This commentary is by Kate Barlow, president, and Omer Trajman, treasurer, of the Norwich Farm Foundation.
In winter 2018, our neighbors called an emergency meeting at Norwich Farm. Chris Gray and Laura Brown of Norwich Farm Creamery explained the precarious future the farm was facing, given the recent announcement that Vermont Technical College would be abandoning a joint dairy farming and teaching partnership.
The farm was in tip-top condition with the recent repairs and improvements made by the college, including the addition of a $750,000 state-of-the-art creamery. Laura and Chris were ready to launch their value-added creamery. The neighbors agreed: The only way to save this farm was to make it a real working farm, and that was the informal beginning of the Norwich Farm Foundation.
Since then, Norwich Farm Creamery turned itself into a viable business and we developed a nonprofit plan to keep Norwich Farm a working value-added dairy farm and education center. Our plan is the closest to the original vision for the future of this farm. And it is centered on a now-proven creamery business model.
A recent VTDigger commentary by Jeanie McIntyre, president of New Hampshire-based nonprofit Upper Valley Land Trust, seeks to “correct the record” on some issues regarding Norwich Farm. The land trust is involved because Vermont Technical College inexplicably gave them an option to purchase the farm for just $50,000 should the college abandon its programming. As we are the only group that has made an offer to purchase the farm, and the only group with a working farm at the core of its mission, we thought some clarification was in order.
The Norwich Farm Creamery were brought in by Vermont technical College as partners on the project. They are not simply “tenants” as McIntyre states.
Upper Valley Land Trust did not solely “finance” the Vermont Technical College program. The land trust purchased — and still owns — the adjacent 350 acres of pastures, agricultural and forest land from Vermont Tech. The purchase of the adjacent land for $300,000 by Upper Valley Land Trust was financed by community donations, town and state funding. The program was financed in part by that sale, state and federal grants, taxpayer money, and money and expertise from Norwich Farm Creamery.
The land sale from Vermont Technical College to Upper Valley Land Trust deliberately or inadvertently separated the working farmland from the farm infrastructure, creating today what the college is marketing as a “6-acre property” next to a conservation area. Just five years ago, and for centuries prior, it was all considered a farm with working cows grazing the pastures. Now suddenly it is “not available” to dairy cows, but OK for beef?
The asking price is $1.25 million. Our concern is that this is a Norwich real estate price, not a price for a sustainable working small farm. Every extra dollar our foundation puts toward the purchase price is a dollar less that goes into investing in the farm itself and keeping it on a feasible financial trajectory.
The agreement to settle a legal dispute between Vermont Technical College and Upper Valley Land Trust, which is framing and impacting the transaction, is not a lump sum being paid in two parts, as McIntyre indicates. An initial payment of $75,000 was due to the land trust on June 30, 2020, followed by a second payment that appears to be a portion of the net sale proceeds. That follow-on payment remains undisclosed, as did the settlement itself until it was obtained through a Public Records Act request.
This seems like an odd incentive. And who set the “floor price” below which Upper Valley Land Trust gets to veto the deal or a right of first refusal to match and purchase the property? Why did the land trust specify the selection of the Realtor?
Contrary to McIntyre’s claims, Norwich Farm Foundation’s plan is not for “intensive dairy.” It is for small-scale, regenerative dairy, which is right-sized for this farm and will build soil, sequester carbon, and control flooding. We are working closely with the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, which has proven throughout the state that dairy and water quality are not mutually exclusive. The farm was originally built to carry 50 cows. Our value-added approach needs only 20 cows to work.
Upper Valley Land Trust’s plan for “agriculture” on their adjoining property consists of a hay lease where the field is cut but once per year, a three-quarter-acre “community garden,” and a few token beef cattle on the pastures. This is “agriculture” if you are trying to meet the tax standards of the Vermont Use Value Appraisal (current use) program, but it trifles in comparison with our plans to produce 350,000 pounds of dairy per year.
McIntyre reveals that the land trust will be blocking access to the agricultural land to whomever Vermont Technical College sells “the farm.” Her position assures the end of this magnificent and powerful agricultural place, and its centuries-long existence as a working farm.
How do we reestablish a farm system that has functioned for centuries and modernize it with a proven business model? Let’s stop asking the people who broke it apart. The solution is to look to the community to support the professional farmers already on site so that Norwich Farm may really farm again and feed our generations to come.
