Guest Blogger: Robin Katz Goes Day Tripping

Two Maple Creemees in One Day; or, City Girl Gets Schooled in Rural Vermont and Thinks about the Library a Bit, Too
By Robin Katz

Since I moved to Vermont in July, I've learned new words like "flatlander" and "camp." (Or, I thought I understood what someone meant when he said his family owned a camp, but it turns out his parents are NOT outdoor educators.) The best new addition to my vocabulary, however, is "maple creemee." And I recently had an excuse to eat two in one day, all while learning about my new home state.

I signed up for the first-ever New Faculty day trip around Vermont. Myself and three other new faculty members, including Tom Schmiedel from the Dana Medical Library, were led around the northwest corner of the state by Doug Lantagne, Dean of UVM Extension. Doug, a native of the Northeast Kingdom, was an excellent guide.

EXTENSION & THE LIBRARY

I didn't know much about Extension beforehand, but I noticed a few parallels with the library. Both our faculty serve unique roles in the university; we fulfill the educational mission in ways that might seem non-traditional to most teaching faculty. Our constituents are wide-ranging, and we are innately service and community oriented. As it relates to my job, I enjoyed hearing about Doug's successes in implementing a strategic marketing plan and improving Extension's visibility and outreach.

MAPLE

Our first stop was the Vermont Maple Outlet near Jeffersonville. We met the owners, a multi-generational Vermont family with deep roots in the maple trade. We also met a faculty member from the Proctor Maple Research Center, and learned a bit about the science and history of sugaring. Apparently, UVM helped invent a new tap which has been less invasive to trees and allowed for higher production. We saw a sugar house & tasted maple creemee no. 1 (first and best, FYI). This visit has me even more excited for Elizabeth Berman's project with Proctor & the CDI - soon we'll all have access to online primary sources all about maple.

FRUIT & VEG

Then we went to a produce & flower farm, where we again met with a UVM faculty member and an industry partner. The farmer explained that his neighbors in the dairy business often disparagingly call him a "gardener," but he runs a major operation and he's piloting an alternative fuel furnace to heat his hot house.

WATER

We stopped for lunch near the causeway at Lake Champlain and heard from a post-doc at the Rubenstein School about collaborative efforts between New York state, Vermont, and Quebec to improve water quality and ensure public safety.

DAIRY FARM

We went to a big ole dairy farm. It was as shiny and clean as a Futurist painting. Less gross than it sounds: they harvest methane while processing the manure and turn the leftover fibers into bedding for the cows. Shocking lessons for the city girl:
-Cows lactate through the last two months of their pregnancy. -At twelve months, they can be impregnated. -Baby bulls don't stick around the farm very long.
-Most of what milk becomes is not milk or yogurt or even cheese but somewhat unrecognizable products. Lots of our country's "dairy" comes from Australia and Japan!
-Biggest dairy day of the year? Superbowl. On pizzas and in nacho cheese. And even more shocking: with rising dairy prices, even an efficient and well managed farm like this one is losing a lot of money.

SEEDS & GRAIN

Then we drove up to a road alongside the Canadian border. At this farm, I saw the largest sunflowers I have ever seen in my life. When we arrived, they were in the middle of pressing canola oil. Does anyone actually know what canola looks like, pre oil? I didn't - tiny, tiny, tiny little seeds. The innovation on this farm was impressive - they were developing ways for small scale bakers and farmers to mill their own local flour, they converted a tractor to biodiesel, and they've got ideas about producing local raw ingredients for all the great brewmasters in Vermont. Best of all, the Extension faculty at this site has an interest in researching (and bringing back) heirloom grains used in Vermont, and I was able to point out some library resources which might be useful to her.

CAMP ABENAKI

We visited a weeklong camp for children whose parents are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. It was held at the YMCA Camp Abenaki and was run by a non-profit for military families and Vermont 4-H. I learned that 4-H is a Land Grant program, and they tried to convince me that 4-H exists in nonrural areas as well.

HOME

From there, we went to a family orchard on the islands. One big lesson of the day: the need for diversification in Vermont. After apple pies a la mode - with maple creemee no. 2 - we headed home to UVM. It was so lovely to meet other new faculty and to learn about this great state. Now the wheels are spinning about how we can integrate ourselves into the community as well as Extension has.