Set yourself up for a successful outdoor 2025 season! Join Vermont Growers Association, Rural Vermont, and Ben Wilcox of Off Piste Farm, a licensed Tier 1 Outdoor Cultivator, in the Northeast Kingdom on Saturday, April 5th from 10am - 1pm for a cannabis pre-season planning and prep workshop. Founded in 2015 in the NEK, Ben is committed to growing high-quality, sun-grown cannabis. Off Piste’s mission is to grow and produce the highest quality products possible, with as little negative impact on the environment and ecosystem as possible, while supporting the local economy as much as possible.  Off Piste uses locally sourced organic inputs and materials, works with other small, independent, locally owned businesses as much as possible, and uses off-grid solar power to generate their own electricity.

Please join us for a 3-hour workshop covering the essentials of at-scale pre-season planning and preparation for the outdoor season. This workshop will cover:

• Taking plant starts and soil blocks

• Potting and transplanting

• Root health and thinning plants

• Frost and mold prevention and finishing time 

• Compliance and recordkeeping

Rural Vermont and VGA will provide key legislative and policy updates from the statehouse and be available to answer questions throughout the workshop.

TICKET PRICE: $20 - $40 (Sliding Scale)

NOTES
*Participants must be 21 years of age or older.
*Address will be given to registered attendees prior to the workshop.
*Light snacks provided.
*Please bring a water bottle and please dress comfortably for the weather. This is a 3-hour outdoor workshop. Please keep this in mind when dressing/preparing for the day!

Each year, Rural Vermont invites our farmer members and ally organizations to learn about and engage in the legislative process, advocacy, and pending policy during the legislative session. This event series offers farmers and the agrarian community at large - homesteaders, gardeners, (urban) farmers, medicine makers, and food activists alike - opportunities to speak with lawmakers, voice their real-life issues, and to empowerment from learning more about the legislative process. In 2025, we’ll be hosting two Small Farm Action Days at the Vermont State House in Montpelier:

 Wednesday, March 26th from 8am to 12pm 

Wednesday, April 23rd 8am to 12pm

Join us for one event or both! This year’s half-day events are designed for those who are interested in testifying in front of the House Ag or Senate Ag committees. Attendees will build skills, connections, and experience to confidently and effectively advocate for the wants and needs of themselves and their communities.  Rural Vermont is not going to be prescriptive on what you are going to testify on. Small Farm Action Day is an open-ended invitation to farm(work)ers to speak to the issues that affect them directly. You can read or listen to our Legislative Update to get an idea about what agricultural issues are currently subject to pending legislation. We welcome you to speak to your own opinion and to bring other issues to the event that are not subject to any legislation as well. Rural Vermont will offer a virtual advocacy training before March 26th for those who are interested. If you plan to testify on March 26 or April 23, it is highly recommended you attend the pre-SFAD virtual training (attending the training is not required).

EVENT SCHEDULE

MARCH 26 & APRIL 23

8:00am - Welcome & Introductions in the Statehouse Lobby

9:00am - 10:00am House Ag Committee 

10:30am - 11:30am Senate Ag Committee

11:30am - 1:00pm Meet and Greet with your Legislator and Join Rural Vermont staff
in the Statehouse cafeteria for lunch and discussion

We will begin with a brief orientation in the statehouse lobby where we will give time for introductions and to reach out to your legislators through the State House’s Page messaging system. Afterwards, we will visit the Senate and House Agriculture Committees where participants of our group will have a chance to  testify on pending legislation and to express needs and issues they face that may not be reflected in legislation yet.  After we visit both committees, your local Senator or Legislator might be interested to meet with you for lunch in the statehouse cafeteria! Alternatively, you are welcome to join Rural Vermont staff for lunch. 

We encourage you to sign up for the virtual advocacy training (signup in our registration form) and/or visit our activist toolkit (link below) before your participation in Small Farm Action Day on March 26th or April 23rd. For those interested, show up in solidarity and follow live on YouTube to hear what your peers bring to legislators attention that day! Hope you all may join us for Small Farm Action Day in 2025 - registration required!

Join us at the 14th annual Farm to Plate Conference Wednesday, November 20th at the Killington Gran Resort from 2:15p - 3:45p for a special workshop facilitated by Rural Vermont’s Legislative Director, Caroline Sherman-Gordon and co-led by Rural Vermont’s Policy Director, Graham Unangst-Rufenacht. This interactive session is designed to explore policy ideas that would facilitate land access for farmers and make farmland more affordable, without corporate or institutional domination. In this brainstorming session, attendees will receive prompts about what’s at stake when farmers can’t afford farmland. After a breakout session, the whole group will capture and discuss policy ideas that could change the trajectory of farmland conservation, land use planning, farm succession and shared leadership models.

Lead Facilitator: Caroline Sherman-Gordon, Legislative Director, Rural Vermont

Co-Facilitators: Grace Oedel, Executive Director, NOFA-VT; Nikki Lennart, Farm Business Specialist, Intervale Center; Jean Hamilton, Director of Program Development, Land Access and Opportunity Board; Graham Unangst-Rufenacht, Policy Director, Rural Vermont; Samantha Langevin, Director of Partnerships & Community, VT Releaf Collective

2024 Farm to Plate Conference
Killington Grand Resort
Wednesday, Nov. 20th & Thursday, Nov. 21st

Join Rural Vermont for one of our favorite annual traditions! Our friends at American Flatbread / Burlington Hearth will be donating a portion of all dine-in and take-out flatbread sales to Rural Vermont. Gather up a crew and head to Burlington! While there, stop by the Rural Vermont table to say hello, snag a sticker, catch up on ag policy, and make some art with us!

Join Rural Vermont, the People’s Agroecology School and ACORN Vermont on Sunday, November 3 from 9:30am - 3pm* at Tup’s Crossing Farm, 66 Young Rd, Orwell, VT for a pasture reclamation work brigade! We will be trimming back and wrapping shade trees in an 8 acre parcel to increase grazing opportunities for a herd of dairy goats. No previous skills necessary.

Work brigades are a popular education tool used around the world to strengthen communities, build trust and solidarity through collective labor, connection, mutual aid, and knowledge sharing.  Lunch, refreshments, education and tools provided. RSVP required for planning purposes. 

Vermont’s ability to feed itself relies on thriving community scale farms working together towards food sovereignty and community resilience. We hope you can join us! 

Please rsvp HERE.

*We may finish before 3pm depending on numbers. It’s okay if you can’t stay for the whole time, but we encourage you to come at the beginning!

Are you interested in raising a highly sustainable (and very tasty!) protein on your farm, homestead, or backyard? Meat rabbits require less land, less water, and less energy to grow than most other livestock. 

They convert food and water into edible meat 1.4 times more efficiently than pigs and 4 times more efficiently than sheep and cattle....making them both highly efficient and sustainable and did we mention...delicious?

Join Rural Vermont and G.I.V.E. A. Care Homestead in Bakersfield on Saturday, June 1st from 10:00-1:00 to learn about raising and processing the other white meat! The workshop will be led by homestead owner, Erica Martel. Erica is a local high school science teacher with a passion for teaching sustainable living. Her family started homesteading 15 years ago with just a kiddie pool for growing tomatoes in the driveway of their apartment and has since moved into a beautiful property where slowly things have been moving more towards self-sufficient living. She and her family own G.I.V.E. A. Care Homestead in Bakersfield where Erica taps maple trees and raises rabbits, chickens, and ducks.

This is an interactive workshop that will take you from set-up, breeding, and care, to humane harvesting and packaging.

Rural Vermont will also present the updates to federal and state on-farm slaughter regulation, particularly around the proposed clarifying language being advocated for by Rural Vermont and its partners. There will be plenty of room for questions and discussion throughout the event.

Registration: $50/participant

Special Notes: Workshop address will be sent to registered participants in advance. Please BYO brown bag lunch and snacks. Please bring a water bottle. Please wear rugged footwear and weather-appropriate clothing. Rabbit meat and other farm products will be available for purchase.

A Note About Workshop Pricing & Registration:

Rural Vermont works alongside farm hosts, instructors, and other non-profits to bring a variety of workshops and peer-to-peer learning opportunities to our members and communities throughout Vermont.  Our ticket prices are built on the needs of the community, the needs of the farm hosts and instructors, and the structure of the workshop itself. We work hard to provide accessible, quality programming and to also pay fair compensation to our farm hosts, our instructors, and to cover the cost of managing and producing our workshops. As such, our ticket pricing varies from workshop to workshop and we strive to keep our pricing within a fair range. Thank you for participating and learning alongside us! 

-The Rural Vermont Team

Rural Vermont and Vermont Growers Association are excited to present their third cannabis workshop collaboration at Lukas Greene Cannabis in Charlotte with instruction by Guillermo Maldonado of Shindig & G’s Craft Cannabis!

Lukas Greene is a licensed Tier 3 Outdoor Cultivator that uses an innovative Dutch-style glasshouse and traditional high tunnels to cultivate cannabis and organic vegetables in the Champlain Lowlands. Shindig & G’s Craft Cannabis is a licensed Tier 3 Outdoor Cultivator in the Northeast Kingdom and the instructor for this workshop. Jesse Lukas and Malcolm Greene welcome us to their gorgeous cannabis operation, where we will discuss at-scale pre-season planning and preparation and growing techniques for outdoor cannabis cultivation.

Please join us for a 3-hour workshop covering the essentials of at-scale pre-season planning and preparation for the outdoor season. This workshop will cover:

• Taking plant starts and soil blocks

• Potting and transplanting

• Root health and thinning plants

• Frost and mold prevention and finishing time 

• Compliance and recordkeeping

Rural Vermont and VGA will provide key legislative and policy updates from the statehouse and be available to answer questions throughout the workshop.

TICKET PRICE: $20 - $40 (Sliding Scale)

NOTES

*Participants must be 21 years of age or older.

*Address will be given to registered attendees prior to the workshop.

*Light snacks provided.

*Please bring a water bottle and please dress comfortably for the weather. This is a 3-hour outdoor workshop. Please keep this in mind when dressing/preparing for the day!

Join us to screen the documentary, “Stewards of the Land - Serán las dueñas de la tierra,” as it follows three Puerto Rican farmers striving to produce healthy food amidst economic challenges and frequent hurricanes. 

When: Monday, April 15 2024, 7:30pm-10:00pm

Where: 101 Stafford Hall, 95 Carrigan Drive, Burlington VT 05405 or attend virtually from anywhere in Vermont

Synopsis: Before disaster hits, three Puerto Rican farmers give it all to grow food that is healthy for the people and the planet. Nothing can stop them. Almost.

Stephanie, Ian and Alfredo are landless ecological farmers striving to produce healthy food for local consumption in Puerto Rico. In this economically depressed US-territory -highly dependent on food imports and a frequent target for hurricanes– producing food locally is urgent. The documentary shows the protagonists’ grit as they attempt to carve a living without land ownership or capital.

Please RSVP

This film is sponsored by Rural Vermont and the Agroecology School Collective, an independent project of Rural Vermont.

Stay after the 1pm Saturday screening for a conversation with four of Vermont’s Black farmers.

Weaving the rich and troubled history of the Black American farming experience with the contemporary resurgence of the land sovereignty movement, this poignant and well-crafted documentary works not only as an informative exploration but also a touching testament to the resilience of Black farmers. Rooted in the picturesque landscapes of New York’s Hudson Valley, we follow Leah Penniman, co-founder of Soul Fire Farm, as she leads a movement of activists and change-makers fighting for environmental justice and building regenerative economies. Finding strength in the deep history of African agrarianism, the farmers in this film chart a new way forward, reclaiming personal dignity while building systems that just might save the world.

In addition to two in person screenings, FARMING WHILE BLACK will be offered as a free virtual screening during the 2024 Green Mountain Film Festival thanks to permission from the filmmakers and the sponsorship of All Brains Belong. After you “purchase” the rental, you will have 24 hours to watch the movie. The festival dates are March 14 – March 17, 2024. This rental is only offered during those days.

Rural Vermont is honored to SPONSOR
Farming While Black

Weaving the rich and troubled history of the Black American farming experience with the contemporary resurgence of the land sovereignty movement, this poignant and well-crafted documentary works not only as an informative exploration but also a touching testament to the resilience of Black farmers. Rooted in the picturesque landscapes of New York’s Hudson Valley, we follow Leah Penniman, co-founder of Soul Fire Farm, as she leads a movement of activists and change-makers fighting for environmental justice and building regenerative economies. Finding strength in the deep history of African agrarianism, the farmers in this film chart a new way forward, reclaiming personal dignity while building systems that just might save the world.

In addition to two in person screenings, FARMING WHILE BLACK will be offered as a free virtual screening during the 2024 Green Mountain Film Festival thanks to permission from the filmmakers and the sponsorship of All Brains Belong. After you “purchase” the rental, you will have 24 hours to watch the movie. The festival dates are March 14 – March 17, 2024. This rental is only offered during those days.

Rural Vermont is honored to sponsor
Farming While Black

WE WELCOME MEMBERS OF ALL EXPERIENCE LEVELS!

All Rural Vermont members are invited to join the Rural Vermont staff and Board for our next virtual forum. These Quarterly Forums are opportunities for our members to join our Policy team in a virtual forum to discuss particular issues which may be affecting your farm and / or community, and/ or that we are currently working on. Bring your questions, ideas, and concerns. We look forward to seeing you there!