As we reflect on 2023, we would like to share a few words of gratitude for you all, our community. 

When a disaster strikes, our society’s easy access to data (like video clips on social media and headlines at our fingertips) provide us with an initial window from afar into the stories of the communities experiencing that disaster. And as time passes, the news moves on to the next headline, as does our attention despite the fact that these communities are still impacted.

A few planters filled with locally adapted perennial and native plants may seem like a small step, but each planter on a downtown streetscape is an opportunity to start a conversation about the importance of ecological systems and the human relationship to them.

There are many factors that go into why a farmer may choose to have livestock or not, and furthermore, what type or species to have. Factors may include their land management goals, access to processing facilities, and available markets. In our first fiber blog, we looked at the long history of textiles, how clothes came to be, and how interwoven plant and animal fibers are with today’s agriculture.

It was a strange way to decide to become a farmer, but as I have learned, the process of becoming a farmer can take many different forms. It is something that I have seen firsthand through my work with the Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) called Managing Pasture for Healthy Farms and Soils Across Vermont on which Bio-Logical Capital is one of several partners.

Bio-Logical Capital has partnered with Urban Villages on an interim installation near the project that rethinks the role urban development can play in a community. Although construction sites represent the promise of something new, they are often disruptive—blocking sidewalks and creating noise pollution and dust that burdens the people and businesses in the community. But this doesn’t need to be the whole story.

Philo Ridge Farm has been one of BLC’s core management projects for the past ten years and we’ve watched their team grow the operation and grow the impact they have in their community. For this month’s blog post, I want to share a piece that their team recently published speaking to the creative process involved in managing a kitchen at the heart of a farm.

Why potatoes you may ask? Why is our team so fascinated by potatoes? The honest truth is that I don’t know. And that I let go of trying to answer that question a long time ago, and I instead rolled up my sleeves and joined the #potatoes team Slack channel.

We are grateful for this work, for our team, and the communities and landscapes that we spend time with. Here is to all of the learnings and questions that lay ahead in this year of 2023.

We talked to Brooklyn about how her role at BLC inspired her to explore new ways of thinking about how, and for whom, business systems are designed, and how human-centered systems can support not only the business but the communities it engages with.