Chief Don Stevens
chiefdonstevens@comcast.net; abenakitribe.org

Chief of the Nulhegan Abenaki is also the Executive director of their non-profit, “Abenaki Helping Abenaki” which is responsible for all the tribal programs and services.  An engaging spokesperson, Chief Stevens helped lead the fight for state recognition of the Abenaki people of Vermont. 

Dr. Fred Wiseman
wisem@vtlink.net

A Missisquoi Abenaki, ethnobotanist, retired professor and former chair of the Department of Humanities at Johnson State College, Dr. Wiseman researches crops, agriculture and cuisine of the Wabanaki region. Through his Seeds of Renewal project, Professor Wiseman is on a mission to assist and encourage the Abenaki tradition of seed saving and indigenous gardening by helping to track down rare or long-lost seeds native to northern New England. He is the author of The Seven Sisters.

In this session, Dr. Wiseman and Chief Stevens will talk about the History of Indigenous Agricultural Practices & Their Application in Today’s Gardens & Landscapes. It's time for us to rethink the wisdom of the first people. Indigenous people moved to North America many thousands of years before Europeans arrived. During that time they bred varieties of vegetables for best taste, productivity, and tolerance of climate. They developed forest farming of desirable fruit and nut trees. They rotated crops and interplanted for sustainable harvests. Arriving Europeans thought that God had provided them a garden of Eden, but the indigenous people were very messy gardeners. 

Travis W. Reynolds
Twreynol@uvm.edu

Dr. Travis W. Reynolds is an agricultural economist with a background in public policy analysis, rural development, environmental studies, and organic farming. He works with teams of international and interdisciplinary scholars in applied research at the intersection of agriculture, food security, and the environment. For the past decade, he has studied relationships between farm management, economic development, and ecosystem services to alleviate poverty in smallholder farming communities in sub-Saharan Africa with sustainability and resilience. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Development and Applied Economics (CDAE) at the University of Vermont and a Fellow at the Gund Institute for Environment. His family farm is in the Northeast Kingdom, in the town of Stannard.

Topic: It’s All Connected; Food Resiliency in Vermont

Over the past decade there has been rising awareness of vulnerabilities in our food systems in Vermont and globally. Vermont’s agricultural response to Hurricane Irene and the Covid-19 Pandemic have revealed many strengths in Vermont food systems, but also opportunities for improvement. Dr. Reynolds will describe how Vermonters contribute to food system resilience and suggest coping skills for the years ahead as we face further challenges.

Ari Rockland-Miller
info@themushroomforager.com

Ari is a writer, instructor and lecturer on wild and cultivated mushrooms and edible plants. He is co-founder of The Mushroom Forager, LLC and an ardent mycophile who enjoys nothing more than the exhilarating feeling of the mushroom hunt. Over the years he has found hundreds of pounds of gourmet and medicinal wild mushrooms, and he loves sharing his knowledge and adventures with blog readers and workshop participants. Ari has facilitated over 200 presentations and hands-on workshops to over 4,000 mycophiles from around the world. He finds inspiration in the gourmet mycorrhizal mushrooms, like porcini and chanterelles, which only thrive in the wild and resist cultivation. He became an expert in cultivating shiitake mushrooms in agroforestry systems when he managed Cornell University's Mushroom Research Project and Agroforestry teaching site and farm, the MacDaniels Nut Grove. Ari also currently works on land use policy and farmland conservation for the State of Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets.

In this session, Ari will describe outdoor log cultivation of four varieties of mushrooms (oyster, shitake, lion's mane, and wine caps), then move on to identification, foraging, and harvesting of mushrooms in the wild. Focused on the fruit of the mycelium organization, he will present the seasons, or target time for specific varieties and offer strategic timing to forage. His presentation will be simple, accessible and practical in scope.