Nest — Fall 2023

17 Teachers Tree Service has arboreal answers

After the summer’s devastating flood, it’s no wonder that Vermonters are entering autumn thinking about more resilient living spaces. at theme takes many shapes in this issue of Nest, Seven Days’ quarterly magazine on homes, design and real estate. In South Burlington, the new HILLSIDE AT O’BRIEN FARM development includes net-zero homes designed to stay powered up even through wild weather. In Shelburne, TEACHERS TREE SERVICE schools clients on healthy natural environments. In Readsboro, artist SIENNA MARTZ embraces nature with her sustainable, upcycled fabric wall sculptures. Across the state, developers are focused on SMART REUSE, too: A proposal in Greensboro would revive an old school into affordable housing, while army barracks-turned-college dorms in Colchester will be reinvented once again as apartments. In Barre, lumber from a COVID-19 testing site is being recycled in a Habitat for Humanity home. Necessity really is the mother of invention.

BY ANNE WALLACE ALLEN

ANNE WALLACE ALLEN

Last Quarter

BY ANNE WALLACE ALLEN anne@sevendaysvt.com

Rural Revival

Greensboro residents are proud of their town, home to Willey’s Store, Circus Smirkus, Highland Center for the Arts, Jasper Hill Farm and Hill Farmstead Brewery. And they know they need more a ordable housing, a priority identified in the town plan. Enrollment at the local Lakeview Elementary School has fallen so low that the school almost closed in June, and people who want to work at local employers can’t find homes to rent or buy.

“What is the vitality of your town if your young people can’t a ord to live here and raise their families?” asked Brett Stanciu, Greensboro’s zoning administrator.

Patrick Shattuck has proposed a project that would help Greensboro develop more housing without losing its vital character. The picture-perfect village is anchored on one end by a large former school building with a roomy triangle of green front lawn. As executive director of RuralEdge, an a ordable housing agency in the Northeast Kingdom, Shattuck hopes to put 24 apartments in the school and a separate building the agency would construct behind it.

The 1912 school building, a mix of American Craftsman and Colonial Revival design that is currently home to the tiny town o ces and a one-room studio, “is a fantastic site,” Shattuck said: It’s in good shape, it’s barely being used, and it’s just steps away from Lakeview and its playground. “It’s framed so nicely as a simple, symmetrical building.”

RuralEdge is one of several a ordable housing agencies that connect builders to state and federal loan and incentive programs. With prices for lending, land and construction materials at record highs, these agencies are the only developers building apartments in many of Vermont’s rural areas.

RuralEdge is doing a feasibility study on the Greensboro project now and plans to apply for funding next year, with occupancy expected in 2026. The agency is also working on several other housing projects in the Northeast Kingdom, including renovating a former convent and school in Newport.

Shattuck grew up in South Burlington and spent his spare time trailing after his Realtor grandfather, absorbing the tenets of home design. As a second grader, he carried a Polaroid camera, graph paper and a ruler as he toured homes for sale. “I was a really nerdy little kid,” he said. “I would draw floor plans during recess.”

Later he studied architecture and historic preservation at Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. Today he applies his eye for design and attention to detail to the heavy work of securing grants, loans, tax credits and local permits, all with the goal of creating opportunities for a ordable housing.

The Greensboro project checks all the boxes. “It’s been well maintained,” Shattuck said of the old school. “There’s a lot of value in this structure, whether it’s historic or not.”

Patrick Shattuck of RuralEdge at the former Greensboro school

Dorms Reborn

ree former army barracks that were built at Fort Ethan Allen in 1904 are slated to become muchneeded studio and one-bedroom apartments.

e three brick buildings, which straddle the town line between Essex and Colchester, once served as barracks for the 10th Cavalry, a regiment of Black soldiers nicknamed the “Buffalo Soldiers.”

ey later became dorms for students at nearby Saint Michael’s College. In the latest iteration, affordable housing developer Champlain Housing Trust will gut the buildings and turn them into 57 one-bedroom apartments and eight studios. ey’ll rent for a range of prices, and residents will have access to a community garden.

“We’ve really seen a need on our waiting list for smaller apartments,” said Miranda Lescaze, the trust’s director of real estate development. e first units should be ready by the end of next year, she said, and the rest by spring 2025.

By the Numbers: Short-Term Rentals

About 11,000 Vermont homes were used as short-term rentals over the summer, according to the data site AirDNA.

Among those listings are tiny houses such as the one Zach Walbridge and Katie Berke recently perched on a hillside in Warren. e 200-square-foot house, purchased from a company

called ÖÖD House in Estonia, is a hit with vacationers, the two said: It’s been booked solid since they first listed it in September 2022.

Walbridge and Berke — who live part time in Burlington and part time in Europe — bought two hillside acres, put in septic and electrical systems, drilled

Material Difference

Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity is using construction materials salvaged from a COVID-19 testing site to defray the costs of building a single-family home in Barre.

a well, and built a driveway to their little house, which is rented at an average of $400 a night. ey expect their investment to pay off within five years, and they’re looking for other sites.

“We’re definitely planning to replicate the success we’ve had in Warren elsewhere in Vermont,” Berke said.

e metal roofing, support beams and two-by-fours would cost about $17,000 if purchased new, said Zachariah Watson, the organization’s executive director. ey will be used to build a cape on a city-donated lot that now hosts a derelict home.

Habitat relies on gifts large and small to keep its homes affordable. Skilled professionals help out on jobsites, and construction companies have installed new roofs and floors for free, Watson said.

“It’s really meaningful for us, because construction costs are so high right now,” he said. “It means more people have homes, and the homes will be somewhat affordable for them.”

Barre, like other Vermont communities, was already facing a housing shortage when the July flooding destroyed or damaged about 100 homes. Replacing them is a tall order. Construction materials prices soared during the pandemic, and while they have stabilized in the past year, they’re still high enough to deter many builders from creating mid-price or affordable housing.

Central Vermont Medical Center contacted Habitat to donate the materials after it closed its COVID-19 testing site in Berlin last year. Watson said he often hears from individual homeowners who want to donate supplies, but it can be difficult to integrate them into Habitat’s projects.

“We oftentimes aren’t able to use them for one reason or another,” he said. “We build high-performance homes, and often used doors and windows aren’t going to meet those standards.”

But unused, uncut lumber can come in handy, Watson said: “It just requires a little more creativity.”

Zachariah Watson

ÖÖD house in Warren

Saint Michael’s College dorms in the former barracks at Fort Ethan Allen

Power Move

A new South Burlington housing development won’t use fossil fuels

BY ANNE WALLACE ALLEN • anne@sevendaysvt.com

Hot on the heels of a stormy summer and historic flooding, the O’Brien Brothers development firm is creating a South Burlington community designed to stay powered up through the wild weather that’s expected as a result of climate change.

The development is fossil fuel-free and features amenities that lower the carbon output of appliances and keep them running when the power goes out.

The neighborhood is part of a 900-unit development near Route 116 called Hillside at O’Brien Farm, on the rolling hills of a former dairy farm. The first phase of the 15-year project included 115 newly completed single-family homes, all of which have sold or are under contract.

The second phase, now in progress, includes 155 net-zero homes that are designed to produce about as much power as they consume. Known as Hillside East, it will be one of the first neighborhoods in the country to share power on a microgrid, a small-scale power grid that

DARIA BISHOP

connects homes in the net-zero development with each other and with the electric company Green Mountain Power.

Net-zero neighborhoods exist in a few other states, and more are being developed, including some by large national homebuilders such as KB Home and Toll Brothers. But Hillside East is the only such development in Vermont, according to Kristin Carlson, chief energy services executive at Green Mountain Power.

The homes come with rooftop solar panels, electric vehicle chargers and individual power storage in the form of Tesla Powerwall batteries that will turn on if the power turns o . Those home electrical systems will also be backed up by a large community battery storage system, and a SPAN power usage dashboard will show residents — and Green Mountain Power — daily energy use and how to find savings.

With July’s flooding and torrential rains still on the minds of many, Hillside East presents an attractive opportunity to avoid spending days without power, as many people did after the floodwaters damaged infrastructure in central and southern Vermont.

“The homes are built with the increasing ferocity of storms in mind,” O’Brien Brothers CEO Evan Langfeldt said. “If the grid goes down, you’ve got your Tesla Powerwalls backing up your power.”

In the middle of January, when solar panels are less e ective, the Powerwalls can provide backup electricity. The on-site battery storage will also kick in if needed — enabling homes to share stored energy at peak times, when regional power grid prices are highest.

Langfeldt said he got in touch with Green Mountain Power last year to talk about making low-emission homes as part of the Hillside development. He had been reading about sustainable housing development projects around the country and wanted to create one at his company’s large, multiyear project.

“The fact that there is zero fossil fuel infrastructure on-site is a big component,” Langfeldt said. “It’s the right thing to do, and it makes sense to our customers to move in this direction because it’s the way the world is shifting anyway.”

Green Mountain Power jumped on board. The utility works with many developers to provide more sustainable and resilient power — it has installed more than 4,900 Tesla Powerwall batteries, each roughly the size of a sleek suitcase, in Vermont homes. It also recently completed a solar generation project in Panton that includes a microgrid. Now

Net-zero neighborhood

e neighborhood at Hillside East at O’Brien Farm will include 155 net-zero homes and is the first of its kind in Vermont, according to Green Mountain Power. e neighborhood will share power on a microgrid, a small-scale power grid that connects homes in the net-zero development with each other and with GMP. Each home comes with:

ROOFTOP SOLAR PANELS

it’s working with the towns of Grafton, Rochester and Brattleboro to create renewable energy projects tailored to local needs.

That work has won the utility, which serves 270,000 customers, national press and awards, including a few from business technology magazine Fast Company, which last year named it one of the top-five most innovative companies in North America.

“I’ve heard great things about Green Mountain Power,” said an envious Sara Hammerschmidt, an engineer and planner who is director of sustainable development for a housing project called Veridian at County Farm in Ann Arbor, Mich. Hammerschmidt said power companies — including the one in her area — often create obstacles, not opportunities, when it comes to using batteries and microgrids to share power in housing developments.

Langfeldt acknowledged the dynamic. “We couldn’t do this without a cooperating utility company,” he said.

To guide net-zero development, several communities and organizations have developed construction standards aimed at reducing emissions from new homes. The U.S. Department of Energy’s standard is called the Zero Energy Ready Home Program, which creates a home that is so e cient that a renewable energy system can o set most or all of its power use, delivering kilowatts back to the grid.

That’s the standard the Hillside East homes will meet, Langfeldt said.

The private homebuilding industry’s movement toward curtailing emissions aligns with a public strategy to lower Vermont’s carbon footprint. Heating is responsible for about a third of Vermont’s carbon emissions, second to transportation. Earlier this year, lawmakers passed a clean heat energy standard, a policy, endorsed by the Vermont Climate Council, meant to help the state reach its greenhouse gas emission-reduction requirements by 2030.

Under the standard, fuel dealers must decrease the amount of fossil fuel they sell over time or find ways to o set emissions from those fuels, such as assisting customers with the installation of electric heat pumps and pellet stoves.

The American Craftsman- and farmhouse-style energy-e cient homes at Hillside East won’t look any di erent on the outside from their carbon-emitting peers in the development. Even on the inside, it’s not readily apparent that

INDIVIDUAL POWER STORAGE BATTERIES

ELECTRIC VEHICLE CHARGERS

A Craftsman home at Hillside at O’Brien Farm

A farmhouse-style home at Hillside POWER MOVE

heating and cooking use electric power, not gas, though a trip to the basement reveals two or three Tesla Powerwalls. One audible difference: No one will ever hear a furnace rumble to life in these homes.

In mid-September, only a few of the Hillside East homes had been framed in. Langfeldt said they’ll share a style with the first-phase homes, which are modestly proportioned at around 2,200 square feet and set close together to create a walkable neighborhood. The new development will also include some 1,300-square-foot homes.

Everyone has a heat pump, which pulls warmth from the outside air with a compressor and pumps it inside. Many Vermonters are skeptical about giving up their furnaces for heat pumps; in the past, the technology hasn’t kept homes comfortably warm in very cold weather. But that’s changed, according to Efficiency Vermont, which provides energyefficiency services for homes and businesses. The state entity says modern heat pumps can keep a well-insulated house warm even on the coldest nights.

Langfeldt added that heat pumps are popular in Maine and Scandinavian countries — places known for their frigid winter temperatures. But, mindful of the skepticism, O’Brien Brothers has added a backup electric heating coil to the forced-air heating systems at Hillside East.

“The market wants this,” Langfeldt said of the backup heat. “We actually don’t believe it’s necessary.”

O’Brien Brothers likely will have no trouble selling the homes as they come on the market. Singlefamily homes are a hot commodity in Vermont, even ones like those at Hillside East that start at $600,000 and $700,000 — prices that Langfeldt said aren’t affected by the net-zero measures. Nine of the homes are already under contract, he said. Customers are looking for homes that will withstand the storms of the future, Hammerschmidt said. And they want to do their part to reduce carbon emissions.

“I’m super excited about this Hillside community,” she said. “It takes a vision and it takes passion and it takes perseverance, because these aren’t standard things.”

While the O’Brien development is the first of its kind in Vermont, Langfeldt said he’s sure others will follow — perhaps even in future phases of the Hillside development.

“We’re just getting out in front of something that’s going to become the norm,” he said. ➆

The view from Hillside at O’Brien Farm

Green Weaver

A Readsboro fiber artist gains a following for her vibrant ethical wall sculptures

BY RACHEL MULLIS

It’s hard to miss a Sienna Martz sculpture. Each one seems to grow right out of the wall, evocative of something you’d find in the natural world — or maybe Hayao Miyazaki’s version of the natural world, if the Japanese filmmaker abandoned animation for plantbased fibers. Martz’s blossom series features fingerlike appendages erupting from the wall in brilliant shades of aqua or amethyst. Another collection features plush circles slurping yarn noodles in hues of canary yellow, pomegranate and tropical sea.

Fiber artist Sienna Martz in her Readsboro studio

Martz’s pieces — fashioned from textiles — have been featured in numerous public and private collections worldwide. She’s graced the pages of Architectural Digest and Elle Décor, among others. And for her more than 20,000 social media followers, she shares videos about her artistic process and life in rural Readsboro.

“She’s popping up all over the place, and she’s got her hand way outside of Vermont, which is amazing for her,” said Kaitlin Mangan, an interior designer at Christine Burdick Design in Burlington.

Now, three years after arriving in Vermont, the vegan fiber artist has begun to attract a local following.

At the Northfield Savings Bank branch on Church Street in Burlington, Martz’s latest sculpture spreads 13 feet across the wall, like a winged creature in flight, in shades of blue, red, purple and yellow. Up close, airy contours rise between the innumerable seams that separate hues.

“Everything has this textural component,” said Mangan, who was the design project manager for the bank installation. “It has a very contemporary aesthetic overall, but also a great use of color.”

Each contour in the sculpture, titled “The Conscious Wave to Harmony,” is a slightly di erent size and shape. The soft fabric is strangely familiar — it’s harvested from thrifted fast-fashion shirts that Martz cut, sewed and stu ed with organic plant fibers.

“I love the idea with secondhand clothing that there’s a history to each piece,” Martz said. “Even beyond the one person who wore it, to the person who made it.”

From the expansive scope of this latest installation to the palm-size wall art that people can purchase on her website,

Martz’s work demands to be seen. But, in many ways, her behind-the-scenes activity is just as intriguing.

Natural Attraction

Martz lives o Route 100 along the Deerfield River, a sparsely populated area with far more mountains and trees than people. She shares a sweet timber-frame house with her partner, Marc; daughter, Luna Wilder; and an enormous masti /pit rescue named David Bowie. When Nest visited in early September, her house smelled enticingly like the meal she’d just cooked for lunch: homemade zucchini fritters, vegan queso sauce and chickpea salad.

ingly like the meal she’d just sauce and chickpea salad.

day she wore a long

expressive eyes. Upstairs, her studio o ers a

pieces of her work to get a better sense of how each

Martz, 32, is willowy and a bit ethereal; that day she wore a long braid falling over one shoulder and cropped bangs that framed expressive eyes. Upstairs, her studio o ers a window into her work. Peer closely, and you’ll notice a wall full of tiny holes. Martz likes to pin up pieces of her work to get a better sense of how each sculpture plays with gravity.

She shared the wooden jigsaw pieces of a sculpture in progress, each carved into intricate curves and upholstered with batting and old clothes that will be fitted together to match her voluptuous concept sketch.

ture in progress, each carved into intricate curves

I WILL FOREVER BE TRYING TO BE MORE SUSTAINABLE AS AN ARTIST.

SIENNA MARTZ

Wall sculptures created by Sienna Martz

GREEN WEAVER » P.14

“I’ve been using a jigsaw, and I cut mainly outside because it’s beautiful,” Martz said, gesturing to the small brook and forested hills that drew her to Vermont in 2020 from Kingston, N.Y.

The riverfront town of Readsboro is far less urban than where Martz spent her childhood, in West Hollywood and Larchmont, half an hour from New York City. Later she lived in Philadelphia, where she received her bachelor of fine art in sculpture and textiles from Tyler School of Art and Architecture. But southern Vermont felt like a better place for her and Marc to raise their family, she said.

Martz opened a box of kapok fiber, which was silky to the touch and looked a lot like milkweed fluff. The fiber is harvested from the fruit of the fast-growing kapok tree and is cultivated without irrigation or pesticides, as opposed to water-intensive cotton or oil-guzzling synthetic fiber production. The material is used to stuff bedding and toys — or, in Martz’s case, sculptures.

“Once I transitioned to a more sustainable approach with my art making, I was using a recycled polyester, but it felt a little bit off,” she explained. “I just want to move away from plastic as much as I can and support companies that are really developing and pushing plant-based options.”

The exception is the fast-fashion fabrics she thrifted for the Northfield Savings Bank sculpture. Those garments were poorly sewed and destined for the landfill; upcycling them requires less energy and resources than collecting and processing newly recycled materials.

Martz’s commitment to environmentally friendly art is an extension of her personal values. Born and raised a vegetarian, she became an ethical vegan in her mid-twenties as she gained more understanding about large-scale agricultural practices that are often at odds with animal welfare and the planet.

“As I really started to follow the movement and educate myself, it became about what I was wearing, what products I was buying, what companies I was supporting, what restaurants I was going to,” Martz said. “It just made sense that that would become part of my art making.”

She uses organic bamboo as well as the kapok fibers and continues to experiment. During our visit, she held up four cakes of dense mushroom foam she’d just received in the mail. Her plan was to fuse and carve them.

Martz’s affinity for plant-based materials has led to a broader appreciation of the natural world, and her artistic inspiration is often drawn from nature. Marc observed that her work resembles

something you might see under a microscope — cells from a plant or mushroom or sea creature. But it is also as if she has removed the glass from the slide to remind viewers that those cells are voluminous and still very much alive. She acknowledged that a lot of her work incorporates elements of organic growth.

“We have been an incredibly destructive and parasitic species,” Martz said. “And Mother Earth and all of these different species within her are having

to adapt and react and sometimes take over.”

Her pieces are often “kind of bursting out of a wall or a man-made structure,” she mused. “They’re reclaiming the space.”

Growing Organically

Creating a connection between human spaces and the natural world is something Connie Dasilva calls biophilic design. As the founder of the sustainable design firm Whole Clarity in Kingston, N.Y., she often recommends Martz’s work to clients.

“It’s so different than almost everything I’ve seen out there,” Dasilva said. “Her attention to detail, the colors, just the big activity of it is so incredible.”

Martz’s work can run from $980 to more than $10,000, depending on its size and complexity. But her online shop also includes small versions of large concepts, such as “micro mini slurps” that are priced at $89. She has moved away from freestanding sculpture to improve the accessibility of her art.

“It’s much more ... likely that someone’s going to have the space on their wall or a space within their home than to have this three-dimensional sculpture that’s standing on its own or hanging from a ceiling,” she said.

Martz handcrafts each piece, from sketch to saw and stuffing to stitching. Designers such as Mangan and Dasilva praise the quality of her work, including its clean execution and detailed installation instructions.

“Sienna is creating the felt that she’s using in the sculpture,” said Amy Wolfe, an art collector and longtime friend of Martz’s from Yardley, Pa. “Considering how much effort is put in — which is a tremendous amount of effort — that’s something that attracts me.”

Wolfe installed a few of Martz’s nebulous clouds, which are felted from organic cotton, in her daughter’s nursery. When she posted photos of the finished design to her Instagram account, home furnishings company Pottery Barn asked to share them.

“It was very flattering, obviously, not to mention those pieces had already been in Architectural Digest,” Wolfe said. “They’re just cool little tidbits I can tell my daughter about when she’s older.”

Martz’s warm demeanor and bohemian aesthetic have earned her a loyal following on social media. Meanwhile, her commitment to ethics has increasingly caught the eye of galleries and online art markets, especially as more supply chains are called out for inhumane practices and greenwashing. She noted that she has seen more interest in supporting and learning about sustainable art and art making over the past several years.

“I will forever be trying to be more sustainable as an artist,” she said. “Knowing that it’s not about perfection and just doing your best makes it less intimidating.”

Martz’s words underscore an unexpected correlation between creativity and sustainability: Both are practices that are nurtured and evolve in response to new information. As Martz’s practice grows, it isn’t clear what concepts or materials she will use in her next series.

But, given the clarity of her vision, you will know her art when you see it. ➆

Learn more at siennamartz.com.

HER WORK RESEMBLES SOMETHING YOU MIGHT SEE UNDER A MICROSCOPE CELLS FROM A PLANT OR MUSHROOM OR SEA CREATURE.

COURTESY OF AMY FARRIS

Wall sculptures created by Sienna Martz

With

GREEN, RESILIENT VERMONT LIVING IS HERE AT HILLSIDE EAST

Leaf Preaching

Teachers Tree Service educates homeowners on healthy arboreal landscapes

BY CAROLYN SHAPIRO

Greg Ranallo rarely gets to climb trees anymore. At age 62, after running his tree care business for two decades, he mostly works behind a desk doing payroll and paperwork, not in the field with his crew.

On a recent day, though, he hoisted himself about 45 feet into the canopy of a giant pin oak tree in Charlotte to help his arborists with a major pruning job. The tree — likely close to 70 years old, Ranallo guessed — had grown cluttered with leafless branches, creating a safety risk if they fell.

“It just hadn’t been pruned in 30 years,” said Ranallo, owner of Teachers Tree Service in Shelburne. “It was full of deadwood.”

Ranallo wore a lime-green helmet and a forest-green Teachers T-shirt as he dangled between branches. He balanced on a limb, one foot in front of the other,

reaching with a long polesaw to fell the oak’s outer boughs.

“He’s in his happy place,” Eric Reindel, one of Ranallo’s employees, said as he collected the fallen debris and fed it into a wood chipper.

Ranallo is like a tree doctor and teacher all in one. The former high school educator — yes, that’s where the name Teachers comes from — administers care and treatment to keep deciduous and coniferous specimens strong.

For property owners grappling with everything from overgrown shrubs to the threat of invasive pests, particularly the dreaded emerald ash borer, Teachers offers information and an honest appraisal of tree health with the sole goal of helping trees live their best lives.

Saturated soils from this summer’s heavy rains have made trees vulnerable to toppling in strong winds, and Teachers had to remove a bunch of fallen white pines that were too large to replant. The crew also assists with construction projects that encroach on adjacent trees. For a golf club that wanted to add a parking lot but keep a giant elm on the site, the team applied a growth inhibitor to temper the tree’s size while letting the foliage flourish.

To address compacted soil, which inhibits beneficial organisms and cuts off water and nutrients for tree roots, Teachers fertilizes with humic acid and biochar. The crew also stems the intrusion of non-native tree and shrub species, which typically require chemical

PHOTOS: JAMES BUCK

Teachers Tree Service crew at a worksite in Shelburne

Teachers Tree Service owner Greg Ranallo

maintenance to survive pests and climate conditions in places they weren’t meant to live.

“We yank out buckthorn and honeysuckle and all that stu and replant native species to support insects and birds,” Ranallo said. “That’s a growing part of our business.”

But Ranallo often talks himself out of a job when an owner wants to remove a tree that he considers viable and valuable. More than one resident has asked Teachers to take out a whole stand of healthy trees — an expensive order — so they can install solar panels, and he has refused.

“Somebody wanted a lot of oaks cut down in their yard because they wanted the firewood or didn’t like the acorns,” Ranallo said. “I’m not going to do that,” he told the homeowner.

Conversely, he’ll also advise customers to save money on the care or treatment of a tree that he deems too sick or damaged to save.

Ranallo has made it his mission in recent years to educate property owners on the evils of the emerald ash borer and o er solutions. The Asian bug feeds on a tree’s cambium, the layer underneath the bark that allows growth. That’s why the pest is so deadly; it’s nearly invisible until it decimates its host. Ranallo believes that the emerald ash borer will ultimately wipe out huge stands of ash in Green Mountain forests.

At homes, though, residents can take steps toward prevention and treat their ash before or in the early stages of infestation. Otherwise, Ranallo warned, owners will lose significant trees.

“They serve important functions, like providing shade, providing aesthetics,” said Sarah Pears, Teachers’ operations manager. “There’s neighborhoods where most of the street trees are mature ash trees, so to have all those gone in one go would be devastating.”

To treat them, Teachers’ certified technician injects a pesticide called emamectin benzoate into tiny holes in ash trunks using a necklace of small syringes. “It looks like an IV for the tree,” Ranallo said.

Some companies use larger needles inserted into plastic taps that they leave in the trunk after treatment, but Teachers opts for the smallest incision possible, which helps the tree heal.

The toxin travels through the tree bark and kills any insect that eats the tree. The treatment costs $200 to $250 for the average ash tree and lasts for two years. To remove the same tree, Teachers would charge $1,000 or more.

The injected poison will kill other pests that feed on the tree, but studies have found that emamectin benzoate does no harm to birds or other mammals, even those that eat the infected bugs.

“We try to make our treatments for plant health care as targeted and surgical as possible, because we don’t want any impacts on the good things,” Pears said.

Ranallo worries so much about the fate of the state’s ash trees that he has treated some pro bono. One of the largest

specimens he has seen in Chittenden County, a white ash with a trunk 53 inches wide in diameter in Charlotte, belongs to a homeowner who couldn’t a ord the injections, so Ranallo did the work for free.

On the brighter side, the wet summer created unwelcome conditions for the spongy moth, which burgeoned across Chittenden County neighborhoods last year. The larvae munch on leaves that trees need to photosynthesize sunlight and store energy. “It’s like shutting down solar panels,” Ranallo said.

The moths aggravate people, too: Residents spent last summer dodging moth larvae that dropped from trees onto patios, picnic tables and car windshields. All the rain this year allowed for the growth of fungal pathogens, which infect and kill the larvae, Pears said.

Teachers also uses an injection method to eradicate spongy moth. The company almost never sprays pesticides to treat pests and other tree plagues, Ranallo said: “It’s too general, and it drips and gets on employees and people’s yards.”

Ranallo grew up in Minnetonka,

Minn., and began working for a tree service company at age 19. He and a friend then started their own tree company there before Ranallo went back to school for his master’s degree and became a high school teacher of economics, anthropology and world studies.

While raising their two sons, Ranallo and his wife wanted them to have closer access to the woods and opportunities to ski and hike. They looked at a U.S. map and picked Vermont, assuming it had the right conditions. They moved here in 2003 “and never looked back,” Ranallo said.

He started Teachers Tree Service while he was still teaching and hired many fellow educators during their summer breaks. Today, much of Teachers’ team boasts an ecologically based education that informs the hard, hands-on labor done in the field. Pears has a master’s degree from the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources.

Four members of the crew are certified arborists.

“If you want to learn about the trees in your yard, call us,” Pears said. “If you just want to take down the trees in your yard, you might not want to call us.”

Ranallo recently learned that his family history has deep roots in trees. His great-grandfather came to the United States from Italy to work as a logger in Wisconsin, he said, and his grandfather was a tree climber who cut down limbs in the Pacific Northwest.

Continuing in that tradition, Ranallo describes himself as an “evangelist” about garden and landscape practices. He never hesitates to o er a tree owner advice or tough love, even if unsolicited and even when he’s o the job.

“After 40 years in the tree business, I notice trees everywhere I go,” Ranallo said. “I can’t help myself.” ➆