Press Manchester Journal
Author Danielle M. Crosier
Published Aug 6, 2024
Walker Cammack weeds one of the experimental agroforest crops as he discusses the need for greater diversity when it comes to the future of farming in Southern Vermont.
MANCHESTER — Nestled into a valley on a long dirt road, seemingly beyond the back of beyond, lies Danby’s Smokey House Center – an educational research laboratory located on a 5,000 acre property.
“We’re a land-based non-profit,” said Walker Cammack, program director at Smokey House, as he settled onto the bench of a picnic table.
“That ridgeline that you see over there,” he said, pointing to the top of the the far mountain, and then moving to point to the top of another to the right, and then spinning around in his seat to indicate the opposite ridges, “and to that ridge line over there – literally, the ridgeline is the property line – so, we’re working in this entire valley.”
The property is under conservation easement, a legally binding agreement between Smokey House Center and the State of Vermont, with the intent of protecting its natural resources against further residential, commercial, or industrial development. The valley, surrounding a portion of Danby Mountain Road, also hosts a smattering of residential properties that lie close to the road.
“Those are inholdings that private landowners hold within the valley, so Smokey House is very much a working landscape. It’s conserved, but that doesn’t mean that people don’t live here,” Cammack said. “It’s still used for agricultural uses. The original mission of Smokey House, fifty years ago, was to demonstrate what a healthy and viable working landscape looks like, and to connect with young people in meaningful ways.”
Originally purchased as a retreat by a wealthy New York City couple with an interest in philanthropic work, the “farm” was passed on to the Taconic Foundation in 1967 for use as an “unidentified public purpose.”
Developing a vision to open Smokey House Center as a platform for place-based learning, the Taconic Foundation established, “the development of a program to demonstrate principles of ecologically sound and environmentally productive land management, and to conduct programs that provide employment training for disadvantaged youth.”
The YouthWork Program at Smokey House was opened in 1974, and quickly grew in success. Funded in part by the U.S. Labor Department under the Carter Administration’s Youth Employment Demonstration Projects Act, the project – along with numerous other ambitious federal stimulus projects – sought to address both the economic issue of rising federal unemployment (which was especially high in young people) and the social issue of the rising tide of disadvantaged and resentful youth.
With Carter’s establishment of the Young Adult Conservation Corps, Smokey House became the destination for young people growing up in areas of high unemployment to develop their skills in farm and forested lands.
“Smokey House has gone through a lot of iterations,” said Cammack. “For about 30-plus years, they basically set up a land-based workforce training program for ‘at risk’ youth and were bringing mostly high school aged kids – a lot of them struggling in the traditional classroom setting – and it was really successful and replicated all over the country. There was a lot of evolution of programming going on here – up until the recession of 2008, that is.”
It was at that time that the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression hit the country, bringing the unemployment rate to over 10% and resulting in nearly 6 million households losing their homes.
“All of the federal funding dried up, and the Taconic Foundation basically spent its way down and no longer existed and pretty abruptly – like, over just a couple of years – had to shutter,” explained Cammack. “And then it entered this extended fallow period where it was kind of like, ‘what comes next?’ That shuttering period was really hard.”
“There were a lot of different factors, but they all just kind of aligned to create an impossible situation,” he continued. “There was a period where they just tried to maintain the resource, and they had some programming where people from the local community came to help farm – and donated proceeds to the local food banks. But, there was no larger, outward-facing public purpose.”
It was just about a year into the Biden Administration and “relatively recently,” Cammack recalled, when the Board finally came together to establish a future mission – a mission of greater resiliency, and a belief that it was time to fully utilize the center’s incredible resources once again.
Ben Holmes, founder of the immersive non-profit Farm School of Massachusetts, was tapped to become the interim executive director of Smokey House. Overseeing the shift, Holmes and the Board brought on Cammack, Scott Alves, Mara Hearst, and Danielle Zimmerman to help fulfill the concept of a “living lab.”
“The living lab is going to be our keystone program now and, in simplest terms, the living lab intends to use this massive land resource to conduct land-based research – applied research in agriculture, forestry, and land stewardship – really in the context of climate change,” Cammack said. “We’re looking at, ‘how do we need to adapt those resources, those practices, to create future abundance but also resilience?’”
“And, that’s really layer number one,” he continued. “Layer number two under that is to really hold true to the original mission – the focus – of working with youth to set up these research projects and set up this research center with the purpose of bringing young people into it. Not in a way that they’re just coming in and learning, but in a way that they’re actively contributing – that’s really the philosophy under everything that we’re trying to do.”
The diversification in the layer approach to Smokey House’s vision is echoed in the diversification of the types of projects that the Center is developing.
“We’re talking about trying to address global issues, but on a community level – which is always complicated,” said Cammack. “And, the reason that we’re focused on young people is not just from the history of this place. But, these are decisions that are impacting them the most. Our real philosophy is to bring them in in a way where they can really build skills – where they can tap into the courage inside them so they can feel a sense of ownership in their future.”
In June, Smokey House’s Board of Directors announced Cammack, Hearst and Zimmerman as the center’s new directors, who together will guide the future of the organization as an innovative shared leadership team.
Together they’ll continue developing the living lab with its immersive place-based youth education, experimentation, and training facility as well as its applied research center.
According to Cammack, whose background is in forestry, some of the most exciting research currently in the works involves the use of forest management and what human interaction with that resource could potentially look like in the future.
Examining the ability for farmers of the future to have long term fallback crops that involve the use of forested lands is of special interest.
As Cammack pointed to the “shade structure,” the growing area that mimics the forested area beyond the agricultural research area, he discussed the transplant of agroforestry crop species such as ginseng, bloodroot, and goldenseals – passive crops that are able to exist in a natural habitat, relatively untended, until times become tough and the harvesting of a windfall crop becomes necessary, kind of like “an insurance policy.”
“This one is valued medicinally – it’s a native plant to the Northeast, a perennial, and it grows in the understory – and there are global markets for it.” said Cammack, weeding around the goldenseal and adding that farmers who own forested land could plant the slow growing species and only access it when other crops failed. Cammack is interested in developing a better understanding of how to transplant goldenseal seedlings from a nursery setting to the forest habitat – a process that is a lot more complicated than it might appear.
The research into goldenseal is currently funded by a sustainable agricultural research and education grant, under the USDA, and in partnership with the Yale School for the Environment. Together, they have created a coalition called the Northeast Forest Farmers Coalition that aims to educate and assist regional agriculturists as they embrace changing economic and changing climate structures. However, the first step is to more fully understand the barriers, and develop strategies that could lead to the development of a best practice scenario.
“And, that’s kind of the broader model here, where we can provide the research platforms – the place and the staff to support – but it’s all about collaboration,” explained Cammack. “Every project we have here, we have collaborative partners in the region who can bring expertise. We’re building coalitions of people to address these problems together.”
Using the Northeast Forest Farmers Coalition as an example once again, Cammack explained that the number of active participants in the project had expanded to over 1,000 in just a few short years. Each participant brings their own lived experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds to the project.
Cammack sees the vision of Smokey House as fully immersive in this framework – where the coalitions are built around a project, and researchers collaborate and partner on grant writing. “And then, we bring the young people to work with and become inspired by those researchers, as well.”
The diversification of the projects and the layered new vision of the Smokey House Center are also about preparing for the future – whatever that might bring.
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