Resources from Event 1: Foundations of Energy and Matter
Watch the Recording of Event 1 and please fill out our survey so that we can keep improving.
The Flour and Bread video from Cat Buxton
Cat Buxton's Soil and Soul Health Principles
Didi Pershouse's Soil Health Principles
Resources Shared in the chat box during Event 1:
Understanding Soil Health and Watershed Function: a Teacher's Manual
Resources from Event 2: Historical Landscape
Watch the Recording of Event 2 and please fill out our survey so that we can keep improving.
Resources Shared in the chat box during Event 2:
Understanding Soil Health and Watershed Function: a Teacher's Manual
Link about the Mashpee Wampanoag
The Abenaki of Vermont: A Living Culture: This link leads to 3 minute excerpt from a 28 minute program, produced as a portrait of what it means to be Abenaki in Vermont in the words of Abenaki people. Produced by Greg Sharrow and Michael Sacca with and for the Vermont Folklife Center. Full 28 min version here.
Breeding Better Vermonters: The Eugenics Project in the Green Mountain State by Nancy L. Gallagher
Resources from Event 3: Here and Now
Watch the Recording of Event 3 and please fill out our survey so that we can keep improving.
Sources from Fran's Presentation
Resources from Asma:
Resource for what we can do instead of calling the police
Report on the police exchange with Israel
Upper Valley Mutual Aid Form for Farmers and Growers
Get the F-35 Out: Virtual Film Screening Invitation
Resources for Farmers During COVID-19:
From National Young Farmers Coalition
Other Resources Shared in the chat box during Event 3:
Understanding Soil Health and Watershed Function: a Teacher's Manual
The Jewish Voice for Peace campaign
Resources from Event 4: Systems Collapse
Watch the Recording of Event 4 and please fill out our survey so that we can keep improving.
Stephen Leslie is the author of “The New Horse-Powered Farm” and “Horse-Powered Farming for the 21st Century” both from Chelsea Green Publishing.
Resources Shared in the chat box during Event 4:
Understanding Soil Health and Watershed Function: a Teacher's Manual
Soil4Climate is a great resource for information and discussion about responsible grazing
LARGE-SCALE REGENERATION THROUGH HOLISTIC MANAGEMENT: The Savory Institute
Meghan Giroux of Vermont Edible Landscapes and Interlace Agroforestry Farm in NY
Check out Upper Valley Seed Savers and Solstice Seeds in Hartland and High Mowing, too!
Planet of the Humans is free to watch on youtube for at least this month.
Resources from Event 5: Revolutionary Resilience
Watch the Recording of Event 5 and please fill out our survey so that we can keep improving.
Resources Shared in the chat box during Event 5
Understanding Soil Health and Watershed Function by Didi Pershouse
Community Resilience Organizations (CROs) are local teams that engage residents and town leaders in climate adaptation, disaster preparedness and hazard mitigation, while strengthening local collaboration and social cohesion.
The shared video shown in this event is from https://www.globalwildlife.org/ We do not own any of the rights to this video. Find the full video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cEXfJc6_d0
Charles Eisenstein’s chapter on gift economy from his book Sacred Economics.
Didi Pershouse’s latest blog post with a great video she made called “The Great Work of Our Time”
Mike Bald of Got Weeds? Got Weeds? is a Vermont company that uses manual and non-synthetic control methods to eradicate, contain, or suppress non-native invasive plants.
Threefold Social Order by Rudolf Steiner
Jean Giorno’s The Man Who Planted Trees
Climate: A New Story by Charles Eisenstein
Susan Perrow is an amazing therapeutic storyteller/author/consultant: she has stories to address a wide spectrum of challenges, appropriate for all ages, esp. needed now for the very young
A PAMPAS GRASS LOVE POEM
By Garth Harwood
We had better learn to love the pampas grass.
The best of us try
to be like it.
Invasive by habit and history,
and finding ourselves on ravaged soil,
we start to rebuild it
slowly
the work days of our lives
doing what coarse pampas-spears do, too:
adding instead of subtracting
in the great break down.
Neither life will count for much when done,
except that others follow similarly
and the soil, the richness of life,
returns at a pace unbearable for thought.
The new land will have no place for us
nor for pampas.
Pampas creates topsoil but cannot sprout in it
because it cannot compete with the new plants that brings;
so, we, land- and culture-building,
create a new people who would not understand our killing origins and our long tolerance of greed.
We too will die out to be replaced by something native.
In this day,
to love the redwood forest
is to love past the trees to the soil
and its builders:
and we had better learn to love
the pampas grass.
Resources from Event 6: Fertile Ground
Watch the Recording of Event 6 and please fill out our survey so that we can keep improving.
Resources Shared in the chat box during Event 6:
Winter Center for Indigenous Traditions, P.O. Box 328, Hanover, New Hampshire 03755. phone: 802-649-8870 wcit@wintercenter-indigenous.org
Understanding Soil Health and Watershed Function by Didi Pershouse
Cedar Circle Farm & Education Center
Federal data: Vermonters spend more than national average on food, gas, health care
Vermont Neighboring Food Co-ops
Want to farm? Contact Niko Horster for Land Access: nhorster@gmail.com or www.shirebeef.com
Farmacology book by Dr. Daphne Miller
Northeast Queer Farmer's Alliance -- you can join the listserv here: nequeerfarmers@lists.riseup.net
More about some of the organizations partnering for the
2020 Climate and Community Resilience: Lessons from the Soil Series
The Winter Center for Indigenous Traditions
Donna L. Moody, PhD (University of Massachusetts/Amherst) is a cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on Native American Studies, African/African American Studies, the intersection of Native American/African American/African peoples, the Atlantic Diaspora, and Inequality and Oppression.
Donna is an Abenaki mother of three, grandmother of fourteen, and great grandmother of thirteen. She is an author, public speaker, educator, and the Director of Winter Center for Indigenous Traditions which is based in the Upper Valley of Vermont and New Hampshire. She currently teaches Anthropology at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, New Hampshire. For twenty years she served as the Repatriation and Site Protection Coordinator for the Abenaki Nation.
John S. Moody is an ethno-historian and independent scholar with forty nine years of research, writing, and speaking focused on history, peace and justice issues, and the Indigenous legacies of the northeast. He graduated from Dartmouth in Native American Studies and Anthropology in 1977. Donna and John live in West Hartford, Vermont.
John has worked with the Abenaki and other Native peoples in the northeast to protect and preserve ancient sites and burial grounds. He has facilitated a number of Sacred and Traditional Site Studies and, with Donna Roberts Moody, has initiated many museum and archaeological collection surveys to facilitate the repatriation of Native remains and artifacts in the northeast. They have worked for many years with Federal and state agencies in the northeast on site protection, repatriation, sacred site and environmental protection, and cultural resource management. He works with the Abenaki Nation coalition in northern New England and New York to facilitate burial ground, sacred site, and environmental protection as well as repatriation.
In 1996, Donna and John co-founded Winter Center for Indigenous Traditions, a service non-profit to strengthen and sustain Native communities. Winter Center is an independent, Native coordinated service non-profit.
The Winter Center Archives, Library, and Research Center is focused on maintaining and increasing Indigenous family and community ethical access to Indigenous familial and community knowledge, history, language, traditions, agricultural, and ancient, subsistence ways of sustainable living to assure survival of Native families, communities, and Nations for Seven Generations to come. We care for a substantial archive of records, research files, documents, oral histories, videos, and other items gathered over the last forty nine years, as an Indigenous peoples’ archive and a public educational resource.
The Archives are used for writing histories and studies, informing programs, educational and language projects, helping families find their way, grounding burial, site protection, and repatriation, and anchoring environmental justice and health care research and advocacy. Native families continue to request help searching for family members, history and research on burial grounds and sacred sites, health care needs and environmental threats, and many other topics.
Our research over the last forty nine years includes ethnobotany, medical history, and the ethnic medical traditions in the northeast; the Abenaki language, related Algonquin languages, and the other Indigenous languages; the linguistics of the Americas, and related topics of Indigenous peoples’ origins; the ancient oral, linguistic, and ethnological traditions of Indigenous peoples; the oral traditions of Indigenous peoples and human origins; the history of ethnic groups in the northeast; inter-tribal and inter-racial relations in the northeast; the recognition process for Native individuals, groups, and Nations in the United States and Canada; the military history of the northeast; the roots of war, and peacemaking, in Native and non-Native societies; and the role of Native peoples in the shaping of the United States and Canada.
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Winter Center’s Mandate
For the Indigenous Nations of the world, the last five hundred years have been like the harshest winter since creation. For this reason, we chose the name Winter Center to remind us of the times we are in and the immediacy of our mandate:
● To honor, respect, and protect the Ancestors and Sacred Places.
● To promote health and healing in Indigenous families, communities and Nations
● To facilitate the gathering of Native Peoples & Nations in a way that is culturally and traditionally nurturing
● To foster peacemaking and a return to balance using traditional methods and teachings
● To protect, defend, and care for the ancient ways and languages of Indigenous Peoples
Our mandate is broad and the struggle continues on many fronts. Native traditions, ecologies, languages, and peoples are still disappearing from the earth. We must do what we can to protect and maintain the ancient traditions and Native peoples that keep this world in balance!
Winter Center for Indigenous Traditions, P.O. Box 328, Hanover, New Hampshire 03755
802-649-8870 wcit@wintercenter-indigenous.org
Read the Land Acknowledgement for this series prepared by Donna and John Moody
The Center for Agriculture and Food Systems
The Center for Agriculture and Food Systems (CAFS) trains law and policy students to develop real-world solutions for a more sustainable and just food system.
CAFS educates students through a comprehensive array of residential and online courses, as well as through the Food and Agriculture Clinic. Students can choose to specialize in Food and Agriculture Law; pursue a JD Certificate in Food and Agriculture Law; or earn a Master's or LLM degree in Food and Agriculture Law and Policy. With CAFS's diverse course offerings, degree options, and practical experiences in the clinic, students explore food and agriculture law from a variety of perspectives.
CAFS is also a center for research and advocacy. As a clinician in the Food and Agriculture Clinic or through our Research Assistant program, students work with local, regional, national, and international partners, engaging in law and policy work that addresses food systems challenges related to the environment, public health, the economy, food security, and animal welfare. The legal tools and policy recommendations they develop have real-world implications for stakeholders across the food system, including farmers, food producers, entrepreneurs, distributors, consumers, legislators, and administrators.
A thriving local food system depends on the success of farms and food entrepreneurs, yet many of these businesses lack legal support. CAFS partnered with the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) to establish the Vermont Legal Food Hub, a program that matches income-eligible farmers, food entrepreneurs, and related organizations with skilled attorneys willing to provide free legal services. CLF launched the first Legal Food Hub in Massachusetts in 2014; since then, hubs have expanded to Maine, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, placing more than 450 clients with attorneys and leveraging more than $2.5 million in pro bono legal assistance. CAFS serves as primary administrator of the Vermont hub, the first of its kind in the state. Visit legalfoodhub.org to learn more.
Agricultural biodiversity is a vital resource for plant breeders trying to improve crops’ nutrient content, disease resistance, resilience to adverse weather conditions, and many other traits. Yet, overall agricultural biodiversity is declining worldwide, and some plant genetic resources are unavailable to plant breeders and researchers because they are subject to intellectual property protections in the form of patents on plants. "The Plant Breeder's Guide to Preventing Patents through Defensive Publication" aims to create a resource for plant breeders to understand the U.S. patent system as it relates to plant varieties, and to preempt patenting of plant varieties or traits through defensive publication. Preempting patenting maintains more agricultural genetic resources in the public domain, ensuring access to them for plant breeders and farmers alike.
Farm Animal Welfare Certification Guide
The lack of welfare standards and transparency in industrial animal agriculture endangers farm animals, misleads consumers, and puts higher-welfare farmers at a disadvantage. Some farmers seek animal welfare certifications in order to communicate their higher-welfare practices to conscious consumers. But deciding what certification to pursue—and how to pursue it—can be complicated. CAFS teamed up with ASPCA to create a comprehensive guide to animal welfare certification for farmers and business owners. Updated in October 2019, the resource includes case studies, step-by-step breakdowns of each certification process, and a comparison of key differences between three recommended programs: Animal Welfare Approved, Certified Humane, and Global Animal Partnership.
Farm to Institution Policy Project
The Food & Agriculture Clinic collaborated with staff, researchers, and the policy workgroup at Farm to Institution New England (FINE) to produce policy snapshots for each New England state that provide analysis of key state procurement policy trends, accomplishments, and gaps, as well as recommendations for strengthening state procurement policy to advance local food purchasing by state institutions. The accompanying report, Regional Trends in New England Farm to Institution Procurement Policy, builds on the snapshots’ key findings.
Extension Legal Services Initiative
CAFS has partnered with University of Vermont Extension and the Northeast Center to Advance Food Safety to develop the Extension Legal Services Initiative (ELSI), which responds to the need for farmers and food producers to receive answers to legal questions that arise in the course of their operations. ELSI currently focuses on questions around compliance with the federal Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), which is being implemented gradually for different sizes of farms and food businesses. Food and Agriculture Clinic students presented on their work to date in a webinar in May 2019, and will produce a series of fact sheets addressing the most common legal questions associated with FSMA compliance by the project's conclusion in late 2020.
"Food Systems Resilience: Concepts & Policy Approaches" presents advocates and policymakers with a suite of policy tools for strengthening food system resilience. With climate-related shocks and stressors adding to existing hazards facing food systems, this is a critical time to examine food system vulnerabilities and work to ameliorate them. This resource provides an overview of the current scholarship on resilience, especially as it applies to food systems, as a means to predict, assess, and improve how those systems cope with disruption.
Housing and Employment Rights for Vermont Dairy Workers
This project provides educational resources for farmworkers relating to applicable housing and employment law. Part of the project, funded by the National Agricultural Library, provides this information via a report assessing federal employment and housing laws relevant to farmworkers, and uses Vermont as an example to highlight state laws that can extend those protections. Leveraging funds from the Vermont Community Foundation, CAFS partnered with Migrant Justice to develop an accompanying Housing and Employment Rights Handbook tailored to workers on Vermont dairies. The Handbook is available in English and Spanish.
This is a four-year project funded by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and led by CAFS in collaboration with the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont (NOFA-VT) and the Farmers Market Coalition (FMC). The Farmers Market Legal Toolkit includes legal resources, best practice recommendations, and case studies for market leaders on enhancing market governance structures, accepting SNAP benefits, and managing common risks. The online tools can help enhance market resiliency and accessibility, increasing local food, strengthening local economies, and improving food access across the country.
Blueprint for a National Food Strategy
This project, a partnership between CAFS and Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, examines the potential for developing a national food strategy in the United States. Through legal and original research, the Blueprint Project considers the need for a national food strategy, how other countries have developed national food strategies in response to similar food systems challenges faced by the United States, and the process by which the United States has developed national strategies in response to other issues. The resources created by this project provide a roadmap for the adoption of national food strategy in order to ensure a food secure future for all Americans. Visit the project website here, and read and interact with the report here.
This is a four-year project funded by the USDA National Agricultural Library, and led by CAFS in collaboration with the Public Health Law Center at Mitchell Hamline School of Law and the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut. The Healthy Food Policy Project (HFPP) identifies and elevates local laws that seek to promote access to healthy food, contribute to strong local economies, an improved environment, and health equity, with a focus on socially disadvantaged and marginalized groups. The project identifies and documents pioneering and exemplary local policy innovations to increase awareness about promising and emerging policy approaches and support communities in the development of their own policy solutions. For more information visit www.healthyfoodpolicyproject.org.
The National Gleaning Project addresses the need for a national network to connect organizations and individuals engaged in gleaning and food recovery across the United States. These organizations vary in size, structure, and mission, but are all working to reduce food waste and insecurity in their communities. The Project developed the online gleaning resources hub to provide a clearinghouse for gleaning and food recovery-related information.
This is a three-year project funded by the USDA National Agricultural Library, and led by CAFS in partnership with BCM Environmental and Land Law, PLLC, and Heyman Legal. Geared towards farm-seekers, farmers, landowners, and their advocates, the Farmland Access Legal Toolkit offers information on more affordable and equitable land access arrangements. This web resource contains sections on leasing, farmland transfer, and innovative models of access, and features a wide variety of case studies.
The Farm Bill Law Enterprise (FBLE) is a novel partnership between eight law school programs, including CAFS. FBLE formed in 2016 to pursue collaborative research on the farm bill. In addition to members’ programs, FBLE recruited law students from across the country to work on the project. Together, faculty and students analyzed each of the farm bill’s components. This research helped FBLE members develop shared goals for a farm bill that meets the long-term needs of our society. These goals include a reliable and nutritious food supply, an honest living for farmers, a healthy environment, and a strong safety net against hunger. FBLE published three reports in March 2018 to coincide with imminent releases of draft farm bills in Congress. These reports provide recommendations for how the next farm bill can begin to meet FBLE’s shared goals by maintaining key programs that work, adding new programs, and redistributing funding in ways that are better for health, the environment, and justice.
State Farm to School Policy Handbook
The Center for Agriculture and Food Systems (CAFS) partners with the National Farm to School Network (NFSN) to produce this annual resource. The most recent version, the State Farm to School Policy Handbook: 2002-2018, is a tool for those working to advance the farm to school movement. The Handbook summarizes and analyzes bills and resolutions introduced between January 1, 2002, and December 31, 2018, from the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. territories. It enables users to search bills by both jurisdiction and topic. The Handbook provides: analysis of and infographics detailing state farm to school legislative trends; summaries of proposed bills since 2002, whether enacted, defeated, or pending; case studies on successful farm to school advocacy efforts in Hawai‘i, Michigan, New Mexico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Vermont; and additional resources for advocates and policymakers to support state farm to school policies.
The State Farm to School Policy Handbook: 2002-2018 builds on a survey that was originally released in 2011, updated in 2013, 2014, and 2017, and was previously called the State Farm to School Legislative Survey.
The purpose of this website is to provide consumers with information to help them navigate food labels and make informed food choices about the products they buy. Unfortunately, food labels and what they mean are not straightforward. This site explains the most common statements on food labels, including what information must be disclosed, what information is voluntary, and what is not included on food labels.