Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Good morning again. We're just kidding, the first time. Senate Agriculture back into action. Gonna spend some time with Working Lands Enterprise Initiatives to hear in some success stories from the grantees. And I think Elizabeth's gonna lead off just for a minute. Welcome, the floor is yours.

[Elizabeth Sispel (Working Lands Enterprise Initiatives Program Manager)]: Thank you so much. Elizabeth Sispel, the Working Lands Enterprise Initiatives Program Manager. Yeah, thank you for having us back in today. Today you are going to be hearing from four grantees. We're going to be hearing from Claire George first, CEO and founder of Butterfly Bakery of Vermont. David Keck from Keck Wine Enterprises, is running slightly behind, but hopefully will be arriving soon. I haven't actually heard from them this morning, but I assume that they're close by. And then joining via Zoom, you will hear from Miles Jenis, owner of Vermont Heavy Timber. And then lastly, Misha Johnson, co owner of Reverse Farm and Apothecary. The business owners that you are hearing from today are all awardees from the fiscal year twenty twenty five Business Enhancement Grant, which is that foundational grant opportunity that we offer each and every year. It's very diverse in the projects that it funds. You're gonna see that today. You'll be hearing from a vineyard, a value added food business, a value added forestry business or secondary, and a small herb farm. And I think when we were identifying the businesses that we invited to testify, we wanted to capture the diversity of sectors, but also a diversity in business size, stage, and also a diversity in grant size. Free First Farm and Apothecary received one of our smallest awards, grant awards at $13,900 and we think it's a good example of the impacts a small investment can have on a business. And I think as I mentioned yesterday, when we look at impacts, we take in account the impacts for the scale of the business in order to fund the full range of small to large businesses. I think without further ado, I'm gonna invite Claire. I am gonna be a little dependent on

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: my notes today, so

[Claire George (Owner/Founder, Butterfly Bakery of Vermont)]: I'm take few Claire George, I'm the owner of Butterfly Bakery Vermont, I want to thank you much for giving us grantees the opportunity to talk about what makes working with hands so integral to what we do. I started Butterfly Bakery Vermont as a small, one person, middle of the night, maple syrup sweetened wholesale bakery in 2003. I was baking alone, delivering my own products, and doing everything by hand. Now, twenty two years later, I have 15 employees, and our products are sold in every state and seven countries. Our hot sauces have been featured on the hit YouTube show Hot Ones four times, and we have been recognized in Food and Wine Magazine for having the best hot sauces in the country. That kind of growth and evolution does not happen in a vacuum. I was able to go from a small bakery to an internationally recognized hot sauce maker because of the long term patient investment that the state of Vermont makes in agriculture and the businesses that depend on it. Butterfly Bakery Vermont has received two working lands grants since last year, a $45,000 business enhancement grant focused on marketing and a $5,000 trade show grant to attend the New York NOW trade show. We've also received technical assistance and support from the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, an organization that plays a critical role in delivering working lands funding and expertise to businesses like mine. That guidance, strategic support, and long term perspective has helped us turn grant funding into lasting operational change and not just short term spending. But just as importantly, we have benefited for most of our existence from years of working lands grants received for the farms and agricultural businesses we rely on every single day. Butterfly Bakery Vermont is a farm to pork food manufacturer. That means that 100% of our milk, produce, and maple are sourced directly from small farms within 200 miles of our Berry Vermont kitchen and almost entirely from within Vermont. That sourcing is not accidental. It's possible because Vermont farms are supported, stabilized, and strengthened by consistent public investment. In 2003, I did not set out to become a Farm to Fork food manufacturer. What I set out to do was make the best food with the best flavor. Again and again, I found that the ingredients with the flavor come from Vermont soil. Historically, Farm Fork food has been the domain of high end restaurants, with price points reserved for the special occasions alone. Because one of my superpowers happens to be logistics, I've been able to take that rarefied occasional whirl at Farm to Fork and turn it into something repeatable, distributable, and every day. When small farms grow primarily for restaurants, they are limited by very real constraints. They are limited by the number of table turns on a Saturday night, by how many leafy greens can be harvested and sold before they wilt, and by how long squash can sit in storage before this quality declines. That model is valuable and important, but it is inherently capped by time, seasonality, and perishability. When farms grow for food manufacturers, those same crops can be transformed into shelf stable products that last years and can be sold not just across the state, but around the world. Manufacturing removes the ceiling that perishability places on farm income and replaces it with predictability, scale, and long term demand. Farm to fork restaurants play a critical role in discovery, experimentation, and delight. They introduce new flavors and celebrate seasonality. Farm to Fork food manufacturers, on the other hand, are designed to create repeatable, dependable staples. They take Vermont grown ingredients and turn them into products that can show up in a home kitchen on a Tuesday night at any price point all year long. Together, these models don't compete with each other, they complete the system. Building and maintaining that kind of system requires more than good intention and good ingredients. It requires investment expertise and support in areas that even strong, successful businesses don't always have internally. Every business owner has something that they're not good at, and that is where you come in. For nearly twenty years, I grew Butterfly Bakery of Vermont entirely through word-of-mouth. You start with extraordinary ingredients, people talk. Through that organic growth, I was able to cross that million dollar gross sales threshold, which is something that only two percent of women business owners ever achieve. What that growth masked, however, was a real vulnerability. While I can make logistics and manufacturing sing and dance to my whim, sales and marketing are far outside my wheelhouse. When the world changed, as it has done repeatedly over the last twenty two years, I didn't know how to intentionally guide how my business changed with it. I recognized that I needed to control our narrative, but I didn't yet have the tools to do that in a changing marketplace. So in 2025, I applied for the Working Lands Business Enhancement Grades to invest in improving our marketing efforts. That impact has been transformative, not just because of how the funds were spent, but because of the foundation the grant gave us to build upon. In that same year, we were able to secure outside investment for the first time. A key reason investors were willing to take that leap with us was our participation in the Working Lands program. We could point directly to the trust that the State of Vermont placed in us and in our plans. That message was simple and powerful. If the State of Vermont believes we can make these plans a reality, then others do too. Our Working Lands grants are part of our larger plan to double our branded sales over the next four years, with roughly 20% growth per year. We are already seeing these changes take effect. In the 2025, our branded sales grew 27% compared to the same period of 2024. Looking only in November and December, that growth was nearly 50%. About two thirds of our sales come from customers and businesses outside of Vermont. If we double our branded sales over the next four years, as we are on track to do, we will bring in more than 5,000,000 additional dollars into Vermont from out of state customers alone compared to remaining flat. That's not a bad return for a $50,000 investment from the State of Vermont. Those dollars don't stay on a spreadsheet. They circulate. With revenue brought in from outside the state, we're able to turn around and purchase tens of thousands of pounds of ingredients from farms like Honeyfield Farm in Norwich, True Love Farm in Shaftsbury, Familia Farm in West Pollet, and Quill Hill Farm in Pultely. We would be able to grow our staff by 25% from 15 to 20 full time year end employees across our kitchen, shipping, and sales department. The working lands model works because it funds the entire ecosystem, not just one link in the chain. Farmers and manufacturers rise together. Without manufacturers, farms hit a ceiling. Without farms, manufacturers have nothing to build on. Working lands is the connective tissue that allows us both to thrive. Because we purchase more Vermont grown chili peppers than anyone else in the country, even more than Whole Foods, we have to commit to our crop purchases in the depths of winter while farms are still planting their fields right now. We spread those purchases across our network of small farm so that the success or failure of any single farm does not jeopardize our ability to consistently produce the products that our customers expect. That strategy protects our business, but more importantly, it protects our farms. If one farm has an off year, we are still there to purchase again the next year when they are ready to grow, and that consistency matters. When we commit to our large crop purchases, farms can breathe a little easier. Jeff Kleis of Familia Farm in West Pollock put it best when he said, Butterfly Bakery gives us a market we don't have to invent or manage every single day. If I get a flat tire, I'm not missing on my one chance to sell that week. Our days are more predictable and our mission is clearer. We can focus on growing 15 crops really well instead of juggling 30 just to stay competitive at the farmer's market. I can focus on farming instead of marketing. Our Working Lands grant did exactly what it was designed to do. We updated our photography. We tried paid advertising for the first time. We attended trade shows. We learned about earned media and how to tell and sell our story. Some of these efforts worked incredibly well. Some did not work at all or not the way that we expected. But the grant allowed us to take informed risks. If something didn't pay off, it didn't threaten the survival of our company. That freedom to experiment allowed us to identify where to invest our own dollars with confidence and has directly contributed to the growth trajectory that we are on now. Without working land support, we would have been limited to making only sure thing bets. When your expertise is in sales and marketing, it's hard to know what a sure thing even looks like. For many food businesses, that path leads to competing on price alone and slowly abandoning local sourcing. Instead, we learned how to tell our story. We learned how to help customers understand why the farm that grows the chili peppers in their hot sauce matters to them, even if that farm is hundreds or thousands of miles away. Marketing when done well isn't about discounts or hollow storytelling. It's not about racing to the bottom on price or chasing short term attention. At its core, good marketing is about translation. It's about helping customers understand what makes a product different, why the way it's made matters, and how their everyday purchasing decision connects back to real places and real people. For Vermont grown products, marketing is the bridge that allows a small farm in a rural town to reach a customer they will never meet in person. It gives Vermont farms and food manufacturers a platform to compete nationally, not by pretending to be bigger or cheaper than everyone else, but by clearly communicating value, integrity, and quality. When marketing is done thoughtfully, it ensures that Vermont grown ingredients are treated not as commodities, but as something worth seeking out, paying for, and sustaining over the long term. The Working Lands program allows businesses like mine to play five or even ten years ahead instead of operating in constant crisis mode and scrambling for cash every quarter. That long term perspective changes how we make our decisions. It allows us to invest in people, infrastructure, and relationships rather than chasing short term fixes or delaying necessary improvements. That sustainability ripples outward. It helps keep Vermont Vermont land working by giving Vermont farmers the confidence to invest in their fields, their equipment, their people, and their soil. When farms have predictable markets, they can focus on building healthy, resilient soil and communities instead of simply surviving to the next season. In turn, businesses like mine are able to grow in a way that is durable, values aligned, and capable of weathering economic shifts, climate challenges, and market disruptions rather than being undone by them. Vermont has an opportunity to continue leading the nation in how it supports working lands, not as a nostalgic ideal, but as a modern, resilient economic strategy. Programs like Working Lands prove that relatively small, targeted investments can generate outsized returns in jobs, tax revenue, and rural vitality. Thank you for continuing to fund this program. Thank you for putting Vermont in a position to lead the way in producing the best food in the country. And thank you for having the foresight to understand that when you invest in farms and the businesses that support them today, you are bringing millions of dollars back into the state tomorrow and ensuring that Vermont's working lands remain truly working for generations.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: You're very welcome.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: A couple questions. First, how was the application process?

[Claire George (Owner/Founder, Butterfly Bakery of Vermont)]: Was good. We've applied to Working Lands in the past and not gotten it, and from that experience, I was able to seek more help in doing it this year. I have an employee who's done grant review before, so he was able to help with it. My advisor is Lawrence Miller, used to be Secretary of Commerce here at the state. So he helped me tremendously and then he's also got resources with Sustainable Jobs Fund and they were able to help me with that as well. So it's an enormous time investment, but obviously it ended up being worth it for us.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: All right, and the second question is where's our samples?

[Claire George (Owner/Founder, Butterfly Bakery of Vermont)]: I should've brought some. I was inquiring if hot sauce was going to be received.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Well, I think it'd be received very well seeing what you're doing across all what you've been through. I mean, it's just amazing. You're in a very tough market, probably the toughest market that there is. It is pretty amazing on where you're at. Thank you. Don't want to

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: go ahead. My follow-up question would be, as you continue to get bigger and better, are you gonna pay it forward with like a donation back to the land, working lands, at Yeah. Some I would love to get to that point.

[Claire George (Owner/Founder, Butterfly Bakery of Vermont)]: Absolutely. Great. Paying it back along every step is a really important part of what Butterfly Bakery does. So, from the very beginning, when I was still earning an income under the poverty level, we were doing things with the Butterfly Bakery platform that I could never do as an individual. So we have our generosity program where we make a specific sauce and donate a portion of the proceeds. So we have our Pride sauce that comes out in June, then we donate, historically we've donated to Pride Center of Vermont. We've also done our website, we donate a percentage of every website sale to the Vermont Food Bank. Goes Fair and Pickle Hot Sauce donates 5% to World Central Kitchen, so it's one non Vermont organization, but we believe very strongly in feeding people, and World Central Kitchen has, you know, come and fed us during our floods. It's a really important organization. So that's something that we do every step of the way. I have Right. Way more more interest in bringing it back to the world that I'm in than to turn a big profit in my pocket for billionaires. Thank

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: you, Mr. Chair. I have a couple questions as well. You talked about price points. Yeah. So I'm curious what the gap might be, whether it And then the second part is, talk to us a little bit about cause I see two markets here. There's retail and then there's restaurant. How do you get your product there?

[Claire George (Owner/Founder, Butterfly Bakery of Vermont)]: Yeah, so we actually don't do a lot with the restaurant industry. Their margins are super, super tiny, and obviously, as a non Tabasco or McCormick of the world, we don't have the margins that generally support them. We do a little bit with restaurants, but mostly we do wholesale and direct to consumer. Okay. So wholesale and co pack. We're also co packers, so we produce other people's products for them. And that Our co pack clients are all over The United States. Wholesale and co pack are probably about Or actually the majority of our business. At this point, 90% of our business or so. Direct to retail is actually where a lot of these marketing efforts that we put in, we've discovered that that's where it's really resonating. So our website has more than doubled in the last year. And then we've also been doing a lot more events. So when I talked about, you know, not things didn't work the way we expected, we did the trade show grant and and we got you know, the trade show grant paid for itself, but we didn't see the growth bump that we got from direct to consumer. And so the things that we learned from doing trade shows and building out a whole trade show booth, we've now been applying it to doing more direct to consumer events. So we're we're doing events basically pretty much every weekend between now and the end of the year.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: Okay. And and the margin is?

[Claire George (Owner/Founder, Butterfly Bakery of Vermont)]: The margin is obviously way better for direct to consumer. A lot more footwork, you're selling individual bottles wholesale, you're selling whole cases. So our gross COGS are in the 50 to 60% range. As we do more direct to consumer, that's dropping. Copac, it's more in the 80% range because those margins are much tinier. Right. I love Copac because manufacturing. That's I like making things, you know, and that's where sales and marketing has been something I've really had to learn. And so, co pack allows me to make other people's things and let them deal with the sales and marketing. But it also allows us to learn. We're learning every step of the way, and it allows us to apply our sourcing expertise to our clients. So we've got clients who we source Vermont peppers for that they don't care where their peppers come from.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: They just

[Claire George (Owner/Founder, Butterfly Bakery of Vermont)]: want the best tasting peppers. And we source all of our peppers. We order them now, we receive them in the fall, and then we have a 2,000 square foot freezer that we put it all in. And so one of our clients is in New Hampshire. He definitely doesn't care about sourcing. He just cares about good sauce that people want. But he has now started to contract with our farms, like with Honeyfield Farm, with Quail Hill, Familia. And he started doing that because when he was buying it all in the commodity market, he might be paying $2 a pound for a habanero in in the peak season, where where we're paying between 3 and $4 a pound for those habaneros. But in

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: the off season, he's paying

[Claire George (Owner/Founder, Butterfly Bakery of Vermont)]: $8.10, $12

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: a pound.

[Claire George (Owner/Founder, Butterfly Bakery of Vermont)]: Mhmm. And they're crap. They don't taste good at all. So if he can commit to arms in advance, he can put them in our freezer. We know how to process them and store them. And so we're working hard at, besides our own sourcing, teaching other people how to do what we're doing, because if that's our secret weapon now, we'd rather everybody else know that and then we just have to get better.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Thank you. So I want to kind of bring it right back to why you're here, which is the Yeah,

[Claire George (Owner/Founder, Butterfly Bakery of Vermont)]: yes.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: So you've obviously made a lot of smart decisions. Kudos to you as far as to grow your business and all that. With this $50,000 grant, that wasn't what it was. What did this grant do for you that you couldn't have done already? Was it the money? Because I think probably you might have had the money if you really wanted to break by, or was there some another ingredient that was brought into this? Did they did they show you how to do with what you wanted to do? What did this grant do for you that you couldn't have done yourself?

[Claire George (Owner/Founder, Butterfly Bakery of Vermont)]: Largely, it really was the money. You know, it's it's hard when your company is self funded. So we did just get investors for the first time this year, but we've been in business for twenty two years. So we've been funded entirely through operational funds, loans, sometimes and credit cards. Cybertrics. Yeah. And there are things that are just monumentally expensive. So with this grant, we use this towards marketing primarily.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: We So what did it buy? Yeah.

[Claire George (Owner/Founder, Butterfly Bakery of Vermont)]: So we bought photography. That was kind of an easy one. We know that photography is gonna pay for itself. So getting really nice photography, it shows companies that come to your website, individuals that come to your website that you're a real company, you know what you're doing, you're still gonna be here tomorrow. So that was one that, know, maybe we would have been able to get as nice photography or whatever, but we know that that's gonna pay for itself. But then we also put it towards SEO and paid advertising for our website. Right. Never done that before. Don't know how that's gonna return. And we paid and so and so When got

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: you did that when you did that

[Claire George (Owner/Founder, Butterfly Bakery of Vermont)]: Yeah.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Did you who was advising you on that? Who made that decision about, okay, we're gonna go with this one company?

[Claire George (Owner/Founder, Butterfly Bakery of Vermont)]: So in my search for investors, I spent a lot of time talking to everybody, everybody I possibly could. Anybody who knew anything about people who might be able to help us with investors. So a lot of other business owners who have investment. Also, like I said, my advisor, anybody he could connect me with, any investors who were not investing at the moment but might be able to help me. So I am talking to lots and lots of people all the time. Specifically, the two major organizations that I worked with with this grant, besides the photography, was I worked with Bootstrap and I worked with Juniper, a PR company. And both of those recommendations came first from Branima because they were among the people I talked to and they have really good responses from these two companies. And what I found through working with companies is, like I said, some of these things worked really well, and we could have paid for that and just been able to be off to the races and run with it. And some of it didn't work like we expected. Doing a trade show is exceptionally expensive. Going to New York now costs us about $12,000 only $5,000 which was reimbursed from the state of Vermont. And there's no guarantee of any sale at all. So we attended four trade shows. Besides these two grants, we also got two grants that were through the dairy side of our business. I also own Fat Tote Farm. So we're a dairy certified milk handler, we brought me caramel and all that. We attended several other trade shows, including the New York Fancy Food Show, which is considered the most you know, important show to do in our industry. From that trade show, we got zero Zero. And that one was about 9 to $10,000 to do that event. And we got zero orders. New York National was a much smaller trade show, but more expensive, but we managed to get enough orders for it to pay for itself. So you just never know what you're gonna expect. And we can't take that risk to, like, we just don't know what to expect out of that. Right. And so it just gives us that opportunity to take that.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: $50,000 goes fast.

[Claire George (Owner/Founder, Butterfly Bakery of Vermont)]: Yes, it very much does. Yes. But it has more than returned Our website, for example, the SEO work that we did helped us determine what improvements we needed to make in our website, and we totally rebuilt our website internally. My background's actually in tech and computer science. That's what I did when I went to college for and what I did prior to moving to Brooklyn. Cool.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: And you're

[Claire George (Owner/Founder, Butterfly Bakery of Vermont)]: located right here in Mary? Yes, yep. Near the Wilkins Harley dealership across the street, where Vermont Village Gantry used to be. Yep. Okay.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: Well, think we could be

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: here all day. You're But a very great success story. Very happy that Working Lands could play a part in it.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: Me too.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Very, very happy to have you in the state and just pretty amazing. Thank you for what you've done and thank you for what you're doing and good luck to you. Thank you very much.

[Claire George (Owner/Founder, Butterfly Bakery of Vermont)]: I appreciate it. The next grantee we're hearing from is on Zoom. Yep. So I'm seeing them on livestream, but I don't see them here.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Okay. Have they is that a?

[Elizabeth Sispel (Working Lands Enterprise Initiatives Program Manager)]: Which one is it? It's reverse form. They are on. Yeah. That's one. Okay. Just take off their audio video. So, Rinisha, hopefully you're hearing this.

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: Can you hear me?

[Elizabeth Sispel (Working Lands Enterprise Initiatives Program Manager)]: Yes. Yes. And can you turn on your video so we can see if you

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: Yeah. Just a sec.

[Elizabeth Sispel (Working Lands Enterprise Initiatives Program Manager)]: Thank you.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: There you are. Good morning.

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: Hi. Good morning, everybody.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Welcome. The floor is yours.

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: Okay. Thank you. I'm just gonna share my screen, to show, some slides that I prepared for today.

[Elizabeth Sispel (Working Lands Enterprise Initiatives Program Manager)]: They are in the packet of slides that we shared.

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: K. Does that work? Everybody can see? Yep. Okay. Thank you. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to share a little bit about our farm and to talk about our experience with the Working Lands grant. My name is Misha Johnson and I'm the co owner of Freeverse Farm in Chelsea. We started our farm in 2012 and have since established ourselves on land in Chelsea. We have approximately 38 acres of field and forest. We cultivate a little bit more than two acres, primarily herbs on our land. We also grow approximately a 100 different herbs that we cultivate in these fields. Our farm as you can see in the image here is located just overlooking the village of Chelsea on the first branch. And we also, in addition to our cultivated acres, do a lot of wild crafting. And we also run Fruits Farm Shop right in Downtown Chelsea, where we sell not only our products but also a range of products from other farms in the area, a broad array of groceries, and we have a cafe. And we also sell through our website. In addition, another important aspect of our farm is that we work with another farm in Chelsea to graze their cattle during the summer months. And they're an important part of building up the fertility on our land and helping us especially improve the wild harvesting open acres that we we have on our on our landscape. Here you see a few of our crops that we're growing in the fields we grow. As you may know, herbs, you can grow for the aerial parts like leaves that we primarily use like something like spearmint, but also in the left side of your screen, you'll see the yellow blossoms of arnica. Behind that, we have yarrow. And on the right side, have tulsi and basil, which we grow for teas and spices as well. Here you can see Taylor, my partner harvesting calendula blossoms and then also one of our tools that we use for harvesting our chamomile blossoms as well. So I'll get to our what we purchased with the working lens grant in a little bit. But just to show you what we did prior to using the the harvester that we got, we would basically hand harvest everything with either knives or clippers, putting them in baskets and then bringing them down to our drying space. Here you can see a couple folks wild harvesting St. John's were in one of our open fields and pastures on our farm as well. In 2022, as part of our scaling up plan for our farm and business, we built a solar powered herb drying barn and processing space on our land. It includes, as you can see, photovoltaic panels on the roof and a solar hot air system on the south facing wall in the building. And that same year, we also achieved organic certification for our crops, which was really important for helping our brand and expand our opportunities going forward. So the barn, once we bring our harvest in, we lay them out on trays. You can see Taylor again on the left, my partner spreading calendula on a drying screen, and then some of our staff on the right hand side spreading, I believe, Tulsi on on one of our drying screens as well. And here's our drying room. So each of those trays gets put onto our onto trays. When we scaled up and built our barn, we went from approximately 300 to close to 500 square feet of drying space. And not only that, we were able to with the the efficiency of the new building, reduced by half, the amount of time it took to dry the herbs, all while maintaining the same quality that we had had prior, which is really important for us to be able to scale up while still maintaining the quality of our our herbs and products. Once the herbs are dried, we, in the case of the blossoms, we'll bag them up and bring them down to our apothecary, which is right next to our farm shop in the village of Chelsea. And for herbs like the rosemary you see in the middle of the screen, we'll garble them, which is to separate the leaves from the stems down to the grade that we're trying to get for market or for our own products, and then bag those up and bring them down to our apothecary. Between the fresh herb that we harvest and the dried herb, usually, the finished herb is approximately one tenth to one quarter the weight of the initial harvest once it's done being dried and and processed. So here, I'll I'll tell you a bit more about our our our harvester. We've purchased this through Terra Tech, which is a company in France that produces equipment and tools for small scale farming. And the way it works is that there's a cutter bar on the bottom left part of the as we're looking at the screen on the bottom left part that cuts the herb and then the the reel knocks the herb onto a conveyor belt and the conveyor belt lifts the herb up into the blue tote that you can see just in front of me harvesting there. And then as you can also see on the right side of the screen.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Say that again? So I

[Elizabeth Sispel (Working Lands Enterprise Initiatives Program Manager)]: was just clarifying that this was specifically the grant funded tool.

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: Yeah. So we got a little bit more than 13,000, I believe, to purchase this tool and it came directly made to order from France. And as part of our scaling up, we needed to find ways to improve efficiency on our farm. One of the most time consuming things on our farm has been to harvest the herbs by hand as you saw in one of the previous slides. So for example, to harvest a 100 bed feet of a crop would often take perhaps three, four or five man hours to do. Whereas with this tool, we can do the same amount with just one person in ten minutes. So the improvement in efficiency for harvesting was dramatic, and it has so many knock on effects from that, not only getting the herb into into a tote or into our harvest cart and getting it down to the barn as soon as possible so it doesn't degrade in the in the hot sun and in the field, but it allows our employees to not have to spend so many hours bent over harvesting during the day. And it allows us to spend time on other tasks. For example, just making sure that the crop is is clean and healthy for the harvest, or spending time doing other harvests like harvesting blossoms. And additionally, it's so quick to harvest that we can actually get multiple harvests out of the field in one day. For drying efficiency, it's really important that we fill up our barns as much as we can completely and then dry the herb over the course of two or three days and then empty that out by processing the herb and then bringing in another harvest. So it has just dramatically allowed us to speed up the whole, not only harvesting process, but the the drying process and making sure that we're using the best making the best use of our drying space.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: So I have a quick question. Is that tool powered by an engine or a motor or is it humanly driven?

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: Good question. So Terra Tech offers two different models. They have one that is that you you push and you actually use a drill battery to to power it. You can see just in front of me on on the the harvester, it's got a a large battery. They're hanging on the side of the machine. So it's completely electric.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Okay.

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: And there's motors for each of the wheels to self propel it. And this is the scaled up version is different than the smaller version, which is good for things like spinach or mixed greens. This allows us to harvest what we call aromatic crops or oftentimes with woody stems, things that wouldn't work with the other model. So something like rosemary or lavender or other crops that are tougher to cut can be done with this. Because it's self propelled, one person can stand behind it and move it down the road without any assistance needed.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: Yeah. And I think that speaks to also what we're trying to do with our farm and the barn that we built several years ago, which is to electrify as much as we can. It's never been our goal to have lots of big machinery on our farm. And we find that being able to have small scale equipment that allows us to still be closely in touch with the herb and the quality of our product is what we're seeking and what we're able to achieve as we scale up with this tool. So our goal over the next few years is to go from producing approximately six to 800 pounds of dried herb a year up to 1,500, 2,000 pounds within the next few years. Where do receive this

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Where's your markets now? Where do you do you do you send your product to?

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: So as mentioned, we we have our shop in the village, so people come directly into our store to purchase herbs. We also have an online store where people will purchase not only our products, but also the bulk herbs that we sell. And then we also have a large wholesale market. We work with Food Connects and the Acorn Food Hub to sell our products around Vermont and New England. And then we also sell direct wholesale to customers in primarily Vermont and New England, but also further field around the country.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: And you think that you have enough room for capacity to still sell your product?

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: You mean in the marketplace?

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: If you increase to where you want to be, you're comfortable. You have room to be able to do that.

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: Yeah, absolutely. From our own experience and also talking with other growers, the market is, there's so much more capacity to scale up. I think like food and many other markets, the industry has been globalized and a lot more people are seeking to find higher quality products closer to home. And we're able to meet that demand, but we still haven't been able to meet demand. We sell out of our herbs every year as we continue to scale up. And I know the same thing happens for other growers as well. My next slide, I just wanted to show you a small a short video of the harvester in action. And this actually was our first crop that we harvested. This is skullcap with the harvester.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: It's cooler in slow motion. How many hours have you put on it so far?

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: How many hours have been put on it?

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: So far. Yeah.

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: That's a good question. I'm not sure exactly. Maybe maybe twenty?

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yeah. It's

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: so fast that we don't actually have to spend that much time on it. And we as I mentioned, we received it mid season last year, so we haven't yet had a full season to work with it.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: Have you used it in the mud yet?

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: No. We haven't used it in the mud yet.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: You shouldn't be picking up, you shouldn't be processing any of that when it's wet out anyway, correct?

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: No, we're basically always waiting for a sunny dry day to harvest things. So usually we're harvesting late morning, early afternoon to bring in the harvest.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: You don't have any of that acid clay down there, so you're all set.

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: Yeah, we have a nice sandy loam up on our hillside and it works really well actually for our crops, many of which are Mediterranean things like thyme, sage, oregano. They actually like the kind of the well drained drier soils.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: Nice.

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: This is just an example of one of our tea blends and the dried product that we have. So once we've harvested and processed everything down in our apothecary, we'll make tea blends. We have spices and spice blends. I'm also a trained herbalist. So we'll make herbal remedies like tinctures and oxymels, fire cider as well as the body care products like salves

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: as well.

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: And one of the things that I think really stands out from competitors on the larger marketplace like McCormick or Frontier is just, you can tell immediately how green and vibrant the herbs are when you look at them on the shelf or buy them. And here's a couple of this is some of our teas and spices and also some of our our body care products that we that we make.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Thanks. Yeah. Oh, there's a view. Yeah.

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: Let's see. I guess I would just also wanted to to speak to the the long term impacts of of having this harvester. So I mentioned that we grow approximately or cultivate approximately two acres and also do some wild crafting on some additional acreage as well. But we're hoping to scale up our cultivated space from approximately two up to three or four over the next five years or so. Having this harvester will allow us to scale particularly the leaf crops that we grow. Like I mentioned, spearmint, skullcap, as you saw in the video, oregano, sage, and many more herbs, which are some of our highest demand herbs, not only as bulk dried herbs, but also for our own products. So having this harvest will allow us to scale up without dramatically increasing our staffing levels, which hiring staff is always tricky. I think we've been very lucky to hire some really wonderful folks, some who have farm experience, but others who come to us with more of an herbalist background, but are seeking to to work directly with the herbs. But we think that we can scale up without we can basically double our production without needing to double our staffing because we've got this tool allowing us to be much more efficient as as we do that.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Was this first time that you applied for one of the grants?

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: No, I've been I think we've been applying for WikiLands grants almost since we started our farm. So we've not every year, but we've tried over various years get grants for different projects that we had in mind. And this specific tool came up for us just in the last couple of years.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Well, good. Thank you. What else would you like to tell us?

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: I think I would just like to mention just how significant the Working Lands grant is. It's one of those grants that prior to achieving or to receiving the grant last year, we always look forward to having the opportunity to apply because not only does it present a sizable chunk of money that's potentially available for projects, but it also funds projects that other grants might not fund. For example, infrastructure. I know sometimes the grants don't also require a match, which is also can be really tricky. And for us, because we invested so much in scaling up our barn a few years ago, we didn't have the ability to to make this kind of purchase of this tool. So otherwise, we would have just continued to grow, but doing everything by hand and maybe that would have slowed down our ability to scale as quickly as we hope to. And for me also, grew up down in the Upper Valley. And when I moved back in 2012 to Vermont to start our farm, it was grants like this that really attracted me to Vermont. There are many reasons why Vermont is amazing, just the values that Vermont puts in the working landscape are something that is so important and makes us as farmers, I think, feel really supported in our endeavors and gives us the opportunity to take risks and to keep expanding the local food economy and also just the general resilience around the state. Think it's kind of priceless what this grant can achieve for different businesses.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: Do you own the farm or are you leasing it? What's a-

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: We own farm and live on the farm.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: Cool. Great. How many acres? Think you said. How many total We

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: have 38 acres. Approximately half of that is forest. The other half is open. Primarily open acreages for grazing and wild crafting. And then around two right now are for cultivated crops.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Do you have any projects that you do in the forest?

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: Right now, our forest is relatively young, but we are thinning it out. It's it's growing up as a nice hardwood forest, and we are have begun to cultivate some woodland medicinals in the forest like ginseng and goldenseal and some others, and are hoping to do that more and more in the coming years. Those kinds of crops are quite slow before we can get to harvest, usually around ten years or so. So that's something that they're planning for in the future.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Well, good. Well, we want to thank you very much for sharing your story with us. Very valuable information for us. Keep doing what you're doing. Congratulations with your success.

[Misha Johnson (Co-owner, Freeverse Farm & Apothecary)]: Thank you so much.

[Elizabeth Sispel (Working Lands Enterprise Initiatives Program Manager)]: So we have two presenters remaining. Yep. We're gonna hear from Miles Jenis from Vermont Levy Timber next who is joining online, and then we're gonna hear from David Keck.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Sounds good.

[Elizabeth Sispel (Working Lands Enterprise Initiatives Program Manager)]: Who's here in person?

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Sounds good. Miles, welcome. The floor is yours.

[Miles Janes (Owner, Vermont Heavy Timber)]: Thank you. I'm sorry I can't be there in person today, but I appreciate the opportunity to testify in front of you. My name is Miles Janes. I am from and live in Huntington, Vermont. And I'm a carpenter, and I run a business called Vermont Heavy Timber. And we focus we we're a timber framing company, but we focus on preservation, restoration. And specifically, focus on trust structures. So churches, meeting houses, and cover bridges, although we do plenty of work on agricultural barns and a little bit of work on houses, not too often. A lot a lot of lot of agricultural products. And we are, as far as I know, one of the few companies in the state and possibly the only company that works to the standards set forth by the secretary of the interior's office that cover restoration, preservation and renovation. We don't do much renovation, but the other two are our big focuses. There are a couple other businesses that focus on that in the timber framing arena, but they're just one man shows and we have good relationships with them and help them with their projects often. It's a bit of a shame. There's a there's a large demand for our work in the state. There's a lot of historic buildings, obviously in the state. Lot of cover bridges, a lot of churches and meeting houses and barns and the state, as you may well know, has a barn grant program that funds some restoration of Vermont's ag barns and we take advantage or the folks that we work for often take advantage of that program. So it's it's unfortunate that there's not more people who do what we do. We are trying to grow to meet the need, but not not grow just for growth sake. We have six employees right now. And at this time we're looking to grow to about nine or 10 folks. So we we do the restoration work. We also are general contractors and oversee most of our projects And we During the course of our work, we're often lifting and moving buildings to be able to get to the foundations and fix the timber frame. So we have the ability to do jacking and house moving and we do some of that as well. We were given a grant by the working landscapes board for $50,000 to build a drying shed right next to our shop here in Huntington, and we are using that we're gonna be using that space. We're not quite done with the project, but we're we're pretty close. We're gonna be using that space to dry timbers, to be able to store timbers. Right now, we don't have a great way to store timbers and we generally use our winter time to be able to cut and prep as much materials we can for the projects that we have ahead of us in the summers. Sometimes, occasionally, we cut some new framing in the winter and we also will go and measure all of our restoration projects that are coming up and precut those timbers and not having a place to store them before we can install them in the spring and summer has been a pretty big pinch point in our business. So that shed is about 2,500 square feet, and that allows us to reallocate a little over 500 employee hours from just logistical tasks related to dealing with those that timber to actually making money, not having to move stuff around all the time and and instead being able to cut timbers and to prep them, do what we actually should be doing. We also we have a sawmill. We saw almost all of our own logs any given year. About 90 to a 100% of our logs come from Vermont loggers. We buy most of our logs off the landing, although we do some of our own harvesting. We are one of two sawmills in the state that can saw. We can shop to 53 feet long, and so we sell specialty timbers to other timber framers like us. We purchase logs from probably 10 to 15 different loggers per year. Many of them local to us, but we will occasionally travel around the state if because we need very particular things. Some of the rules in those standards that I mentioned before about replacing in kind and so if a building say a cover bridge was built with spruce, we're gonna replace it with spruce. If it was hand hewn, we're gonna hand hew the timbers. We probably spend it's not a massive amount. Wood is actually fairly cheap when you buy it in the log form. We we spend anywhere from depends on the year, but 25 to $50,000 a year on logs from local loggers. And I really love that part of our business. I love that most of what we use is what I call base materials wood, steel, copper and a lot of that money is in the wood and flows right back into the local economy. So that's something I take pride in. I think I mentioned we got a $50,000 grant for that drying shed and that's been a huge help for us. That was the first time that we applied for a grant. And we're probably spending a little more than a 150% of that cost ourselves to build this project, both in labor mostly and some in materials. And like I said, we'll be done with that fairly soon.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: Miles, if I may, how many employees do you have?

[Miles Janes (Owner, Vermont Heavy Timber)]: I have six right now, and we're hiring. We're trying to get up to about nine or 10 this year.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Oh, wow. Good. Good. Which other Well,

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: that that maybe answered what is staffing is rough. I was gonna ask you what are some of your challenges, And I think you answered it in how many in staffing. How skilled do you need or do you train staff when they're there?

[Miles Janes (Owner, Vermont Heavy Timber)]: Yeah, that's a great question, Senator. It is a very high skill business. That's the reason we don't really have much competition or many colleagues I'd say, because the bar to entry is quite high for both in the cost of of what it takes, the equipment and and the skill level. Unfortunately, we don't really find folks who are skilled. We we generally hire stick framers who have had experience and then we train them to do what we do, but there there's so few people out there who who do what we do that we spend a huge amount of time training. And so education is a really big part of our business. And it has to be I mean, I'm delighted in it, but it also has its downsides and that we really have to focus on that side.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: And once you train them, what's your attention like of keeping them? Because obviously if you train them and a year later they leave, that can be a little frustrating.

[Miles Janes (Owner, Vermont Heavy Timber)]: It certainly can be. When people come on, we ask that they give us at least a a two year minimum commitment. It's not a contractual thing, but we ask them to, you know, look us in the eye and say, this is what I wanna do. And I think we pay pretty well. We don't have health insurance, but we do pay, you know, people start at 25 and my foreman's at 45 an hour. You know, we're very flexible on folks time and we do have some other benefits. So could be more, could be less. I think we do pretty well for considering the the what people get paid in this industry And we try and take care of folks. And we also because of what we do, it's we're we are lucky that folks will move across the country to work for us. I mean, is there's sort of a cache in what we do. You know, folks really wanna come work for us specifically because we do very, you know, very you know, it's a it's a craft. That's not just banging nails. And so it but that doesn't mean that it's hard or it doesn't mean that it's easy to find folks.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: Sure, sure. Miles, do you use old timber frames as well, or is it all new cut and manufacture of your own and it's like to have an old standing barn.

[Miles Janes (Owner, Vermont Heavy Timber)]: Yeah, it's funny. So many people ask us this. We generally don't take down old barns. One of the structures in that set of guidelines that I referenced earlier is about readable repairs. So we're trying to make sure that we would never fool a historian, an architectural historian in the future. And so we're never putting old timbers from a different building into into another old building. Generally, if we're working on an old building, we're using new timbers, but we're we're using the same joinery and the same conversion techniques whether it's healing or sawing.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: Thanks.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Well, what else would you like to tell us?

[Miles Janes (Owner, Vermont Heavy Timber)]: Well, what I love to tell you, I would say a couple things. The working lens enterprise board has been you know, that grant has been big for us. I would say that that project is something that we would have done someday in the future, but for us to be able to do it now as a huge help. And I I think that the money that we got will certainly go right back into the Vermont economy. Like, there's a huge amount of money that passes through the business and and stays right here in the state. And like I said, I'm really proud of that. The other things I'd like to say purely on my own recognizance, I

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: you're crazy. Pros.

[Miles Janes (Owner, Vermont Heavy Timber)]: I think we'll be able to use some of the infrastructure that we built here for that called the Shaker Mountain School. And that's that's a big focus of mine just because there is, you know, a real dearth of carpenters here in the in the state.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: Miles, we didn't hear the first half. You went you you you froze there for

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: a bit.

[Miles Janes (Owner, Vermont Heavy Timber)]: Oh gosh. I apologize. We're we're we're working on starting a school, a nonprofit school to teach the trade. There's a real shortage of of grass people and trades people here in Vermont as I'm sure you've noticed. And I just I want to respond to that need. That's a really important thing for us. And then I know it sounds a little crazy, but I wanted to put a plug in for wooden bridges. We're actually working on getting a grant from the Northern borders regional commission to do a case study on so the grant is about timber for transit, and we want to replace a failing concrete or steel bridge with a wooden bridge using glulam timbers as the base beams. Would be able to carry full highway load, would be taller, you know, full height to be able to take full size trucks. But just a little little plug there for wooden bridges. I'm sure you're you're well aware that steel and concrete are not actually, you know, those aren't lifetime materials. They need maintenance and they fail over time and and wooden bridges actually have a a really long lasting capability because they're covered. So just a little plug in here.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: I don't

[Elizabeth Sispel (Working Lands Enterprise Initiatives Program Manager)]: think you can

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: get anything more Vermont. Exactly.

[Miles Janes (Owner, Vermont Heavy Timber)]: It really seems to fit. Know, we could teach some carpenters. We'd be able to keep a whole bunch of money in the state, and I think it would really fit the aesthetic in Vermont.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Very cool. Thank you. Well, thank you. One last question.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: Your application process, how how how's that go?

[Miles Janes (Owner, Vermont Heavy Timber)]: It went quite well. We had been given some technical assistance by the state through one of their programs, and that's through the UVM extension. We had a couple folks helping us with application, which is great. And I I found it pretty easy. We

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Could you have done it

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: personally yourself without the help?

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yes. Yep. Okay.

[Miles Janes (Owner, Vermont Heavy Timber)]: Yep. It's just a matter of timing. There's a whole bunch of stuff I gotta do. So if I can get help, I love help.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: I hear you there. Yep. Thank you. I appreciate you coming in. I hope you keep up with your continued success, and

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: it was great to hear your story.

[Miles Janes (Owner, Vermont Heavy Timber)]: Thank you very much, sir.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Have a good day. Yep.

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: Jim, one off. Hot seat here, everybody. Yeah. Virtually.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: That's all that's all good. Good

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: morning. Good morning to you. Appreciate your patience as I navigated Jeffersonville Roads this morning. It's all good. David Tech. I'm the owner of all of you, I think, actually in previous testimony, but owner operator for Stella fourteen Wines up in Cambridge, Vermont. Yes. In North Cambridge. And applied and received a grant from Working Lands last year to trellis the vineyard that we planted in 2024. Yes. Thank you. Decent view from the vineyard there.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: Yeah.

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: Good. Good.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: So

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: I've testified in the past about sort of the potential in what I think is really an agricultural landscape that Vermont could benefit a lot from developing vineyards, just from both a purely economic standpoint and use of the land, keeping land in agriculture, but then also from a tourism and tax dollars perspective, I think they have a huge amount of potential. I guess I'll dive into these slides because I think they tell a lot of the story to begin with, but that is Golden Dog Farm up in on Pratt Road in Jeffersonville, and this is where we initiated the project. That's one of their older stretches of vineyard. My wife in the hat in the middle there poking her head through, and a crew of folks picking grapes in actually, that's 2023, I think. And actually, to Miles' career in business, the barn in the background there, by all accounts, Ira Allen's barn Oh. From Ira, Vermont that one of his colleagues who does similar work deconstructed and moved to that farm. The outside looks smooth, but the inside is all original timber, which is equal. So our trajectory, we took over the Boyden farm in 2020 from David and Linda Boyden, and David and yeah. Linda. And started farming it and producing wine. 2020 was our first vintage. And we opened a tasting room in Jacksonville in 2022, and we're kind of on an upward slope. We just hired our first employee and actually two employees at that point, and then 2023 happened. The first challenge that we saw was the frost of 2023, which I testified in here about the challenges that that presented. We lost 90% of the crop at Boynton in that year. So our sort of upward trajectory was sort of stalled there. And then in kind of a dark bit of positive thinking, This is what the vineyard looks like later that year when it flooded in Jeffersonville, and the only positive side to that was we didn't have any crop hanging because of frost. So the vines struggled a bit, but there wasn't any really, we weren't very concerned about the quality of the fruit at that point. That was the only part of the vineyard, thankfully, that flooded. But we ended up closing the tasting room as a result, but that was also the point at which I started the conversation with Doug and Becca Warpole, who own the Golden Dog Farm on Prab Road, which is about 500 feet, 400, 500 feet higher than the Boyden Farm, and was out of that, sort of the frost all settled in the valleys. It was irradiated frost, so basically the lack of airflow and the cold air all created the worst possible situation at the Boyden Farm, which is right next to the river. Up at Golden Dog Farm, we have better airflow. The temperature was similar, but we actually didn't have any frost damage up there. So 2023 was the first year that we took over the vineyard as it existed up there. And then 2024 began a ten year lease with Doug and Becca to farm that vineyard. The vineyard itself had been planted in 2015 by the previous owners of the property, and it was planted let me see if the next picture actually helps this. It does a little bit. So it it was planted as one enormous seven acre stretch by the previous owners who were on the on the property maybe a couple times a year to be there, but their full time residence was not the 270 acre farm that they built and brought all these beautiful buildings to. So after having had the vineyard for about few years, they decided it was a lot of work, and they tore out five acres of what they planted and trellised all of the posts, all of the wire, everything, and mowed it under and just made it a hayfield. When Duncan and Bethe took over the vineyard or the property, there were two acres that were still planted. There were two acres that had been mowed under, but they'd begun to kind of allow to come back because vines are sort of like weeds. If you don't continue to mow them or pull them out by the roots, they will continue to come back. And then there was about three acres that were just still hayfield. So on the left or my left, I guess, yours too, is what the vineyard looked like in the middle section. There's two acres that were had bamboo and vines coming back, but no trellising and no infrastructure for them to grow. Vines need some sort of structure to whether however you trellis, there are ways all over the world that people trellis vines, but this is not a successful, especially not here where we have a lot of humidity and a lot of vigor. But the part of the vineyard that was still trellised had its own challenges because it was planted essentially the way a California vineyard would be planted with old end posts made with locust that is or black walnut, I guess, that is, in theory, rock proof. But it's rock proof if you're in a really dry climate with a lot of sand in your soil, and our soils are heavy and acidic, as you know. And so all of the hosts are kind of in the process of rotting out. This is my friend, and her dad Dave and mom, helping us get bird nets off of the post because we've kind of cherry rigged everything and made it viable, but it's not great. So all of those posts are in the process of falling down. So this was kind of the vineyard that we inherited. Because I'm a stubborn Vermonter, and I And

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: and I'm sorry. You you told me 2015?

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: So it was planted in 2015. Doug and Becca bought the property in 2020, and then we began working with the vineyard in '23. '23. Okay. Yep. So because we're stubborn, but we realized the potential, a, there had been a vineyard there and had been a successfully grown vineyard, and it was in not in a flood zone, also not in a place that was prone to frost particularly. The middle picture here is what the bottom part of the vineyard looked like, and we doubled down, bought 3,500 vines from Andy down in Paulette, Vermont, who has a Northeast Vine Supply, kind of provides hybrid varieties that survive this climate to really the entire nation, actually. Grows a tremendous amount down there. We, there's my border collie, my wife planting, we and a bunch

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: of

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: friends replanted the entire bottom three and a half acres with those 3,500 vines. There they are in the back of my truck. That's, my neighbor, Don, pulling a plow from nineteen twenty five behind the tractor. That was not the most effective way to get the the the field plowed, but we but we got it planted. For those wondering, planting a vineyard is actually the most miserable work ever. It seems really romantic, but it's pretty, pretty dirty, sweaty, buggy, and, my wife and I got married a monk after we planted that vineyard, which is, still amazing to me. That's putting in the last vine.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: The marriage or the vineyard?

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: America's a vineyard. Yeah, she was not

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Like like did you say? I am

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: being ridiculous. No. It's close to

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Valentine's Day. Was giving you a shot for the whole time.

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: I know. She's the first one to admit that as we put in that last vine, she was really wondering what we were doing. So it was a lot of vines to plant. But that's the vineyard after we planted it in 2024. All had we put all of it on bamboo, all of it with grow tubes around it, no trellising, but but finished. So we knew we needed to trellis the vineyard. How we were gonna do that was a pretty challenging conversation. It's one of the most expensive aspects. Planting the vines is expensive, it's hugely labor intensive and equipment intensive, but trellising it is a massive project and involves a lot of equipment, skill, materials, really materials. And so this is Steven Wilson with BT Vineyards, And we had him come out because basically I wanted to see if we could use steel posts instead of the old wood that they had used, and otherwise we would have been digging and putting in a bunch of pressure treated wood, which also is very expensive, but the steel will last a lot longer. And, they're easier to install. They're faster to install, but you have to be able to drill them in at an angle and in specific you're not using excavators. You're just hammering it to the soil. So we had him come out to test the viability of that, and and he and his team checked the entire vineyard and found that it was gonna go, which was a pretty great moment. So this is November 2024. Here was the math that I'm sorry. This is the worst possible slide because it is a it is all text, but this was a math that informed our decision to to plant the vineyard and go ahead knowing that we did not at that time have a working lands grant. We we were basically looking at whether we were going to bring in outside investment, look at, whether it was private equity or figuring out some sort of loan to get a trellis, but the math on the thing all added up. So the current vineyard production was really the two acres that we inherited that were poorly trellised, and those were producing about 30 to 50 cases a year. So in the best case scenario, that's about $15,000 a year in product if you're selling your bottle of wine for $20 bottle, which is pretty low. That's a pretty conservative price for Vermont wine. The average Vermont bottle on the shelf is about $30, but we figured between wholesale and retail, that's where we would at least do our numbers. With the addition of the untrellised vineyard, but it was planted, so just adding trellising to the two acres that had vines that didn't require us to replant them, we'd be able to increase from 50 cases to about 100 to 120. That's pretty conservative for two acres, but it's conservative because it's been fallow for a couple of years. It's been unmaintained, and we don't really know what the production is gonna look like. After watching it grow last year, I'm really excited. I think it's gonna be a much more successful vineyard than we projected. But, but in the interest of doing the numbers, middle of the road scenario, that's about $36,000 in product annually on so that's four acres total at this point, in the plan. With the new plantings, which were planted at a higher density with new vine material that's more successful and planted, in a place with, a lot more potential for success, all sort of South Southwest facing beautifully exposed slope, we would go from 120 cases to, at the most conservative, three fifty cases in '27, and then close to 600 cases in '28, and that's looking at pretty conservative numbers. To give you an example, Shellburn Vineyard is cropping at about four tons per acre. These numbers are done at one and a half tons per acre. So extremely conservative, but I wanted to be conservative because we don't know whether we're gonna get frost again or whether we're gonna get torrential downpours all through flowering and things like that. I'd rather look at the numbers conservatively and be delightfully surprised. So looking at that, we're looking at over $100,000 a year in product in 'twenty seven and $180,000 a year in product in 'twenty eight, if it performs at kind of bare minimum to mediocre yields. None of this includes any of the tax dollars or tourism dollars that are included visits to the vineyard wine tastings, things like that. I also am director of hospitality for Golden Dog Farms, so we do wine tastings all summer where people come and I'm pouring, you know, a handful of bottles of the coffee, then we have people paying $200 a person to come hang out with golden retrievers on the farm and then taste Vermont wine and usually walk away with some bottles. That all just goes right back into the Vermont economy. So those numbers made sense to me considering the amount of investment we were looking for for trellising and the amount that we'd already put in with the planting. So if we had not received the Working Lands grant, which we applied for in December '4 and received in April? Project probably.

[Elizabeth Sispel (Working Lands Enterprise Initiatives Program Manager)]: You probably received notification in January and then

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: February, yeah.

[Elizabeth Sispel (Working Lands Enterprise Initiatives Program Manager)]: After a grant agreement in March.

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: Sounds right. So we were essentially spending the winter looking at what it would take to fix the old trellising, which was in such rough shape. Trellis, the reclaimed part of the vineyard that desperately needed trellising, those were the two most time sensitive aspects. And then how are we gonna take out loans, find private equity, etcetera, to trellis the rest of the vineyard, which is really the the heaviest amount of, financial investment, but also could put off a couple of years because we planted it in the '24, we kind of had until '26 to trellis it, so we had a little bit of time. Wasting that time on sort of scrounging and trying to find financial investment was definitely gonna slow our upward trajectory, but it was kind of what we committed to doing. Today, because of the working lands grant, we got again in February, I guess, of 'twenty five, but we began to implement immediately upon receiving the funding to buy materials, which are a huge part of it. And then Steven and his team started mid summer last year to get the trellising done. That then allows us to bring on two plus part time employees. The number is a little bit skewed because we work with Angus at West Farm in Jeffersonville, which if you've not been to that farm, truly a spectacular property, but he frequently has his employees too early in the season. So in April, it's muddy in his vineyard or in his fields for planting and for doing a lot of the work, and so he kind of lends us. I just cover his employees for a couple of weeks at the beginning of the season, because April's a pretty busy time for us getting the vineyard finished pruning, getting it trimmed, getting all of that done. Mid season, we frequently will hire a couple of his people away again, but then we've got room for at least two plus part time employees to keep our vineyard maintained throughout the growing season. And then during harvest we bring in a team to get it picked and to help with processing. So the two acres that needed retrellising are now retrellised, and I'm pruning them anytime it's not below 15 degrees and it makes sense to be out there. We reclaim the middle three acres and those look beautiful. I'm excited to get in. That's gonna be some fun work getting those tied up. And then the three and a half acres that'll planted at the bottom of the hill are all planted, trellised, and those basically get mowed and then tied up this year. And then next year, they'll go onto the wire and produce a crop. One of the huge aspects for us as well with this grant was not just having help in the vineyards, but also moving from basically the work was a lot of it just on hands and knees scrounging around trying to excavate these finds. Once they're tied up, a lot of that work moves from on your hands and knees in the snow or mud or whatever up to, like, actual upright work and then track your work moving forward. So quality of life changes pretty dramatically. The amount of time it takes actually also is substantially different. So that's the vineyard. This is proof that we got married. That's our wedding night actually. A pretty nice evening for that in July 2524. So and then we have this beautiful sign that Working Lands has given us to put in the vineyard so that when people visit, they can appreciate what what went into it. So

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: I think the last time we had a conversation, we might have been talking about flooding. Mhmm. If you have How are we how did you make it through the drought?

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: I hate to say this with so many colleagues who suffered because of the drought, but it's kind of perfect for growing grapes. Right. We had one of the best, cleanest, prettiest harvests we have seen in either this or the Boynton Vineyard. We picked faster, and in '22 is actually the perfect contrast because it was disgusting in September. It poured rain.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: I don't know if you remember, but basically rain as well. We had some We

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: brought in twenty nineteen or twenty twenty in the fall. And then twenty twenty two soaking well through harvest. So we spend a lot of we dropped probably 50% of the fruit on the ground just because we're out there sorting through it all. Any rot, anything, little very split rot spreads pretty quickly. That was rough. '23 and 2023 was the frost year. '24 was actually a pretty pretty solid and successful harvest for us. '25 was some of the prettiest brew that we've ever seen. I mean, we just it was just pick it and put it in the bin. You even have to look. And and it meant we moved quickly in the vineyard. So Good. Yeah.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Well, when you're doing all that type of expansion and stuff, you need a

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: little long gray. It's certainly nice. Yeah. It's certainly nice.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Well, good. Well, you know, when the Boydans were there and now you're there, it's all it really is a free part of Vermont to drive through that little valley and and see what you're doing there. So, you know, thank you for what you do for Vermont. It is We've said over and over and over again that the Vermont landscape is not the same if you didn't have Vermont farmers, see a little bit of a different of a look going through and seeing how you guys are making it happen. It's very nice to hear the success story and that your this grant did help you out.

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: Well, it's as you know, farming is not easy on anyone, and every every now and then to be honest, like, had applied for a number of grants, very federal and and otherwise, and had been pretty unsuccessful. I should piggyback on what Miles said. We had help working on the previous grants. This one I actually wrote myself, but with kind of materials that had been put together for previous grant applications. We had no idea whether this was gonna come through, it dramatically changed our perspective for the year. The application itself, so just I think it's important to point out that the process itself, I think, is really important for farms and for businesses because it forces us to really look at the projects that we're hoping to do and look at the viability, the financial incentives, and and what we're really putting together. And so I think the process of the application itself also helped us clarify our business plan and and what we're doing moving forward. So that's hugely impactful for us.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Any questions? Well, I'd like to hear from Scott, and I want thank all of you. This committee is very committed to all Vermont farmers, whether I say it over and over and over again, whether you're baking 12 loaves of bread, buying your sourced products from someone else that's able to do that or you're a large farm operation. We're here, we're working now. I think that you folks ought to know what we're working on. We're working on the language to fix the Supreme Court decision on the Stat Street decision to ensure that we can continue on with what we passed last year, which was the right to farm, and also to make sure that farming can stay viable and stay as much as possible out of direct zoning conflicts within communities. We'll have that, we'll have some successful language before we're done, working with partners of the league, Vermont City Leagues and Towns, and all the other stakeholder groups. Yeah, we're very focused. We're non political. That's one thing we don't allow in here. We are here with what is best for Vermont Farms, and you have a big ally in here, so

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: yes. So how many acres are you doing right now, total?

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: So the Boynton Farm is six and a half or so, David would say ten, six and a half planted acres, and then we have the seven up there, so we're at about 13 and a half, 14 acres.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: And what do you see, how far do you ever see growing? How big would you like to get, and how many acres? Long as you don't

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: have it planted. Yeah, lots

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: of healthy planting. I've projected out to, I think, a fifth listen. 20 acres, 15 acres is just extremely small in the scale of viticulture. That's a tiny plot of one person's vineyard in California. Right? With 50 acres, you get close to 10,000 cases, which is kind of the threshold for being a very successful winery operation. Above 10,000 cases, the scales of economy work against you because you need to upscale sort of all of your equipment in a way that then doesn't become super viable until you're at a 100,000 cases, which I don't think is the way Vermont's ever gonna go necessarily with viticulture, but 50 acres, I think, is a really maybe maybe. I don't know.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: Yeah.

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: But 50 acres, I think, for our operation is a dream.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: So It takes time.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. So I think everyone wants, in here wants to know, when do

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: you open for tasting? So I had two really positive things to do into that conversation. One is, has nothing to do with our wine, but has to do with a new business opening in Cambridge right across from the Boise tasting room, is Warehouse Pies is opening a cafe and sort of a a full operation, and we're gonna collaborate with them to do some tastings there, I think, maybe every Thursday starting this summer. So so we'll start

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: doing some Very important. Like, where

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: are the sammons?

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yes. You don't want some of them. No. Wine. Let me They

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: they took my utility knife at the gate. I'm sure they would have been super excited about alcohol walking.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: If you had your staff on the window, we would come out.

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: Yeah. I know. You didn't see me going back to

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: the front. No. We should've

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: Yeah. Yeah.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: We should've paid better attention. We apologize. Yeah. No. That's alright.

[Elizabeth Sispel (Working Lands Enterprise Initiatives Program Manager)]: You guys know that we we go and visit every project, not or a board member, and we're not allowed to accept a single taste as, like, you know, which makes sense. Like, that makes sense for us. But imagine the pain of being, oh, wow. Look at all these, like, you know,

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: products. Yeah.

[Elizabeth Sispel (Working Lands Enterprise Initiatives Program Manager)]: But if there just happened

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: to be a cup sitting

[Elizabeth Sispel (Working Lands Enterprise Initiatives Program Manager)]: there Yeah. Yeah. I

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: think it's part of determining whether the project was successful. Yes. It's quality control. Yes. Yes.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Well, thank you. Thank you, Elizabeth.

[David Keck (Owner/Operator, Stella 14 Wines)]: Thank you all for your time, for

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: your support.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Thank you. The stories are very rewarding. They're good to hear.

[Elizabeth Sispel (Working Lands Enterprise Initiatives Program Manager)]: We trust that you'll reach out to us if any questions come up or clarify any.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: We will.

[Elizabeth Sispel (Working Lands Enterprise Initiatives Program Manager)]: Yeah, need clarifying information. You know where we are. Yep. Thank you for giving us this time.

[Senator Joseph "Joe" Major (Vice Chair)]: Thank you. It's good to hear the success stories.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: It is. We've spent a lot of time on the non success stories that we touched upon with David and social workers. Let's take a break. We're going to be back here at 10:45 or maybe a few minutes early. We're going put some time on the section 10 subject we haven't got to. Before we take a break, I just want to talk a little bit. We're trying to do that. We have a few minutes. We have a lot of stakeholder groups that have come out with a lot of new ideas on this this stuff that's one through three. I am willing to give them a week to solve that amongst themselves between the agency and all that. And if they can't solve it, they can't get to it. I'm coming in here and listening to, I'm respectful of all of that stuff. But I think we have a pretty good idea of where we want to get to. I have a pretty good idea that we know where we can get to. I think there's just some more conversations for those folks to hammer out amongst themselves and then bring it back to us. If they can't do that, then we'll make a decision. So I'm going to put that on hold for a little bit. You guys will probably get some discussions, but as of right now, have Steve and them are going to talk the agencies and all those guys. Mean, they need to hammer it out. So I'm going give them that time and then we'll start that. Other than that we're gonna have to move on on some of our other stuff. So everybody good with that? Yep. Okay. Everybody changes anything or wants to do anything just let me know. They need to do some of their heavy lifting have to recall some of their differences. So we'll take a break. We probably won't start any bit earlier but