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Dear Fellow Vermonter,
I hope you’ll take a minute to watch a video featuring a young Vermont farm family, Donald and Jessica Muller from Franklin, Vermont. Here’s why.
In Vermont and all across the country, family farms are going out of business and rural communities are in decline. Young people are leaving the towns in which they grew up, schools are closing and locally owned stores are being shuttered.
This is a trend I hope we can reverse. I have talked to many, many Vermonters who grew up on farms and remember how that experience enriched their lives. They spoke about the work ethic and sense of responsibility they developed, their closeness to nature and the animals they tended, and the reassurance that families in a small town often looked out for each other in a very special way.
Given the nature of the modern economy, strengthening family-based agriculture and our rural way of life won’t be easy — but it’s a fight worth undertaking. And I’m happy to report that there are some positive developments. Go to any Vermont Farmer’s Market and you’ll see a whole lot of people buying locally grown food — produced by family farmers. Like Americans across the country, Vermonters are suspicious of factory farming and the quality of the products being produced. They want to know who is growing the food they eat, how it is grown and whether it is healthy.
Here is the story of a young Vermont couple, Donald and Jessica Muller. They grew up in northern Vermont, have recently started a farm in Franklin based on regenerative agriculture principles and are working hard to produce good quality food for their neighbors. |