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.
I love to ask what books people are reading and what they are learning. I always come away from these conversation with new ideas and exciting book titles. It also means that I have books piled on tables all around my house.
Over one hundred thousand years ago, during the last ice age, clothing was arguably introduced as a form of survival and protection from the elements. For millennia, and up only until recently, our garments have been solely produced from animal or plant material- many of which are grown or harvested from farm and agricultural processes. Since their origin, textiles have been transformed by cultures and individuals into a representation of status, wealth, personal expression, gender, and ingenuity. To tell a story of the history of textiles, there is a lot of ground to cover.
We chatted with Operations Director Luiz Da Costa to better understand what drew him to work with BLC and how he thinks about managing teams.
Our team is constantly curious. Observing, listening, and learning are core aspects of the work we do. And summertime, with its longer and lighter days, often provides more space and energy for cultivating our curiosity.
Landscapes are ephemeral yet eternal, singular yet ubiquitous, living and inert, and shaped through time by forces as large as tectonic shifts and as small as single-celled organisms. To fully understand landscapes or to capture their essence is impossible and yet, as humans, we must try because they are our very foundation. Landscapes are what root us, nurture us, and inspire us as a species and as individuals.
With snowy peaks still surrounding us in Denver, our team has spent many recent winter evenings curled up with a good book. I asked our team to share what’s been stacked on their bedside table lately.
Our team at Bio-Logical Capital has seen the essential role that meat processing plays in the livelihoods of small and medium size farms – and the working landscapes they steward. Working with Vermont Livestock Slaughter and Processing Company, a small family-owned meat processing business in rural Vermont, represents our translating and convening work across farming, food processing, impact investing, employee equity, and community development.
In our work we are met with failures and successes, sometime in the same project in the same week. We celebrate our success! And we are constantly learning from our missed steps and failures. And forever, we have a lot to learn. Here is to both celebrating 2021 and looking forward to 2022 and the commitment to continued learning, work and growth.
Carbon is the core structural element and “food” for plants, a product of animal respiration, the predominant greenhouse gas, and fundamental to buzz words such as “net-zero”, “carbon off-sets”, and “Payments for Ecosystem Services”.
Rather than creating a traditional development plan with the most cost-effective design at its center, Urban Villages and its partner for the project, Carmel Partners, proposed something radically different. They would design West Village to be a 100% net zero energy community, meaning it would produce on-site all of the energy that it consumed.
After college I began working as an instructor for the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), an organization that takes students of all ages and experiences into wilderness classrooms around the world. Though I didn’t know it at the time, my work with NOLS was about to become a common thread woven into my life.
As we deepen our team’s work in Vermont and the Northeast – through research and new leadership with a NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant – we’re also welcoming new projects in Colorado and the West. I have thought often about compound interest through this process: not the mathematical concept, but how our experience and relationships compound to develop more potent knowledge.
This month Meriwether shares Four Seasons— a reflection she wrote inspired by the rhythms of change.
Bio-Logical Capital, Vermont Land Trust and University of Vermont Receive $2.6 Million for NRCS Conservation Innovation Project in Vermont.
We launched into 2020 with a clear strategic plan and vision for what this year would entail. Yet, just a month or so into that plan, the world changed around as we entered into a global pandemic. As the Buddhist teacher and author Pema Chödrön writes, “sometimes when things fall apart, well, that's the big opportunity to change.” And that has been our mantra for this year.
Land is where our work begins. As a team, we often share this sentiment as a way of creating context and structuring our engagement with farms, businesses and landscapes. A core tenant of our work lies in understanding the landscape that we are working in, what it is capable of producing and what it wants to be in its natural state.
Everything on our plates can spawn a revelation, including the plate itself. Every piece of food is saturated with stories and histories. Some are conspicuous while others lie buried beneath layers of deceit and misrepresentation. Some so intertwined with other stories as to render their own histories mere testaments to the beauty and folly of humanity.
We are here to consult with the Bean family, owners and stewards of Lava Lake Lamb for the last twenty years. Named for a rare open water body formed by a dam of molten lava at the south end of the property, Lava Lake has been working ranchland for over a century.
Our team, operating model, and business have made many pivots in response to COVID-19. Some of these changes have been small, daily adaptations, whereas other changes are ongoing, broader, longer term decisions that we are still working through. Some of these changes are really exciting, and others are hard.