It was the down — tiny goose feathers — in his sleeping bag that prevented him from suffering a fate similar to the beer. Amazing feathers.

On that cold night (one of many in Bernd Heinrich’s famed winter ecology course), Thor Hanson wondered about another feathered creature also sleeping nearby: the golden-crowned kinglet. This bird weighs five grams, “about the same as a nickel or teaspoon of salt,” Hanson writes in his book, Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle.

High over his head, in the crook of a fir branch, the kinglet kept its body about 120 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the surrounding air. Without the uncanny microstructure of feathers — the most insulating material in the world — the bird would have died in a few breaths. Amazing feathers.

This is just one of dozens of feather-fascinated, perspective-altering stories that led Hanson’s book to be selected as this year’s winner of the John Burroughs Medal. Given in the past to such luminaries as Rachel Carson and Barry Lopez, it is considered the highest award for American nature writing.

Hanson traveled to the American Museum of Natural History in New York to receive the medal on April 1.

Bird feathers, people feathers

Hanson credits UVM’s Field Naturalist Program, and teachers like Heinrich, for helping to shape this book. “This could have easily been a narrow ornithological textbook,” Hanson says, “and yet it’s the broad perspective that is encouraged in the FN program that allows this book to be something that touches on everything from fashion to golf history.”

As well as flying dinosaurs, quill pens, outrageous ostrich-plume hats, the myth of Icarus (who donned feathers and flew too close to the sun), the feather money of Santa Cruz Island, pillows at the Pacific Coast Feather Company, and electron microscope images of water droplets on the barbs of a pigeon — Hanson’s book travels gleefully on a headlong pursuit of the origin, meaning and uses of feathers for birds and people. It even tells why flamingos are pink. Go read it to find out.

Field naturalist

Hanson completed his UVM degree in 2000, studying under Heinrich and other professors, including David Barrington, then went on to get his doctorate in conservation biology. He’s studied Central American songbirds, nest predation in Tanzania, and, as he writes, “the grisly feeding habits of African vultures.” He now lives on the San Juan Islands as an independent biologist and writer.

“This book is a curiosity-driven enterprise, rather than doctrinal,” he says. Which may be why it has attracted a substantial popular audience, and glowing reviews from the New York Times, Economist, Science and many other outlets.

And Hanson is not alone as a publishing success from the Field Naturalist Program. “The book publishing output from graduates of our small program — we graduate only four field naturalists per year — is in a league of its own,” notes plant biologist Jeffrey Hughes, who directs the program. Over the last ten years, graduates of the program have published at least fifteen books, Hughes wrote, one of which won the 2010 National Outdoor Book Award — and now the John Burroughs Medal.

Broad views

Glued together intellectually by a fascination with the intricacies of evolution, the narrative in Feathers caroms back and forth over what Hanson described to me as “the imaginary but very significant boundary we put between the natural world and the human world.” We can’t make feathers, which may be why we love them, collect them.

“Every culture and every home has feathers in it somewhere,” says Hanson, “and we use these for so many purposes. You start asking: why? And then you realize that the answers are the very same answers for why these things are so successful in nature,” — like supreme aerodynamics, unbeatable insulation, glittering beauty, perfect camouflage, the freedom of flight.

In asking many questions, Feathers offers an unabashed defense of natural history, with its tradition of generous observation of plants and animals in their habitats. Partly under the eye-popping insights of molecular biology, natural history storytelling has taken some hard knocks for too-little rigor and quantitative force — and too much teleological sentimentality. Hanson understands these criticisms, but pushes back.

“Natural history is where you frame your questions,” he says, and shape your experiments; it’s the broad view that lets the careful observer see the real connections in the world. “In the Field Naturalist Program we studied about connectivity between all the layers of a landscape, from bedrock to the soil to the plants to the creatures,” Hanson says, and this hunt for connections pulses through Feathers.

Feathered rainbow

For this book, Hanson reports from a dusty plain in Kenya where he watches vultures, with their featherless heads, dipping into the rotting carcass of a zebra; from sober shrines to natural history, including Yale’s Peabody Museum — but also from Las Vegas.

A low cinderblock building, just a few blocks off the city’s glitzy strip, might not seem the most promising field site for a conservation biologist. But Hanson followed many paths toward the meanings and uses of feathers, including the supply house of showgirls: the Rainbow Feather Company.

“When you need ten thousand plumes died hot pink,” Hanson writes, this is the only place in the world to go. Rainbow Feather “takes orders from clients as varied as Jubilee!, Cirque de Soleil, and Victoria’s Secret,” Hanson writes, while its retail shop, “must be the only place in the world where burlesque dancers regularly rub elbows with fly-fisherman and bow hunters.” Thor Hanson’s book lets readers rub elbows with an equally diverse cast of feathered characters.

The award, named in honor of the late John Finley, a respected agricultural educator and Vermont community member, recognizes an individual who has performed distinguished service to Vermont Agriculture and exhibits the outstanding character and mental vigor exemplified by Finley.

“Bob is man I’m sure my dad would have been proud to have as a colleague and a friend,” said Kate Finley Woodruff, an MPA Adjunct Professor and daughter of John Finley. Both John Finley and Parsons studied at Penn State University, received PhD’s in Agricultural Economics, and had years of dedicated experience to the dairy industry, farm management and profitability.

Parsons’ greatest contributions to the agricultural industry have been made in Vermont. His accomplishments include securing more than $8 million in grants, conducting agricultural research on turning cow manure into electricity, and evaluating Vermont grass-based livestock farm policy.

However, Parsons’ agricultural economics work spans international boundaries, including Albania, Kenya and Zambia, where he worked with farmers on dairy management, increased profitability and financial training.

“I love my work because it ties together so many different aspects of the dairy sector, from technology and business to community planning,” Parsons said. “It keeps what I do very refreshing.”

Parsons currently teaches Agricultural Policy and Ethics in the Community Development and Applied Economics department.

Then Berlin — a professor in UVM’s Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences and director of UVM's Center for Sustainable Agriculture — and Limoges — UVM class of 2012 and now a graduate student in dietetics — move on to collect data about the skim milk. Next up: frozen broccoli.

At the other end of the small store, Bill McMaster, a UVM Extension professor, gathers information about bread. Whole-wheat and white? Lowest prices? Brand? Two or three shoppers move through the aisles with blue hand-baskets, looking quizzically at these researchers with clipboards.

“We’re interested in figuring out how to get more healthy, affordable, and regionally produced foods into markets like this one,” says Berlin.

As a first step, they want to know more about the price and supply of eight foods that are for sale here — a “market basket,” they call it, that includes ground beef (lean or not), broccoli (with or without cheese sauce), and peaches (canned with sugar or not). And they want to talk with local people who come to the store — to learn how they get (or fail to get) food now.

Into the desert

Outside, fine snow sweeps out of the spruce-fir woods and down Cross Street, the wide road through town. It’s cold and quiet; just a few people are out, readjusting snowmobiles on their trailer. It doesn’t look like a desert.

Yet, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Island Pond is a kind of desert. A food desert.

Defining a food desert is an inexact science at best, but the basic point is clear: these are communities with many low-income people — and few or no places to buy affordable, healthy food.

In the Ted’s Market parking lot, Island Pond resident Melanie Yasharian holds a small bag of groceries. “I just came in to pick up a couple of items,” she says — and patiently answers questions being asked by Kristyn Achilich — a graduate student in UVM’s new food systems master’s program — about her food buying habits and challenges.

Done with the survey, Yasharian volunteers to tell me her story: how she works hard to feed her two children, ages 2 and 3, now waiting in the car.

“I feel very lucky, “ she says with a broad smile as the wind whips snow and grit over our heads, “we have a large garden, we do a lot of canning, we started a root cellar this year, we freeze a lot, and we raise all our own meat; we don’t buy any meat at the store. We raise chickens, turkeys, and pigs, and my husband is a hunter and so we have venison,” she says.

But it’s not easy. “I do find it hard in town to get a variety of vegetables or fruits,” she says, and, “it’s extremely expensive to eat healthy and to provide your kids with healthy and with a variety.”

Where to shop?

And many of her neighbors probably have a harder time than she does. According to USDA statistics, all of the people who live in and around Island Pond, 1,260 people, have “low access” to food — meaning that a large grocery store is not within easy driving distance. Melanie Yasharian says she drives to St. Johnsbury, 20 miles away, to do some grocery shopping.

Of these 1,260 people, 241 of them, about 20 percent, are low-income. Many have limited transportation to get to the store, which means if they’re going grocery shopping at all, it’s likely to be at Ted’s Market or the other small food store two blocks down, at the other end of the commercial district. Here, Kingdom Market has a large “Welcome Ice Fishermen” sign inside the front entrance.

Kingdom Market sells many of the same foods and brands as Ted’s. And this is not surprising. Both stores are supplied by the same out-of-Vermont distributor.

Heading the other way on Route 114/105 out of Island Pond, it’s not too many miles to Interstate 91, and, from there, south to Boston and global markets beyond. And that’s the route, except in reverse, that much of the food that fills these stores’ shelves traveled.

“We have these two independently owned stores in Island Pond that are a component of our research,” Berlin says, noting that the owners of both stores have been willing partners and supporters of the project. These are the only two grocery stores in all of Essex County, the least populous county in New England, deep in the heart of Vermont’s famed Northeast Kingdom.

Food security

Unlike a spate of recent efforts to simply improve what is available at stores — so-called “healthy retailer” projects — Berlin’s research is far broader and more complex.

Island Pond is one of nine sites, three rural and six urban, throughout the Northeast that are being studied under the leadership of Stephan Goetz, a professor at Penn State. Drawing experts from the USDA and several universities, including UVM’s Linda Berlin and her students, the team’s goal is to enhance what they call “food security” in “underserved” places — often poor, urban neighborhoods — in a new way.

The researchers want to link what have often been seen as separate problems. On the one hand, 12 percent of the population in the Northeast, more than seven million people, are food insecure, according to the USDA. This means they face a challenge getting healthy, affordable food — and all the health problems, like obesity, hunger, and diabetes that are associated with this challenge.

On the other hand, regional farmers are struggling to stay in business, the land base for agriculture in the Northeast continues to decline, and a large percentage of fruits and vegetables eaten here — that can be grown in the Delaware-to-Maine corridor — are transported from farms in the Midwest, California, Mexico, and other parts of the world, using large amounts of fuel.

The researchers want to show that both problems can — and maybe need to be — addressed together. They’re exploring the entire supply chain, from farmer to distributor to retailer to consumer. The plan: build a powerful model of how the whole system works. The hope: enhance the supply and availability of foods grown in the Northeast region.

“Why are there not more regionally produced foods in these stores?” Berlin wonders. “We’re looking for the pressure points,” she says.

“We’re taking a systems approach,” she says. “If your supplier is in Boston, let’s go to the supplier and find out how they decide what to carry.”

“We can tighten the scale of the food system,” says Achilich, to help both low-income consumers on one end and farmers on the other. In an era of climate change and water shortages, the research team is testing the idea that regionally produced food — in place of globally produced foods — can alleviate environmental problems while improving food access and affordability for struggling communities.

This is the end of the second year of a five-year project funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture — and a key first step of building an insightful model of the food system, Berlin says, is listening carefully to the people who are buying the food.

Near the shopping carts at Kingdom Market, Kristyn Achilich is collecting more information with help from life-long Island Pond resident Bill Hawkins. He’s been working with the UVM team, reaching out to his friends and neighbors as they come in and out of the store, explaining the research project. They’ve been listening carefully to Sherman Allen, who came in “to get a few incidentals,” he tells me. He drove to the store from the settlement of West Charleston, eleven miles away.

“Here are some of our trees,” she says with a hint of a smile.

It’s conventional plastic tubing used in the maple syrup business. Each stretch is connected to a black spout sticking out of the side of a tree. Then the chest-high tubes run gently downhill, pulling sap, under vacuum pressure, to collecting tanks. Everything here looks like a modern maple sugarbush.

'Except the trees. They’re not maples. They’re birches. “It’s odd, isn’t it?” she says.

Up a long dirt driveway, off Route 7, in Leicester, Kevin New and his cousin have converted an old goat barn into a sugarhouse. “As you can see, we don’t win awards for the looks of our shack,” he says, laughing, “but we have won awards for our maple syrup.” A sweet steam rises off the evaporator pan and he runs a skimmer through boiling sap. Along one wall he’s tacked a pair of blue ribbons from the Addison County Fair. Against the back window, stand two neat rows of mason jars filled with rich reddish syrup.

Except the syrup isn’t maple syrup. It’s birch syrup.

These may be the only two places in Vermont where birch trees are tapped.

“I heard though Facebook that there is a guy up in Franklin County who was going to try it,” New says, looking out the window, “but as far I know I’m the first one.”

What’s in Birch?

If Abby van den Berg’s uncanny research project comes back with promising results, she expects to see more Vermont maple sugarmakers adding birch syrup production into their business.

Her two-year project proposal earned an $80,307 grant from the Northeastern States Research Cooperative because of its potential to offer integrated solutions to the social, economic and ecological challenges in the Northern Forest. In April 2012, van den Berg, her colleagues Tim Perkins and Mark Isselhardt and her work-study student Teague Henkle ’14, collected sap and data from 40 birch trees in five research plots. They didn’t actually boil much of the sap into syrup – just enough to make sure it tasted right. What they really want to learn is how much sap — and sugar — birch trees produce. Van den Berg interpreted the spring 2012 data during the rest of the year and will do another round of collection this spring, weather willing.

“We want to see whether there is enough sugar produced by birches here in Vermont, using modern tools and techniques — like vacuum and reverse osmosis — to make a profitable addition to an established maple operation,” she says.

“We don’t know a lot about birch here in the Northeast,” she says, “How long is the season? How much sap do different size trees make? How much sugar will they yield? How many trees and taps would you need to be profitable?”

What’s it Worth?

Kevin New is asking himself the same questions and he’s talked with van den Berg on the phone about what they’re both learning.

Birch sap is more watery than maple sap. Typically, 40 to 60 gallons of maple sap yield one gallon of syrup. For birch sap, it’s well over a hundred gallons to one. “I’m averaging 116 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup,” New says.

This adds a tremendous amount of fuel and time to the syrup-making equation — which is one of the reasons birch syrup is rare. There are four commercial producers in Alaska, a few in British Columbia and other parts of Canada and one established maker in New Hampshire.

But the other side of the scale is this: Alaskan birch syrup is now selling for $78 per quart. One major producer there sells gallons for $328. New is testing his prices at $50 per quart. 

“Is it worth it? Will people buy it?” he says. “That’s what I need to find out.”

He’s given samples to chefs at two restaurants, he’s telling his friends and he’s letting anyone who stops by take a taste for free.

If you take a spoonful of birch syrup expecting some taste cousin to maple syrup, think again.

“I wouldn’t ruin a pancake with it,” New says, with a broad grin as he opens three small jars (from his three boiling runs to date) for sampling.

“When you say syrup, for some reason, people think of maple. It’s not!” New says. “I think it’s fruity, myself. Some people call it tangy. Some call it spicy.”

A taste from the first jar seems overly sharp with a strange after-flavor, but the second is better, delicious: sharp and sweet, with a citrusy edge. The third is the sweetest but not as interesting.

New starts to list recipes he’s heard of for birch syrup:“you’ll find it in sauces and glazes. They use it on salmon, seared scallops, glaze on chickens. You can make a pecan pie out of it,” he says. “I have a friend down the street making birch bars instead of maple bars.”

Crazy weather

Abby van den Berg, a research assistant professor in UVM’s plant biology department, would like to know whether birch products can be produced just as the maple season is wrapping up, adding to producers’ bottom line. Maple sap runs when it’s freezing at night and warmer by day. Birch sap, driven by root pressure rather than stem pressure, only starts to run when it stays above freezing in the spring. For a typical year in Vermont, this means late March into April.

But 2012 was atypical, mid March registered a record-breaking 86 degrees at the Proctor Center followed by weeks of cold and a short sap run. “This year may be a dud, but I don’t expect this project to be a dud,” van den Berg says. “I expect the numbers for this will work out.” Part of the reason for her optimism is that birch syrup production could use a great deal of the equipment already in place in an existing maple operation, “your evaporator, your sap tanks, your pumps,” van den Berg says.

“Birch trees are already present in a lot of sugarbushes,” van den Berg says. Ambitious sugarmakers could follow up their six or eight weeks of maple syrup making with two or three weeks of birch. And that would have ecological benefits too. “If birch become a species of value,” she says, “producers are more likely to want to keep them and thus keep more diversity in our forests.”

Maple syrup production seems as established a part of northern New England as, well, maple syrup on pancakes. But it’s under threat. The cost of owning land is rising, as is fuel, and other production costs. Climate change too poses a threat as the sugaring season gets shorter and the long-term viability of maples comes into question.

“We’ve had calls and interest about birch from producers all over the place,” van den Berg says. “They’re very keen to find things that will extend the season, make a little extra money — and just experiment with something new. That’s the culture of maple producers.”

Like undergraduate Teague Henkle who is helping van den Berg on the experiment. “To be honest, I’m not a big fan of how birch syrup tastes,” he says, “but it’s really interesting to be part of adding a whole new business in Vermont.”

Because omega-3 fatty acids and selenium have been recognized as nutrients of high biological value that impart health benefits, they represent promising functional food components enriched in milk and dairy products. Diets rich in these nutrients have been shown to be significant in lowering cholesterol and the risk of heart attacks.

“There is growing interest in the development of functional milk and dairy products to maximize their contribution to health promotion and disease prevention,” says Kraft.

Her two-year project began in October 2011, funded by $150,000 from UVM’s Dairy Center of Excellence. “For the current project, the plants for the oil to feed the cows were grown in Canada,” Kraft explains. “However, I’d like to see the plants grown in Vermont to encourage sustainable agriculture here.”  To incorporate the bonus of locally grown cattle feed part of the project, Kraft will ask grant funders to extend the project an additional year.

She’s supplemented her initial project with a $60,000 three-year Hatch Project ending in 2015 to test her hypothesis on an animal model and additionally “look at the cow level, that is, the objective is to improve the overall health of the cow through feeding omega-3 fatty acids,” she says.

NOT SO SIMPLE, BUT WORTH IT

Why not just add omega-3 fatty acids to milk and yogurt and skip running it through the cow altogether?

“The omega-3 fatty acids could be simply incorporated into the products,” Kraft concedes, “but one of our major goals is also to improve the cow's health, so with one strategy we will accomplish two goals: improving the healthfulness of milk and enhancing the health of the dairy cow.” Then there’s the suspended fat. “If you add fats to dairy products, you will need to emulsify it into the product,” she says. “A 'naturally enriched' product may be more appealing to or accepted by the consumer.”  Last but not least, there are a number of reasons having to do with milk chemistry. “Milk fats' composition is unique, for example, the milk fat globule membrane contains bioactive substances by itself. Milk fat is easy to digest and has a unique and desirable texture and flavor,” Kraft explains. “By simply adding the omega-3 fatty acids and/or removing milk fat, you may alter the typical and desirable flavor and texture of milk and the way it performs in recipes.”

Unfortunately, one can’t just feed cattle, say, fish oil, which is rich in omega-3 fatty acids, because the oil is toxic to the bacteria in the rumen that digest the feed in the cattle’s stomach, Kraft explains. Also, the rumen bacteria convert unsaturated fatty acids to saturated fatty acids – the opposite of our goal of adding healthful fatty acids to the diets of both cows and humans.

One “work-around” this obstacle is to add encapsulated rumen-protected oil to the feed. But ultimately, Kraft believes she will come up with a novel rumen-protected, feed source that is high in specific omega-3 fatty acids, will be good for cows that eat it and the beneficial acids will be present in their milk. To that end, she analyzes the milk for lipids and fatty acid analysis using gas chromatography to test variables such as what feed offers the highest levels of omega 3’s and what is the lowest dose cattle must receive for the benefits to show.

In related research, Kraft recently submitted a proposal to the New England Dairy Promotion Board/Vermont Dairy Promotion Council to collaborate with UVM College of Medicine to improve understanding of the role of milk fat from whole milk as an integral part of a balanced diet and its efficacy in modulating risk factors associated with metabolic syndrome. This study will be a human intervention trial.

Kraft feels that “milk fat is getting a bad rap. Milk fat contains a unique variety of bioactive fatty acids that may account for beneficial effects of milk fat. Whole-milk dairy products are an important part of a healthful diet. Balance is what is important,” she says.

“Many researchers focus on developing new products for the market, but overlook human nutrition as a component of those products,” says Kraft, who is an assistant professor of animal science. “My work is the interface between animal science and human nutrition.”

“Dr. Kraft’s research is innovative and timely with its focus on making dairy foods even more healthful in a natural way, and it fits with the multi-disciplinary expertise of the department in that it looks to improve both animal and human health,” says André-Denis Wright chair of animal science in UVM’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

In 2003, when he was in the thick of writing American Farmstead Cheese: The Complete Guide to Making and Selling Artisan Cheeses, he knew he needed a little historical context to help new farmstead cheesemakers understand the big picture. But Kindstedt easily realized that the 9,000-year history of cheese was an important story to connect today’s traditional cheesemakers with their ancient roots. What Paul Kindstedt didn’t realize is that writing that history would change the direction of his research 180 degrees.

Nine years and more than 250 pages later, in 2012, his Cheese and Culture: A History of Cheese and its Place in Western Civilization was published. This big cheese bible is a textbook, a rich backgrounder for cheese connoisseurs, a handbook for cheesemakers, a lens through which to understand history and "worth your time," high praise from "The Atlantic" magazine.

“It highlights the unique stories of traditional cheeses and thereby adds to their specialness, which is crucial for cheeses to command high prices in the marketplace,” Kindstedt says. “Several high profile cheesemongers have told me that Cheese and Culture helps them to sell artisan cheeses, and that's good for Vermont artisan cheesemakers.”

Great timing: in December, an interdisciplinary team of scholars published in the prestigious journal, “Nature,” a major discovery dating the earliest definitive evidence of cheesemaking at 5,500 B.C. in what is now Poland. As a result, Kindstedt receives requests from journalists worldwide for his comments and expertise. Kindstedt even became an animated cartoon at the hand of famed Fast Draw “investigative Cartoonist” Mitch Butler for CBS Sunday Morning on January 20.

Kindstedt built that expertise, over 26 years at UVM specializing in the chemistry, biochemistry, structure and function of cheese. Most notably, by figuring out the science behind eradicating naturally occurring calcium crystals that form on cheese, he helped major industrial cheese manufacturers produce smooth, uniform products for mass markets.

But by 2005, with the publication of American Farmstead Cheese and as co-director of UVM's Vermont Institute of Artisan Cheese, Kindstedt was at the forefront of a burgeoning movement.  In 2011 he earned a Hatch Research Incentive grant to shift his research goals toward cheesemakers specializing in small-batch, farmstead cheeses, while building on the considerable body of research he had already accomplished.

The ‘Snowflake Bentley of Cheese’

And now, radically, he’s looking at cheese crystals in quite the opposite way.

“My previous work was all about eradicating crystals – the new work is to take that base of knowledge and look at crystals as the signature of traditional cheesemaking practices and their nature,” Kindstedt says. “The hypothesis is that traditional cheeses are much more prone to forming various types crystals because of the way they’re made and aged. ”

“In European cheeses, crystals are seen as a characteristic of proper aging, a cheese without crystals will tell you the cheese wasn’t aged for as long as it should have – it’s too young a cheese for the price,” chimes in Gil Tansman, Kindstedt’s graduate student working alongside him.

That’s what these researchers will need to demonstrate scientifically and then convince artisan cheesemakers and their customers.

And they’ve found the resources for this scientific inquiry in what, at a glance, may seem two unlikely places: UVM’s geology lab and UVM College of Medicine.

It is Tansman, says Kindstedt, who on his own initiative came up with some completely unexpected tools for studying cheese crystals – tools he found in Professor John Hughes’ geology laboratory.

“The tools and techniques John Hughes uses to study moon rocks, are useful to the study of cheese,” says Tansman. The pride of the Hughes lab is an x-ray diffractometer, which irradiates crystals causing beams to diffract in specific ways. By measuring the angles of the beams, a researcher can determine the identity and atomic and molecular structure of a crystal. Combining that information with various forms of microscopy, he can create a picture of the crystal. More on that picture later.

“The amount of probing power Professor Hughes uses hasn’t been used for food science before,” says Tansman. “While he is examining an extremely well crystallized piece from a mountain, we study a less well crystallized organic substrate and a more transient matrix, still we find that there’s an overlap. We may have to try harder, to find the right samples, press them properly and deal with instrumentation, but at the end of the day, the information is there if we use the techniques developed by other disciplines.” Tansman’s x-ray crystallography patterns suggest that each kind of cheese displays unique crystals.

Meanwhile, Kindstedt has asked the staff in UVM Medical College’s Microscopy Imaging Center to train Tansman this semester to use its electron microscopy instruments. ‘Some of the same equipment used to study cancer cells, such as dissecting microscopy platforms, are fantastic for cheese,” says Kindstedt.

Kindstedt is excited to see “food science research drawing bits and pieces from both geology and medicine,” in the same way that his books draw from the fields of archaeology and anthropology to bring new understanding and information to the very core characteristics that define artisan cheese.

What’s more, those cheese crystal images from the geology lab turn out to be, well, art, not unlike the famous snowflake images first photographed by Vermonter Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley in the early 1900s.

"Gil Tansman is the Snowflake Bentley of Cheese," says Kindstedt. "Gil is making it possible to see those crystals at the microscopic level – they’re really a thing of beauty – that’s what Snowflake Bentley was doing. Crystals show off some of the attributes that make these cheeses so desirable – their hand-craftedness – it’s a signature to be celebrated. And if you look at that at the microscopic level we show people that these are works of art.”

Between 2000 and 2010, Vermont’s Latino population grew 24 times faster than its overall population, and the two largest dairy producing counties, Addison and Franklin, tallied 73 and 111 percent increases respectively. That said, the actual numbers are small – an estimated 1,200-1,500 workers in a state of 626,000 people. Still, this represents a significant demographic shift for a state where Spanish is rarely spoken.

“Public concern about how migrant workers were being treated was raised in 2009 when a young Mexican worker was killed in an accident on a Vermont dairy farm. This accident highlighted the lack of objective data about how workers are faring in Vermont,” Dan Baker wrote in the “Journal of Agromedicine” in an article published in July 2012.

“Little is known about who these workers are, how they view dairy farm employment, or how they differ from dairy farm workers who from Vermont and what their health needs are,” says Baker a UVM assistant professor of community development and applied economics. That’s why he, research specialist David Chappelle are among the UVM faculty and staff who are conducting several studies and programs.

RESULTS MAY INFORM POLICY, CHANGE

Baker’s three-year, $60,000, USDA Hatch-funded project, which ended in 2010, tried to understand the broader issues faced by dairy farm labor in Vermont. Through surveys, analysis of secondary data and collaboration with partner organizations, he’s gathered statistics such as those below that build a picture of the state of Vermont’s work force. Most importantly, it includes the perspectives of both farm managers and farm workers and how they affect Vermont’s economy and communities. For example:

• 78 percent, of farmers surveyed believe that there is a shortage of domestic labor.
• Hispanic workers put in more hours than their domestic counterparts, 70 compared to 50 hours a week, and say they want to put in more hours.
• Although few farmers speak Spanish and few workers speak English, farmers report being pleased with their Hispanic workers and 90 percent of workers report they’re satisfied with their jobs and felt they were treated well.
• The main concern farmers expressed about hiring Hispanic workers was potential legal repercussions.
• The greatest challenge most workers report is isolation. And other studies point to workers suffering from a number of work-related injuries and diseases and high levels of depression and anxiety.

“The results of this study will contribute to a more detailed understanding of the situation faced by the state's farming sector and the policy alternatives available to address agricultural labor issues,” says Baker. “It is also of use to other states and regions facing similar changes in their farm labor work force.”

Baker has delivered survey findings at an annual roundtable discussion on the state of Vermont’s agricultural work force, testified before Vermont Senate and House committees, written articles and delivered remarks at conferences and meetings such as the Northeast Organic Farming Winter Conference, Vermont Farm Bureau annual meeting and to the Vermont Agency of Agriculture.

The need for further research and discussion can only continue as does the increase in the Latino population and the need for solutions to make Vermont’s agricultural work force just and sustainable. In 2011, he led a one-year project investigating migrant health issues in Vermont. In 2012, Baker received a two-year, $30,000 USDA Hatch fund grant to study anxiety and depression among migrant farm workers.


The 11 recommendations in the report of the advisory group, chaired by Nicholas Donofrio, former executive vice president for innovation at IBM, all advance the goals of creating a sustainable relationship between Vermont and UVM, while preparing students for the jobs of the future. Key among these is the concept of an innovation center, which would put UVM as a hub from which to reach across the state and beyond to public and private sectors in order to foster innovation, research, entrepreneurship and job creation. Work has been initiated to create a clearinghouse for resources already available at UVM, the state colleges, other institutions of higher education, state government and the private sector.  

John Evans, president of the Vermont Technology Council said the Technology Council was pleased to collaborate with UVM on the new center. “There are a tremendous number of resources already available, and we need to put them to work,” he said. 

Bramley served as UVM’s interim president from August 2011 to July 2012. Before that he was department chair of animal sciences, dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and provost and senior vice president of the university. In 2006 he served as acting president during President Daniel Mark Fogel’s illness. From 2007 to 2011 he was president and CEO of the Windham Foundation, the largest private foundation registered in Vermont. 

The higher education advisory group’s report, titled “New Ideas for Changing Times: Strengthening the Partnership Between the State of Vermont and the University of Vermont,” was released in June.

As philosophers are wont to do, he made his points Socratically, by asking audience members how they would react to a series of progressively thorny ethical dilemmas.

“There's a girl drowning in a puddle outside the Davis Center,” he began, gazing innocently at the audience. "Should you save her?" Of course, a woman near the front replied. “What if the puddle was very deep?” he added. Still yes. “What if it was burning hot, like lava,” he elaborated impishly. A nodding affirmative. “If it paralyzed you from the waist down?” Yes, again. “Is there any cost you would not pay?” he asked the impressively altruistic audience member with a smile, after pausing for effect.

Doggett's drift, in part, was to unpack an unspoken assumption behind an Economist cover story that had caught his attention titled “Feeding the World.” Unexamined by the magazine, Doggett pointed out, was the question of whether we should feed the world, especially when the many and varied costs of such an endeavor were taken into account.

“Everyone thinks you should save the child if there’s no cost,” he said, returning to his example. “It becomes significantly less plausible if you jack the cost up.”

But his real point was about the need for transdisciplinarity in addressing problems, including those related to the food system.

“Philosophy has nothing to say about what the costs are, but a lot to say about whether or not you should pay them,” he said. “Philosophy is important, but it’s not enough.” For example, an agro-economist, like Doggett’s fellow faculty member Ernesto Mendez, might be a good partner in integrating the “should” and “how” elements of the Economist cover story.

Such transdisciplinary coalitions of the willing –  where to find them, how to build them, how to make them work – were the theme of the day at the symposium, titled “The Cultivation of Collaboration: Increasing Our Impact on the Food System.”

“That’s OK”

Partnerships can evolve almost serendipitously, said John Barlow, assistant professor of animal science, who spoke about a new transdisciplinary project he participates in that addresses artisanal cheesemakers’ ability to minimize food safety risks and understand consumer needs. The project's six-member team includes Catherine Donnelly in nutrition and food science, an expert in foodborne pathogens; Jane Hill in engineering, an environmental engineer who focuses on microbial activity; and David Conner, an agricultural economist in the department of community development and applied economics.

Barlow met Donnelly through normal channels – both are faculty members in animal, nutrition and food sciences graduate program and colleagues in UVM's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. But he met Conner at a new faculty oriention and Hill through the Vermont Center for Immunology and Infectious Diseases (COBRE).

“Some of it was dumb luck and random chance,” Barlow said. “That’s OK. Another way to look at that is you’re watching and thinking about what’s going on, and identifying potential opportunities for future use.”

Power of partnering

Another presentation given by Linda Berlin, director of UVM’s Center for Sustainable Agriculture, was all about the power of partnering. Her project addresses how better to serve so called “food deserts” – places where people, often of low-income, have limited access to grocery stores and limited transportation, and so are "food insecure" in a variety of ways. Her research is part of a large USDA grant involving several schools, including UVM. 

The goal of the grant is to improve access to healthy food for underserved populations by better understanding what a regional food system means and how it works. The project encompasses nine communities in the Northeast, including Essex County in Vermont where it focuses on two independent grocery stores.

Ultimate transdisciplinarity

In the last presentation of the day, Amy Trubek, associate professor of nutrition and food sciences, gave an overview on the new food systems masters degree program. It is one of the most transdisciplinary programs on campus. 

Thirty faculty members affiliated with the program are doing many kinds of food systems research, she said, from the work Jane Kolidinsky, chair of community development and applied economics, is doing on obesity; to work by Chris Koliba, director of the master's in public administration program, on food systems policy. Students can work with any faculty member in the program, which is both an opportunity and, given their large number, a challenge. Discussions are under way, she said, to improve ways for faculty and graduate students to find one another.

The symposium also included a panel of representatives from Green Mountain College, Vermont Technical College and Vermont Law School on opportunities for cross-institutional collaboration. The symposium's keynote speaker, Wouter Van Hoven, who was to speak about African food security, was stranded in Boston by Hurricane Sandy. Diane Imrie, director of food services at Fletcher Allen Health Care, took his place. 

Douglas Lantagne, dean of UVM Extension and interim director of the Food Systems Spire, said he was very happy with the symposium, which was attended by about 100 people, but he is eager to do more. “When you get people together to network, great things come out of it,” he said. “I have to figure out how to do that more frequently, not just at the Food Summit and the Food Symposium. That’s what I’m going to be working on – more frequency and less logistical planning.”

Driven by a lack of laborers on the state’s 1,007 dairy farms, Vermont’s Latino population has grown 24 times faster than the state's total population between 2000 and 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Since 2007, more than 50 percent of the milk in the 12th-largest milk producing state in the nation was harvested by the hands of Latino migrant workers, according to the Agency of Agriculture, making Vermont one of America’s new Latino destinations.

With such a dramatic demographic change come a host of new issues related to health, education, language, law enforcement and immigration, especially in the state’s two largest agricultural counties, where Latino populations increased by 73 percent and 111 percent, respectively. Dan Baker, assistant professor in Community Development and Applied Economics, has produced some of the first survey data in the nation on the health of migrant workers on dairy farms based on interviews with 120 Latino workers on 59 dairy farms that included self-assessment health status information and perceived barriers to healthcare.

The results, published in the article, "Health Status and Needs of Latino Dairy Farm Workers in Vermont," in the July 2012 issue of the Journal of Agromedicine showed that migrant workers rarely seek medical attention despite experiencing back and neck pain, dental issues, allergies, flu, rashes or skin problems, eye and vision issues, gastrointestinal problems, and psychological issues such as anxiety, depression and isolation. The top reason for not seeking medical attention was “fear of immigration/law enforcement,” followed by language barriers, lack of transportation and cost of care.

Consequently, most Latino workers wait until they return to Mexico to access medical care, according to Baker, who cites community-based initiatives involving greater education and outreach to farmers about health resources for migrants, including partnerships with colleges and universities, and the adoption of “bias-free policing” that enables foreign-born workers to travel to clinics without concern about deportation, as strategies that may reduce barriers to care.

“There were a number of surprising findings,” says Baker. “Many of the workers reported feeling healthy, but workers have been in Vermont a relatively short time, so there hasn’t been time for chronic issues to develop. There were a high percentage of people who reported feeling depression and anxiety most likely because they are so isolated on Vermont farms and far from home.”

Conducting research with impact

Baker’s current study flows from 2007 research focusing on language barriers between Vermont farm owners and Hispanic dairy workers, resulting in the launching of the Vermont Dairy Spanish Program through the Vermont Agency of Agriculture. Farmers “made significant improvement in their ability to understand and adapt to a foreign labor force” after taking the course, writes Baker in an article in the June 2012 edition of the Journal of Extension,“ In Vermont, "Se Habal Espanol: Using Occupational Spanish to Help Dairy Farmers manage a Changing Workforce.” His recommendations for designing the course have been used by other governmental agencies. They include the prioritizing of phrase lists that farmers use most frequently; addressing cultural barriers to communication as well as language; emphasizing repetition and memorization; and being flexible in course design.

“It has been an evolving process of figuring out what type of useful research we can provide to help Vermont deal with an influx of Spanish workers in the state,” says Baker, who organized two statewide roundtable discussions at UVM in February on issues related to Latino immigrants. “We’re focused on sharing our research with policy makers, health clinics and groups focused on immigrant well-being like Migrant Justice because they can make a difference in the lives of the people who need it most.”

Putting a face on the statistics

Health and safety issues on farms came to the forefront in 2009 when José Obeth Santis Cruz was killed in a Vermont farming accident. The death of Cruz played a key role in the co-founding of Burlington-based immigrant advocacy group Migrant Justice by UVM alumnus Brendan O’Neill G’05 and with major support from founding member Natalia Fajardo ’06, both of whom have worked tirelessly on behalf of Latinos living in Vermont. They’ve found Baker’s research useful, especially when trying to humanize the data.

“We try to get people to think of immigrants as more than work machines and more in terms of a shared humanity – to value each other beyond what we can contribute to an industry,” says O’Neill. “Dan has sought to objectively identify problems. He does numbers, and we do the stories behind them. He provides helpful academic background and research data, and we’re mobilizing to change some of the outcomes. It works well together.” 

Danilo Lopez is one of the faces behind the numbers. After working on a farm in Charlotte in 2009 he started advocating on behalf of fellow migrant workers and is now in a leadership and advocacy role at Migrant Justice. Lopez, who is spearheading Migrant Justice’s driver's license campaign, says Vermont is a welcoming place that cares about its people and communities, but that because it’s very rural and white, migrant workers are often treated as outsiders and experience discrimination.

“Migrant workers are afraid to leave the farm or don’t have transportation,” says Lopez, who has been harassed by state and federal officials and had a customer at Wal-Mart call border patrol after hearing him speaking Spanish. “Migrant workers should be able to drive (legally) to the store, because right now they are working hard to produce milk that they can’t even buy at the store.”

Dairy industry would crash without migrant workers

The State of Vermont has relied on information and research from Migrant Justice and Baker, who testified before the Vermont Senate Agriculture Committee in February of 2012. In his report, “Public Policy Research: Implications for Foreign Labor Policy in Vermont,” Baker presented survey data from farmers, Latino workers, domestic workers and some of the first opinion-based information gathered from the general public.

If legislators, who are well aware that the dairy industry accounts for more than 65 percent of total state farm receipts in 2011, were concerned about passing laws that might not sit well with voters, Baker’s presentation may have put them at ease.

In short, he found that 49 percent of Vermonters view the impact of undocumented workers on Vermont communities as “generally positive” with another 32 another percent feeling “neither positive nor negative.” With just under 63 percent “strongly disagreeing” that undocumented farm workers take jobs away from Vermonters and 59 percent believing that undocumented farm workers are helping Vermont farms stay in business, it’s not surprising that 82.6 percent of Vermonters are in favor of a guest worker program that allows foreign laborers to work legally on Vermont dairy farms for up to three years.

“That’s the contradiction,” O’Neill says. “We have a community that our government is unwilling to recognize, yet the state’s economy is heavily dependent on migrant labor. Our dairy economy would completely crash if there was a sweep by border patrol or immigration.”

Laggis is quick to credit the help of many University of Vermont students for the DREAM activity, which was really the warm-up to a hike that the teens participated in the following weekend on Vermont's Long Trail. The Long Trail hike was part of the Outing Club's new Catamountain Classic – an attempt to hike the entirety of the Long Trail in groups in a single weekend.

But credit, she says, is especially due to her friend Avi Kurganoff, a UVM student who passed away in March 2012.

This effort to get underprivileged Burlington youth into the woods was the concept behind Kurganoff's impact plan, a project required of all members of UVM's Dewey House for Civic Engagement, the residential learning community dedicated to service where Laggis and Kurganoff met as first-year students. 

"He created this plan, but he was never able to implement it," Laggis says. "After he passed away, there was so much sadness. All the groups he had been a part of were devastated." Drawn together to mourn, new alliances started to form. With the help of DREAM and the Outing Club, the Dewey House, led by Laggis, set to work to carry out his vision.

The weekend of Sept. 29 and 30, nearly 40 clubs, groups and campus organizations hiked Long Trail routes of varying difficulty, all together covering the entirety of the 272-mile Long Trail. The teenaged DREAM mentees and their mentors hiked a two-mile portion in southern Vermont, ending at Little Rock Pond. Kurganoff's family joined them. The event's registration fees were donated, in his memory, to a scholarship fund that will enable a DREAM youth to attend an Outward Bound course, a program Kurganoff completed when he was a young teen.

"In terms of who Avi was and what his objectives were in life, to give the scholarship to a DREAM student is well aligned," says Outing Club adviser John Abbott. Hosting the Catamountain Classic was long a goal of the Outing Club, he says, and organizing it in memory of Kurganoff was a perfect fit. "I can't give enough credit to Joe Kassay, Sara Stanton and Kathryn Martin," Abbott says, the students – friends of Kurganoff's – who helped on the Outing Club's end to organize the event and fundraiser.

Dreams realized

The project is one that helped Laggis, last July, earn a nationally competitive Pearson Prize for Higher Education, that honors students who have completed at least one year of college and have demonstrated community service leadership. She was chosen as one of 20 winners, out of more than 20,000 applicants, who received $10,000 to help defray the cost of college, as well as guidance, support and training from the Pearson Foundation around endeavors in community involvement and social entrepreneurship. 

It was Carrie Williams Howe, course instructor for "Rebuilding Vermont," the service-learning course Laggis took following the devastation of Tropical Storm Irene at the beginning of her sophomore year, who encouraged Laggis to apply. "Hillary quickly emerged as an engaged and passionate student in our class," Williams Howe says, adding that Laggis, a Hardwick, Vt. native, has "an ability to genuinely relate to people with whom she is volunteering, to really listen to them, and do amazing work without asking for any credit. You could tell she was doing her best work not for the grade, but in order to meaningfully contribute to recovery for her fellow Vermonters."

"The 'Rebuilding Vermont' class really opened a ton of doors for me, beyond just the Pearson Prize," Laggis says. "It was my favorite class I've ever taken at UVM. It was the first time I was actually able to apply everything I'd learned in the classroom immediately in the field." It led to another opportunity this past summer for Laggis: an internship using knowledge from her public communications major working for the Irene Recovery Office in Montpelier, an area of work she says she might like to explore after graduation.

In the meantime, she's using the resources available to her through the Pearson Foundation to make "Avi's Adventures" – bi-semester excursions to the woods – a sustainable program and a permanent collaboration between DREAM and the Outing Club. 

"It's really a mutually beneficial experience for everyone," she says. "The Outing Club gets to give back. DREAM gets to work with the Outing Club. And besides it being really exciting for our kids to do the outdoor adventure, they're directly benefiting from this scholarship fund."

Beyond national awards, Laggis can rejoice in meeting another goal: the sounds of adventure and exploration echoing around Centennial Woods are testament to Avi Kurganoff's dream realized.

Our College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) played a significant roll in the ceremony. Among attendees, Professors David Barrington served on the presidential search committee, Robert Tyzbir was University Marshal, CALS senior Maria Carabello carried the College's banner and Tom Vogelmann sat among the deans.

in perhaps prophetic remarks by Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin, Vermont's U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, University of Minnesota President Emeritus Robert Bruininks and the 42nd U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale charged Sullivan with the tasks of making tough decisions and at the same time collaborating with and inspiring others. As Mondale said, “A president… must unite imagination and vision with practical know-how and be ready to make progress the old-fashioned way: through hard work and determination.” 

Sullivan outlined his plan for UVM, just as he has since his arrival in July to smaller groups on campusi, in his statewide travels,to the media and again Oct. 9 in an email to the UVM community:

1. “We must provide our students access to success through more scholarships and financial aid.  Affordability must be our top priority! 
2. We must advance academic excellence by rebalancing priorities and investing in this University’s strengths to create a distinctive teaching and learning environment. 
3. We must improve facilities and support creative endeavors and breakthrough research for our faculty and staff to attract and retain talent of the highest quality.
4. Central to our mission are public service, civic engagement, and outreach throughout Vermont to further economic development, health, civic life, and environmental sustainability.  We seek to inspire students to apply what they learn here and to build vibrant communities wherever they live.”

See the whole slide show of UVM College of Agriculture and Life Sciences people as they played their part in this historic rite of passage. (©Stephen Mease Photography).

Here is the UVM slide show by uvmphoto ©Sally McCay. 

But wait a minute. Words can't begin to describe the way photographs do how students, faculty and staff welcomed visitors and how much fun families and alumni had, so let's cut right to the SLIDE SHOW of cute animals and children and folks you know. Then read on, if you will.

On Friday in classes as complex as Laura Almstead's Survey of Biochemistry and Jenny Wilkinson's Horse Health and Disease, parents were spotted in the back rows. One anonymous couple who had majored in chemistry and biology respectively admitted they wanted to see if they could actually understand what their daughter was learning. An animated Almstead walked up and down the aisles waving her arms, challenging students to commit to answers with their iClickers, then shook her head, urging them to talk it over, do better. She could instantly see their choices on computer screen.

Saturday's rain made the indoor chat with Dean Tom Vogelmann all the more popular as dozens stopped by to hear about the College's continued rapid growth to 1,245 undergraduate and 146 graduate students this year, $3.1 million in research grants brought to the College by its scientists and some of the state-of-the art facilities where even undergrads can conduct research with their mentors in addition to classroom learning. But talk was informal. Families from Washington, Oregon, California flew to Vermont to see how their first-year students were doing. The answer was: doing very well. Alumni like John Vanderpol of Hudson, Massachusetts and Steve Hancock from Dartmouth, Massachusetts came back to campus to see old friends, former professors and how the place has changed. The both graduated in Plant and Soil Science in 1987. 

But a hub of activity was the UVM Farms where cattle and horses were on display and equestrian demonstrations were a hit even with folks not familiar with agriculture.

Thousands of visitors converged on campus for Reunion and Homecoming. Many came to see the ceremonial installation of Thomas Sullivan as the University of Vermont's 26th president on Friday, Oct. 5.

That makes it sound easy. It wasn't, of course.

Her professor told the story. "In fall of 2009 during my lecture on ways to minimize the environmental impact of horses and incorporate renewable energy sources for equine facilities, I lamented that when the Hardacre Equine Center was built in 1999, solar wasn't an option,  said Josie Davis, associate dean of UVM's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and an equine studies program lecturer. "After class, Rachel suggested that the newly formed UVM Clean Energy Fund might fund a solar array on the equine facility roof. Then she added, 'but the deadline for grants is this Sunday.'"

"Isn't it crazy that we have this enormous south-facing roof on the equine center and there are no solar panels?" Cadwallader-Staub asked with determination. "If you are game, I think I have time to do the leg work."

Davis, who is overseeing the long-term revitalization of UVM Farms, gave Cadwallader-Staub the blueprints, contact information on builders and the electric company and offered advice while away at a conference. They beat the deadline by an hour.

Not only was the proposal funded, it was one of the best the decisionmakers had reviewed, said Gioia Thompson, director of UVM's Office of Sustainability, which oversees the Fund. The Fund, launched in 2008, is fed by a $10 per semester student fee. That adds up to $225,000 annually destined to create new clean energy projects on campus. This is the newest of 21 Clean Energy Fund projects so far that demonstrate that small donations can have a huge impact when a community combines efforts.

The total cost of the solar array was $135,990; the Clean Energy Fund supplied $80,250 and a $55,740 incentive grant from the state's Clean Energy Development Fund made up the difference. 

What's Under the Roof

The rooftop panels were completed this summer, and the system went active in September. In the barn, the ticking sound in a grey metal wall-mounted box is like the sound of coins dropping into a bank. The system will produce a daily average of 100 kilowatt hours of electricity – enough for 8 1/2 percent of the University's Miller Research Farms electrical needs (or the equivalent power for six medium sized homes).

For every kilowatt hour of electricity the solar array produces, UVM gains a value of roughly 20 cents: about 14 cents for the average retail price of a kilowatt of electricity it doesn’t need to buy plus a six cent solar premium that Green Mountain Power pays for every kilowatt generated. Bottom line: The credit program should generate about $8,000 per year, allowing UVM to repay its initial investment in 10 years.

If UVM Farms Can Do It, Maybe Others Can Too

“We hope the solar panel project will spark discussion about costs, sustainability and clean energy, as well as demonstrate the nuts and bolts of how and where solar panels can be installed, said Tom Vogelmann, who leads UVM’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences as its dean. “As a land-grant institution, UVM needs to model the most innovative ways of contributing to the viability of agriculture in our state.”

UVM Farms solar array also makes use of a much underutilized resource on Vermont farms – rooftops, pointed out Clark Hinsdale, president of the Vermont Farm Bureau, who says he sees the value of farmers replicating this concept when it becomes cost effective. “Most agricultural businesses have a lot of roof space,” he said. “Solar is a renewable resource that doesn’t have to use land and can be a nice supplemental income source for farmers.”

"It started as a really crazy idea and a great dream," said Rachel Cadwallader-Staub, who now works as manager of Shelburne Farms children's farmyard. "But if you don't try, the answer is 'no.'" Jeff Wakefield contributed to this story.

But in 2003, when he was in the thick of writing American Farmstead Cheese: The Complete Guide to Making and Selling Artisan Cheeses, he knew he need a little historical context to help new farmstead cheesemakers today understand the big picture. But Kindsted easily realized that the 9,000-year history of cheese was, well, it's another story. He knew there was an important story to tell, one that would connect today’s traditional cheesemakers with their ancient roots, but it would require much deeper research.

Nine years and more than 250 pages later he tells that story in the recently published, Cheese and Culture: A History of Cheese and its Place in Western Civilization. This big cheese bible is not only a textbook, but a rich backgrounder for cheese aficionados, handbook for cheesemakers, lens through which to understand history and "worth your time," according to critics such as "The Atlantic" magazine.

Kindstedt's expertise is, according to his curriculum vitae, in the technology of cheesemaking physicochemical and biochemical processes that influence the functional characteristics of mozzarella. He built his career helping large industrial cheese producers perfect their products for a mass market.

But Kindstedt began to change course in 2005 with the publication of American Farmstead Cheese and his role as co-director of UVM's Vermont Institute of Artisan Cheese.

Helping small producers flourish became the rationale for following a trail of sometimes obscure references to cheese in art, religion, literature, classics, archeochemistry, archeoclimatology and more.… areas both foreign and thrilling to Kindstedt. Wherever a specialist in one of these areas made a passing reference to cheese, the scientist, looking through “a different set of eyes,” found a piece of his complex puzzle (“Whoa, that’s global climate change shifting the whole direction of cheesemaking in Europe!” he said, as an example). Eventually, painstakingly he built, for instance, the first comprehensive narrative of when, how and why hard sheep pecorino cheese was developed in one region and soft-ripened cow’s milk cheeses in another.

Kindstedt tells the reader how the landscape, the climate, the economy, the politics shaped the cheese and, equally so, how cheese came to shape the cultural identity of the people and the place where it’s made. It’s not an understatement, Kindstedt says: “Cheese helped shaped everything in terms of who we are.”

Like Salt: A World History, Spice: The History of a Temptation, Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World,  and several other comprehensive nonfiction history books on the likes of sugar, chocolate and even the banana, published since the new milennium, Cheese and Culture postulates that this food changed the course of history.

Molding tradition

Kindstedt's tale of cheesemaking began around 7000 B.C. as devastating overuse of land in the once Fertile Crescent of western Asia began to be used for grazing ruminant animals instead of growing crops. The advent of pottery allowed for collecting milk combined with the realization that adults (then universally lactose intolerant) could consume dairy foods if coagulated and the whey was drawn off —  cheese became a food staple.

Jumping forward several millennia, Kindstedt argues that the Roman Empire lasted 500 years, at least in part, because Romans were accomplished cheesemakers. “The reason why they were able to hold these vast areas,” he says, “is because when they set up a fort or new province they immediately established an agricultural installation. They took the technology of sheep milk cheesemaking — and wool production for blankets and clothing — and made that the basis of a military provisioning network that enabled them to permanently station a half million troops on a 10,000-mile border.”

A favorite example of Kindstedt’s that gets to the synergy between the place and the cheese is the rugged alpine cheeses of central Europe. That story begins around the start of the fourth millennium B.C. when there was a dramatic global climate shift that led to long, severe winters and warmer wetter summers in this part of Europe, wreaking havoc on the Neolithic peoples huddled in the river valleys along the Danube and the Rhine, most of the land being too heavily forested to cultivate crops or graze animals. But over the long term, the extreme cold caused forestlands to thin, enabling people to move to higher ground, clear and cultivate fields. It also caused tree lines to recede down alpine slopes as much as a thousand vertical feet. By 2500 B.C. there’s evidence of people moving animals up the mountaintops to graze in the summer, turning their milk into hard cheese to stockpile for the winter while cultivating crops below.

What began, then, as a survival strategy became an embedded part of the culture in many parts of Austria and Switzerland. “It persists to this day,” says Kindstedt, “because it’s part of local life, part of local identity. The movement of the animals up in the spring becomes this enormous cultural celebration  — when they come back down there’s another celebration. It’s part of the identity of the people themselves.”

Kindstedt believes that Americans have historically missed out on this deep connection between place and food that is demonstrated throughout the pages of his book, Cheese and Culture. “Those traditional technologies that did arrive (in America) from Europe were changed as the cheese industry changed,” he says. Americans’ lack of a shared identity around food, Kindstedt believes, is due to its relentlessly mobile society in contrast to Europe, where people have commonly lived and died in the same place where their great grandparents did. “We’re always moving,” he says. “Culture is shared collective experience over time."

The immense popularity and award-winning international respect of small-batch farmstead cheeses, especially from Vermont; the success of the nation's only center for teaching and research on farmstead cheeses — UVM's Vermont Institute of Artisan Cheese; and the prestigious acclaim of Paul Kindstedt's Cheese and Culture: A History of Cheese and its Place in Western Civilization, a story told with the precision of a scientist and the devotion of a cheese connoisseur; are all signs that the tide of American food culture may be turning. And not a moment too soon.

~LeeAnn Cox and Cheryl Dorschner contributed to this article.

Attaining national accreditation has been a long-term goal of the MPA faculty since relocating to the Community Development & Applied Economics Department in 2001 after years of moving between departments. The program has steadily grown in numbers and quality over the last decade, achieving national ranking by U.S News and World Report for the first time in 2011.

To date, 169 programs have earned NASPAA accreditation. Accredited programs "must contribute to the knowledge, research, and practice of public service, establish observable goals and outcomes, and use information about their performance to guide program improvement." They must also practice truth in advertising and ensure their students achieve learning objectives in five domains essential to public service.

Founded in 1986 by an interdisciplinary group of faculty committed to advancing UVM's capacity to serve and support the region's public and nonprofit managers, the UVM MPA Program's mission-driven emphasis on democratic governance has attracted students from around the world. The MPA is headquartered in Morrill Hall in the department of community development and applied economics. 

“We like to think that Allbee and Pankey’s strong ties to the University of Vermont contributed to their receiving their lifetime achievement awards, and it makes the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences proud to have worked closely with them,” remarked Tom Vogelmann, dean of the College.

The 2012 awardees: Pankey, Allbee, Stephen Woodard, Anne Burke and David Grimm, were honored at a luncheon attended by about 100 people, including two governors. The honorees join 44 others who have been recognized since 2003. The Hall of Fame is an entrance to the Champlain Valley Exposition’s Miller Building that is lined with black and white photographic portraits of award winners.

At the Milking Stanchion,

Pankey Raised the Bar on Cleanliness

When he was a UVM research professor, Woody Pankey became renowned for his mastitis research on cattle and especially breakthrough udder cleansing techniques known as “pre-dip” and “post-dip,” that have become widely used nationwide. Perhaps not so widely known though, that the general public would get the reference “DIP-IT” on his auto license plate, nonetheless, it was a trademark among colleagues.

Then he turned his research to biological, non-germicide mastitis controls that were safer for farmers and cattle and more economical. Over the years Pankey taught courses such as Career Seminar, took on the role of dairy Extension specialist, and served on many committees at UVM and in state and national associations until his death in 2,000.

Pankey earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in bacteriology from Louisiana Tech University and his doctorate in microbiology from Louisiana State University. He worked at LSU for 10 years researching mastitis, until 1984, when he joined the animal science department Quality Milk Research Lab at UVM’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences as a research professor.

“Farmers working alongside Woody were viewed (by him) as open minded, educated and energetic collaborators,” said Jackie Folsom, reading the posthumous citation. “These qualities, along with his energy, productivity and reputation for generating outstanding research were key ingredients in his recipe for success.” Folsom, chair of the Hall of Fame committee, led the awards luncheon.

Former UVM provost and interim president John Bramley accepted the award on behalf of the Pankey family. Bramley, who himself was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2003, had been chair of UVM animal science during Pankey’s tenure there.

Pankey’s wife “Phyllis is proud of Woody and grateful to the nominators who recognize his work not only in the Vermont dairy industry but in the global dairy industry,” said Bramley. “He conducted astounding research and scholarship and was one of the most warm, honest and caring individuals on this planet.”

Allbee was Early Advocate

for Buying Local and Direct from Farmer

Roger Allbee is chair of the University of Vermont College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Advisory Board. He was Vermont Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets under Gov. Jim Douglas.

Among his many affiliations, previously he was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives committee on agriculture and executive director of the USDA Farm Service Agency in Vermont. Albee developed strong relationships with Quebec and France – countries that celebrate and promote their place-based foods. He was lauded as among the first to envision that application for Vermont products.

In addition, “his work on the Vermont housing and conservation board brought a ‘working landscape’ persepctive to farmland conservation,” said Folsom. “He linked tourism and economic development to agriculture in a very public way.”

Allbee was also vice president and senior staff of the former Farm Credit Banks of Springfield and a Cornell University Extension specialist. Today he is a senior scholar in residence and advisor on agriculture and food systems to the President of Vermont Technical College, an author and opinion columnist of the well known “What Ceres Says” blog.

Vermont Lieut. Gov. Phil Scott presented the award to Allbee.

“Any estate that has one penny, or more, can be the cause of a fight.”

“A Vermont farmer would rather endure three weeks of below zero weather, than talk about his feelings.”

These are just a few of Bob Parsons favorite sayings, oft repeated during his talks to farmers on how to transfer businesses, estates and assets. Parsons, an agricultural economist with both the University of Vermont College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) and UVM Extension, gives about five such talks and workshops every year throughout the U.S. His headquarters are in Morrill Hall in the department of community development and applied economics.

Before an audience, Parsons is animated and engenders bursts of laughter, not just the nervous laughter of recognition and discomfort about planning for the afterlife either.

Making the Most of a Legacy

The audience for “Farm Transfer & Succession Planning” one day in January was the Vermont Christmas Tree Growers Association gathered at the Vermont Farm Show in Essex Junction. They were there to grapple with the same issues that any property owner faces unless he wants to cash out his assets. Parsons led listeners through the personal issues such as procrastination, fairness versus equity and children’s interests and abilities to inherit family businesses. He highlighted tax law changes, estate planning basics and various transfer options. His is also a crash course in business structure.

He speaks from research: Parsons’ material comes from a four-year, nationwide comprehensive study of the ways families transfer their small and medium-sized farms to the next generation – a critical component to the future of U.S. agriculture. The study was funded by a $468,000 USDA National Research Initiative grant and five grants from the Northeast Center for Risk Management Education totaling $265,000. His conclusions mirror Vermont's farm landscape. The average age of a farmer nowadays is 57, a decade older than in the 1970s. Trends show more absentee landowners and more complicated regulations. On the other hand, the number of small farms is on the increase as are efforts to preserve farmland. That’s why Parson’s presentations resonate with his audiences.

He speaks from experience: Parsons tells the tale of his own dad, 88, who created a business plan to hand over his Pennsylvania farm to his adult children yet routinely plans which trees to plant next year. “Now that is long-range planning,” says Parsons, confessing that his dad wasn’t always so well organized. “In the 1980s on the way into heart surgery, he asked his wife not to sell the farm.”

Parsons leaves his audiences with plenty to think about, a 12-page PowerPoint handout and the suggestion that they contact the University of New Hampshire for its websites and course tapes.

“This was helpful for a lot of people here,” said James Horst, surveying the crowd of about 60 attendees that day. His take-away message was “people – the spouse and kids – have to be all thinking and acting in the same direction.” Horst, a Bennington tree farmer with some 300 acres, says he has been through farm transfer as a recipient. And now he’s on the giving end.

“My kids are young, in their twenties – they need time to decide what they want to do,” he says, so his plan includes, “I’ve got to keep alive for a long time.”

Williams, himself a former Peace Corps volunteer, spoke about a sometimes overlooked third goal of the organization: for volunteers to make a difference when they return home. In addition to the handful of audience members who affirmed their service as volunteers, he congratulated two Vermonters in attendance, John William Meyer of Shelburne, a 2010 Middlebury College graduate who recently completed his service as a youth development volunteer in Peru, and UVM doctoral student Charles Kerchner of Burlington, who served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic from 2001-2003.

Kerchner took to the podium to outline his “Two Worlds — One Bird” project, an alliance he founded to protect endangered rainforest in the Caribbean and save the threatened Bicknell’s Thrush, a songbird that migrates from Vermont and the northeast to the Dominican and Haiti. Using his Peace Corps background as an agro forestry specialist, Kerchner imports organic cacao from the Dominican to manufacture Kerchner Artisan Chocolate in Vermont. The business partnership helps the cacao farmers to improve earnings while conserving land in the rainforest canopy to protect the Thrush and other migratory songbirds. Kerchner earned his master's degree from UVM College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in the department of community development and applied economics.

His work received initial funding through small donations at the Henderson Café cash register about five years ago, an amount leveraged to $1.25 million as the project has grown in the years since. Kerchner spoke of his work with Bicknell's Thrush as symbolic of the goals of the Peace Corps, one that celebrates the "shared values and morals between countries" and showcases the "compounding impact" of serving in the Corps.

Vermont is nationally ranked on the 2011 Peace Corps Top State list for per-capita volunteer production with 47 currently-serving Peace Corps volunteers. Historically, Vermont has produced 1,422 Peace Corps volunteers who have helped promote a better understanding between Americans and the people of the 139 countries in which they have served. 

The University of Vermont ranks No. 5 on the 2012 top Peace Corps volunteer-producing colleges and universities in the medium size category with 42 undergraduate alumni currently serving overseas. Since the agency was founded in 1961, 801 UVM alumni have served in the Peace Corps.

Refereeing this fierce debate with solid scientific data are University of Vermont research scientists at the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese (VIAC) – experts in cheese safety and food borne pathogens.

“I’m interested in making sure that we can forward traditional cheesemaking practices and ingredients in this era of food safety challenges,” co-director of VIAC, Catherine Donnelly said in a widely acclaimed video produced last year by the American Society for Microbiology.

 “We found the absence of large-cheese-associated outbreaks to be remarkable, because compared with other commodities that's not the norm.” she says. “But in studies looking at instances where cheeses made from pasteurized milk were involved in outbreaks, we realize that the most significant threat to cheese safety isn’t the use of raw milk – isn’t the cheese itself – it's actually post-process recontamination either from the aging environment or introduction by humans of pathogens on their hands after the cheese is made. It's really recontamination that poses a threat. It’s irrelevant whether cheese is made with raw or pasteurized milk.” Donnelly is one of the nation’s foremost experts on microorganisms affecting food safety, especially Listeria.

She concludes that Staphylococcus aureus carried on human hands or cows’ udders causes the most problem in cheeses. Staph aureus allowed to grow to high population levels produces toxins that people sick. Listeria and Salmonella are sometimes also problematic as well as, though very rarely, E. coli.

Another problem that cheesemakers encounter are viruses that live in the cheesemaking environment, called bacteriophage that attack bacterial starter cultures and cause the batch to fail. Cheesemakers guard against bacteriophage by keeping the cheesemaking facility sanitary.

Donnelly’s $45,000, three-year Hatch grant was renewed and her USDA APHIS grants have totaled more than $600,000 over several years. These continue to pinpoint both the vulnerabilities in the large-commodity food system that contribute to the spread of pathogens while simultaneously demonstrating that centuries-old techniques used in artisan cheeses rely on the culture of beneficial microorganisms.

Donnelly believes that while regulation is one way to control food borne pathogens, education is another. VIAC teaches food-safety practices and past grants enabled her staff to do on-site risk-reduction programs for cheesemakers.

Donnelly and Dennis “DJ” D’Amico, a senior research scientist and lab manager for VIAC, are poised to use their scientific findings to continue to inform the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Health Canada as they evaluate the food safety of soft-ripened, raw-milk cheeses.

Donnelly and D’Amico predict that the debate among the interests of small and large-scale cheesemakers and the FDA will intensify in the coming year over a circa 1940s federal rule that requires cheese to be aged for 60 days before it is deemed safe to eat. The law was aimed at hard cheeses such as Cheddar that become inhospitable to pathogens as they dry out during aging. When raw-milk cheeses age, the chemicals, acids and salt in the cheese also destroy harmful bacteria, and since types of cheese differ greatly, scientists such as D’Amico and Donnelly conclude that the 60-day rule is simplistic at best.

“The 60-day rule wasn’t based on real science,” D’Amico told “The New York Times” last spring. “The pathogens have changed and the cheeses have certainly changed. But the rule has not.” D’Amico’s research was the subject of much media attention, also including the “Atlantic,” ABC and Fox News.

The FDA is reassessing the rule as it applies to soft cheeses, so the regulations are likely to change.

Expect the debate to heat up – but not the raw milk used in cheesemaking.

'A great graduation gift for the Class of 2012 from honorary degree recipient Nickelodeon president Cyma Zarghami.

As a result, CALS' Class of 2012, families and friends arrived at 4:30 p.m. upbeat, warmed by the 88-degree temperatures and fueled by food and drink from a reception hosted by the College before the ceremony. College Marshal Jonathan Leonard and Dean Tom Vogelmann led the event. Faculty member Don Stratton read the names of every one of the 337 graduates as they received their diplomas. And three professors transitioned to emeriti status before the audience of about 1200 people.

Commencement speaker, Distinguished University Professor Susan Wallace contrasted her rise from student to scientist in a "man's world," with the sphere of CALS' graduating class, which is 73 percent women. She told graduates that they could be successful at whatever life's work they choose if they "love doing it and (are) willing to work hard at it." Here's the full story.

View the slide show of highlights and more than 40 photos of College of Agriculture and Life Sciences graduates who earned the top awards of the College and UVM. Among them:

• Shiren Chan earned the Keith M. Miser Leadership Award.
• Jeffrey Eng received the Elmer Nicholson Achievement Prize.
• Samantha Case and Julie L. Williams are UVM McNair Scholars.
• Rebecca Calder was chosen as College of Agriculture and Life Sciences banner bearer in UVM commencement.
• Liam Donnelly, Erika Hesterberg, Pamela Rooney and Brandon Vanasse received University of Vermont Mortar Board Awards.
• Summa cum laude graduates are: Dylan Badger, Lauren Fowler, Jennifer Kaulius, Pamela Rooney and Todd Stanley.
• Magna cum laude graduates are: Marie Burneko, Rebecca Calder, Erika Hall, Erika Hesterberg, Samantha Ogilvie, Clara Pedley, Kyriel Pineault, Morgan Powers and Jarrod Szydlowski.
• Cum laude graduates are: Jesse Ackemann, Page Atcheson, Meagan DiVito, Liam Donnelly, Jean Drolet, Christina Economou, Hannah Facey, Kelsey Haist, Hannah Hinsley, Samuel Hoadley, Katherine Ida, Hannah Kammerer, Julianna Kattermann, Allison Keller, Michele Langone, Laurie Lesage, Sarah McMahon, Sarah Moylan, Jillian Nyman, Kelsey Preston, Rachel Shapiro, Megan Taylor and Sara Ziegler.

Vogelmann noted that this class, the largest in CALS history and among the highest achieving – 18 hail from UVM's Honors College and eight earned University-wide accolades – "made excellent use of the rich resources and opportunities that our great College has to offer." 

Three UVM Extension leaders ceremoniously retired from service as Extension Dean and Director Douglas Lantagne read proclamations highlighting their years of service.

• Richard LeVitre's UVM Extension career spans more than 30 years. As associate dean, LeVitre increased his faculty and staff's grant funding from $1M to $7M. As Farm Viability Program leader LeVitre helped hundreds of Vermont farms stay in business. He especially loved his years hosting a call-in radio show. (And he was a "ringer" during any milking contest, leading his team to victory.)
• Chester Parsons, renowned sheep expert, retired from UVM Extension after more than 26 years. He often said, “Strive for the most advanced information that education has to offer, but to question all of it.”  But he was better known for his Willie Nelson impersonations, guitar playing, songs and laughter.
• Karen Schneider is well known in Extension circles for big-picture thinking, organization, early adoption of technologies and bringing her colleagues on board with enthusiasm, cajoling and humor. "Performing with ease, the classroom is your stage," said Extension Dean Doug Lantagne. She served UVM Extension for 26 years.

In sending off the newly minted group of alumni of UVM's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Dean Tom Vogelmann said, "we feel lucky to have known you and lucky that your families allowed us to be your mentors.”

Shelburne Farms was once the 3,800-acre estate of William Seward and Lila Vanderbilt Webb and a model of agricultural practices at the turn of the 19th Century. Today the historic landmark on Lake Champlain is not just a tourist destination for its exquisite barns, groomed landscapes, inn, restaurant and award-winning farmhouse cheddar. It is a nonprofit, member-supported, environmental education center and 1,400-acre working farm that milks 125 purebred, registered Brown Swiss cows.

So when Shelburne Farms essentially became Rebecca Calder's childhood farm, (She even leased Brown Swiss cows to show at the county fairs.) the setting was a shade more "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" than typical Vermont hardscrabble farm.

When she enrolled at the University of Vermont as a Green and Gold Scholar, she brought with her this love of agriculture and a number of other scholarships, including from 4-H. At UVM she received many more scholarships and honors while majoring in animal science, minoring in microbiology in UVM's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) She averaged 17 credits per semester with a near perfect grade point.

Calder’s work with cattle over the past four years is unprecedented. She interned at two large animal veterinary practices in St. Albans and Vergennes. She was a UVM CREAM herd advisor. (That stands for Cooperative for Real Education in Agricultural Management.) She was president of the UVM Pre-Vet Club, member of UVM Dairy Club and a 4-H Dairy Show manager at the Champlain Valley Exposition, giving up many Saturdays to lead 4-H kids from ages 8 to 18.

She prepared two undergraduate research grant proposals and was awarded both. She elected to pursue the project that allowed her to conduct part of her research the prestigious Plum Island Animal Disease Center in Orient Point, New York. She earned a UVM CALS distinguished undergraduate research award for this project, which she continued during her senior year in Professor John Barlow’s lab. She also worked at Green Mountain Antibody on a related project during her senior year.

But what’s interesting is that she also ’s not a strictly cattle person. She also enrolled in the equine management course, and as her teacher Jenny Wilkinson says, “she immersed herself in the horse barn spending extra time caring for her horse or seeking help from experienced students.” She was the first ever to receive a perfect score on her final project.

Her mentor John Barlow says, “Rebecca has a natural knack and a passion for animals. Her compassion radiates in whatever she does.”

Calder was a very hands-on volunteer at New England Ovis, a New Hampshire sheep operation; she was a nurse assistant at a local pet and exotic animal veterinary clinic; and returning to Shelburne Farms as the children's farmyard educator at Shelburne Farms, she became familiar with the full range of livestock there: from rabbits and turkeys to alpacas and draft horses.

Meanwhile, she volunteered with the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life and UVM Student Government Association. She’s a highly accomplished clarinetist with UVM Concert Band, Wind Ensemble and the Catamount Pep Band.

John Barlow says, she has incredible drive and must be a master of time management. It makes you wonder if she ever sleeps.”

Rebecca Calder’s incredibly diverse, hands-on experience and education in UVM's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences qualifies her for a top position in nothing less than Noah’s Ark.

For these and many other reasons, Calder was awarded the Lawrence K. Forcier Outstanding Senior Award at the CALS Alumni and Friends annual dinner on May 12 at the Davis Center on campus. Also receiving awards were 2012 Outstanding Alumni Barbara Moore '74 and Dennis Canedy '75, Robert O. Sinclair Cup career achievement award winners and emeriti faculty Mary Carlson G'93 and Frederick Magdoff.

After graduating from UVM on May 20, she will continue research in the Barlow lab and at Green Mountain Antibodies and enjoy a Vermont summer of camping and hiking with her family and a road trip to the South.

Among the five veterinary schools eager to have her next fall, she chooses to study at Cornell University. After earning her doctorate in veterinary medicine, she will likely become an extraordinary veterinary medical researcher, Barlow predicts.

"The Lawrence K. Forcier Outstanding Senior Award is like a wager,” said CALS Dean Tom Vogelmann in presenting the award. “It honors a student who has made excellent use of the rich resources and opportunities that UVM’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences offers all students. It awards a student who significantly helps fellow students and the community while excelling in a demanding academic program. It flags a young adult whom we bet will make a big difference in the world.” He added, “This year we’re betting on Rebecca Calder."

You can bet she will go far.

“Given UVM’s recent focus on food systems as a spire of excellence, Barbara has, in true Vermont food systems vocabulary, lived a life ‘from farm to plate,” observes Professor Philip Ackerman-Leist of Green Mountain College near Moore’s Vermont hometown. “Having grown up on an egg farm in Vermont’s Mettowee River Valley, Barbara never strayed far from the farm or its guiding principles of hard work, land stewardship and community responsibility. Those ideals, combined with her love of the fresh, local foods that she grew up with, have defined her food service career,” he added.

That's why on May 12, as UVM College of Agriculture and Life Sciences alumni gathered at the campus Davis Center for their annual dinner, Barbara Moore '74, of Pawlet, Vermont and Rye, New York, was presented with a 2012 Outstanding Alumna Award by Dean Tom Vogelmann. Also receiving this award was Dennis Cannedy '75. Rebecca Calder '12 received the Lawrence K. Forcier Outstanding Senior Award. Emeriti faculty Mary Carlson and Frederick Magdoff were presented with the Robert O. Sinclair Cup for career achievement. 

In 2001, when Barbara founded The Good Table food service business headquartered in Purchase, New York, she was one of the pioneers of a business strategy that was at once new and as old as the hills – that is, buying food from local producers, showcasing foods’ sources and building relationships with both food producers and customers. It’s a strategy that recently became common. What has remained uncommon is her niche of serving restaurant quality food in corporate settings.

She calls what she does, "Restaurant Supported Agriculture." Her restaurant initiative includes offering high quality meals that feature serving organic produce to 1,000 or more people daily in corporate cafés at five locations in New York and Connecticut. As if that weren’t enough, she organized farm CSA farm share deliveries to her business locations.

Barbara’s appreciation of fresh food originated at the farm in Pawlet where she grew up, and which she now owns and lives on weekends. To keep this farm producing, she leases land to several farmers. She smoothed the way for an upstate New York farmer to move to Pawlet and farm a neighboring property.  She has arranged for the family farm and woodlands to eventually belong to the Vermont Land Trust and The Nature Conservancy. She also continues to support UVM with her time, efforts and annual donations to UVM’s Center for Sustainable Agriculture.

"You can see that the picture of Barbara Moore emerging here, is one described by that ancient phrase 'right livelihood' – her ethics, career, homestead and generosity are all interconnected," said Vogelmann.

Justine Denison, a New York State organic vegetable farmer who supplies Barbara’s business, says, “Barbara has made possible many gifts for many people with her dedication to outstanding work in both her professional career and in her contribution to preserving Vermont farm and woodlands.”

Nominating Barbara for the alumni award, Gail Jokerst ’74, divulged another angle on her classmate when she wrote, “Barbara credits her UVM education as shaping her future – literally and figuratively. After reading about Jean Harvey-Berino's research and VTrim weight-loss program, Barbara enrolled and lost 28 pounds on the Vtrim program, volunteered as a VTrim ambassador, brought a VTrim speaker to one of her corporate accounts and has given copies of Jean Harvey-Berino's book, "The EatingWell Diet" to friends, colleagues and neighbors.”

Barbara graduated magna cum laude from UVM in 1974 with a degree in home economics education. She worked for a decade in teachin with a sideline in catering.

After earning her master’s degree from Cornell University School of Hotel Administration in 1985, Barbara worked in corporate food service. Barbara purchased the assets of her former employer of 12 years and expanded its business.

"Now that we’ve seen what Barbara has accomplished," said Vogelmann before presenting, aptly, a hand-turned wooden salad bowl, made of UVM Proctor Maple Research Center maple,  "we are certain that this business model that celebrates and benefits Vermont, preserves a sustainable lifestyle and benefits many people, can be replicated by others with the same values."

As the president and principle leader of a private business launch of a sustainable agriculture and development project in Kurdistan, Iraq, he has gathered the resources of major multi-national partners, local businesses and governments. Canedy’s plan is nothing less than to create communities that will integrate best agricultural practices, a sustainable infrastructure and a network of research, education and operations.

And once Canedy succeeds in Iraq, he hopes that his efforts there will be replicated in other countries through his business and development organization called World Enrichment Group.

This logistically and politically complex effort only awaits a more stable political climate.

This business idea is a “global application of a land-grant ethic.” says Howard Lincoln, development officer for UVM's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. That's why Lincoln nominated Canedy for the 2012 Outstanding Alumnus Award that he received on May 12. Lincoln called “this plan seems destined to succeed in Iraq, where food production is at a fraction of what it could be.”

Canedy is widely known for his work and contributions to professional landscaping in the state of Arizona. He lives in Phoenix. He started Sunset Landscaping and Designs in 1980, growing it to more than 100 employees, many of whom have been with him since the beginning. They specialize in landscaping communities of up to 12,000 model homes, and custom homes of up to 30,000 square feet.

“He is a preferred landscape designer and installer of many local building contractors for his model complexes, as well as designer of choice for custom landscaping for home buyers,” says Judy Gausman executive director of the Arizona Landscape Contractor Association.

That organization gave Sunset Landscaping and Designs many awards for designs and construction over the years. In 2006, his peers named Canedy Outstanding Contractor of the Year. He became an ALCA president, director of government affairs and a leading advocate for sustainable environmental practices in landscaping. He met regularly with state and federal officials representing the industry on employee identification and immigration reform.

In his community, he voluntarily designed and orchestrated the renovation of a backyard at a transitional home for women who are working to become independent and self-sufficient. Canedy was also a Little League coach while his two sons were growing up.

A Brattleboro native, Dennis Canedy earned his UVM degree in biological science. Upon graduation he studied landscape architecture at Syracuse University and SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

Whether in Arizona or Iraq, Canedy always maintained close ties with his alma mater. He is a member of the Ira Allen Society, serving in development and alumni relations as a donor, participant in class reunions and with special UVM projects.

He is a proud member of Chikago International. Chikago is a highly unofficial UVM fraternity that he and college roommates formed in 1975 and still convene at UVM gatherings, on European tours and at that May 12 CALS Alumni and Friends Dinner when Dennis "Redman" Canedy received the Outstanding Alumnus Award before a crowd gathered at UVM's Davis Center Grand Maple Ballroom. Barbara Moore '74 also received a 2012 Outstanding Alumna Award. Two faculty members received the College's Sinclair Cup for their more than three decades of service: Mary Carlson and Frederick Magdoff. Rebecca Calder '12 was named Outstanding Senior.

Dennis Canedy’s camaraderie with the Men of Chikago is emblematic of how UVM traditions and friendships continue more than 30 years later (and gain a little notoriety). A tale of Chikago International reunions even showed up on the 2011 Land's End Business Outfitters blog!

Kate Baldwin, ’78, who served CALS and now the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, and who is a Chikago spouse, summed up Dennis Canedy this way: “He has applied his CALS degree and many practical courses in his profession. He works close to the land every day. He understands his role and responsibility as a local and world citizen. Most of all, he has a heart of gold, and would help anyone in need.”

As late spring moves across the United States, and corn plants reach about a foot high, farmers will walk among their rows taking core soil samples to measure nitrogen levels.

The “Magdoff nitrate test” is the standard from Nebraska to Vermont and wherever corn grows. This pre-sidedress nitrate test changed the method and timing of soil testing in the early 1980s, became the benchmark for comparing any new procedure and has saved farmers countless dollars and wasted fertilizer.

And now, we realize an even greater benefit, the Magdoff nitrate test prevented enormous water pollution in the past 30 years and is one of the principle tools to counteract the nation’s water quality problems.

This practical test devised by University of Vermont Emeriti Professor Frederick Magdoff “is undoubtedly his most famous scientific accomplishment,” says Ray Weil, University of Maryland professor and co-editor with Fred of the book, “Soil Organic Matter in Sustainable Agriculture,” published in 2004.

However, in his 34-year career in plant and soil science, Magdoff's work has set the standard by which others are measured, changed scientific thinking, pioneered whole system farm and food production practices and advocated for planting methods that cause less environmental harm. UVM College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Dean Tom Vogelmann cited these accomplishments before the annual gathering of alumni and friends on May 12, as he presented Magdoff with the Robert O. Sinclair Cup for career achievement.

Magdoff's book “Building Soils for Better Crops,” co-authored with Cornell University’s Harold van Es, is the soil science bible for students, teachers and farmers. In its third edition it’s the most widely used soil science textbook.

His work on soil pH buffering capacity corrected how scientists understood, described and taught about this phenomenon. “Soil pH Buffering Revisited,” published with one of CALS’ favorite son’s, the late Rich Bartlett, turned conventional wisdom on its head and also helped our understanding of forest soils’ response to acidic deposition.

While he carefully approached research and teaching in the context of good science, when it comes to sustainable agriculture, he is a strong advocate. While he led Northeast SARE (Sustainable Agriculture, Research & Education) for nearly two decades, he changed many farmers’, students’ and academicians’ minds about the importance of a whole-systems farm approach. It is no coincidence that Vermont leads the way in sustainable agriculture.

Magdoff mentored some of Vermont’s best known and successful CALS and UVM Extension professionals including Vern Grubinger who followed him as coordinator of Northeast SARE and agronomist Heather Darby – both credit Magdoff for giving them direction in their early years.

He came to UVM in 1973 with degrees in history from Oberlin College (1963) and soil science from Cornell University (1965 and 1969). He was UVM plant and soil science department chair from 1985-1993. From 1998 through his retirement in 2007, he was the first coordinator of Northeast SARE. During this 34-year career, he garnered $5 million in extramural funding and published articles in 70+ journals – many seminal papers on pH, aluminum, phosphorous and organic matter in soil.

Fred Magdoff has already been distinguished by his peers – among his awards, he was named a fellow of the American Society of Agronomy in 1995, received a research award from the Northeast Branch of the American Society of Agronomy and Soil Science Society of America in 2004 and earned CALS Hubert "Hub" Vogelmann research and scholarship award in 2006.

"In the field of soil science, the University of Vermont is well known because of Fred Magdoff," Vogelmann said. "And as the nation grapples more than ever before with soil and water quality issues, the name “Magdoff” will be to soil what the name “Rodale” is to organic."