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A NEW GENERATION
At Chilmark's Allen Farm
S I M P L E / S M A RT / S U S TA I N A B L E / S TOR I E S
LOCAL HERO
Jen Randolph of Kinship Heals
CURRIER CRUISES
With Mustang Margaret
Watching Wildlife From the Sky
Micah Thanhauser Fires a New Kiln
S I M P L E / S M A RT / S U STA I N A B L E / STOR I E S Favorite Local Gifts · OB’s Tree Stewards · Cooking From Your Garden @bluedotlivingmv
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BDL • OUR TEAM
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President Victoria Riskin CEO Raymond Pearce Editor Jamie Kageleiry, editor@bluedotliving.com Senior Writer Leslie Garrett Associate Editors Lucas Thors, Julia Cooper Copyeditor Laura Roosevelt Creative Director Tara Kenny Design/Production Whitney Multari Digital Projects Manager Kelsey Perrett Digital Assets Manager Alison Mead Contributing Editors Mollie Doyle, Catherine Walthers Ad Sales Josh Katz, adsales@bluedotliiving.com Contributors, this issue Randi Baird, Geoff Currier, Jeremy Driesen, Sheny Leon, Sam Moore, Laura Roosevelt •••••• Bluedot and Bluedot Living logos and wordmarks are trademarks of Bluedot, Inc. Copyright © 2023. All rights reserved. Bluedot Living: At Home on Earth is printed on recycled material, using soy-based ink, in the U.S. Bluedot Living magazine is published quarterly and is available at newsstands, select retail locations, inns, hotels, and bookstores, free of charge. Please write us if you’d like to stock Bluedot Living at your business. Editor@bluedotliving.com Sign up for the Martha’s Vineyard Bluedot Living newsletter, along with any of our others: the BuyBetter Marketplace, our national ‘Hub” newsletter, and our soon-to-be-launched Bluedot Kitchenr: bit.ly/MV-NEWSLETTER Subscribe! Get Bluedot Living Martha’s Vineyard and our annual Bluedot GreenGuide mailed to your address. It’s $24.95 a year for all four issues plus the Green Guide, and as a bonus, we’ll email you a collection of Bluedot Kitchen recipes. Subscribe at bit.ly/MVBluedotSubs Read stories from this magazine and more at marthasvineyard.bluedotliving.com Find Bluedot Living on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube @bluedotliving
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EDITOR'S LETTER
Hello Readers,
W
hen we at Bluedot are planning our issues, we typically start with a story, then assign pictures or illustrations based on that. But for this issue we started with the photographs first in all three of our feature stories. Sheny Leon, one of our favorite photographers, told me he’d been taking photographs of Micah Thanhauser’s new kiln at Merry Farm Pottery studio in West Tisbury. Micah had been wanting to build a wood-fired kiln in his backyard for years, and it came together over the past few months, with other potters and friends arriving to help out. I loved Sheny’s images so much that we decided to create a story from it. Similarly, we took a photos-first approach with the story on the Allen Farm. Photographer MICAH THANHAUSER Randi Baird was on board to do HOLDS A VASE. a “Day in the Life” photo essay. Reporter Lucas Thors went along for the shoot and wrote his story based on her photographs of the 260+ year old Allen Farm and three generations of Allen-Posins. Both these stories reflect our desire to celebrate locally made goods, and Islanders creating sustainable lives here on Martha’s Vineyard. In our other feature, writer Sam Moore talks to the men who PHOTO BY SHENY LEON founded Oceans Unmanned. The former pilots now guide drones with cameras to unobtrusively monitor wildlife all over the world. With NOAA, they’ve been tracking gray seals on nearby Muskeget Island, home to the largest population of the animals in the western North Atlantic. Coming next spring, we’ll feature upgrades Islanders have made to their homes to make them greener: Have you added solar? Replaced a furnace with a heat pump? Are you building in a way to accommodate composting in your kitchen or another room? Have you found a way to be more energy efficient by installing different windows or even changing the types of curtains you use? Have you built a new house or room that is extremely well insulated? Or a new home powered by geothermal energy? Or started a vegetable garden or switched out your lawn for a Natural Neighbors-style haven for pollinators? We’d love to hear about everything from your composting station to your new net-zero home (and anything in between). Please write to me at jamie@bluedotliving.com. If you’d like to support our solutions-focused journalism, you can chip in here: bit.ly/mv-bdl-support. We are so grateful for our readers’ contributions. Have a great holiday season and winter. –Jamie Kageleiry
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CONTENTS Upfront
Departments
2 Our Team 3 Editor's Letter 5 Favorite Things: We Share
Our Favorite Local Gifts
By Julia Cooper
9 Field notes: Catching Up With
MV Non-profits
13 Coming to a Park Near You: The Oak Bluffs Tree Stewards
By Lucas Thors
Features
16 Cruising with Currier
Geoff Rides with Mustang Margare.t
19 Dear Dot: Did Smoke Change the Color of my Hydrangeas? 28 Garden to Table: Wrapping up a Year of Planting (and Eating) + Recipes! By Laura D. Roosevelt 48 Local Hero: Jennifer Randolph
By Leslie Garrett At Kinship Heals, protecting women
and children is part of protecting Mother Earth.
40 Generations By Lucas Thors The Allen Farm has been raising sheep for going on three centuries. A new generation is at the helm.
34 Oceans Unmanned By Sam Moore
Watching (and Protecting) Wildlife from the Sky
40 Micah Fires Up the New Kiln
After six years of planning, and 26 tons of bricks, Micah Thanhauser has a wood-fired kiln in his backyard at Merry Farm Pottery.
Newsletters to sign up for The Bluedot Kitchen Healthy Food, Healthy Planet
Subscribe! marthasvineyard.bluedotliving. com/magazine-subscriptions/
The BuyBetter Marketplace: Bluedot’s picks of planet-friendly products
Cover photograph: The Allen-Posin Family at the Allen Farm in Chilmark. Photo by Randi Baird
Your Daily Dot (daily Dot musings, Climate Quick Tips, and Dot answers your questions — right to your inbox) Sign up for all here: bit.ly/BDL-newsletters 4
Find this magazine online at marthasvineyard.bluedotliving.com
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PHOTO BY RANDI BARID
Martha's Vineyard Bluedot Living: bit.ly/MV-NEWSLETTER
Bluedot IT'S ALL
UP FRONT • BLUEDOT FAVORITE GIFTS
Favorite Gifts: Why shop anywhere else? LOCAL
By Julia Cooper
CHILMARK COFFEE
Julia Cooper, Social Media & Digital Content Producer
“Now that I live off-Island, my mom gives me pounds and pounds of my favorite coffee beans — the Columbian blend from Chilmark Coffee! I also love sharing my favorite coffee with constantly caffeinated colleagues.” Find it at LeRoux, Cronig’s and more — see ChilmarkCoffeeCo.com for locations.
ALPACA SOCKS
Leslie Garrett, Editorial Director
“Simply the warmest, coziest, and most durable socks around! Like an alpaca hug for your feet. Mitts are awesome too." Shop online at IslandAlpaca.com or at the farm at 1 Head of the Pond Road, Oak Bluffs
GILLYB APPAREL FOR BABIES AND DOGS Whitney Multari, Design/Production "GillyB creates great gifts for people with a newborn or a dog! She has matching hats, onesies, and burp cloths with hand-sewn MV applique made of recycled T-shirt material. For dogs, she makes hand-dyed dog bandanas.” Find her at Trust on Main Street, VH, Vaalbara in EDG and on Etsy at etsy.com/shop/ gillybmv; Check out her popup store schedule on her Instagram @gillybmv
SUGAR AND STONE ARTISAN CHOCOLATES “Beautiful handmade local chocolates.” Find them on Instagram @sugarandstonechocolate
HIGH QUALITY VINEGAR AND OLIVE OIL FROM LEROUX “LeRoux has different flavored vinegars and olive oils which make great gifts again for dinner parties or for something special from MV.” Find them at LeRoux at Home on Main Street, Vineyard Haven, at Alley’s General Store in West Tisbury, or at LeRouxKitchen.com
HANDBLOWN GLASS Victoria Riskin, Founder and President
MV Glassworks creates beautiful glass vases and jewelry. Visit their studio at 683 State Road, West Tisbury; you can also shop at MVGlassworks.com
CONRADO: THOUGHTFULLY CRAFTED WOMEN’S CLOTHING
“Angela at Conrado has developed a thriving business with her own clothing designs and great gifts from other Vineyard makers. You can shop online as well.” Shop in person at 75 Main Street, Unit A, Vineyard Haven; or online at ShopConrado.com
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BLUEDOT FAVORITE GIFTS • UP FRONT
LOCAL ART TO FIT ANY BUDGET
A TOTE OF JELLIES AND JAMS
Alison Mead, Digital Asset Manager / Web Producer
“From prints to decals to apparel to notecards, there is something for every budget on local artist and angler Abe Pieciak's online store. For those who want to really splurge, his sculpted pieces made with found materials from the Island's beaches are unique, one of a kind, and a lovely tribute to the Island and its wildlife.” Find online at abraham-pieciak.squarespace.com
“Everyone loves Morning Glory Farm! On or off-Island, Mo Glo merch is a great local gift and can be bought online. Canned items such as beach plum jelly and strawberry jam can be bought in store and make great stocking stuffers, hostess gifts or as part of a local goods gift basket.” Visit Morning Glory Farm, 120 Meshacket Road, Edgartown; or shop online at MorningGloryFarm.com
GREEN TOYS
Nicki Miller, Bluedot Santa Barbara Editor “This toy ferry boat is great for kids and playful adults! The Lazy Frog sells it in store and online, so recipients can be on- or off-Island. Made from 100 percent recycled plastic, the ferry boat comes with two cars to drive on and off. ” Visit the shop: 42 Circuit Ave., Oak Bluffs
Garden Angels Bring beauty to your property
Native plant specialists and environmentally focused organic garden practices.
Design • Installation • Maintenance (508) 645-9306 www.vineyardgardenangels.com 6
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UP FRONT • BLUEDOT FAVORITE GIFTS
ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE: A YEAR OF FOOD LIFE, BY BARBARA KINGSOLVER Kelsey Perrett, Digital Projects Manager "This book is fifteen-plus years old now, but its lessons about what it actually looks like to make a big environmental change in your life still ring true. Kingsolver writes beautifully about her family's locavoric journey. Whether it's possible for you to drop everything and start growing all your own food or not, I think this book remains a crowd-pleaser because it invites us to take an honest look at our environmental habits and what the process of changing them entails — the good, the bad, the ugly, and the funny.” Try Bunch of Grapes, Edgartown Books, or bluedotliving.com/Animal-Vegetable-Miracle-amazon
AROMATHERAPY EYE PILLOWS AND HEAT PACKS Tara Kenny, Creative Director
“I often use my Austin Designs aromatherapy pillow at my desk. I heat it in the microwave for two minutes and put it behind my lower back — the scent is heavenly, too. I recommend buying extra covers that you can wash and preserve the longevity of your heat pack. I have bought many as gifts. Love!" Try Martha’s Vineyard Made at 29 Main Street, Vineyard Haven; Vineyard Artisans Annual Holiday Festival on Dec. 16; or online at VineyardArtisans.com and AustinDesignsMV.com
GATEWAY GOLF DISCS
Jim Miller, Bluedot Santa Barbara Editor
“Made from 100 percent recycled plastic, these discs provide a great way to get outdoors (MV has a course at the State Forest), and the whole experience is more environmentally friendly than regular golf. These discs are only sold in the store, so head over to Lazy Frog.” Visit the shop: 42 Circuit Ave., Oak Bluffs
BY THE SEA SALT Jamie Kageleiry, Director of Publications
“I've been putting ‘By the Sea’ salt on bagels, fish, and more for decades. And I've gotten my entire extended family hooked, so I bring little bottles up as stocking stuffers. I have even had to send bottles up to (Bluedot Editorial Director) Leslie Garrett before she just decided it was easier to buy a house here and have a constant supply.” Try Larsen’s, LeRoux at Home, or their site: BytheSeaSalt.com
SOUPS + SIDES COOKBOOK, BY CATHERINE WALTHERS “I had the great good luck to help taste recipes when Catherine Walthers (Bluedot's food editor) was creating her Raising the Salad Bar, and Soups + Sides, so I can attest to how yummy (and healthful) this food is. Catherine's always thinking about how not to waste food, so you'll find tips like how to use a Parmesan rind (Italian Wedding Soup!). I gave this to my sister-in-law, and she loved it. You can often find this at Bunch of Grapes. Otherwise, here’s an Amazon link. bit.ly/soups-amazon
FLATPOINT FARM SOAPS “I love these goat-milk soaps. Find them at the Vineyard Artisans Holiday Festivals. You can also purchase from Martha’s Vineyard Made." Find them at Allen Farm in Chilmark, Morning Glory Farm in Edgartown; check their site for other locations: FlatpointFarm.com/find-our-soap
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BLUEDOT FAVORITE GIFTS • UP FRONT
FIND A LOT OF LOCAL AT: FEATHERSTONE CENTER FOR THE ARTS HOLIDAY GIFT SHOW
Dozens of Island artists and artisans; handmade creations include paintings, photography, pottery, crafts, jewelry, knitwear, clothing, ornaments, and more. Until Dec. 17, open 12 to 4 pm daily. FeatherstoneArt.org/HolidayGiftShow
VINEYARD ARTISANS ANNUAL HOLIDAY FESTIVAL Island artisans including Beldan K. Radcliffe, Austin Designs, Chappaquiddick Wood Company, and Hypatia Book Arts Saturday, Dec. 16, 10 am to 4 pm VineyardArtisans.com
MARTHA’S VINEYARD MADE
Everything from chocolates to Peter Simon calendars to cute leather moccasins for babies, and all of it made by Islanders. Shop in person or online. 29 Main Street, Vineyard Haven; MarthasVineyardMade.com
Island wood salad servers by Chappaquiddick Wood Company
Sign up for Bluedot Living’s BuyBetter Marketplace, a biweekly newsletter that navigates the confusing world of stuff. bit.ly/BDL-newsletters
bluedotliving.com/marketplace
Buy less, but when you do — buy better.
Shop the
BuyBetter Marketplace
In a world of disposable goods, it’s hard to know which products are sustainable. At Bluedot, we do the legwork for you by selecting items made with regard for the planet and its people. 8
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FIELD NOTES
FIELDNotes
Catching Up With our Non-profits To: Bluedot Living From: BiodiversityWorks Subject: If You Build It, They Will Come
I
n 2023, we successfully collaborated with The Trustees to build two snake hibernacula and a road underpass for small animals at Long Point Wildlife Refuge to offer them safe spaces for winter slumber and safe passage to the beach. As ectotherms, black racers and other snakes need to bask in sunny places to increase their body temperature for active hunting. Roads are an attractive death trap for them, and the growing number of roads from development over the past thirty years has only increased this risk. The road underpass at Long Point was a test project to see how racers, a very active snake that climbs, might respond to a drift fence and underpass in proximity to a hibernation site. We were thrilled when we captured the first racers on drift fence camera traps and through the road underpass in June. At the hibernacula, we first noted mice, voles, and chipmunks moving into the underground spaces, which meant that predators would soon follow. In July, we began seeing black
racer snake activity at both hibernacula. Soon after, racers began entering and exiting them, as we had hoped. Other predators also visited, such as skunks, raccoons, and even a barn owl! Our camera traps even captured birds and butterflies using the rocks and brush piles on top of one hibernaculum. Racers settle into their winter hibernation spaces in November, and we hope they see our ‘vacancy with breakfast’ signs! We’re grateful to The Trustees of Reservations for partnering with us on this racer conservation project and to MassWildlife for the Habitat Restoration Grant.
BiodiversityWorks' remote camera caught this black racer snake using its road underpass at Long Point. It also caught the owl, above.
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NON PROFITS
and Looking Ahead
coordinator was on tour all year with a wonderful Vineyard Lawns presentation, and we even won a blue ribbon for our educational display at the Ag Fair. Look for the Vineyard Lawns display, as well as the PowerPoint presentation on tour at your local libraries all winter long. We also greatly anticipate part two of Ollie Becker’s film “On Our Watch,” which we coproduced. The success of the West Tisbury big house bylaw has been encouraging, bolstering the planning board’s role in trophy homes. The VCS ‘rapid response’ team has submitted testimony on issues concerning growth and development. Under new leadership, VCS looks forward to expanding conversation about growth and development.
VCS
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od
510 State Rd, West Tisbury, MA 02575 • 508.687.0131 • finefettle.com
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LOCALLY GROWN. LOCALLY ENJOYED.
COURTESY VCS
is excited to announce the expansion of our Tap Map water bottle refill station network, with eight new locations! Creating an Island-wide network of water bottle refill stations is our goal to reduce plastic pollution. Refill stations and Take Back the Tap businesses can be found on the VCS Tap Map. In 2024, we’re looking forward to more stations at Niantic Park and downtown Oak Bluffs, MVRHS athletic fields, Robinson Road Rec area in Edgartown, Owen Park in Tisbury, and the Chilmark Town Hall. We’re looking forward to expanding our reach into the schools with a comprehensive waste and plastics reduction program. This year, we began monthly beach cleanups with our Beach BeFrienders. We are excited to be collaborating with our non-profit partners on saving our coastal ponds. Our education
oo
To: Bluedot Living From: Vineyard Conservation Society Subject: 2023 Accomplishments,
More refill stations!
WALK-INS WELCOME
breast-feeding may pose potential harms. It is against the law to drive or operate machinery when under the influence of this product. KEEP THIS PRODUCT AWAY FROM CHILDREN. There may be health risks associated with consumption of this ed by two hours or more. In case of accidental ingestion, contact poison control hotline 1-800-222-1222 or 9-1-1. This product may be illegal outside of MA.
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NON PROFITS
To: Bluedot Living From: Island Housing Trust Subject: Green Housing, Affordable Housing 1(833) MV SOLAR
PHOTO BY RANDI BAIRD
(687-6527)
Serving the Community of Martha’s Vineyard
Solar panels at Scott's Grove.
T
he Island Housing Trust consistently uses green building practices and has received the highest green building certifications in the country. With the help of knowledgeable designers and builders, IHT has built neighborhoods of zero net energy. These homes have the potential to produce as much energy as residents need. They achieve this by building all-electric homes that are solar ready, airtight, and super insulated. The designs include appropriately sized solar-ready HVAC systems. This past summer, we broke ground on four permanently affordable year-round rental apartments in Aquinnah. Built in partnership with the Town of Aquinnah on town-owned land, the homes will be located behind town hall on Carl Widdiss Way. The town is finishing a new playground at this site and will then plant a community food forest and build a gazebo. Each of the two buildings we’re constructing will contain two onebedroom and two two-bedroom apartments with direct access via a walking path to the town center including the playground, gazebo, and food forest. In Oak Bluffs we’re working on sixty rental apartments and a community center next to the YMCA. We’ll be breaking ground for Meshacket Commons in 2024. Both of these neighborhoods are being built on town-owned land in partnership with the towns and a co-developer, Affirmative Investments. The Meshacket Commons neighborhood will have thirty-six rental and four ownership homes, all of which will be affordable for year-round working Island residents. The site design proposes a pedestrian and bike-friendly neighborhood with a community building and a property management office, as well as outdoor play areas, passive recreational spaces, and paths that connect to the Old Meshacket Road ancient way. The site plan protects open spaces and maintains as much of the existing vegetation as possible. Our Vision 2025 Goal is to build 150 permanently affordable homes for year-round Island residents. Scaling up production this ambitiously has meant scaling up staffing, so operational support is at the top of our wish list! Please contact Joanna McCarthy at jmccarthy@ihtmv.org or visit ihtmv.org/ donate to donate.
Solar System Installation New & Retrofit Battery Storage Canopies & Pergolas Commercial & Residential
Support Bluedot! We love bringing you stories about Islanders addressing climate change. Generous contributions from readers such as you helps us do this. Make a one-time, monthly, or annual contribution here.
And we’ll email you a downloadable collection of Bluedot Kitchen Recipes
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NON PROFITS
Mass Audubon at Felix Neck teaches children about nature with animal shows (below, left) and pond adventures (below, right), among many other programs.
COURTESY MASS AUDUBON/FELIX NECK
To: Bluedot Living From: Mass Audubon at Felix Neck Subject: A Place for Play and Outdoor Adventures What are you most proud of accomplishing in 2023? To make our camps more affordable, Mass Audubon implemented a sliding scale fee program to accommodate families of all income brackets. Support for families increased four-fold with this change in fee structure, allowing us to teach more children about nature and how to take care of the environment. Mass Audubon also cared for birds and their habitats, and staff are proud of our work to protect beach-nesting birds and their habitats. What initiatives are you planning for 2024? Mass Audubon believes in making our Sanctuaries welcoming to everyone. Felix Neck has made great strides to accommodate different needs including a Freedom Chair Trail Wheelchair, Access-Able Golf Cart Tours, cane chair,
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noise-canceling headphones, and internships for people with disabilities. This year we will build an accessible wildlife-viewing area for owl and osprey observations, and add an accessible electric vehicle charging station. Staff is excited about our second annual Nature Drag Show for PRIDE. What would you put on a wish list for donors? We need to replace an ailing utility vehicle to continue to care for the Sanctuary’s trails and features. Our Preschool and Camp educators dream of enhancing the preschool and camp nature play areas with water features, a book nook, easels, magnifying station, and other devices for discovery. The kids require outdoor gear for all-weather adventures, adding a cost (if the items are not donated), and, of course, tuition support for Islander families so that their children can participate in all that Felix Neck has to offer.
FEATURE • OAK BLUFFS TREE STEWARDS
A new homegrown initiative is connecting community members through tree planting.
T
Story and Photos By Lucas Thors The rhythmic clanging of shovels scooping heavy loads of dirt echoes through Niantic Park on a sunny October morning, as one group of volunteers begins digging their first holes. Likewise, in two other Oak Bluffs parks — Nashawena and Wesleyan — eager community members of all ages pull on their work gloves and hoist their spades with the goal of planting ten trees before the end of the day. They are part of the pilot phase of an initiative called the Oak Bluffs Tree Stewards — a collaboration between the Town of Oak Bluffs and a small, dedicated group of locals. Earlier in the morning, before the work began (and after everyone had had their coffee), Peter Meleney, co-founder of the Tree Stewards, stood with the crowd of almost thirty town volunteers and thanked them from the bottom of his heart. “We really appreciate everyone coming out; we wouldn’t be able to do this without you all volunteering your time,” he said. Peter is a longtime member of the Oak Bluffs Climate and Energy Advisory Committee and a passionate community advocate. He told Bluedot Living that he first got interested in planting trees in town parks when he read the book Saving Us, by Katharine Hayhoe. The book made him think about his role as an individual who wants to make a difference in society. “Climate change is so daunting in so many ways,” he said, “but what are some small things we each can do on the local level to push back?”
“Going out and digging in the dirt with your neighbors, putting a bunch of new trees in the ground — that is an excellent way to bring people together and give them some hope.” –Kelly Joyce, Oak Bluffs Tree Stewards co-founder After speaking with a number of close friends and colleagues, Peter thought about some practical approaches to getting the community involved — strategies that could be implemented right here on the Vineyard. “I really thought about what my passions were, and eventually decided that my passion is planting trees, and that’s what I want to do,” he told me.
Oak Bluffs
Tree Stewards:
COMING TO A PARK NEAR YOU Dana Hughes hoists the first tree of the day over her head.
During a meeting at the Oak Bluffs library centered around the idea of collective participation to combat climate change, Peter met a key future collaborator in this venture, Kelly Joyce. Kelly provided the background necessary to make tree planting not just an affordable and approachable step in the right direction, but also a community-building exercise. “Initially, we were talking with landscapers about prices for planting trees, and we couldn’t get that down to under two thousand dollars a tree,” Peter explained. “Last June, Kelly suggested using bare root trees [trees with no soil ball]. It was a winning idea.” Apart from Kelly’s spirit and her interest in sustainability, she had been involved in similar planting programs in Philadelphia, as part of the Philly Tree Tenders. Kelly had plenty of practice planting bare root trees, and knew how to organize and work with a group of volunteers. When it came time for the Tree Stewards to bring their planting proposal to the Parks Commission, Peter got in touch with Commission chair Tony Lima. The two had worked together on an earlier initiative to put commemorative benches in town parks. “That project became a bit of a problem, because the benches started deteriorating. So instead of benches, I sug-
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OAK BLUFFS TREE STEWARDS • FEATURE
Volunteers dig the first hole of the day.
gested we plant trees — they would certainly last longer,” Peter said with a laugh. Peter added that The Tree Stewards have also been working on a program where a townsperson can donate a tree in memory of someone, and receive a certificate that they can frame. Eventually, Peter is hoping to offer a certificate to donors indicating which park their commemorative tree is planted in. “I would like to have a place in town hall where we list the people who have donated trees. That way, it really encourages community participation, and you are publicly recognizing the people who do this,” he explained. According to Kelly Joyce, the Oak Bluffs Tree Stewards’ efforts to fill town parks with new trees is a story of the right people and the right circumstances coming together at the perfect time. While Peter was working with Tony and the Friends of Oak Bluffs to create a plan, Kelly had just returned from Philly, where she’d been busy planting street trees for the community. “I ended up going to one of those meetings at the library organized by the Climate and Energy Advisory Committee, Kelly said, “and that’s where Peter and I formed this wonderful partnership — we immediately got together and started brainstorming.” As Kelly gathered her volunteer group and prepared to head out to her dig site, she told Bluedot that the Philly model is a powerful way to bring people together around environmental issues, and to connect them more deeply to their homes. “You get to know neighbors you didn’t even know you had, all from planting trees together,” Kelly said. “And every time you walk by those trees, you feel happy, because you helped make that happen.” Once Kelly and Peter located a bare root tree nursery in upstate New York, they began thinking about fundraising. They reached out to various environmental advocacy networks on the 14
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Reporter Lucas Thors pitched in.
Vineyard and asked for help. Community members volunteered to go around and knock on doors to ask for donations, and one retired PR executive in Oak Bluffs, McGhee Osse, offered to design and print brochures for the planting. In less than two weeks, the group raised three thousands dollars — enough for the ten trees they initially aimed to plant. Kelly said she was elated to see such a strong turnout for the tree planting event, and watching everyone work together was an empowering experience for her. “I think that, regardless of your age or background, people want to do something that is meaningful. They want to do something that will positively affect their neighborhood and their town,” Kelly said. “Going out and digging in the dirt with your neighbors, putting a bunch of
From left: Peter Meleney, Tony Lima, and Kelly Joyce celebrate the first tree of the day.
FEATURE • OAK BLUFFS TREE STEWARDS new trees in the ground — that is an excellent way to bring people together and give them some hope.” For Tony Lima, replenishing the number of trees in Oak Bluffs parks had been at the forefront of his mind for a long time. Over the past five or six years, he said, a number of large trees have been lost due to old age, disease, and wind storms. All Tony and the Parks Commission needed was a band of volunteers who wanted to dedicate their energy to the cause and take the lead on fundraising. “It was a no-brainer for me when Peter came to me and described this cool community-building project where everyone gets a chance to help out,” Tony said. “It shows how things can work in a small community when resources are limited but everyone really wants to see something happen.”
“Initially, we were talking with landscapers about prices for planting trees, and we couldn’t get that down to under two thousand dollars a tree. Last June, Kelly suggested using bare root trees. It was a winning idea.” –Peter Meleney, Oak Bluffs Tree Stewards co-founder In order to collect money for the project without the Tree Stewards having to form a nonprofit or a similar fundraising vehicle, the Parks Commission decided to create a restricted fund and allocate donations specifically to tree-planting efforts, including buying the trees, procuring the necessary planting tools, and maintaining the trees over time. Tony said he was impressed with the amount of donated funds the group was able to garner in such a short timespan. The Tree Stewards are still seeking donations for their next round of planting in the spring, and they have applied for a Community Preservation Act grant to create a secure source of funding for the next three years. Going forward, each year the gang plans to plant ten trees in the spring and another ten in the fall. Tony said he is just as excited to watch the momentum for the initiative grow as he is to watch the newly-planted trees grow over the years. “It’s great to see these folks showing up to our Commission meetings and asking how they can help us plant trees. We really appreciate that people are invested in this,” Tony said. “And they’re even willing to come out and pick up a shovel.” Those looking to volunteer, donate funds, or find out more information can email OBTreeStewards@ gmail.com.
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CRUISING WITH CURRIER • THE HANNEMANNS Margaret and Rob Hannemann with Geoff Currier in Menemsha.
Cruising With Currier A SUNSET WITH MUSTANG MARGARET
W
A long-awaited ride with the Hannemanns (Rob, too), and their red Mach-E.
We’re always interested in going for a cruise with electric vehicle owners. Last spring I was talking with Tracy Thorpe, the programs coordinator at the Chilmark Library, and she asked me if I had seen Margaret Hannemann’s new red Ford Mustang Mach-E. “It’s a beauty!” Tracy said. Actually, I’d been hearing a lot of buzz about the new electric Mustang. Not only is it a great-performing vehicle, but it also resonates with a whole generation of people like my wife and me who grew up with the original
16
Written by Geoff Currier Photos by Jeremy Driesen
“pony cars” back in the seventies. I reached out to Margaret, and we tried to set up a meeting, but she had family staying with her pretty much the whole summer, so we weren't able to find a date. She said “You know, there is another red Mustang Mach-E on the Island. I’ve seen them driving around, I just don’t have any contact info for them.” I was running out of time, but then, in early August, I thought I hit pay dirt. I was walking down Circuit Avenue in Oak Bluffs, when there it was — a red Mustang Mach-E, parked
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down by Vineyard Vines. So I bought a cup of coffee, sat on a bench, and staked out the car for the better part of the day, thinking, sooner or later they've got to come back. For a moment I thought maybe this was Margaret’s car, but I couldn’t reach her by phone. Besides, there was one of those car refreshers like you see in a cab hanging from the rear view mirror, and based on our brief phone conversation, Margaret didn’t strike me as a car refresher kind of person. While I was waiting, I spoke with
THE HANNEMANNS • CRUISING WITH CURRIER
a fellow who worked next to where the Mach-E was parked, and he told me that the car had been parked there for a few days, so I decided to call off my stakeout. I left a note under the wipers saying, “Hi, this is ‘Cruising with Currier,’ and I’d like to talk to you about your car,” and then I headed home to wait for a call. I never did get the call, most likely because my note was downright creepy, but I reached Margaret, and we were able to arrange to meet for our cruise about a week later. Margaret and Rob Hannemann live in Chilmark, not far from Beetlebung
Rob says there's not a lot of servicing with these vehicles.
Charging for eight hours provides the battery with a range of about 300 miles, or several dozen trips around the Island.
Corner, up a long dirt road in a lovely shingled house on a hill that they bought in 2003. Both used to work in the tech industry, and Rob taught at Tufts University before retiring. Both Hannemanns are environmentally conscious (Rob serves on several environmental boards on the Island) and they wanted to purchase an electric vehicle. When they heard about the electric Mustang, they were sold. The first car they ever owned together was a red 1970 Mustang, and they had great memories of the car; it had served them well. In 2021 they went online and
The Hannemanns thought that, while it would be great having a car of the future, it was wonderful having a car with a connection to their past as well.
The first car they ever owned together was a red 1970 Mustang. marthasvineyard.
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CRUISING WITH CURRIER • THE HANNEMANNS
Parking was easy for the Menemsha sunset.
They also currently have a Toyota Tacoma pick up truck which Rob uses for dump runs and which the kids like to use when they visit. “We encourage them not to use the Mustang,” Margaret said. “We’ve seen how they drive.” ordered the new Mustang from a Ford dealer in Bourne. “There are predictions,” Rob said, “that in seven years, fifty percent of all new cars will be electric.” At last count, there were sixty electric vehicles in Chilmark alone. They thought that while it would be great having a car of the future, it was wonderful having a car with a connection to their past as well. The Hannemanns have owned several BMWs, and they also currently have a Toyota Tacoma pick up truck which Rob uses for dump runs and which the kids like to use when they visit. “We encourage them not to use the Mustang,” Margaret said. “We’ve seen how they drive.” I asked them if there were any surprises, things that didn’t live up to their expectations or exceeded their 18
expectations. Rob said, “We've had some nice cars, and this is the nicest car we’ve ever owned.” He noted that the acceleration is amazing, it’s quiet, and there is a ton of interior space, including storage under the hood, called the “frunk.” I asked Rob how servicing the car has gone. “There’s not a lot to be serviced in these electric vehicles,” he said. “The car itself tells you when the tires are low, for instance, but that hasn’t happened yet.” There is, of course, the cost of installing a Level 2 home charger. “The charger is not that expensive,” Rob said, “but because it’s 240 volts, you need an electrician to install it.” You might already have 240 volts powering your electric dryer; it only took the electrician about forty minutes to install it at the Hannemanns. Charging for eight hours provides the battery with
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a range of about 300 miles — enough to go to Boston and back. For longer trips, Rob says you can find Level 3 chargers off-Island that charge from about twenty percent to ninety percent in forty-five minutes, so you can stop for lunch or shop while you charge. The Hannemanns have made trips in the Mustang to Montauk, the Adirondacks, and Washington, D.C. On-Island, the average trip is relatively short, so battery range is not much of a factor, and there are charging stations in every town if you need a top-off. So an electric vehicle is ideal for local driving. For the purposes of our cruise, Margaret and Rob and I were just going down the road a few miles to catch the sunset at Menemsha. It was a beautiful Indian Summer afternoon, relatively uncrowded by summer standards, and we had no problem finding a place to park. I asked Rob if he had heard of the famous “Farting seats” in the Tesla X. (The Tesla has a setting that puts its seats into Whoopie Cushion mode. See our Cruising story here: bit.ly/Hasoni-PrattTesla.) Rob said that Ford had been building cars forever and that they were more no-nonsense and down-to-earth about their cars. With that, he turned on the “Puddle Lights” — lights that project the Mustang logo on the ground so you can see where you’re stepping when you get out of the car. Take that, Elon.
The Facts EPA-estimated range figures for the entire Mustang Mach-E lineup go from 224 to 312 miles on a charge, 0-60 mph in 3.7 seconds Possible savings of $3,750 in potential federal tax credit. And $6,250 in retail incentives. – Ford website
DEAR DOT
dot DEAR
Dear Dot,
I noticed on the Vineyard this summer that the usual bluey-purple hydrangeas were mostly pink or white. We were affected by wildfire smoke from Canada, and it was a rainy July. Did that impact the color of hydrangeas? –Raymond
Dear Raymond,
Dot, too, noticed that there seemed to be more pink and white hydrangeas than usual. Indeed a number of Vineyard-based Bluedot staffers nodded their heads in agreement when I asked if your question resonated with them. And so I fully expected Tim Boland, executive director at Polly Hill Arboretum, to affirm our observations and offer up his usual expertise as to why. Was it the wildfire smoke, eh? The rain? Nope and nada, Tim said. In fact, he explained, “the mop top hydrangeas — aka Hydrangea macrophylla; aka big leaf hydrangea — set their flora buds by the fall of the previous season for the
Illustration Elissa Turnbull next year’s bloom.” In other words, the stage was set for the hydrangea blooms we saw in July last fall, long before wildfires or rain. And autumn 2022, Tim reminds us, was particularly warm, which lasted into January. In early February, however, a cold snap took temperatures down to negative 8 degrees Fahrenheit, along with 68 mph winds. “The floral buds were not cold acclimated,” Tim says. Because the buds hadn’t cooled down slowly into dormancy, the floral buds were killed by cold temperatures. Massacred by February, Raymond. Dot wants to report a crime against nascent loveliness! All was not lost, however. While those hydrangea that set their buds the prior season were mostly winter killed, Tim explains, a few stalwart stems nonetheless formed new buds. Tim wants to remind us, too, that the Vineyard boasts a number of hydrangea species. Hydrangea panniculata — aka limelight hydrangea — develops buds on the current year’s growth and it managed just fine. Similarly, smooth hydrangea — aka Hydrangea arborescens and native to the eastern United States (though not Massachusetts) — also blooms on new growth and so avoided February’s wrath. “I grow a close relative of smooth
Hydrangea in my garden and at Polly Hill,” Tim tells Dot. “I collected it in Georgia — Hydrangea radiata — similar to smooth hydrangea but has silver undersides to the leaves.” Sounds beautiful. Dot has made a note in her calendar to visit Polly Hill next summer and take it in. But to your question Raymond: it seems that those of us convinced that we were seeing more pink and white blooms and fewer blue are simply imagining things. Soil pH affects flower color by affecting the availability of aluminum in the soil. Acidic soil (pH 5.5 or lower) makes aluminum more available to plants’ roots. Neutral or alkaline soil (pH 7.0 or higher) decreases aluminum levels. And while ash from wildfires can temporarily alter the pH of soil (making it more alkaline), Tim says there’s no evidence that there was enough on Martha’s Vineyard to create a color change in hydrangea. Vineyard soils are so acidic — 4.5 to 5.8 — the amount of ash would have to be considerable, he says. Whatever color hydrangea we favor most, given that they aren’t native to the Vineyard, should we be avoiding them altogether? Not at all, Tim says. While he and the folks at Polly Hill encourage (and sell) lots of native plants, hydrangea arborescens is beloved by pollinators. “My garden is a mix, and it's very alive and ecologically active. So, yes, you can plant non-native and still have abundant ecological services.” That’s horticulture speak for ‘plant … and they shall come.’ Acidically, Dot Please send your questions to deardot@bluedotliving.com Want to see more Dear Dots? Find lots here: bit.ly/Dear-Dot-Hub Check out our new Daily Dot newsletter and get a Climate Quick Tip each weekday, and an answer from Dot each Saturday. On Sunday, Dot rests. Sign up here: bit.ly/BDL-newsletters
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ALLEN FARM • FEATURE
GROWING TOGETHER T H R E E GENERATIONS OF A L L EN FA RMERS It takes a tightly-woven family to sustain this centuries-old Chilmark sheep farm. Story by Lucas Thors Photos by Randi Baird
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FEATURE • ALLEN FARM
From left: Nathaniel Allen-Posin and Kaila (Binney) Allen-Posin with children Arlo, Tavira, and Florence; Clarissa Allen and Mithc Posin.
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ALLEN FARM • FEATURE
Since 1762, more than thirteen generations of Islanders have dug the earth, tended the flock, and sheared the wool at the Allen Farm. Now the next generations of farmers, who share the same lineage and the same passion, are stepping in.
“At some point, my kids won’t need me looking after them as much. But this place will always need me, and I will always need this place.” –Kaila (Binney) Allen-Posin
The gang returns from the sheep pastures after a family walk.
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I
was lucky enough to take a trip up to Chilmark to visit the Allen Farm with photographer Randi Baird on a recent warm weekend afternoon. I got out of my car and heard sheep bleating in the distance, chickens clucking in their coops, and the squeals and laughter of young children — the newest generation — playing together. I met Clarissa Allen and Mitch Posin, and they introduced me to their son, Nathaniel, and his wife, Kaila, who have recently taken over as the farm managers. With a bit of work, the adults managed to gather together Kaila and Nathaniel's children, Arlo, Tavira, and Florence, for a family walk. Mitch donned an Allen Farm baseball hat and one of the original Allen Farm wool vests, and we strolled toward the rear of the property. “The only way families are going to continue their legacies,” Mitch told me, “is if the person you want to pass the torch to is willing to pick it up and run with it. It seems to happen more here on the Island — the Athearns, the Fischers, the Whitings, and us. But things have definitely evolved in the past few years.” Around the country, industrial agriculture continues to push local, family-owned farms out of business; Mitch said he is proud to see the next generation take ownership of the farm, and begin to make it their own. For decades, Mitch and Clarissa were the sole workforce on the farm. With Kaila, Nathaniel, and the little ones now involved, Mitch said the operation runs a lot more smoothly. “We’ve got twice the number of hands, and everyone wants to pitch in,” he said. He looked out over the green pastures and smiled. “You should have seen this place three or four years ago. Totally a night-and-day difference.” He explained that the Allen Farm has been experimenting with some farming techniques in recent years. They use mob grazing, an advanced form of rotational grazing, that puts a lot of animals in a
FEATURE • ALLEN FARM
Nathaniel Allen-Posin and son Arlo load up a few bales of hay with the tractor.
“The only way families are going to continue their legacies is if the person you want to pass the torch to is willing to pick it up and run with it.” –Mitch Posin
An aerial view of the farmhouse, the greenhouse, and the mechanic shop.
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ALLEN FARM • FEATURE
1
2
3
1. The famous Allen Farm wool vests come in several different styles and sizes. 2. Skeins of soft wool ready for knitting or weaving. 3. The Allen Farm makes some seriously soft and warm clothing, hats, and blankets.
“One thing my parents made sure of when I was little was to never force me to do morning or evening chores. They said this life is a choice, and I want to offer that opportunity to my children.” –Nathaniel Allen-Posin Nathaniel sits at the family's industrial loom alongside his daughter Tavira.
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small plot of land for a short period of time. This technique increases biodiversity, reduces the risk of overgrazing, and minimizes the need for fertilizers. And they’re trying out a practice called silvopasture, which integrates shade trees into pastureland to keep the animals comfortable and improve soil biology. The shade from the trees increases moisture retention and mitigates the amount of moisture that’s wicked away by the wind. “More moisture equals a better soil biota, which equals more grass, which equals better sustenance for the animals,” Mitch said. Over the decades, The Allen Farm has become well known for its soft and beautifully-colored wool. Clare Ives, a talented local weaver, has used the family’s industrial loom to craft custom throws for three decades. After so many years on the farm, Clare has become an integral part of the operation, and part of the family. In about 1988, Valerie Beggs helped Mitch design the first version of the famous Allen Farm wool vest. The farm has also long been known for wool blankets and sweaters. The meat the farm produces is just as sought-after as the wool textiles. Mitch
FEATURE • ALLEN FARM
From left: Arlo, Tavira, and Florence sit in the doorway of the chicken coop.
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ALLEN FARM • FEATURE
looked over to the chicken coops. “We do a lot of meat and egg birds each year. In total, we have about one hundred and fifty meat birds in the freezer to sell over the winter, then we have about seventy
laying hens and a bunch of roosters,” he said. “It’s a lot of work, but we love this life.” The farm’s lamb (often seen on upscale Island restaurant menus, but also for sale to the public) is so popular that
The wind turbine at the Allen Farm, built in 2011, powers the entire property.
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the family has to space out meat sales so they don’t sell out. While encouraging the kids to smile for Randi’s camera, Clarissa said that having the entire family on the farm together is a blessing that she refuses to take for granted. “Our son has always had a deep commitment to the farm,” she said, “and now Kaila is here with him, and they are taking this on together.” She added that, for her son, taking over the lead role on the farm has been a clarifying point in his life. “I remember, toward the end of his college career, Nathaniel said ‘You know what, looking back, I think it would have been a better investment to spend that tuition money on a tractor.’” Clarissa has spent almost all of her life on the farm, and she said she wants to offer that same option to her children and grandchildren. Even with the challenge of negotiating a modern system that often disincentivizes family farming, Clarissa and her family have managed to hold it all together, and to grow together. After tossing down a bag of grain for some hungry ewes, Nathaniel said his family farm has long been a place where local knitters come to showcase their craft. Along with those items, the farm shop sells blankets that Clare weaves on the family loom and a wide range of other goods. The bulk of the farm’s wool is sent off-Island to be processed and used to create Allen Farm products. Shearers Andy Rice and Aaron Loux shear the sheep at the end of May — usually about fifty ewes. The wool is sent to a wool broker to get scoured, then the white wool heads to South Carolina and the black wool heads to North Carolina to be treated. After that, it’s all sent to a spinnery, then it’s made into the famous Allen Farm vests, sweaters, and other clothing. Nathaniel said that this time of season, they take the sheep out of rotational grazing while the grass is dormant, and place them in a pasture with two bunk feeders filled with hay until the next crop of lambs are born. When the grass grows back around the middle of
FEATURE • ALLEN FARM
May, the sheep will go right back out to pasture until the end of November. “It’s all very cyclical,” Nathaniel said. “That allows us to focus on different things during different parts of the year, and we can integrate more of the regenerative techniques that we have learned.” After plopping Arlo down from his shoulders and penning in the sheep, Nathaniel said that, although farming is hard work, he wouldn’t choose any other path. He stressed that a life and a livelihood like this has to be a conscious choice, and although he would love
“Our son has always had a deep commitment to the farm, and now Kaila is here with him, and they are taking this on together.”
nity to jump into an amazing historic farm alongside my husband.” Kaila said the openness and warmth she immediately felt from Clarissa and Mitch was inspiring, and the two encouraged
Florence feeds one of the family chickens.
–Clarissa Allen his kids to pick up where he and Kaila leave off, he wants them to forge their own paths. “One thing my parents made sure of when I was little was to never force me to do morning or evening chores. They said this life is a choice, and I want to offer that opportunity to my children.” As the sun began to set, and a chill crept in across the moorland, Kaila was busy in the barn getting Florence geared up for a quick ride on one of the horses. “After college, I studied permaculture — sustainable agriculture systems,” Kaila said. “I felt so grateful for the opportu-
Arlo hangs with one of the family's miniature donkeys.
her to make her own mark on the farm. “I started a little garden next to the greenhouse, and over the years my role just grew and grew,” Kaila said. When she’s not caring for her kids, Kaila helps Clarissa manage the shop, sources local vendors, and dreams up new and creative ways to use the farm’s wool. A few years back, Kaila designed a special-edition Allen Farm Woolrich blanket. She said she loves getting a chance to see customers come into the shop and marvel at the finished products. Kaila also manages the farm’s poultry production — a role she enjoys just as much as working the retail end of things. Kaila is an experienced garden- and place-based educator on the Island. After working for Island Grown Schools until 2016, she and her sister founded a homeschool cooperative called At Home in the Woods, which allows kids ages two through seven to immerse themselves in and learn from their environment year-round. At this point in her life, Kaila said it’s not hard to recognize the blessings that surround her and her family. “We really understand our natural world, and where our place is in that world,” she said. As she watches her children grow, Kaila has noticed that each of them has already naturally assumed a special role on the farm. Tavira is the herbalist of the family and an avid gardener; Arlo is the technician, always wanting to take rides on the tractor with his father; and Florence has become quite the equestrian. “The farm is endless work, with a little bit of chaos thrown in,” Kaila laughed as Tavira played with one of the donkeys. “At some point, my kids won’t need me looking after them as much. But this place will always need me, and I will always need this place.”
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GARDEN TO TABLE • FALL WRAP-UP
A summer's worth of garlic.
Garden to Table: Fall Wrap-up
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FALL WRAP-UP • GARDEN TO TABLE
I planted, I harvested, I cooked, I learned.
F
Plus recipes!
Story by Laura D. Roosevelt Photos by Randi Baird
For most of us gardeners, no matter how devoted we are, there comes a point in the season when we’ve just had enough. For me, it usually happens literally overnight: One day, I’m out there weeding and planning new, fast-growing, cool-weather crops like lettuce and cilantro, and the next morning, I wake up and think “I’m done.” This year, garden fatigue hit me on Saturday, October 7th, and I never did get in those lettuce seeds. A gardening friend in Nyack, New York, scolded me about this. “What’s the big deal?” he asked. “I literally just go out and fling a handful of seeds on a bare patch of ground, and the next thing I know: salad.” Well, that’s nice for him. Even that slim level of forward-looking commitment seemed beyond me this year.
I can just leave in the ground and pick when I need them. (Unless there’s a serious cold snap like the day of sub-zero temperatures we had last winter, it’s been my experience that leeks will overwinter in the ground.) This was my second year of attempting to gear my garden toward feeding me and my husband as much as possible year-round, and I’ve learned a few things about what works, and what doesn’t. The principal lesson, which I really should have already known, is never assume. Just because you didn’t have squash beetles last year doesn’t mean you won’t have them this year. (This year, they destroyed my cucumber crop after I’d pickled just four jars’ worth.) Just because your butternut
This year started well, with lots of small fruits forming on all the trees. And then, over the course of a couple of days, while the fruits were still small, hard, and green, squirrels ate every last one of them. We know because we saw them at it. That being said, as I write this at the outset of November, I’m still picking string beans, lima beans, sorrel (a perennial), and peppers. My Brussels sprouts look ready to harvest, though they’re disappointingly small; maybe I should have fertilized them. I have some very healthy volunteer tatsoi, a second crop of beets nearly ready to pull, celery root ready for harvest, about fifteen enormous butternut squashes that I’ll bring in once the vines have fully died, and a few dozen leeks that, I’ve learned,
squashes didn’t grow well in the spent asparagus patch two years ago doesn’t mean they won’t thrive there now. Besides my mammoth butternuts, my biggest successes this year were these:
ONIONS Last year, I planted only red onions. This year, I planted reputedly long-keeping varieties of both red and yellow. I have about twenty onion braids hanging in my basement, and if last year’s experience holds true, I won’t have to buy onions until May. But in the “never
assume” department, it should be noted that while most of my red onions last year were nearly softball-sized, this year they were all disappointingly shallot-sized. The yellow onions did far better.
GARLIC I had a very nice crop, now stored in a big bowl in the basement. It should hold us until next year’s crop comes in.
STRING BEANS I’ve had beans
for months — first, some bush beans planted early, and now, growing on the trellis formerly occupied by my sugar snap peas, a crop of climbing rattlesnake beans and a mysterious, long purple bean that I don’t recall ordering, no less planting, but it’s delicious. Last year, I waited too long to get the climbers into the ground, planting seeds only after the pea vines were fully dead, and I’d removed them. Consequently, while my bean vines were vigorous, they flowered late, after many of the pollinators had disappeared, resulting in very few actual beans. Not so now. Because I made sure to pull out my pea vines the moment they’d stopped making peas, I planted my climbing beans nearly two weeks earlier than I did last year. Now I’m picking baskets of beans every couple of days, and I’ve got several freezer bags of them in storage for the winter. Some disappointments from this season, besides the cukes done in early by beetles:
CABBAGES You know how
you can forget about a cabbage in the back of your fridge, and three months later, you find it, and it’s still fine? I assumed that I’d be able to store my own cabbages nearly indefinitely in my basement fridge. Sadly, no. They’ve rotted. I am dismayed, but not daunted. I researched cabbage storage and learned that I made some mistakes that I won’t
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GARDEN TO TABLE • FALL WRAP-UP
repeat. First, cabbage evidently likes moisture, so it should be stored in the crisper drawer (which I didn’t do), in a plastic bag that’s left open so moisture can get in (I sealed my bags). Most important, one expert informed me that early-season cabbages (which mine were) can store for about two months, whereas late-season cabbages can store for up to six months. Note to self: Plant cabbages later next summer.
FRUIT It’s painful to even talk about this. I have some dozen fruit trees, including apples, pears, peaches, plums, and cherries. While the birds always beat us to the cherries and plums, we often get generous harvests of pears, apples, and peaches. This year started well, with lots of small fruits forming on all the trees. And then, over the course of a couple of days, while the fruits were still small, hard, and green, squirrels
This was my second year of attempting to gear my garden toward feeding me and my husband as much as possible year-round, and I’ve learned a few things about what works, and what doesn’t. SUGAR SNAPS Mine grew
perfectly well this year, but I didn’t like the variety I planted. They were tough, and not very sweet. I chose this variety because it was advertised as growing only about four or five feet tall. The previous year, my plants had climbed all the way up my six-foot high trellis, and then flopped over, creating a huge mass of tangled vines at the trellis’ top, full of peas I had trouble reaching. But what’s the good in being able to easily pick a lot of peas that don’t taste so great? Next year, I’m going to hunt for varieties that boast of their sweetness. And invest in a stepladder.
CARROTS A month ago, when
I went to harvest my carrots, all the stems came off in my hands, because the carrots themselves had rotted in the ground. My best guess as to the cause of this disaster is overwatering. It was a fairly wet summer to begin with, but also, my garden sprinkling system (which is set to run for a half an hour every night at 2:00 am), soaks some sections of my garden more thoroughly than others. Next year, I’ll plant my carrots in drier terrain.
ate every last one of them. We know because we saw them at it. Chasing them away just stalled them temporarily. This has never happened before. My theory is that, because there were very few acorns last fall, the squirrels had nothing else to eat in the spring. I’m sorry they were hungry, but I hope my green fruit gave them stomachaches. Thank goodness for friends and neighbors. One neighbor with a bumper crop of apples gave us a couple of full bags of Empires and Galas, and we … um … took advantage of a different, seasonal neighbor’s departure in the fall to relieve his lawn of another couple of bags’ worth (we call these our “poached apples”), and now we have several tubs of homemade applesauce in our freezer. In terms of preservation for the winter, I did best this year with freezing. Besides some mediocre sugar snaps and a lot of delicious string beans, I experimented with freezing grated zucchini. Several people online swear that frozen shredded zucchini works wonderfully in zucchini breads and tossed into soups. Here’s hoping. And now for a confession: I’m terrified of canning. It has to be done absolutely properly, or you run the risk of offing
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Lots of onions in the basement.
yourself and others at your table by serving a platter of botulism. Having learned, to my disappointment, that canning can’t be done in an Instant Pot, I went so far as to buy a pressure cooker last winter that I thought would work (it popped up on my screen when I searched for “pressure canners”), only to learn later that it won’t suffice. I now know that fool-proof(ish) pressure canners generally run over $300 a pop and are covered in intimidating valves, gauges, and hefty screw mechanisms that presumably prevent their tops from exploding through the kitchen ceiling. I considered asking my husband to get me one for Christmas, and then I found myself thinking, “Do I really want my big present to be something that will cause me a lot of anxiety only to result in some jars of canned beets?” In a word, no. I’m going to stick with freezing, cellar-storing, and pickling. Just as I was done with gardening (or at least planting) on October 7th, now it’s November 1st, and I’m done with my gardening musings for 2023. Thanks for reading.
FALL WRAP-UP • GARDEN TO TABLE
GREEN BEAN AND CELERY ROOT SOUP Recipes by Laura D. Roosevelt Yield: 7 Cups
INGREDIENTS
6 scallions, sliced 6 shallots, chopped 2 garlic cloves, minced 3 tablespoons butter ½ of a large celery root, peeled and diced (about 2 cups) 4 cups chicken or vegetable broth 2 lbs. green beans, cut in 1 ½-inch pieces ½ to 1 cup yogurt, cream, or half-and-half (to taste) 1 tblsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice ½ tsp. dried tarragon, or 1 tablespoon fresh tarragon, minced ¼ teaspoon pepper Salt to taste Yogurt and chopped chives for serving
I began making this soup several years ago, when I had an overabundance of string beans in my garden. I couldn’t keep up with the picking, and consequently, some of my beans got very large – too large, I felt, to just steam and serve them. Pureeing them in a soup was a great way to use them up. The recipe that inspired this one called for potatoes, but since I had a good crop of celery root in my garden, I used it instead, to wonderful effect. This soup freezes well and offers delicious autumn flavor even when thawed in February.
DIRECTIONS
1. Melt the butter in a skillet on medium
heat. Add the scallions, shallots, and garlic, and cook, stirring, until tender. Set aside.
2. Cook the diced celery root in boiling water for 15 minutes, until tender. Drain. 3. In a soup pot, bring the broth to a boil. Add the beans and simmer for 20
to 30 minutes, until soft. Stir in the scallion mixture and the celery root, along with the yogurt, cream, or half-and-half. Stir to mix. 4. Using an immersion blender, puree the soup thoroughly. (Alternatively, the soup can be pureed in batches in a
blender or food processor, then returned to the pot.) 5. Bring the soup to a boil. Add the lemon juice and tarragon. Let the soup simmer for 1 or 2 minutes, then serve with a dollop of yogurt and a sprinkling of chives.
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GARDEN TO TABLE • FALL WRAP-UP
This recipe (which I copied onto a file card two decades ago and have made so many times that I no longer remember where I found it) is a family favorite and always appears on our Thanksgiving table. Both of my adult children liked it even when they were young and wouldn’t eat much that was green, and now they both make it themselves in their own homes.
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FALL WRAP-UP • GARDEN TO TABLE
INGREDIENTS For the salad:
24 large Brussels sprouts 1 cup walnut pieces 4 oz. Parmesan cheese, finely grated (about ¾ cup)
For the dressing:
3 Tbsps apple cider vinegar 2 tsps Dijon mustard 2 tsps Dijon mustard Salt and pepper to taste 9 Tbsps olive oil
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Using a box grater, a mandoline, or a food processor with its shredder blade, shred the Brussels sprouts. Place in a serving bowl. 2. In a skillet over medium heat, or in the oven or a toaster oven set at 375 degrees, cook the walnut pieces until they darken in color, but be careful not to burn them. When they’ve cooled, add them to the shredded Brussels sprouts, along with the grated Parmesan cheese. Mix thoroughly. 3. Make the dressing: In a medium bowl or a large measuring cup, mix the apple cider vinegar, Dijon mustard, and salt and pepper. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil, whisking constantly, until the dressing comes together. 4. Pour the dressing over the salad, toss, and serve.
ADDICTIVE BRUSSELS SPROUTS SALAD Yield: Serves 6 to 8
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WATCHING WILDLIFE FROM THE SKY • FEATURE
Watching Wildlife From the Sky
Oceans Unmanned uses drones to safely monitor creatures and coastlines.
Brian Taggert launches a drone in the Maldives, as part of a marine debris survey.
M
att Pickett was an aircraft pilot for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for twenty years. “I flew a variety of environmental research and monitoring missions,” he says, “everything from polar bear research in the Arctic, to right whale surveys off of the East Coast, to manatee surveys down in Florida.”
Now he flies similar missions from the ground — with key research being done on nearby Muskeget Island — with just a fraction of the equipment, operating a fleet of drones alongside another former NOAA aviator, Brian
PHOTO BY OCEANS UNMANNED
Story by Sam Moore Taggart, and their small staff at Oceans Unmanned, a California nonprofit they founded to facilitate the use of unmanned technology to protect oceans and coastal marine environments.
Planes Versus Drones
“I've been one of the old heads in this business from the start, when it was military hand-me-down technology,” Matt says. As he was getting ready to retire, NOAA was experimenting with early drone technology. “Back then, you needed to be a licensed aircraft pilot to be flying drones in the U.S. So they put me on contract and said, ‘Hey, can this technology replace or supplement some
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of the things you've been doing with manned aircraft?’” As drone technology has become cheaper, easier to use, and more widely available, it’s opened up exciting opportunities for researchers, government agencies, and conservation groups. Counting seals, identifying whales from the sky, mapping coastlines in three dimensions to track sea level rise — all things that once required the time-and-labor-intensive resources of human-piloted aircraft — are now feasible on a much smaller budget. “I started getting contacted by a lot of different research organizations, universities, nonprofits, saying, ‘Hey,
FEATURE • WATCHING WILDLIFE FROM THE SKY
we're interested in this technology too,’” Matt says. “There are two main game changers in environmental monitoring with drones,” he continues. “One is how often you can monitor something. When I flew for NOAA, it was a very expensive aircraft with two pilots, and researchers could afford this whole production of getting the aircraft and pilots and crew up there maybe once a year. Not to mention the danger of manned aircraft — it's the leading cause of death of biologists, because they fly so low. A drone can do it daily or weekly or monthly and really start to look at those fine-scale changes in a habitat or an animal population.” “The other [game changer] is getting biological monitoring down to almost the individual level,” Matt says. “At high altitude you take pictures, and you can see a bunch of seals on the beach, you can count them. But with the high resolution cameras on a drone at a low altitude, you can start to identify individual animals very easily, whether it's in whales with fluke prints, or in flippers on seals. Using photogrammetry [mapping/measuring with photography], you can actually
measure animals. From the pixel size, you can get the length of animals in the water, on the beach.”
Advantage: Drones
“One of our first projects was working in Oregon and Washington doing sea otter surveys, flying a military drone which was designed to be quiet,” Matt says. “We were circling over otters, and the pups were playing. And the biologist was like, ‘I've never been able to see that behavior.’ When you're in a helicopter at 750 feet, a thousand feet, the animals hear that and they hunker down. With a drone, you get much
more natural behavior.” Now, Oceans Unmanned flies drones to missions all over the world, from seal surveys on Muskeget, to whale disentanglement operations in Hawaii and Senegal. It also trains other organizations to do drone work themselves. “We are constantly putting ourselves out of business,” Matt says, “because a client says, ‘Hey, can we use drones to do this?’ And then we come in and say yes, here's the paperwork, here's the permit, here's the platform you need, here's the sensors, and we can train you how to do this in-house.” Drone flight is generally much
“We were circling over otters, and the pups were playing. And the biologist was like, ‘I've never been able to see that behavior.’ When you're in a helicopter at 750 feet, a thousand feet, the animals hear that and they hunker down. With a drone, you get much more natural behavior.”
Each winter, with help from Brian Taggert and Matt Pickett of Oceans Unmanned, NOAA scientist Kimberly Murray's team surveys Muskeget Island, home to one of the largest gray seal pupping colonies in the entire western North Atlantic. “And it's only on this one-square-kilometer island,” she says.
PHOTO TAKEN FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH CONDUCTED PURSUANT TO NMFS MMPA PERMIT NO. 21719.
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C
G
WATCHING WILDLIFE FROM THE SKY • FEATURE
PHOTO BY KIM NELSON AND DAN CUSHING
Nesting birds in particular are a flashpoint for federal agencies and conservation groups, often responding with acute stress to overhead objects resembling avian predators.
This is a Marbled Murrelet in Oregon.
more automated than crewed aircraft — after launch, monitoring a preprogrammed flight path is often the only thing the pilot needs to do. But sometimes, as when searching for marbled murrelets in the old forests of the Pacific Northwest, the flying
gets more exciting, weaving between branches high up in the tree canopy to look for small nesting birds with an infrared camera. “We had to do that by hand,” Matt says. (Brian was the pilot.) “That was some of the best flying I've ever seen.”
Choosing a Drone
The Oceans Unmanned drones are somewhere on the spectrum between military hardware and Best Buy — what’s known as “prosumer” technology, the kinds of drones you might see carrying nice movie cameras in
Matt Pickett prepares a Trinity drone for takeoff on Muskeget island. The miniature aircraft takes off vertically like a helicopter and then transitions into an efficient fixedwing flight to survey the whole island in about 90 minutes. PHOTO TAKEN FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH CONDUCTED PURSUANT TO NMFS MMPA PERMIT NO. 21719.
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FEATURE • WATCHING WILDLIFE FROM THE SKY
Brian and Matt approach Muskeget Island, home to a huge population of gray seals. PHOTO TAKEN FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH CONDUCTED PURSUANT TO NMFS MMPA PERMIT NO. 21719.
Hollywood. Each carries a payload of sensors or cameras customized to the mission, often worth much more than the aircraft itself. “I'm more nervous flying drones than I ever was flying manned aircraft,” Matt says. “The difference is that then, I had my hand on the controls and on the throttle, and I could feel connected to that piece of machinery. Now we're flying $70,000 sensors on a $5,000 drone over a river or offshore. If the software glitches, I can't do anything. We've watched a handful of drones crash.” “They say ‘don't launch a drone unless you're willing to lose it,’” Matt adds, “which is fine if you're talking about your $1,500 dollar Best Buy drone, but when you have some really high-end equipment hanging out there, it gets a little tense.” “We were flying for this submerged shipwreck project up in Michigan,” he says. “Brian was the observer watching
the drone, and I had my head down flying. All of a sudden my screen started flashing, and I’m like, ‘I'm getting some warnings here.’” “I bet,” Brian responded, as he watched the drone disintegrate in mid-air. “I was trying to make a turn that was too steep, and the wings separated,” Matt says. “We learned to triple check everything and have a lot of safety protocols, and we've come a long way at the cost of losing some equipment. Those lessons are hard learned, but very valuable,” Matt says.
Drones and Wildlife
As the availability of recreational drones has increased, so too has concern over their misuse around other aircraft and around wildlife. Nesting birds in particular are a flashpoint for federal agencies and conservation groups, often responding with acute stress to overhead objects resembling avian predators. Answering the need for better
outreach and training around responsible recreational flying, Oceans Unmanned launched ECO-Drone — a best practices program created to educate people who fly drones either for fun or for research. “The challenge was that each animal responds differently to drones. Some respond to the sound of the drone. Birds kind of respond to the shape of the drone. If it has a swept wing, [the bird] thinks it’s a predator; if it has straight wings, it thinks it's a pelican or something.” Oceans Unmanned offers a basic primer for the public on the laws protecting wildlife, like the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the rules governing areas like national parks. The bottom line is the importance of keeping a safe distance. “It's like every technology that comes along, the last thing people start to think about is the environmental
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WATCHING WILDLIFE FROM THE SKY • FEATURE
Oceans Unmanned drones created this "orthomosaic" of Muskeget Island, the second largest pupping colony in the Northwest Atlantic for gray seals. PHOTO TAKEN FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH CONDUCTED PURSUANT TO NMFS MMPA PERMIT NO. 21719.
Counting seals, identifying whales from the sky, mapping coastlines in three dimensions to track sea level rise — all things that once required the time-and-labor-intensive resources of human-piloted aircraft — are now feasible on a much smaller budget. impact,” Matt says. “They’re thinking about package delivery systems and stuff like that, but can we be a little bit more forward thinking about what this technology means?” The future for the field is bright, he thinks. “I was a mechanical engineer and never thought that you could use that for environmental monitoring. My daughter graduated in engineering, and she does environmental work now. We get to draw from a broad range of not just pure biologists, but also technologists and engineers to help address these environmental issues. Right now, there are a couple of universities (like the Duke University Marine Lab) that are producing really talented kids who understand the technology and the environmental requirements, who can carry the torch moving forward.”
CASE STUDY: MUSKEGET ISLAND Kimberly Murray, a biologist who leads the Seal Ecology and Assessment Program at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, is working with Oceans Unmanned to better understand the role of gray seals in the ecosystem. Each winter, with help from Brian and Matt, her team surveys Muskeget Island, home to one of the largest gray seal pupping colonies in the entire western North Atlantic. “And it's only on this one-square-kilometer island,” Kimberly says. Using a drone, which takes off vertically before transitioning into an efficient fixed-wing aircraft, the team can survey the whole small island in high resolution in about ninety minutes. “It's a really useful tool to monitor trends in abundance at that site and the rates of increase in the number of pups that are born each year in the population,” Kimberly says. “We try to target at peak time, after all the pups are born, which is usually early January.” “The gray seals are increasing,” she says. “We know from measuring the number of pups born each year. A lot of that is driven by immigration from Canada. Some animals that were born in Canada are now having their pups in the U.S., and once they do that, they tend to come back to the same island to have their pups again.” The population in the U.S. portion of the Western North Atlantic was estimated at roughly 27,000 seals as of the most recent abundance estimate in 2016. “Overall, I think that's a sign of a healthy marine environment, because we have suitable habitat and an environment rich enough to support that growth,”
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FEATURE • WATCHING WILDLIFE FROM THE SKY
she says. “It does come at a social cost to the people who interact with seals on shared beaches, or fishermen who are trying to make a living. And white sharks venture into that picture there too, because they are obviously now near parts of the Outer Cape foraging on seals, when historically they weren't here in large numbers.” “As we overlap more and more with the recovering population, we're trying to work out how to coexist with that,” she continues. “The drones have been a really great tool in helping us understand the rates of growth, and coupled with information on movements and distribution, we can also get a sense of what kind of habitat these animals are using and where they might be coming into conflicts with the public.” Her team also uses smaller, “hexacopter” drones for studying individual animals. “We can get better imagery of, say, that animal's mass, or whether or not it might have health issues like an entanglement, or any marks, brands, or tags existing on the animal already,” she says. The team is even experimenting with getting volumetric data on individual animals. “If you fly a certain pattern, you can create a 3D image of the seals. If you can get an idea of their length and weight and their body condition, you might be able to assess whether or not that's changing over time in the colony, which could be an indicator of changes in the environment,” she says. Some challenges remain; because drone pilots still need to have line-of-sight proximity to their equipment, the team still needs to physically set foot on this small island in winter. “Leaving from Woods Hole to go over to a little island off Nantucket in January in a twenty-five-foot, center console, open-air boat, in your Mustang suit… it's a little hairy sometimes,” Kimberly says. A future scenario where a drone could fly round-trip from Nantucket would be “a much safer mission,” she adds. Still, she says, “I never would have imagined that we would be flying drones over animal colonies to study not just numbers, but their particular characteristics.”
W H AT YOU CA N D O Check out the Oceans Unmanned website and on X (formerly known as Twitter), where they post about ongoing research. Watch them look for Marbeled Murrelets in Oregon: bit.ly/Oregon-Murrelets Read more about Kimberly Murray's research on seal ecology on NOAA's website: bit.ly/NOAA-seals Be responsible with personal drones — these can be very stressful on wildlife like nesting birds, and many protected areas have strong restrictions on their use. Here are Ocean Unmanned's drone guidelines: bit.ly/Drone-guidelines
Pictured on Muskeget island, from left: Brian Taggert, Oceans Unmanned; Ben Weissman, US Coast Guard; Matt Pickett, Oceans Unmanned; Kimberly Murray, NOAA lead scientist. Credit: Oceans Unmanned PHOTO TAKEN FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH CONDUCTED PURSUANT TO NMFS MMPA PERMIT NO. 21719.
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MERRY FARM POTERY • HANDMADE
HANDMADE
MICAH THANHAUSER FIRES UP THE KILN It bakes his beautiful Merry Farm pottery, and brings a community of potters together.
Micah Thanhauser, Eric Knoche, Gilan Doty, Gordon Moore
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FEATURE • MERRY FARM POTTERY
The wood framing is temporary — just until the twenty-six tons of bricks are placed in an arch.
Story by Micah Thanheuser (as told to Jamie Kageleiry) Photos by Sheny Leon
I
started wanting to do pottery at the high school here, and I’ve pretty much stayed with it. Scott Campbell [pictured on page 45] was the crafts and sculpture teacher at MVRHS. He’d have a wood-firing of our pottery at the end of the year. As an adult, I can see that firing a wood kiln is an insane thing to pull off with fully functioning adults, never mind teens. Eric and Gilan are friends from North Carolina, where I did an apprenticeship after college. They came to help with the kiln; Gordon Moore, who went to the high school here, went to RISD, got hooked on clay, then came back to the Island and worked for me for two years. He lives and works in Brooklyn now but came back to help. Before we moved back to MV from North Carolina six years ago, there was
another potter changing up his A sketch of the future kiln. business and he had to take down his big wood kiln. I helped him take down the the sizes and shapes, and we designed the kiln and we split up the bricks. So I had all kiln around that. Throughout history, kilns these bricks. That’s always the thing with have usually been built by potters. They’re a wood-fired kiln — getting the bricks. not pro’s. But it’s not rocket science: If the They’re expensive to buy, heavy. kiln is this big, the chimney has to be this I had a tractor trailer full of bricks tall — that sort of thing. shipped to the Vineyard. They sat in my So we worked on and off for a year, yard for five years. I was trying to get my then there was an intensive two weeks business up and running; I have a gas-fired with a lot of help; that’s when all the phokiln that works well. I was busy, had two tos are from. kids, had a lot going on. Finally things The plywood is a temporary form, so opened up enough that I could think about we could lay the bricks onto it. You can’t doing it a year ago. build an arch into empty space. Then you A potter I knew from North Carolina remove the wood — with great stress and had built a number of kilns. He’s a smart effort. Lots of breathholding. I had like thinker about kilns and he helped me with five friends come. Getting the wood out the drawings. I counted the bricks I had, was tricky.
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MERRY FARM POTTERY • FEATURE
At the firing in September, we burned something like two cords, which burned for forty hours. The primary control is how much wood you’re putting in, how often. We’d put in two sticks every five minutes, then we’d say lets try three sticks every four minutes. There are aesthetic factors in firing: The longer you fire each piece, the more effects you can use. You control the amount of air coming in by opening air inlets; there’s a damper. There are signs — you can watch the fire and see if there’s a bunch of smoke. That’s too much wood. The fire’s quiet means not enough wood. It’s very much a skilled task. It’s really good to have people around. The potters who were firing the kiln made some little sculptures as they sat around the fire. And we had some neighbor kids come and hang out and make some little pieces. Barney Zeitz is a neighbor and an artist and he was interested in seeing what this
Micah was the first to fire the kiln in September. His family (below): wife, Emily and daughter, Mae (he also has a son, Asa, who’s 4). Barney Zeitz is in the background
was all about. He is a big fan of ambitious, impractical undertakings. He loved this. It’s so much work. He said “You don’t have to do any of this, you could just not do this.” But we did it anyway. He came over and said “This is so dumb, I do dumb stuff all the time but this is even dumber.” He was proud — he liked the whole vibe.
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He had a Rumi poem:“Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah … it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.” He was a big cheerleader for the whole thing. The metal support structure around the kiln, he gave me that metal, we did a trade.
FEATURE • MERRY FARM POTTERY
Top, Merry Farm Pottery bowls, by Micah Thanhauser. Micah’s studio assistant Rob Pajor, wearing goggles, was a key part of the kiln-building; he’s checking cones which measure temperature.
Frank Creney, who runs the pottery studio at Featherstone, with Heather Goff, longtime Vineyard potter.
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MERRY FARM POTTERY • FEATURE
The other potters in the pictures were participants in the firing. We had eight potters who put work in the kiln in exchange for helping out with the firing. A big reason for having this kiln is to bring people together. No one can do this alone — it's too much work. So I made it bigger than I need so there would be space for other potters to put some work in. They brought their work over, then everyone’s work went into the kiln at once. There’s labor involved in firing it. It’s more than one person can do. The space inside is so big — it takes a lot. It lends itself well to a community effort. So it works well for other people to put pottery in and help with the labor. The next firing will probably be in March. It takes about two weeks to prepare the wood, load the kiln, and fire it, and I plan on firing about three times a year. It also takes about two
Pottery sits on the shelves of the kiln.
months of full-time making to produce the pottery to fill the kiln. I have a smaller propane kiln that I fire more frequently, in between wood firings. At least for me for a while, I just
Glazed pieces before firing.
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want whoever wants to get involved to get involved and we’ll see how it shakes out. Most of the time potters are just doing their own thing; we’re in our
FEATURE • MERRY FARM POTTERY
studio making work. There’s not a lot of cause for getting together but this is one of those occasions to get together. Really good chats, really good hangs around the kiln Splitting wood, stoking the kiln. Some of the best times.
A community of potters were there to help; from left: Tegan Gale (student of Brendan Coogan’s at MVRHS) , Scott Campbell (Micah’s first pottery teacher at the high school), Heather Goff, Frank Creney, Micah, Gordon Moore (Heather Goff’s son).
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JENNIFER RANDOLPH • LOCAL HERO
Continued from page 48
LG So ... food sovereignty. I don’t know
together — the corn, beans, and the that I’ve completely wrapped my mind squash. We’re not planting single rows of around how food sovereignty is tied into corn in a field where you’d have to bring helping women and girls and addressing irrigation. … I think climate change domestic violence. starts when you start working against nature. How do we heal our communities and how do we preserve them so they can thrive? We need to restore our ways of sustainability, which is our food systems. … We were moved and displaced and our ceremonies that connect us to land were interrupted. Then, along with colonization, came the removal of children. So the knowledge that gets passed down gets watered down. Our kids lost connection Jennifer holds Native corn. to place and community. So we’re about restoring those connections, beJR Prior to colonization, women were cause it all goes hand in hand. heads of the households. Men would go Within our tribal community, we have off and … go fishing, go hunting. [But] water protectors and environmentalists. we were the ones who tended to [most And we talk about protecting Mother of ] the food systems, and the food sysEarth. What needs to go hand in hand tems belonged to us. When you got marwith protecting Mother Earth is protect- ried, a man would leave his community ing our women and children. You cannot and move in with a woman’s community. be a water protector and a protector of And it would be her family that he Mother Earth if you’re putting hands on lived with. And the children were hers, women, because we come from the same too, because you are who your mother sort of energy — we give life like Mother is. Being in control of the food systems Earth does. We birth the next generations. and having the house and birthing the Those are the traditional teachings. nation’s children, that was sacred, that So when we sat down to build our was special. And nobody put a hand to a organization, we went [back to] our woman because you were harming your traditional ways prior to colonization. future. If someone wasn’t a good partner, And that includes food sovereignty, a woman would just put the man’s stuff taking care of Earth, taking care of outside. And that was a signal to the rest those relationships. of the community that he was no longer
M A R T H A’ S V I N E YA R D
welcome there. And she was able to do that because she controlled the food systems. Women weren’t relying upon men to provide for them. We can’t replicate what we had in the past. But if we can make sure that everyone has access to food and has enough to survive, then we know — our women know — that they will be fed.
LG So you have community gar-
dens. With the three sisters, are you growing other things as well?
JR We’re doing our traditional corn, beans, and squash. And Cherokee Purple tomatoes. We haven’t had the opportunity yet to save our seeds and protect them from cross pollination, but we’re gonna get there. The other thing that we want to do, too, is plant a food forest on our newly acquired property. We want to work out agreements — this is a long term goal — with the Land Bank, and the other conservation agencies, that native people can go forage for wild edibles and our traditional foods on those conservation properties that encircle tribal lands. LG So having control of the food systems is a safety net.
JR One strand of that safety web that we had previously. Our strategy is to just keep learning and looking at what we had prior to colonization, because we didn’t have domestic violence, sexual assault, there’s no word for any of those concepts in any native language. So it’s
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HOME & GARDEN M A R K E T P L AC E SIMPLE / SMART S U S TA I N A B L E / S T O R I E S
LOCAL HERO • JENNIFER RANDOLPH
just looking at what we had, and trying to figure out a modern day version of that. And to put that into place.
work, the bonds and relationships that going to simulate that? Why are we going are developed are really deep and strong. to reinvent the wheel when we can just do those things that we used to do? And LG And there also wouldn’t be a sense of those foods are so much healthier for us. LG In what ways? my corn and your corn. So it just makes more sense all the way around — this is what’s gonna provide JR So we talk about three sisters garJR Correct. And from a domestic viohealth and safety for our community. dens. The sisterhood bonds that existed lence and sexual assault standpoint, one of within the women within the communi- the basic tactics is isolation. How are you LG So, bottom line: Building community ty weren’t like they are today. Women’s isolating someone when they’re so interis essential, right? relationships were very deep. … Having connected like that? You’re not. So with those gardens is a lot of work. our three sisters gardens, we’re making JR When something happens [in our I have three daughters. So I think sure that our women and girls are building community], it impacts all of us. And about them being competitive. And you those strong, healthy relationships. The knowing the rates of violence that we know, the drama that can suffer — I think eightygo along with a bunch of five percent of our women girls being together. We have experienced violence found out firsthand, [with] — when you think of the the corn itself. A lot of people who are impacted, or native corn is like this. You connected to any one victim, can’t just eat corn, you have you can say all of us are to remove the outer layer impacted. in order to consume it. … I think that we all band And that has to go through together and do this work a special process or else because we will be with each you get sick. Just dealing other for the next 1,000 years. with the corn itself is very And if we don’t do somelabor intensive. And when thing, our grandkids will be you try to do it by yourself, in the same [situation]. Corn and beans are two of the "Three Sisters"; it’s miserable. And there’s I look at my work, and I squash is the third. no way that, by yourself, think, Okay, so I’ve made a you can grow enough and small improvement for my process enough to feed your family. But best way to do that is to go about those daughters. I want to make sure that when you do it together with the other tasks that we used to do together, shelling when they have kids, things are better women in your community ... That’s the beans. So [with our daughters], we for them. It may take us that long to get how we worked. We didn’t have indipicked the beans two years ago at IGI. there; I still think we’re not moving fast vidual family gardens, we had commuWe’re in that field with the beans for a enough. Maybe four or five generations nity gardens, we did this together as a few hours, and the girls were just talking down the road, things will be different community. When you spend that much away and doing different tasks. What kind for them. I probably won’t be able to see time with somebody doing that kind of of activity are you going to create that’s it, but it’s got to start somewhere.
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PHOTOS BY SHENY LEON
JENNIFER RANDOLPH • LOCAL HERO LOCAL HEROES • FEATURE
Jennifer Randolph Jennifer Randolph (center) with her daughter Jada (left), who acts as a Youth Advocate for Kinship Heals; and Trisha Chandler, Kinship Heals' Director of Programs, in the woods in Aquinnah with native corn and beans.
Interview by Leslie Garrett On a very rainy day, I sat down with Jennifer Randolph. Bluedot had heard that Jen was doing interesting and important work with her Wampanoag tribe, including finding ways to address food security and to restore a sense of shared community.
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nvironmentalism is often defined too narrowly — saving a species or reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. Those deep in climate work, however, understand that environmentalism is also about preserving and strengthening communities. Confronting our climate crisis means also addressing inequality, poverty, sexual and racial HEROES violence, and food insecurity.
Leslie Garrett Bluedot’s focus on climate extends to environmental justice. It’s all the things wrapped into what our changing climate is creating, including people needing to develop food security, and get reconnected to the soil. Tell me about your community and the work you’re doing within it. Jennifer Randolph If you look at our mission and our vision, we talk about ending violence against Native people and supporting an increased capacity for our communities to heal from, and respond to, and prevent violence, using methods that are deeply rooted in our culture and traditions that were in existence prior to colonization. And so, when you think about that statement in itself, why did we start experiencing violence? What was that about? It was about people coming here looking for resources, looking to take over land and change the way land was being utilized, and to extract its resources. And with that came violence, there came a whole disruption of food systems. And when they changed the way the land was being utilized, such as just gardening — they call it husbandry, we call it being imbalanced, right? We’re growing Three Sisters gardens (bit.ly/Three-sisters-gardens); we’re not digging into the earth, we’re mounding the earth along river beds and planting crops that naturally grow
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Jennifer Randolph knows this. She is the founder and executive director of Kinship Heals, an organization that helps survivors of domestic and sexual violence in the Wampanoag community, while tackling the issues — poverty, inadequate housing, disrupted food systems, and more — that give rise to it. Restoring a healthy community, Randolph insists, creates a healthier world.
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