:13:27 So, if you're handling tobacco or harvesting it if you're not careful. It's like putting 10 nicotine patches on your arm and you're going to get a little woozy because you're that that of nicotine is absorbing right into your skin.
19:13:42 So, the animals are the same way. They didn't bugs tried to get into your garden sort of like what Mary goals do in the garden, it kept the bugs away so when they landed on the flowers to try to get to the tobacco flowers, they stuck to the plan.
19:14:01 And they and it kind of as a natural bug collector or bug zapper and and the animals didn't want to eat the plant or go through it because of the stickiness and because of the nicotine that was in it, so it was like a natural fence, almost so that that.
19:14:17 So we found out based on our stories, what the kind of structure was so you had the corn, beans and squash in the middle, and the tobacco were kind of outside kind of keeping watch, and it's neat to see how your stories, and how your, the actual agriculture
19:14:34 comes together.
19:14:36 So that became not very big enough so one of my goals was since we have a large health disparity.
19:14:44 You know, we're really high with chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and actually a lot of economic poverty as well, especially in the Northeast Kingdom there's no industry up there.
19:14:55 everybody kind of lives off the grid and in kind of each what they can or what they grow or what they Forge.
19:15:03 But sometimes it's cheaper to go get $1 menu, you know something off the dollar menu than it would be to $3, head of lettuce right so that that didn't help much.
19:15:12 So I set out with some others to say how do we get food. First, security, and then food sovereignty.
19:15:21 So we started working with the sterling college as Fred did with the seeds of renewal, to kind of grow out our crops so that way not only could we educate the students, but we can also read the produce from that and give it to our citizens to be able
19:15:41 to eat.
19:15:43 So it was a good partnership. And as we grew crops and they got larger. We fed people in the Australian college the students educated, but also was able to give food to our citizens.
19:16:00 So the following year, that was about three years ago. The following year, I moved to Middlebury College and started the same thing, growing some crops there for seed the first year and then the second year really building out seeds, you know and and
19:16:16 crops, so that way we could take those crops and distribute them. And last year was the third year that we really started our food security program. And we, we started working with Nova, and we also expanded into ubm.
19:16:32 The horticultural farm.
19:16:33 So they started growing food for us, and.
19:16:39 And with Nova we had. That's the north northeast organic farming Association.
19:16:44 So we started working with them and we had 15 growers somewhere commercial somewhere individual farmers. So basically they would grow the crops, we would retain the rights to the seeds, they would be able to eat something new that they've never had before
19:16:56 because you can't just buy it off the shelf. And then we would do an end of the year harvest and educate them on on our, our kind of growing or crops, so it's a great, it's a great partnership in there and they really helping our community.
19:17:10 And that's the reason I call it food security and not sovereignty because we're relying on others to help us grow who actually have the land that we don't have any more.
19:17:20 And so we have to rely on people to help grow these crops. This year, we're moving to four colleges, including Bennington College, and also 40 growers of Nova.
19:17:38 So, which will probably triple our food production, and to meet to meet the demands of this we open a food shelf in Holland Vermont, and the old Holland school where we distribute food out of I distributed out of my house and Shelburne to as I can to
19:17:55 the communities around Montpelier and Chetan County. And also, we have one in Concord, New Hampshire and we probably are going to be opening a fourth up in northern New Hampshire around Littleton, or Lincoln around that area at some point.
19:18:11 So we're trying to feed all of our people off these programs, if you go to have an accurate tribe.org, and go over to the more section under Aha, you'll see they have an IP land link project which focuses on the the stuff we're doing with Nova.
19:18:29 So because the kids are coming back. That's why we're starting to build out more and more produce.
19:18:36 And we've had some awesome partners so that's kind of our food security program when it came comes to the produce piece, but we also are branching out into meat production and bison production for me, you know steers and bison.
19:18:54 So we're in the process of building that that out where we're relying on a couple of farms to actually how's the, the animals, and we're always looking for Hey to feed them or because we don't have a revenue source.
19:19:09 So we have to rely on others in donations in grants to help our programs, until we can get land that we can do it on our own and make it a lot easier then we will have true food security.
19:19:25 So that's another aspect so now we have the crops, we have the.
19:19:30 We have the, the meat production.
19:19:33 But there's also a third area that I wanted to do because he ownership of land was sort of a foreign concept to us because we were land based people, and the land was part of us and we were part of the land, but didn't really look at it as ownership because
19:19:48 the Creator, or was copy created the land, and we couldn't take it with us we couldn't put it in our pocket we couldn't leave. We didn't have the sense of ownership.
19:20:00 We had the sense of stewardship. So as long as we took care of the land, the land would take care of us. And that's, and we would have these things periodically like Fred was saying like end of your harvest or the beginning of the crops or throughout
19:20:13 the year to get together to really determine where family should be located, like, Okay, we don't want to use up all the resources we want to manage them.
19:20:23 So in the summer, your family goes here on this river maybe Lake Willoughby maybe the Clyde maybe the no Hagen river, and then you you grow the crops and and and eat waterfowl and fish, while the, the, the winner sources of food would replenish like the
19:20:42 in the winter we go to, like, wigwam quarter or longhouse sort of structures, where we would live in a community and we would eat the big game like moves and deer and, and then we would let you know the fish and the waterfowl and everything else replenish
19:20:57 so it was a cycle we would move between our winner, and our summer grounds, and we would come together at this big harvest at the end of the year, and we would we would help.
19:21:08 Like somebody might have too much corn but somebody doesn't have any squash, or we would we would get together at the harvest so we would trade for things we needed that would help us get us through the winter.
19:21:19 And then we would store them and caches and go get them as we needed them.
19:21:23 So, the other, the other piece that I want to talk if you're going to have a Nike tribe or two partnerships.
19:21:30 I wanted to give us access to land since we couldn't own land and we didn't have the money to purchase land. We I said how do we work with the people who do have the land and do own it now.
19:21:41 How do we work with them to get access to that land as our ancestors did. So I reached out to some companies like first light and Trans Canada, and green.
19:21:52 The Green Mountain National Forests Those were the three that we really started working with to say, Hey, I know we can't own the land but can we access it to gather natural foods, natural medicines and artistry material, so like you know fiddle heads
19:22:08 are coming up soon and ramps and, you know, how do we, how can we forge natural food systems, and the way our ancestors did without having to worry about the ownership of the land and so that the key was is getting easements or access to land, whether
19:22:24 it be easements deeds gifted land to us or through licenses or permits. So once we started getting a few of those Europeans were more comfortable that they weren't the first one doing this.
19:22:36 So then I really started compounding, you know I got a permit.
19:22:41 Through the Sylvia content base and I worked with the state to get all the ad agency and Natural Resources lands the Fish and Wildlife Lanza state parks and RECs.
19:22:53 And we're working on Vermont housing Conservation Board lands and others were actually have some lands that are needed, where the easements we don't need it.
19:23:07 We're in the easements. And like I said, besides the land we own environment. So, we have the natural foraging and natural medicines and artistry material, we have the crops that we grow with partners, farmers that we work with and also our meat production
19:23:24 so that kind of gives us a good food security program. And we're continuing to build that out and trying to help lessen the gap of the health disparities.
19:23:38 One of the things I wanted to mention that, that when when Fred was talking some of the mountains that were done in Burlington, because they're done within, within close proximity of a river, then those sometimes tend to flood right like Fred had mentioned.
19:23:53 So, so the mounds will be done in rows, and it would be parallel to the river so if it happened to flood the current would be going in between the rows, because that was a natural funnel because they didn't block them, the mounds are kind of like a little
19:24:12 barrier, and one stack behind the other were kind of like a natural so it created more of a funnel in between. So that way, the mounds would go with the river and not against it.
19:24:22 So the flow would naturally try to go in between, which was perfect because then it didn't wash all your crops away in case you had an instant flood or something after you've started growing your crops and there's a big rainstorm, it wouldn't wipe out
19:24:35 your entire crop it would actually just kind of flood but it would the currents would go through the rose parallel to the river instead of just you staggering them and then it just wiped them out.
19:24:49 So, I know it's it's about 725, and I'm about five minutes over. So I'll probably stop it there but if anybody has any questions on how to how they want to participate.
19:25:03 You can always go to our webpage and to contact us shoot me a note, you can contact Nova.
19:25:10 You know, or, you know, go to our website, you'll learn a lot of about all of our programs, between our food security, our land access and just general history.
19:25:21 So, thank you.
19:25:26 Thank you so much to Stephen's.
19:25:29 I'm sure that there is an awful lot more that you could be telling us about and there are some great questions that have already been asked in the chat, and then the help of Lauren and Avi, I can lead to know what those questions are we have a question
19:25:51 from.
19:25:52 We have a consolidated question about the tobacco from several people.
19:26:00 One of the questions is where, where do you get the seeds for the tobacco.
19:26:07 And then, is the tobacco mosaic virus of concern for those plants like it is on tomatoes. I know that that is a concern for, including tobacco or smoking and a greenhouse where they're growing tomatoes.
19:26:26 Oh, go ahead. I can only say for myself that I mean we have tobacco that was, you know, we have some from the seeds of renewal, we've gotten some from other webinar key tribes, including some of the island I can tribes.
19:26:40 So we there was two types of tobacco there was a what we call the rabbit tobacco or the yellow bell and then there's the larger rustic, which is a pink and white flower.
19:26:55 I don't know we haven't had any problems with disease, per se, Fred, probably would be more of the expert on that type of thing but one thing I will tell you that once you do and i, you could probably order tobacco seeds online from like because I mean
19:27:05 down in the Carolinas I mean there's tobacco and Virginia all over the place so I imagine there's places you could buy seed from mail order to grow it.
19:27:15 If you can buy hemp seed you probably buy tobacco seeds. But, so my point being is that, though, once you plant this. They're very prolific. They're almost like weeds and One One little tiny ball of tobacco seed might have 100 seeds in it.
19:27:33 Right one little ball might have 100 seeds and they're like carrying seeds. I mean, Fred will tell you once you once you get some and you grow it, you'll never run out of tobacco seeds again, because it's very prolific.
19:27:46 So go ahead, Fred Do you want to add anything.
19:27:47 Yeah, as far as where to get seeds there's.
19:27:51 But you should try. If you're ordering online the tobacco is rustic a tobacco negotiator rustic.
19:28:00 Okay, we did not have the traditional Avenue varieties are not the tobacco, which is a South American when, even though the Connecticut River, of course, the, the big tobacco industry and the lower Connecticut River Valley, those are all, you know, negotiate
19:28:20 vacuums, and I've never had any trouble with any mosaic virus know when they're planning the field.
19:28:29 And as john said they are a weed, the cushion is a weed and so they'll, you know you get them going and they'll stay.
19:28:41 You got to really, you know, to harvest the best way.
19:28:45 There's a couple ways is to harvest the interview with the CO Shana rustic varieties.
19:28:53 There, instead of just taking the whole plant up and hanging it up right what you, what we do anyway and the one, the way that we learned it was as it starts to go yellow from the bottom, you stay ahead of the yellowing as it goes up and just as the individual
19:29:12 leaf is beginning to go yellow that's when you pick it, because at that point that's consolidating all of the,
19:29:22 the essence.
19:29:25 Both the phytochemicals, as well as the spiritual essence of the tobacco. So there's a couple little hymns.
19:29:31 Well, thanks. There was another question about the tobacco if, and I think you've answered it.
19:29:39 Is that is your tobacco similar to the flower Nicole Oceana which is used in the same, which must be in the same plant family. And is that also useful as a fence to protect your plants ornamental, the coaching as well.
19:30:00 much of the phytochemicals that, you know, we like to, to use when we smoke it. But, you know, it says some, But it's nowhere near as good a repellent.
19:30:15 Actually the coaching and a rustic up is about four to five times stronger than tobacco.
19:30:21 In terms of that repellent kind of activity. It's also pretty hefty thing to to smoke it in non ceremonial way so we always encourage only its use in in very rare.
19:30:39 You know, specialized times, let's put it that way. Yeah, most, most people don't realize that the tobacco most of what we grew we actually offered it by hand into a fire.
19:30:48 I mean we smoked it like spread said, you know, ceremonial and occasionally but it wasn't a recreational drug to us or recreational thing like, you know, we would.
19:31:00 It's like any medicine that you take right if you smoke too much of it, it causes, it'll eat you from the inside out because you problems. So if it's done in the right way and done in moderation, then that's the way we looked at things, right.
19:31:17 Great. Thank you, Tom, then there was some questions for Fred about what was the name of the fish the kind of fish that use the the mounds.
19:31:31 And how do you do turn critters that you've already mentioned, and then there would, there was another question about how can we learn more about the old baskets you were describing, whereas the resources to learn about.
19:31:51 Yeah, well let's start with the fish.
19:31:53 Interestingly enough for years I had, I had a dictionary that a scholar published a long time ago, and I copied out of all the important names of the animals and plants, so that I could start memorizing them and thinking about them in the old way.
19:32:12 And the white sucker costume is commercially I its name in FAQ is get a kick out of
19:32:23 which was strikingly similar to the beginning of the game for field. Keep going.
19:32:39 And prizes. So I set it aside until I was talking with Chief Nancy mullet of the CO ops back around 2006 2007.
19:32:42 And she said when she was young her.
19:32:46 Her grandmother had them all her and her cohort, go down to the MS Lucic River.
19:32:52 There's a spot where the white suckers will accumulate, and they would have to catch the suckers bring them up, and that they will be planted in the field.
19:33:06 And she said, the cost name for a second was the garden fish bone, there was the old Abernathy name.
19:33:27 in the ground. The interesting thing is the eminence sick, not so much in the Mississippi River, but the the fish will run and exactly the time when you're planning your mounds and co ops territory.
19:33:40 So it just seems as though the Great Spirit, you know has worked everything out as a finely tuned machine.
19:33:46 So that's it for the fish garden fish now what was another part of that question, how can how can we learn about the old baskets.
19:34:01 The old baskets.
19:34:04 Sheesh.
19:34:07 Um, well the old baskets. We're lucky one of the things you can do is go online and look up main potato basket.
19:34:17 Okay.
19:34:19 The main tribes.
19:34:20 Actually they still make them but up until the 1980s they make huge numbers of Ashlyn baskets for harvesting potatoes.
19:34:31 The construction of that basket their round baskets. Okay, with a very hefty bail, or the handle coming up over the top.
19:34:41 They were not polished. In other words, if you look at a fancy basket.
19:34:47 The individual splits will reflect light.
19:34:50 Okay. That's because they took this tool to shave off the remains of the, the screen would there. So I would make a nice shiny surface for the for the tourists.
19:35:06 In general, not always, but in general, most agricultural food baskets, were left rough.
19:35:12 So in other words, you could run your finger over against the grain, and it would feel rough. You do that for a tourist basket, it would. So there's a couple quick ways of finding one, but I really don't want anybody else to, to know how to find them
19:35:29 because I want them all myself.
19:35:35 Okay, Well, we have another question for both of you are either new for art at the colleges and farm fields where you're having the indigenous seeds and foods, being grown.
19:35:57 Are they also using the, the mound practices and other indigenous practices to grow the crops or they're just planting them as they normally do.
19:36:11 For myself, they're, they're doing the demonstration. But most of it's done in a commercial way, because they have the big equipment scene back in the old days you had a lot of people to be able to do it right to make the mountains, and now that most
19:36:23 people have farm equipment, and easy to tell and pray rose.
19:36:30 A lot of people, a lot of the colleges are doing it that way, but unless but they will do some sections for demonstration purposes. I know Shelburne farms also does some for demonstration purposes and some for growing the crops, because when we work with
19:36:44 them they actually serve some of the food in the end, and also had a display garden for information.
19:36:53 Now that's my experience.
19:36:55 The inner veil has a is probably the only one that has a food production mountain system.
19:37:04 And that is used was used last year to produce all of our food for our two very important ceremonies. Now they add to the food had to be raised in very specific ways on mounds be prayed over and correct ways and some other stuff so the interval center
19:37:22 graciously allowed us to do that as well as they put up some very nice exclusionary electric fencing.
19:37:32 They have the, the animal damage down to a muted roar.
19:37:37 And I wanna, I want to say to that, like places like when I travel for us we would do it, because we have the tribal citizens, I mean, individuals do it in their own gardens because like I said you can grow quite a bit, and, and a small amount of space
19:37:51 and amount, right. So, individuals do it more than, then doing it for a more of a commercial efficiency type deal.
19:38:03 And, and going back to agro agro forestry as well as that, you know, our land where you know we up and barn we're trying to plan, you know apples and nut trees and berry trees and all those things too.
19:38:16 And I know Fred's working on, Tiger forest programs we're working on some of that stuff together that we're trying to bring some of that back and see how productive it is and how it how it works.
19:38:36 Now, those of you there, you know, it's kind of weird kind of interesting. When you're thinking about agro agriculture.
19:38:41 You know organic agriculture and permaculture and agro forestry each one of these is a leap forward in terms of lightness of touch of the land.
19:38:52 And like a mount system is a permanent structure.
19:38:58 And so there is no waiting there's no more tillage, there's no nothing.
19:39:05 It doesn't produce quite as much as far as we know, but maybe it does.
19:39:09 As, let's say, would be done by rho agriculture at UVM or Sterling, but nobody's ever actually tested that. So you know when you're thinking about the green New Deal, and you know all of the expense of alternative energy systems, to be able to do to replace
19:39:30 the old fashioned American, you know, agriculture and other systems. I bet you that this form of permaculture that you know uses only fish. And we're experimenting with milk well now we're taking mill foil out to decrease prospers.
19:39:47 The Lake Champlain, in terms of carbon neutrality, all of the, probably, by the time you know the youngest of You are my age, there's going to be a carbon tax there's going to be tax on agriculture and everything is going to have management by large scale
19:40:04 entities to keep the carbon and everything else phosphate, anything that comes out of a field. Okay, it's probably going to be taxed the next hundred years.
19:40:16 We're definitely going in that direction. These will not generate any of that. They.
19:40:23 So, perhaps, you know, even though ubm and Sterling everybody is doing, you know, large carbon footprint mounds and hawing and stuff like that. And those little mounds that we did for years and years are just sitting there, you know, maybe I would say
19:40:40 within 100 years with the way that things are going, that might be a very inexpensive way of raising your crops for the whole world.
19:40:51 And I want to quickly say to like Fred said that most of the work is in the beginning, once they get established in the end there's no weeding, right.
19:40:59 So, I mean, we had entire villages that could go out and then at this at this brief amount of time, do all the mountains and get those prepare right and then move on to other things.
19:41:11 And the same thing with the agriculture industry, you know as you clear and get firewood, you have whole communities, getting firewood for their, their lodges and other things.
19:41:21 So you had a lot of manpower to be able to do these things, and then you move on to the next task. We don't have that from a commercial standpoint, or from, you know, people would rather take a tractor plow it all up at once planet and then go.
19:41:38 So, so that's why I want to say is that you can be very efficient with mountain gardens, but you need the manpower to be able to do it up front, that's that's the big, that's the big catch.
19:41:49 Yeah well when you're talking about you know agriculture intensive systems.
19:41:54 You know, there's two, there's what's called bio intensive systems and geo intensive systems.
19:42:08 Less manpower.
19:42:10 Okay.
19:42:11 whereas bio intensive systems use a lot huge amount of information, because it uses optimal foraging theory which we can't get into today to manage and structure the under the nature of the timing of all your crops that come out of it.
19:42:27 But once you've got it built you just sit back, lay under the tree and let the maple sap and the apples and plumbers just fall in your mouth.
19:42:35 So it's completely.
19:42:38 You know, work free.
19:42:40 Totally carbon, you know, negative, and everything so you know it's going to be interesting to see how this, this all plays out.
19:42:50 And the tropics agro fire so you can see it beat up to 600 persons per square kilometer.
19:42:58 Yeah. And also, I also want to say grace to that arc type of crops are unique to us that were built here, like the cost of corn has a very short growing season.
19:43:07 So no matter how the climate change happens. There's still enough room on both ends, to be able to have it grow in be able to harvest it without, you know, that that kind of is better than some other corns because they take a lot longer to grow and develop
19:43:24 that. That's great, and really appreciate that and we have really only time for one more question which I'm going to make an executive decision and insert the thing that I want to know and will lead us into our next segment which is really what can we
19:43:52 do to help you obtain more land access for your traditional food production for Jane, Sarah ceremony or what have you. I know that there's that there, there have been cultural easements worked out for getting access to land and I think that there's a
19:44:15 lot of folks here who would like to be able to support that effort, beyond what's what's already been done so what what can we do. Yeah, I would say first since I've been involved with this.
19:44:30 First, go to the partnerships website. I mean my website, our travel website. I haven't actually tried it out or go to partnerships and look at all the variety of types of access we have.
19:44:42 And then, I would say, what suits you. Like, what are you comfortable with some people are comfortable saying I don't care what you do, you can just go on our land anytime you want I don't need permission.
19:44:54 Just you guys we're stewards, that's great.
19:44:56 Then there's others like they want to know exactly what you're taking they want to know when you're there they want to, you know, so it's whatever people are comfortable with, because we if we had we didn't have the access before but we do get it, then
19:45:11 that's more than what we had. right i mean ultimately we want to have on encumbered access and even having the land ourselves, but that's not always possible.
19:45:20 So sometimes it's a shared thing right because Europeans are here we're here, we're sharing the land, you know, how do we do it together. And, and the best way is what are you comfortable with.
19:45:33 And if you want to get into the crops and growing crops, then we can work full this year but we can look at other opportunities that might be able to work.
19:45:43 And, and provide access to help grow food for the people. Because if we get too much then we'll start contacting others to help fill those needs to other disadvantaged populations.
19:45:54 I don't know if Fred has anything more on that but no my, my focus is not on, you know land access.
19:46:03 Mine is more on the ceremony, and the, the germplasm itself.
19:46:09 But, you know, the goal eventual goal is to have land that is not only owned by indigenous populations, but controlled by them in a political way, you know, which is of course the ultimate, you know, is to regain sovereignty.
19:46:30 So, until that happens.
19:46:35 You know I'm, I'm kind of just focusing.
19:46:36 I've got, each at Don and I both have our, our lives pretty full on handling the two complimentary aspects of it so the arcade in the management side to him.
19:46:48 I deal with it. You know in the more, and other ways.
19:46:53 Thank you so much that you're complementing each other.
19:46:59 Very nicely and filling us up with great ideas here grace. Last thing I want to say is, we're also branched out into New Hampshire, we have, we have a see we have citizens all over the place so we have the Ave Jackie trails project, and we have the food
19:47:20 shelf like I said in Connor cook and starting in Littleton so we do have people. We have citizens in New Hampshire, we're working with local people there to grow food for our new hampshire citizens, and also trying to get land access there too.
19:47:29 So I just wanted to make sure that it's not confined just to Vermont, it's confined to the Western Kentucky territories which which encompass, you know, New England, basically, certain parts of England so I just want to be clear on that in case other
19:47:43 people are watching that are outside of Vermont.
19:47:47 That's great, thanks for that and.
19:47:51 Before I introduce Becky to, to take us home. I'm going to call on Gwendolyn Hall Smith from Cabot and the reminders for a new economy to offer you another opportunity to implement these ideas, where you live.
19:48:15 So, we have when on microphone, and thanks grace. Hi. Hi.
19:48:24 That's great said I'm going to let Paul Smith I live in a permaculture eco village in Cabot, and we're calling for a regeneration revolution.
19:48:33 We need your help. We're asking people from every town in the state of Vermont, to take up a petition for town meeting next year supporting regenerative legislation at the state level, and to start and amplify regenerative practices at the local level.
19:48:48 Here in Cabot, I'm going to take up a petition for town meeting to grant a permanent easement on our town forest to the mall Hagen Bennett key band for medicine and stewardship and to support the regenerative economy bill.
19:49:04 All the local regenerate owners which are people just like you I hope you sign up for this after the meeting will come together on October 2 2021 for the first People's Assembly, that's where we'll decide on what the statewide campaign for 2022 will be
19:49:19 people's assemblies are called for and the regenerative economy bill, they would have a mandate to create a new economy and professional staff support.
19:49:29 As far as I know, the bill is stalled in the committee on natural resources Fish and Wildlife but we're going to show them that it can work.
19:49:36 You can join us by going to new economy vt.org or put your email in the chat and I'd be happy to send you more information. Thanks.
19:49:46 Thank you. Well, and now for Becky Cole pits to tell us what we have learned and what we can do and ask us what we can do.
19:50:00 When we get home.
19:50:02 Take it away, Becky.
19:50:05 Thank you, Grace. Oh my gosh, this series is amazing and another one just happened.
19:50:13 So after the pandemic started last year, there was a soil series in Hanover that I learned about. And so I approached Lauren Western and cap Buxton last summer.
19:50:28 And I had imagined what a series like this would could do for our region's resiliency, that was top priority on my mind with food shortages and you know shells not being always stopped in our food Co Op, although because of our local connections, we really
19:50:48 had a full meat case and produce less resiliency.
19:50:57 So, so I talked to them about the series, and the series is actually gone beyond my imagination and half and now it's out into the world with inspiration grounded practical knowledge and resources to build a strong social mycelium here in the North Country
19:51:13 of New Hampshire, the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont and further and wider, the reach of this series as extended across the nation, and even internationally.
19:51:24 Thank you to our amazing organizational team of Lauren Weston cap Buxton grace for shooting, Melissa Laurita Cole and Avi Bauer, their vision and expertise, has truly made this series, amazing impossible.
19:51:39 I would also like to give a heartfelt thank you to the Cooperative Education Fund in Cabot Creamery. Both of these are cooperatives and that's what cooperatives do we as a food Co Op cooperate with CO ops all around the country and the cooperative education
19:51:56 fun and kind of Creamery is also a cooperative.
19:52:01 And also we had many sponsoring and partnering organizations that are all listed on the Vermont healthy soils coalition website with the funding we received we've been able to financially support our speakers and the staff from Vermont healthy soils coalition,
19:52:16 who put in many hours of preparation for each event.
19:52:21 So, now is the time to make changes to get curious to gather more information. This series is meant to be used as an inspirational springboard for innovative action and collaboration, whether it be on your own home turf in your town.
19:52:39 Your wider community, even the world.
19:52:42 So in the chat Please share your ideas of what you want to do in your community.
19:52:48 Tell us one significant piece of information you received from our shared stories.
19:52:54 What are you going to do differently.
19:52:57 Who are you going from here.
19:52:59 What do you want to learn more about to get your creative juices flowing.
19:53:05 What new questions. Are you asking now. And are they different from the questions that you that were forming before attending one or most or all of the soil health and community resilient series.
19:53:21 What mycelium, are you planning on building in your own community homestead farmer organization.
19:53:28 So we take a journey.
19:53:30 We went. The next slide please.
19:53:34 shows all the events and the journey that we took.
19:53:37 We've learned about soil science and the connections to climate in our food and to our communities resilience. We learned how soil plants partner with each other.
19:53:48 We close local nutrient loops and building soil with community composting efforts around and turning and turning our plants into bio char healing the land with farm animals, working with the woods.
19:54:05 And this one that just happened, learning from the original Vermonters, and as chief Don Stephen said, New Hampshire as well. And really, really.
19:54:16 We're all one,
19:54:19 the resiliency of our region is directly related to the healthy mycelium of our soil on which we live, work and play.
19:54:28 Our resiliency is also directly related to the healthy social mycelium that we build through sharing knowledge, resources, actions and organizing for the betterment of all this series has given us the personal stories, lived experience, knowledge of people
19:54:45 in our region of the world. We've also featured projects like micro justice milk with dignity program, or so the Fresh Start farm farms calabash gardens and just tonight regeneration revolution.
19:55:02 These are people like you and me who honed their values and literally grounded their ethics deep into the soil with practical actions, and are building the social mycelium needed for all of us to move forward in a sustainable regenerative way.
19:55:20 Now we continue to build in this mycelium with the teachings of the series.
19:55:26 Now we each have the opportunity to continue on this work.
19:55:31 I have such deep gratitude for all it was sharing, and this time together.
19:55:37 So my next step is to help our team get the series to our local North Country and Northeast Kingdom communities to be used for group discussions and to incubate innovative projects and collaborations.
19:55:48 If you know of a group, public library school Town Hall, that could use this, please feel free to share far and wide, and remember that an extensive list of the resources gathered during this series is available on the Vermont healthy soils coalition
19:56:05 website.
19:56:08 I live in the North Country of New Hampshire, and I look out my backyard to the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont across the river.
19:56:15 Let us extend our hands and our hearts out to empower each other in our home communities and across the river, so that we may include all in our efforts, take bold actions and build the healthy mycelium of adjust equitable and thriving world.
19:56:35 Now let's see if there's any ideas that are coming in on checks of what you might be doing. Ooh.
19:56:57 Some but Marilyn wants to create a community food forest that, Oh, that's so awesome.
19:56:52 I'm asking what region of Vermont, the 22 soil series takes place in maybe seven four months if anybody knows where that could take place.
19:57:04 That cat.
19:57:06 Because it'll be awesome.
19:57:10 Em, is saying how to open access to land, an understanding the Celtic agricultural practices. How can regenerative agriculture regenerate both egg and culture.
19:57:23 We been soil. Thanks all.
19:57:28 Thank you, Becky. And thank you all for coming to view and attend the 2021 soil series soil health and community resilience stories from the north. We have very much enjoyed the opportunity to highlight the farmers foresters community organizers project
19:57:50 leaders, and more amazing folks from the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont and the North Country of New Hampshire.
19:57:58 So to keep the conversation going. We encourage you to join the listserv for the Vermont healthy soils coalition.
19:58:06 When you get the post event survey, along with the recording of today's event via event bright. You can also elect to join the listserv, and I think it's a fabulous way to stay informed and stay in touch.
19:58:22 not really a huge amount of traffic.
19:58:27 And also make sure to fill out the survey to enter this week's raffle, including for that grand prize. Wolf River apple tree.
19:58:36 And if you have enjoyed these presentations, please do consider donating what you can to support this work, and help us to make the material available to more communities.
19:58:49 You can look for the donate button on the website, or use the link in the chat, or follow up event bright message.
19:58:59 We also encourage you to support the organization's featured throughout the series links for those organizations and businesses are available on the event website.
19:59:12 So stay tuned for next year soil series may be in Southern Vermont, and always more helpful information from the Vermont, healthy soils coalition.
19:59:23 We all wish you and your soil, the best of health.
19:59:29 And thank you so much. Have a great year.