Smokey House Center reports botanical research results
Forest farming, also called agroforestry, is gaining greater recognition in New England, in part due to initiatives such as the Northeast Forest Farmers Coalition (NFFC) and in part due to the many benefits associated with its practices.
The NFFC is a partnership of individuals, farms, universities, nonprofits, businesses and other organizations with the shared goal of growing forest farming opportunities and education.
As summer turned to autumn, the Smokey House Center in Danby, VT, a 5,000-acre nonprofit valley-wide landscape, hosted one of the several agroforestry twilight meetings which took place across New England.
Three presenters – Walker Cammack, Smokey House’s program director and shared leadership team member; Karam Sheban, Ph.D., who joined the University of New Hampshire’s ADAPT program this spring as an associate professor; and Nat Burr, a master’s degree candidate at the Yale School of the Environment – discussed several ongoing multi-year experiments with understory botanicals.
The dozen scientists on the two-hour tour in both pastures and forests in Danby were given a booklet published in July by the NFFC: “Propagation of Understory Botanicals: A Guide to Growing Black Cohosh, Ramps, Ginseng, Bloodroot, Goldenseal & Solomon’s Seal.” Barr was one of its co-authors. The publication features very detailed drawings and instructions, funded through the Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education (SARE) program.
The scientists also viewed several other experiments that involved alley cropping with poplars providing shade and toured an area where ramps are among Smokey House Center’s most valuable resources. They were planted by second grade students in a “working” sugarbush.
A little more than two years ago, USDA awarded UNH $10 million in a five-year ADAPT grant designed to develop more sustainable ways to implement climate-smart agriculture (CSA) strategies to expand farming and food production while enhancing economic opportunities, providing important ecosystem services, like clean water and air, and creating healthy communities.
UNH partnered with Dartmouth College and Yale University, which were both selected to tap a range of complementary resources and knowledge.
Smokey House Center, in partnership with the NFFC and other collaborators, is working to develop active field trials that result in production data that will be useful within several forest farming systems and to support workshops and programs for herb growers as well as other non-timber forest products (NTFPs), including maple syrup, mushrooms, nut crops and tree saps.
“Approximately 75% of New England is made up of forests, which can be challenging when trying to expand farming opportunities to meet the growing need for more sustainable ways to produce locally grown food,” explained Heidi Asbjornsen, UNH professor of natural resources and the environment. “But those forests also need to be preserved because they are a globally important carbon sink that absorbs and stores about 4.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year. We’re looking to develop ways to expand agricultural opportunities while also preserving carbon storage that’s crucial when addressing climate change.”
The nonprofit Smokey House Center has a unique history. In 1958, a young wealthy couple, Audrey Bruce Currier, the daughter of U.S. Ambassador to Britain David K.E. Bruce and granddaughter the late former Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, and her husband, Stephen Currier, bought a cottage in Danby as a retreat and enlarged its holdings to some 5,000 acres.
In the next decade, through the Taconic Foundation that they started in New York City, the couple became deeply involved philanthropically in supporting the nation’s civil rights struggle. The couple, parents of three youngsters, chartered a plane on Jan. 17, 1967, to fly from Puerto Rico to the Virgin Islands. The small plane was lost during its short flight over the Caribbean.
Later that year, after they were declared deceased, the Vermont property was passed through their wills into the Taconic Foundation for use as an “unidentified public purpose.” A federally funded YouthWork program was opened in 1974 which proved very successful. For more than 30 years, until the recession of 2008 hit, Smokey House ran a workforce training program for at-risk youth that was successfully copied across the country.
But when federal funding dried up, Smokey House’s Board of Directors worked hard to re-articulate the center’s mission. When then-Executive Director Jesse Pyles resigned his post in 2022 to move onto other opportunities, the board appointed Ben Holmes, founder of the nonprofit Farm School in Athol, MA, to be the center’s interim executive director. After hiring Cammack, Development & Communications Director Danielle Zimmerman and Finance & Administration Director Mara Hearst, the board accepted Holmes’ advice to create a collaborative shared leadership team at Smokey House Center to help fulfill the newly adopted concept of a “Living Lab.”
“The Living Lab advances ecologically sound farming and forestry through collaborative research and demonstration efforts conducted on Smokey House Center’s 5,000 acres and in partnership with farmers, foresters, academic partners and a diverse group of community members,” the updated mission statement reads.
Yoder Farm and Dorset Peak & Cattle Co., the two commercial farms that hold long-term leases on its land, are among the most valuable resources with whom Smokey House Center now works, according to its shared leadership team. As well as providing food for the surrounding communities and livelihoods for their families, these farms are partners in the work of the lab and living systems on which the lab can perform its research.
by Edith Tucker
