Good morning everyone. This is a joint meeting of the House Agriculture and Forestry Committee and the Senate Agriculture Committee. We're delighted to have our senators here as well and we are going to be hearing today about the Working Lands Enterprise Initiative. Excuse me, many of you know about this initiative and how incredibly important it's been to our rural economy for the last several years and this is a yearly meeting to get our updates and so Bobby is there anything you want to say just very briefly and we'll turn it over to Anson? Well the only thing is that you know we know that Working Lands the Enterprise Initiative has really worked well. We've added of course more money to the program and hopefully it'll help a lot of our enterprises in agriculture proceed and in a good manner over the next year so and we're just starting to work on the 23 budget and hopefully that will bear some fruit and some money for next year so I want to thank you know all the people that work on that as well as the ones that have applied and not received well keep on working on your app and maybe we'll get you the next trip around so with that thank you Carol. Well thank you Bobby and now it's my real pleasure and I and I want to thank everyone in advance for your time today we really appreciate you being here and it's my pleasure to introduce Secretary of Agriculture Food and Markets Anson Tebbett so Anson welcome. Well thank you and thank you all members of the Legislature and our partners across state government and board members. On behalf of Deputy Eastman we're delighted to be here to talk about this program. This program supports farm and forest economies. The Working Lands program began a decade ago. It's a partnership that brings together those who are making a living off the land as well as partners including the Agency of Agriculture, Forest Parks and Recreation and the Agency of Commerce and Community Development. The board leads the program. This board reviews and vets the grant applications and after some difficult choices awards dollars and those dollars grow the rural economy and make those businesses more affordable. In a few minutes you'll hear from a number of folks about the advances we've made. Uh oh. Where'd he go? Anson needs better broadband. Yeah. Anson if you can hear me you're frozen. I know. Anson maybe you could turn off your video if you can hear me. When he's frozen like that he usually has to rejoin the meeting. Okay. He should be on shortly. Happens quite often. Yeah. So Allison do you think we should turn this over to Lynn Ellen? Absolutely. Okay. So our first witness and is uh wait a minute maybe he'll be back. It's Lynn Ellen Shimola and um Lynn Ellen you want to pick up from where Anson left off. Maybe we could have an all mute for everybody else. My back. Oh there you are. Okay yeah. I was just turning it over to Lynn Ellen but you made it just in time. Okay I'm gonna I'm gonna turn off my video that may help okay. Can you hear me? It's off. If we can hear you your video is off. It's good. Okay. So as I was I was I was talking the governor has proposed a doubling the annual appropriation for working lands. That's proven that this is a worthwhile investment. Allocating more dollars to working lands was one of the priorities of the governor's commission on the future of agriculture. That report is just out and we hope you agree that allocating more dollars to this program is needed. This administration is focused on making investments that transform our economy and working lands does that. The pandemic has exposed the country's food system and it's very fragile at this time and we cannot depend on faraway places to feed all of us. All the proposals at hand help hardworking grimoires by making it more affordable to access the food we need to live, work, eat, and play in the Green Mountain State. Vermont's story is strong but it needs some support and now is the time to capitalize and transform agriculture and the forest sector. Investing in agriculture and forestry improves the economy of rural Vermont, makes our state more livable and provides nutritious food for all Vermonters. I would like to thank Deputy Allison Eastman who helps lead this board as well as Lynn Ellen Schmoller who manages this program. Lynn Ellen runs a smooth, efficient program that makes a difference for countless Vermonters and their companies. I want to introduce some of the speakers that you're going to hear from. We're going to hear from Lynn Allen. We're also going to hear another tremendous partner that's been with us for a number of years and that's Molly Mahar who's the President of the Vermont Ski Association. We're here from Charlie Hancock who's a consulting forester with Northwoods Forestry. We'll hear from the Department of Forest Parks and Recreation and Danielle Fitzo, Randall Zott with the Agency of Community Development and Commerce is with us. Another partner is Ellen Kaler with the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, Gus Selig, Executive Director of the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, Sarah Eisch is the partner with VEDOS with us, Steve Bick of Northeast Forest, Joe Bosson of Vermont Beancrafters and Vermont All Souls Tortilla. They're all with us today and we also have a number of board members that are with us and if it's appropriate, Madam Chair would be appropriate if maybe some of the board members could say hi, maybe turn their cameras on and just say hi to everybody to know that and we appreciate the the long hours they put in vetting these proposals adding us through that. So with that I'll turn it over to those members if they want to say hi and then Lynn Ellen Schmoller is going to run through some of the talking points and some of the investments we've made over the last few years. Sure go ahead board members. We call on people so they know who's going and we are aren't all interrupting at the same time. That would be good. Happy to. David Hubbard. This is David Hubbard. I work with GMC Hardwoods out of the North Vermont. Allison Lowe. Hi, I'm Allison Lowe. I work with Northeastern Vermont Development Association with the Regional Planning Commission and the Economic Development Corporation for the Northeast Kingdom and I joined the board just last year. Donna Young. I'm Donna Young a sugar maker from Morgan, Vermont and I just recently joined the board to represent Maple. Paul Frederick designee to Commissioner Mike Snyder. Hi, I'm Paul Frederick. I'm the Forest Economy Program Manager for the Department of Forest Parks and Rec and unfortunately I keep my video on. Well, don't worry Paul. We're glad you're here. Are there any other board members? I think at this point Madam Chair that's it except for the board members who will be speakers. Okay, I really want to thank you board members for the time you put in. Really, really appreciate your work. It's a very successful program and it's just stellar in terms of everything we are looking forward to and in terms of the future and making our forestry and agriculture sectors more successful. So, with that answer I will turn it to Lynn Ellen Schmoller. Is that correct? Great. Go ahead Lynn Ellen. Thank you. Good morning again, Chairwoman Partridge, Chairman Starr and committee members. I'm Lynn Ellen Schmoller, I live in Essex. I'm the Program Lead for the Working Lands Enterprise Initiative at the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets. Thanks again for hosting this annual Working Lands legislative visit. To support the work of the board and nimbly get dollars to businesses, I do want to acknowledge some of the staff in agriculture who dedicated part-time hours in 2021. Diana Ferguson and Gina Cicero. In late 2021 the program welcomed a full-time Agriculture Development Specialist, Claire Salerno and Claire if you want to turn your camera on and wave. I also enjoy working with Paul Frederick and Catherine Sevidio from Forest Parks and Recreation and Randall Zott, Partner Program colleague from Commerce and Community Development. I'm really honored to lead a program that's making a difference for Working Lands Enterprises and Vermont communities. I really know firsthand the hard work, wins and losses that come with running a business and the types of resources and supports all enterprises need to stay viable. My mother and grandfather owned and operated retail food stores and prior to joining the agency I managed independently and cooperatively owned markets on both coasts. In my role at Working Lands, among my many priorities, I want to highlight two. One, coordinate board governance nimbly, particularly as liaison to appointing offices, working with the WALUBS eight subcommittees and supporting Deputy Eastman's accent facilitation of board meetings. And two, mitigate the administrative burden of application process for applicants, providing them with resources at the agency or match making them to viability partners. What you'll hear today is evidence of what the Working Lands Enterprise Board does best. Effectively deploy capital and business assistance to Vermont working lands, farm, food and forest enterprises and thereby to date helping to create and protect jobs over 500, help enterprises to generate revenue over $45 million and keep the working landscape over 22,000 acres vibrant and vital. This board strategically allocates the funds it is appropriated, measures the influence of those allocations and communicates those results. I encourage you to visit the 2021 Working Lands Impact Report posted on the Working Lands website and routed to your committees. This program's consistent track record of demonstrating impact, effectively deploying and leveraging public dollars is a pretty stellar story. Thank you. Thank you, Lynn Ellen. We really appreciate your work. Now, do you want to introduce the next folks or do you want me to do that? Well, we were hoping that we would just go in the order that Secretary Tevitz introduced all of us. Okay. For efficiency. That's right. I think folks know who's going next. I think Molly Mahara is going next. And I'll just sort of cue folks and we have another hour and a quarters. So I'm mindful of time. We want to hear from everybody. So Molly, go right ahead. Well, good morning. Thank you very much, Chairwoman Partridge. Thank you. And thanks also to your committee and the Senate Agriculture Committee to Secretary Tevitz and also to Lynn Ellen Schmoller. She does a great job. She's our liaison with the program and she does a great job and is really wonderful to work with. I'm Molly Mahara, President of Vermont Ski Areas Association. It's nice to see you all again and I hope next year that I'll be able to be there in person. It's really an honor to be able to speak with you this morning about the importance of supporting the Working Lands Enterprise initiative and being able to fund these grants each year. Our working lands shape the character of Vermont. Our mountains, our farms and our forests are iconic to the state's identity and they are what draw people here. They are critical for sustainability of our economy, our environment and our climate. Ski industry is proud to be a part of Vermont's working lands and is committed to supporting and helping to grow other businesses with which we share this landscape. Over the years the businesses and projects that we have supported were chosen because they reflect our own values which are rooted in Vermont's cultural and historical heritage. Stewardship of the land, contributions to the state's economy and the pride that we feel from living and working in the Green Mountain State. These important businesses and projects support a vibrant and diverse economy through responsible use and stewardship of the land. A healthy working landscape supports resiliency in the face of a climate, a changing climate and that's something that's critical for Vermont now and into the future. Over the past few years the Vermont Ski Areas Association has been able to support a diverse group of projects that have helped to educate children and families about the importance of farming in Vermont, helped to support responsible forestry and a healthy forest products market that are so critical to keeping large tracts of forest land intact and maximizing carbon sequestration, helped a business that builds season extending greenhouse structures to meet the growing demand from Vermont's small farms, supported another farm business that's dedicated to preserving the diversity of fruit-bearing trees that grow well in the northern climate and this year's grant will support a project that will help guide BIPOC farmers in gaining access to land hoping to promote diversity and equity and the range of these projects and businesses and the way that they allow the Ski industry to support different facets of the state's working lands is really unique to the Working Lands Enterprise Initiative and we are pleased and proud to continue this collaborative partnership and I would also like to thank the board for all of their hard work when they go through and look at all of these grant applications and award these grants so thank you very much for your time this morning I was very pleased to be able to be here and thank you Molly for all of your work we really appreciate it next up is Charlie Hancock well morning morning everybody thanks for the opportunity today so for the record my name is Charlie Hancock I'm a consulting forester based up here in Montgomery I also currently serve as the vice chair of the Working Lands Enterprise Board since this program's inception Working Lands Enterprise fund has funded over 7.3 million dollars in projects leveraging an additional 11 million dollars to 249 enterprises and these investments continue to make an impact across all 14 of our counties these investments are designed to support businesses at critical growth stages with a specific focus on maintaining an active working and vibrant landscape the foundation of Vermont's economies and communities and frankly as Molly pointed out our identity here in the state it's also important to remember as we think about this landscape that these businesses have a conservation effect keeping farms as farms and forests as forests I can't help but think about the opportunity we have right now to look at our sector through the lens of climate adaptation resilience as well as community vitality and economic opportunity you have an opportunity at the critical moment orient to really cement the connections that need cementing and catalyze transformational change through our investments and lift up our work as part of the natural climate solutions that we need just as articulated in this first iteration of our climate action plan much of the work of the Working Lands Enterprise Board itself is governance our committees facilitate planning and analysis that supports effective and efficient board decision making that in turn amplifies our impact the grant review process often brings together public and private thought partners who make investment recommendations that proactively address the board's strategic considerations and opportunities enabling the initiative to both be innovative and responsive as we address both the challenges and immense opportunities that we have before us so thank you very much for your continued support and at this point I think I'd like to pass it off to our friend Danny fisco the director of forest parks and director of forests at the Department of Forest Parks and Recreation all right thanks charlie go right ahead Danny great good morning everybody and thank you for the opportunity to visit with you about the working lands initiative I'm here on behalf of commissioner Snyder who sends his regrets he's in a zoom window in another committee testifying right now I am Danielle fits go I'm the director of forest with the Department of Forest Parks and Recreation and I've been in my role for the past three years and honestly I have not had that much engagement with the initiative or the board until recently and I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to tell you how impressed I have been with the board and the overall impact of this initiative it is truly a partnership of balanced voices that is orchestrated by the team really well at the agency of agriculture food and markets and their board really works hard and together to make decisions for the best interest of Vermont's working land enterprises and the future of Vermont I had the privilege this year to sit in on the planning committee for their symposium the symposium was held to help determine how to invest this unprecedented 5.3 million dollars with FY 22 funds I've been around grant programs for a long time I've been with the state for over 20 years and typically when we get more money we channel it in the same way that we've always channels tack tacked it on um with the short time frame to move these funds most boards would have went in that direction did they take the easy way no they took the time to step back to think big and to think forward they listened to stories curated by a team that's where I came in I helped tell one of the stories what does Vermont look like it's heading to 20 years from now what are the challenges and the opportunities for our working lands enterprise crisis with the goal to consider how to put these funds to work to meet the current challenges opportunities today and 20 years from now they listened and they visioned and they determined wherever Vermont needs to strategically invest they considered diversity equity and inclusion they considered our climate crisis they considered the current and future workforce they considered what technical supports business businesses need to thrive and they considered the current and future Vermonters and the outcomes of this thoughtful and intelligent work is in the grants that they offered already 2.1 million dollars have been awarded since January to across all sectors across all counties of Vermont in the following areas there are service part provider grants these are giving to organizations to support the vitality of enterprises giving them businesses the technical resources they need to succeed small business infrastructure projects the board recognizes that business businesses come in all shapes and sizes and these grants touch businesses of all shapes and sizes from small farm stands to large manufacturing facilities these particular funds support market sales strategies and enhancing production and manufacturing efficiencies at a smaller scale there was a special focus on meat processing and slaughter enterprises for processing and distribution this specifically addresses a known infrastructure bottleneck they also have producer association grants associations are often the backbone to support businesses these funds help with organization organizational development including business structure onboarding governance board training and capacity really core fundamental components of a successful association 3.2 million dollars will be awarded in April the grants are in the review process now and they are for supply chain impact and market level infrastructure impact these projects are designed to keep the pool in the supply chain to keep it moving and and reduce the barriers and meet the larger investment needs with grants up to 250 thousand dollars as someone connected to the forestry side and knowing the challenges of our forest sector the board listened understood and thought hard about how to meet the needs and all sectors and all types of enterprises and they understood that in many cases in the forestry sector investments are needed at a larger scale to really make impact equipment and machinery are expensive whether you're in the woods or you're in the mill and they responded with these larger 250 thousand dollars grants it's been awesome to have a window into the board's good work it is truly a working progressive thoughtful collaborative impact driven model in the state before I pass it on to the next speaker as part of forest parks and recreation I know the commissioner would want me to recognize the R in our department recreation and share gratitude for our long time recreation partner but also our long time working lands partner ski vermont ski vermont recognizes the importance of our working lands and our shared values and since 2017 ski vermont has infused over 880 thousand dollars to support we live grants to me that's the hallmark that says how much vermont's rural economy relies on the success of the working lands initiative thank you molly for being here and ski vermont and for investing and pulling together with we lab for vermont's working lands future thank you for your time and listening thank you daniel we really appreciate it and again kudos to molly and her work and what i'm going to suggest is we go through all of our speakers and then when we at the end just make notes committees and and we can ask questions at the end i just want to make sure everybody gets in we're doing well so next up is randall sot randall is not an unfamiliar face to those of us here in the statehouse welcome randall thank you thank you so much thank you for having me and for the record i'm randall sot partner program liaison for the agency of commerce and community development uh and yes when i last saw some of you i was i was representing the beautiful windsor 401 district um but that district has since received a major upgrade uh by the the new member from barnard there in the house ag i'm happy to see that great improvement for the district um uh and although we are focusing mostly on fiscal uh year 21 impact one thing i wanted to note because i did a quick scan before coming here i i looked at uh working lands enterprise initiative funding through the years and the initiative has funded projects in the legislative districts of 10 of the 13 joint ag members here today which is quite impressive i think as i mentioned i'm here on behalf of the agency of commerce community development and this program touches on both the commerce and the community development side of our mission as the commerce vermont's food farm forest and wood product sector are a critical economic engine for the state and these grants encourage innovation and risk taking the to bring these companies to the next phase a working lands enterprise initiative is unique because it invests in the businesses and organizations so that it keystones to support our working lands economy without these enterprises and organizations other businesses would not have the same access to markets or growth potential and they're the backbone of the vermont economy and as to community uh the working lands um entrepreneurs are also part a part of the heart of our community's landscapes they're an integral part to what continues to make vermont equality place to live and i would point out that there are obvious ways um there they are community hubs they have on-farm events or they host class field trips but they're also the subtle ways that they contributed to community like donating maple syrup to pancake breakfasts and i wanted to share a couple of highlights from a visit to one of our fiscal year 2021 grantees i went to jasper hill creamery to sort of see how the grant was being implemented and see the impact that it had on their operation and uh jasper hill does what so many of our working lands folks do they are stewards of the landscape they support other working lands businesses they create jobs they innovate and they preserve traditions which i think is a valuable piece of this program and there are two things in particular that i wanted to share one is a very easy piece which is and it's mentioned in the impact report that you all will have received jasper hill did an analysis of their lifetime expenditures by zip code and noted that they make 79 percent of their expenditures within the state of vermont and that alone is pretty impressive but the really astonishing piece is that they did a further analysis and they saw that 62 percent of their expenditures are within 15 miles of their farm which i just blows me away i think that's super impressive then there's a little more subtle piece of their impact that i think it's just important to share was very noteworthy it was a minor thing but it it did it did stand out and then just that they employ two forestry professionals to harvest spruce trees from local woodlands and they extract the cambium to wrap one of their award-winning cheeses harvest and if you've ever had the pleasure of trying it and they also mill the spruce boards and use those boards to age their cheeses in the cellars at jasper hill and the economic excuse me the economic impact of that might be small but as all of you know it's the every little revenue stream that can be stitched together for working lands businesses is important and it keeps a wood log well managed and that is difficult to measure but it's another threat in the the larger weave of what makes the working lands enterprise initiative so valuable vermont and i didn't have this in my prepared remarks but i did just want to emphasize to the committees what good hands this program is and having you know briefly been witness to the various board meetings the board members are astonishingly accomplished thoughtful in their work and just another little operational detail on the staff side that you may not be aware of but it's just it just shows the level of care and attention that that is applied to this program there's a there's a backside grant application system that people have to enter all their information into sometimes people start applications and they don't finish now in a lot of grant making capacity that stuff just kind of goes unnoticed but in this in this program the staff says hmm why did these people not finish their applications and they actually get back in touch with these people and contact them and find out why to see if there's an impediment in the grant making process and that level of attention and care to detail to me just shows everything you need to know about how how seriously people take their work in this in this initiative so again thank you for your time thank you randall really appreciate your perspective and next up is ellen taylor ellen welcome hi there nice to see you all again thanks for the opportunity um also a big fan of this program as you all know and uh i've been serving along with my counterparts of sarah isham and gas ceiling on the board since its inception because in the statute uh you may recall there are three ex officio seats that don't rotate off the board and are not and are not members of the administration and our role is to help provide some consistency and historical knowledge over time as well as some deep expertise in the working land sector as a whole as the board is then considering strategic investments in our sectors so we provide a lot of consistency we provide a lot of historical knowledge a lot of content knowledge but then ultimately we don't actually vote on the projects themselves so we can influence we can inform but just so you know we don't actually vote on the grant awards themselves um it's also important to know that um uh that you know part of the reason why in in in the case of of my position it was named in the in the statute the executive director of the sustainable jobs fund was in part this link to the farm to plate investment program um and so what i try to do when i'm at board meetings is represent uh not just uh the farm and food sector as well as the forest product sector but also what is then represented in the farm to plate strategic plan uh that have had so many vermonters input into that process and uh as you know from h566 we're also all contemplating that uh similar kind of uh having a similar kind of plan for the forest products industry which again would be used as a foundational document to really support strategic uh investments and decision-making uh by the board as a whole now one of the things that i think it's important to know is is not only we know how popular this program is with all of you you all have it very close to your heart um it's also a very popular program within the the farm and food sector and that's because you all have been consistently providing funding every year the challenge of course is that that that there is not a consistent level of funding year over year which makes um it difficult for the private sector in particular to plan thoughtfully about well what what's the right year for me to apply because i have a big project i want to do jeez you know there's a whole bunch of money this year there might be a million dollars but next year maybe that'll only be five hundred thousand dollars and so it can be really that choppiness in in allocation is really challenging which is why in the new farm to play strategic plan priority strategy number one is to try to ensure that every year there is at least one point five million dollars in funding available to the program now this past year fiscal 22 you all did an amazing thing you put five and a half million dollars into this program and and and that's really unprecedented and we we still blew away past that figure in terms of requests so as you i think all know in the budget adjustment act there's an additional two point two million dollars added to the fiscal 22 a budget for this program and we will not have any problem dispatching those funds as you may know when we were going into the supply chain innovation and and infrastructure innovation grant rounds which are those larger rounds larger dollars that dany fisco mentioned we only had three million dollars left to award in fiscal 22 and we had over seven million dollars in requests and these were strong proposals right if you're going to do a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar grant you you burn through a lot of millions of dollars pretty pretty quickly on a small number of projects and so we're very very grateful that it looks like there'll be this extra two million dollars i haven't cut up with where the budget adjustment act is in the process so i'm hoping that we're all locked in and that extra two million will come because that'll mean that we'll have that we'll have an extra two million to put towards these larger grants which are designed to be really impactful in terms of of the marketplace as a whole and the market for products and they don't just benefit one business in in either the farm or forest side or the forest and wood side of things if they're actually designed to have multiple ripple effects on many many other businesses and so you get a lot of bang for a little bit of bucks when you invest in some of these larger grants that we're giving out so i really want to thank you you all we we continue to get oversubscribed with requests in this program so all the more reason why anything that can be done to increase the amount of support for this program over time and to have it be consistent year over year is really really critical so i want to thank you very much for your support and for this program your dedication to it it really does make a big difference for the businesses that and the service provider organizations that work with businesses to be able to continue to really grow this sector and and as you know we've we've been able to grow the farm and food side from 5% local consumption up to up to 17.8% so we're looking forward to seeing what we can do on the forest product side in a similar vein going forward so thank you so very much well thank you ellen we always excuse me we always love hearing from you and we we love the the great success that this program has been next up is gus c league who is the executive director of the ron housing conservation board gus welcome madam chair and committee members thank you for having me this morning and i'm just going to repeat a number of things you've already heard with perhaps a little different take like ellen i'm an ex officio member of the board um as the director uh at vhcb i served on the board the first three years of ex existence and then elah chape and represented us until her retirement last year and then i came back and what i want to say is that um lin ellen's management of this program has put us in a whole different place than in those infancy years and allison's leadership of the board is just in facilitation has just been tremendous this is a much more sophisticated operation i want to just share a couple of overlaps uh the reasons that we're on the board i think go to both our mission uh which is to it says in the statute to conserve for future generations the essential characteristics of the vermont countryside and that's not just physical characteristics that's human characteristics and this program is signaling to young people all across the state that the work they're doing on our lands working landscape really matters and it's causing more investment so um i'm not surprised at all that the signal you sent with the one-time investment last year has been well oversubscribed and i think it speaks to the desire for vitality in our rural communities uh the second piece of overlap really is with our farm and forest viability program uh vhcb invests over a million dollars a year from the transfer tax in that program and in addition to advice we are an applicant in the service provider category and have worked closely with the agency uh both in covid relief but in ongoing business planning through that program and that has reaped wonderful results and i think the biggest result is it helps young entrepreneurs be much more ready to be competitive for the grants that we love offers um and there's been a great amount of success that way over and over again and we'll send you some of the stories and you'll hear some of those stories uh from uh participants in the program but um the business planning really helps people be more analytical more strategic and it's a great investment that we love is able to make uh ellen's farm to plate work suggests we really have to ramp that work up it's something we're committed to working with all of you to do um but i think that it's really critical that that we are at a time and you've all seen the changes in vermont's real estate market uh over the last two years since the pandemic began that i don't think will go away just when the pandemic recedes because we we're we're going to change as a country with remote work and that's going to mean more and more people want to live in vermont while they have jobs other places and so the cost of real estate in vermont's going to go up the entry into working lands businesses the pressure on our working landscape is going to increase and the signal you send both through the work you do with us and through we lab is going to be critical that we want to continue not to suburbanize rural vermont but to make it a place where people work and grow families and support communities and that vitality i think is really the secret sauce beyond any individual business having places that people work in and make their living really makes vermont and vermont's small communities really special places to be so thank you for the great support you've given to we lab that you've given to us and we look forward to many years of continued partnership thank you thanks so much gus we really appreciate you being here today and all your hard work and we're going to move on to sarah isham who is the director of agricultural lending for the vermont economic development authority um i'm not sure where i'm seeing you here but yeah there you are hi sarah sorry thank you thank you all for this opportunity i am the designate for cassie polemans who is the ceo of vermont economic development authority known as veda and um agricultural and forestry lending at veda is done through vermont agricultural corporation uh sometimes known as back although we generally market ourselves as veda now and with both our commercial and agricultural lending programs and the vermont economic development authority is an ex officio number of we lab which is allowed for partnering and leveraging opportunities veda's role in providing financing to farm and forest-based businesses to enhance vermont's economy has allowed the working lands enterprise board and veda to work collaboratively and identifying gaps gaps and opportunities for these industries and the we lab consistently provides grants to businesses and from time to time philanthropically supports um letters throughout vermont financial institutions provide innovative financing tools that effectively leverage public dollars to address these system gaps and opportunities and um the working lands grants back in 2016 for the organic transition loan program was one example of that and we were able to assist a number of conventional dairy farmers as they transition to organic nut production in the end there were some funds that were still remaining and we directed those to vermont vhcb for the um farm and forest viability program to assist dairy farmers in doing so we let complements the day to day work of vermont lenders and capital providers and there have been a number of different um businesses that we have worked with at veda that have benefited from um working lands enterprise grants um many of them are larger businesses but there have also been a couple of examples where our lending really was um was leveraged by working lands grants that provided capital for these farmers to be able to really to cover their share of um of doing a project and arisa one was for was for a couple to purchase an existing value-added business which they moved to their own farm and they needed to have funding to help them um fill pay barn creamery and purchase machinery and equipment as part of that business and a we love grant was um directly beneficial and leveraging our financing there we have also in the past um partnered and with some grants that helped with uh cider making business and um also with providing climate control storage for a vegetable farm and so it is an ongoing relationship um i'm very pleased to be able to serve as a member of the board and to contribute contribute on behalf of veda thank you all right thanks so much sarah i really appreciate your work as well um we're now going to move to steve bick who is the owner of northeast forests ll c steve thanks so much for joining us today thanks i i appreciate the opportunity to speak to this group i'm uh i'm here today from north faceton where we got a terrific broadband upgrade last year and that makes us all a bit a bit easier so i'm a forest economist uh by training i've been the recipient of multiple um working land service provider contracts and grants and um you know my particular interest is working with forest based small businesses i had worked around the region the northeast for quite a while doing a variety of forestry consulting and as i uh kind of went from state to state to do continuing education workshops i was drawn uh to vermont uh more and more because of the great people here uh i think you probably already know this but fpr as a state agency is viewed in other states it's just a model they're really well thought of um you know they like the work that danie and everyone does there and mike and in particular they like to work with paul fredrick and so i'm one of those people i kept coming back here and then in in 2013 lis glison who i think had just started with vhcb reached out to me to do some one-on-one consulting with some of the loggers and other small businesses here and it kind of picked up from there in uh in 2019 i wanted to really expand and focus more on these types of businesses and i started an LLC for for my company in vermont and also started a dba for the the forest business school about that time sam lincoln who has i think contacted me every week for the last 20 years with a question or two he put me in touch with lin ellen and i learned more about what working lands does so at that time i had this idea for a cohort-based learning program with mid-career small business members and and working lands funded funded the pilot version of this which we held last year we had a number of terrific small business people and one or two key employees participate cohort learning is kind of um i didn't even know the term a year ago but it is it's kind of developed organically you know we have to have opportunities for learning and growing businesses that fit a working lifestyle and and and so you know i wanted to take the businesses i was interacting with where people were really good at the work they're they're they're good at harvesting timber they're good at giving forestry advice to landowners but maybe they haven't focused on the business side of things so this program was kind of built for that and it was built to fit into two people's everyday work life so we use a combination of audiobooks and podcasts and other readings and then meet once a week and we talk about how does this apply to our work and and what i had hoped for there was to develop supportive peer groups and that's that's kind of what we got i'd like to tell you about uh some of the people uh that have been through the program Tyler Dallas it has a consulting forestry firm down in in Reading uh he came into the program and said you know i'm here i've been working as an employee for a company for a while and someday i want to start my own business and about two months into the program he said you know i want to start this business probably six months from now well another two or three weeks went by and he said i quit my job and i started my business and and the response from the group was terrific everyone gave him supportive advice but one or two people in particular reached out and put him in connection and with some landowners who um who needed some advice and suddenly he had work to do and that worry about was he going to be able to support his family went away and i'm happy to tell you he has more work than he can he can do right now he came into it at a good time he applied some of the things he learned and he leaned on on some tears so uh you know uh another another person we had in the group we had a woodworker Nate Flosher from and Nate had been you know not participating you know so much in the primary forest economy and this put him in touch with those people so as a result he is sourcing more local wood he realizes he doesn't have to work with big corporations to get the supplies that he needs another person ever Thurston decided he wanted to expand his business i was able to help him get a value-added producer grant to look at getting into firewood and and into uh developing or or starting a sawmill at some point so you know we've been able to leverage the funds that that you have provided to working lands through this program participants last year reported that their personal productivity went up by almost 50% and they projected increased revenues of 30 to 40% you know this year i've got some other folks that that are you know we're partway through the program and it kind of works out they learn some things but they also kind of have an ongoing interaction with each other and with me Christy bowman Donna Colton Enterprises has got some big plans and is working on things and i hear from her every week about the things we discuss in the program and how she might apply them at work i want you to know that the funding you put into this is having an impact is having impact with a lot of small businesses that are that you know they protect the working landscape i was able to leverage this and get some funding from farm credits ag enhancement program to put on a startup bootcamp for forest based startup businesses and that's going to happen later on in the spring so i've been really excited to work with Lynn Ellen i think i've developed a good work relationship with her the administration you know i've worked with a lot of public agencies the administration here has been fantastic and i can't say enough about the terrific impact it's it's having i don't know if there's time for any questions but i'd be delighted i'll talk all day if you let me so i better stop well Steve we really appreciate that and we thank you and i'm asking committee members to please jot down their questions so that at the end and i think we're going to have plenty of time for questions but i want to make sure everybody gets a chance to testify and then we'll go to um question answer so um thank you again for being here today and for telling us your exciting story next up is joe bosson um joe is the owner of vermont bean crafters and vermont all souls so joe go right ahead all right good morning madam chair committee members uh my name is joe bosson as mentioned i run um vermont bean crafters which is got to start in west rutherland vermont about 12 years ago now and then as well as all souls tertiary up and currently burlington vermont where we do a similar mission of making value-added products out of local organic grains and um bean crafters received in 2016 a working lands grant that allowed us to scale up our capacity to aggregate store and clean dry beans and for us you know that is a sector when we look at the local food movement a lot of things that you know we're getting investment and attention that was relatively underrepresented in the overall mix at that point and for us uh we were able to use those grant funds and from 2016 to 2017 saw a 20 uptick in our gross revenue numbers uh we with that equipment um are also lending that equipment out at no cost um because we receive them through public funds we try to treat these things as kind of the commons and so there's a handful of other farms around vermont and some in new york that uh will use our threshing machine our seed cleaning equipment um to do their small grains some of those we buy in some of those retain and uh used to direct market in their communities so when we think about the ripple effects of the opportunities of one organization and how those bleed into the others i think it's really interesting and important to to give voice to those sorts of things beyond the uh other aspects and ripple effects of the working lands funds that we were able to get um you know at the time of receiving that we were just a small business with it was me and three part-time um people you know making you know okay wages and over time we've been able to grow our markets and grow um where now we have um three full-time and three part-time people all you know we're now our our wages are about twice what they were before getting this funding back in the day we're from a quality assurance standpoint being able to bring in grains that um grains and beans that otherwise might not meet spec and for growers that don't have uh post harvest handling infrastructure on their own has been a big boon for us to be able to work with smaller growers uh which is a big part of what we're hoping to do and um within all of that when I look forward and all the things we're posed to do now even with the setbacks of um you know COVID and navigating the last couple years we're in the midst of rolling out new products and a new retail ready dry bean program um in pre-printed packaging that we're going to be pushing with a broker to get into regional supermarket chains and in all of this we are working on keeping all of the the beans and grains that we're working with source identified through the supply chain so that the network of growers that we work with are transparently represented in the products we're putting out to the world um moving forward so so keep your eyes out for that roll out moving forward um when I guess I would also just say you know being um along this way we will also people who have benefited from the work of farm viability uh both through technical assistance and grants and I feel like the maturation of the business on the outside of having gotten to work with uh folks like Rose Wilson um just gave us a lot more confidence and aptitude to to grow the business from a stable foundation and I really when I think of all of my friends and peers that are in the food space I I struggle to think of any that haven't um beneficial utilize the farm viability technical assistance program I can't say enough good things about it and uh I use that for both bean crappers and all souls and was really lucky to work with Rose Wilson on both of those and um I'd say the only other thing um put out there is that I likewise could talk all day long so um I'm happy to leave it there and leave more time for questions so I can speak to anything um that you have in mind in particular great thank you so much Joe um it's good to hear about your success um Anson uh we've heard from all of the schedule so I'm wondering if there's anyone um that you see who would want to um it would want to say something I don't want to cut anyone off but it's up to you you know I think I think we're in good shape um if there's any questions that folks want to um help us with all right I see um Bobby star is waving his finger at us so we'll go to Bobby and then others I can't necessarily see your hands so if you raise your hand Kara will help me figure out I think she can tell me who's hands are up but Bobby why don't you kick it off well you're muted Bobby I've been good I even pushed the milk but anyway I want to thank um all you folks that testified this morning uh one question came up in regards to the uh two million dollars that the house put in and where the the supplemental budget was in the process and I I must say that um the senate of course I I'm lucky that I serve on the prop's as well as that uh so but I was lucky um in the senate uh there wasn't hardly a question from anybody in regards to working lands or our ag money and we passed the bill back to the house on a 30-0 vote uh so you know it's really I think very solid that we're going to get the extra uh two million it's in you know there's always some things between the house of prop's and the senate prop's that that's different so it's all they got to do is work out those differences um you know I I listened very closely this morning and and you know what a marvelous story uh we've heard uh and 10 or 11 years ago when we were starting the working lands program when you're starting a program you never you never really know how it's gonna work out and of course the last thing legislators uh won is getting egg on their face from starting a program and having it go belly up or not work properly uh and you know I I must say that I've been pretty I've been pretty fortunate over the years to watch farm and ag and rover mock programs come together and it'll work well and one thing that that impressed me about working lands is the process that the applicants have to go through um and the the great thing is if you think about we've got ag we've got beta we've got the forestry agency bhcb accd um you know all these and the regional planning people are even in on it but when you have a a strong group uh so diverse and having a program that's diverse like working lands is it it really can work well and and is working well um I think the you know I should say too that we got five extra million I think it was this last year plus now another two but of course that wouldn't have been possible if we hadn't gotten a load of money from Washington and we've got this money for a few years coming and so it's it's really I think smart business to build our base is very strong and then as that money slows down we'll have enough small businesses rolling and in pretty good shape so they can move forward and and supply jobs and help our rural economies so I I guess um you know I I just want to say thanks a lot for all the hard work that all you folks have done um and that makes our job easy in the legislature when you have a program that's successful it's worked it's from basically all corners of the state I guess we still got three or four counties stay head on but um yeah I I think the board's done a an excellent job and the crew doing the work to make sure that this will move forward in the future so thanks again for all the work that you do out there yeah thanks Bobby um are there any plans up yet Kara okay so Tom has his hand up go ahead Tom yes Kara I have a question for Steve Beck Steve as you look into the future uh say the next five or ten years through your crystal ball where would you uh see entrepreneurs in small business entrepreneurs especially uh looking at what kind of forest processing products uh what kind of uh forest activity do you see uh entrepreneurs going into you're muted Steve sorry I do that all the time so I think they're going to have to take on the challenges that are there so we have a lot of of the working landscape here in current use and and landowners needing services and the landowners that want to do good work on their property and I see us moving um and we're already seeing this moving farther from just simple I'm going to pay you and harvest your timber to I'm going to help you accomplish your your civil cultural goals and it may be more of a service that has to be paid for uh and the other you know the labor force issue is no is no secret to anyone here uh they're going to have to solve that problem for people and I think to some degree that's going to be with with more equipment or with better equipment more cut to length and that sort of thing so I see I see problems that create opportunities and and whoever can do that at scale is really going to benefit thank you all right you need to put your mask back on all right next up is John O'Brien in Tunbridge John go ahead thank you Carolyn looking at these tiles today it feels like the pro bowl game in Las Vegas that there's so many stars here from the farm and forest world that it's it's quite impressive um and also hearing for the last hour about the successes of this program I think we're all fans in house ag and senate ag my question and thinking about this is if anybody wants to jump in where where have there been failures that you learned from or what could could working lands do better um besides just money you know what are the challenges going forward anyone no failures that's good I I think when Ellen can probably touch on that I know you know we're constantly looking at our metrics and when reviewing grants and uh trying to figure out if the way that we're approaching it is fair and equitable um those are one of the you know big thing that comes to my mind but now when you have that thank you Deputy Eastman I think I would rewind back to something that Randall noted which was the touch point of navigating all of the applicants who don't get funded and so when I came in um just because of building the plane as it was flying it was a new program when I came in you got an automated message that just said um you won't be awarded and I shifted that to make sure that I coordinate specifically with each applicant and give them feedback because we have a review process which is pretty robust and so I can take those comments translate them in a way that's encouraging and gets the the enterprise to understand what it is they need to work on not just for assembling a better application but potentially match making them to viability so that they're actually centering and figuring out what it is in the operation that they might need some help with so I think that was a that was a solving of finding a solution to an old problem um I would say that I've been really impressed with the board's ability to flex when they needed to um in fiscal year 19 um really led by the efforts of former deputy commissioner Sam Lincoln, Allison Eastman, Gus Selig shop, many others there was a real concerted focus on building executive business skills and scale-up investments particularly for four sector um four sector enterprises have pretty expensive equipment and so for infrastructure um the board shifted from capping grants out at about 45,000 to 50,000 to today where we're going to be awarding projects up to 250,000 dollars so again I think I'm just pointing out the finding solutions to the old problems um I think a challenge for for applicants it continues to be and we're working hard uh within the agency to mitigate this as I mentioned earlier really looking at the administrative burden um helping them through the application process so I conduct one-to-one meetings with interested applicants I think August through November of this year I've had a total of 50 so that could be a 15-minute video visit it could be a phone call it could be a half-hour video visit it could be an hour it could be follow-ups of emails introducing them to viability partners but I do think that's made a distinctive difference we designed webinars that we record and we post on the website so folks can visit that if they can't make the webinar to also help them unpack um everything that's needed to assemble an application so that that's what I would share um I'm not sure if there's any board members that would want to speak to this as well thanks Lynn Ellen I noticed that Ellen had um Ellen Taylor had unmuted herself and I wondered if you wanted to add to this Ellen yeah just very briefly you know I think that I think that generally speaking things are are only really failures if we fail to learn from them and I think as Lynn Ellen said this board has built a culture and the agency supports that culture of continuous improvement and so we're we're very reflective every year we have an annual symposium for two days usually or day and a half where we really take stock and like what went well this past year where did we have some things that maybe were a little too sticky and didn't really quite work out as planned and and so we're constantly adjusting and making improvements and I really think that you know everything I can't support Lynn Ellen enough in how she's leading this program on a day-to-day basis she's doing a phenomenal job and that that personal touch and outreach that she does really does make a difference because sometimes we get applications in where it's it is really clear there's a nub of a good idea but they're just not ready and so then referring them the board then you know we'll say let's refer them to the farm or for a fiability program or let's refer them to so-and-so that information then gets back with really clear guidance like this would really help you come back next year and routinely year after year we get applications back for a second a second run at it as senator star was saying and and there's so much more improved the applications and the concept and the readiness to receive those funds and the last thing I'll just say is you know I also don't think that if we've had a very low in air quotes failure rate of app of awarded grantees that we that just couldn't complete the project where we've had to de-obligate the funds and then re-obligate them and for a program where you all said when this program got started in statute the intention was don't just fund the easy things don't just do the one the grants that you know are definitely going to succeed take some risks it be okay with some of these projects not working and the board has always held that in our minds as we're making decisions there's always a couple of applicants every year where we say this might be those one this that one that won't work you know or this is the one that might need a little extra hand-holding and you know if they if we if they work we're we totally are excited but if they don't we're still okay with that because because we're taking the kind of risks that this kind of program was set up to do and and I think that we're as long as we're always learning we're going to be okay thanks Ellen um Chris Pearson you have your hand up go right ahead yeah thank you and and great to hear from everybody today uh it is one of the the sort of routinely better uh sessions we have in terms of sharing some good news so appreciate it um I my question is is I guess for board members I keep hearing every year we hear about sort of discrete good projects and and I think as a whole that leads to a stronger uh rural landscape and and and rural economy but I'd love to understand your approach because uh around sort of coordination because we do hear this over and over that that you know you have a good producing farm but they're struggling to get distribution or you know some of those missing middle pieces we have our our food hubs in various iterations are are working on that but could you just tell us how you approach that and and um maybe if there are projects specifically designed to meet some of those connector pieces of uh our local food economy and and and if that makes sense I'd love to hear any comments along those lines thanks thanks for that question Chris Lynn Ellen is that a question for you who would like Allison were you thinking of answering that I was uh going for aerospace but I'd love to turn it over to Deputy Eastman I think Ellen Kaler would also be an excellent person to answer this or Vice Chair Hancock yes actually I was going to tee it up and say that you know our board meetings the discussions that we have around the grant applications and you know in totality who's there and what the applications are lacking we have grant reviewers that go through and grade each one of the applications and usually as we talk about the applications we'll turn to those grant reviewers and ask them their thoughts and then as a whole board collectively we make recommendations our note takers um are very diligent in getting those notes together so that our staff can communicate to those that have applied so I'll turn it over to Ellen and and then Charlie and see if they want to build on that yeah it's a great question um uh totally ditto uh what Secretary Eastman said and I think um you know we use the farm to plate strategic plan because we have it as as a foundational document um to to give that intel into what where there are needs in the sector that's going to strengthen the farm and food sector um and hoping we're going to have that on the forest product side too um soon but a lot of it it does happen that intel about whether a project is really strategic how many businesses are going to be supported um in that ripple effect if we make this investment in this particular business all of that does surface during the the review meetings there's routinely lots of extra information that the subject matter experts who are the reviewers bring into the room that that you because the because the application itself is necessarily short so we don't overwhelm people asking for a lot of details there's just knowledge that we all have Bob Lasnikowski for instance is is practically a walking encyclopedia uh on all of the businesses that apply like the stuff that that he just knows is amazing and so that depth of knowledge of real subject matter expertise that we have on the board and with the the extended reviewers that Lynn Ellen brings to the table the staff from different agencies other subject matter experts from the private sector all of whom helped to review and score these applications it really I think makes for really high quality decision making and the other thing I will just say is at our annual symposium as I mentioned before when we step back and we take a look at what are we seeing on the horizon we bring in and have panelists that talk to us so we've had panelists for instance on financing of the farm and food sector and the forest products industry we've had food hubs in to give presentation so we're also trying to make sure that we're staying fresh with what's happening on the ground and we do that at our annual symposium and that then tees up what we make how we design the rfps for the following fall that then is what people apply for if I can do it quickly I want to echo the comments about the power of the thought partnership we have here and it's funny I was going to actually point to bob too is being kind of the guy that knows everything happening everywhere in the ag space but yeah the caliber of the people that we bring in is great and the position that we sit in I think is critical because we kind of see the landscape right we are the nexus of information happening in these spaces in these markets and so as it's been said we have a very unique vantage point to see what's going on identify opportunities the only other thing I'll add is I think it's important to remember that when we give out these grants we're looking at kind of three different buckets we've got our standard business grants which are you know potentially transformational amounts of money for businesses but from a state budget perspective relatively small dollars but we have these larger buckets of grants that look at supply chain impacts and market level impacts and so that's where we get the projects in that actually tie different businesses together you know we're looking at ones this year around new packing lines for milk or reopening sawmills that are going to have impacts across both the ag and forest sectors and so I think that's important that we as Ellen said every year we kind of look at you know what our allocations are going to be if we really pay attention to where those big transformational changes can happen at the market level and that's where we can really kind of you know you know twist the dials to make an impact there thanks Charlie any any other questions Chris did that that answered your question yeah I could talk like these guys I could ask questions all day but you know that's super thank you and appreciate the good work yeah yeah um other questions for any of the folks who have joined us today Vicki good morning everybody Vicki strong from Albany and Joe Boston I was just reading about your business on seven days a really amazing article just to hear your story that's what I like when I come to this get together here are those personal stories and people's journeys and their businesses and Joe I don't really have a question other than I'm really amazed at the amount of effort that it's taken you to launch your bean burgers and tortillas and so many other things I see in this article you're doing and I know that you've had support but you've worked hard and haven't even taken pay it sounds like from the article a lot of the time and it's the joke of one of Ramonner has three jobs what are they they're lazy it's like you have four or five things going on successfully over time could you just maybe tell us I mean and maybe you did already but now that I read your story I hear it in a different way what's your next venture you're launching here it looks like growing beans a firm you want to do some fermentation it looks like what's your next venture and and again just tell us a little bit how you feel blessed by the folks who've supported you sure yeah no I'm I'm really fortunate to have I hope to not spend my 30s like I spent my 20s in terms of burnout and hours work relative to pay receive so I'm trying to work smarter not harder these days but it's still especially with staffing being what it is a little bit of a trick but yeah right now the hard to think about all the you know in the context of the Vermont working landscape like and all these things we're talking about today I think it's really also important to speak to just some of the inherent qualities of the Vermont agricultural community itself and we would not exist at all if it wasn't for the Goodwill and big hearts of folks like Greg Cox at Bourbon Hill Farm where we started being crafters who gave us uh commercial kitchen space and land to grow at no cost and great inconvenience to himself and at every different stage of the business there's been these things that don't make headlines but they're totally the difference between whether a small business like ours exists at all let alone makes it to the next level I do see um farm viability and working lands as catalytic and us being able to instead of treading water make a next step being someone who did not was not quote unquote bankable you know even with a profitable business if you don't have assets to leverage most mainstream banks aren't going to give you the time of day so Vermont Community Loan Fund uh is who we got most of our debt service from over time the newer Vermont Farmers Fund has been transformational for us and other small producers access to capital is a big part of that um it's really hard to cash flow the growth of a business without some of that what I would call non-traditional financing options and then in terms of the things that we're looking at doing next um also as we recently launched a new flower tortilla line that's um just about a year old now and we're in the midst of scaling and that's going really well and we have a super saturation of demand for that we've been scaling our um fried chip line and are looking at investing in equipment to scale up our chips also a super saturation of demand in that and so we're looking at a new continuous fryer and then in the on the coattails of that exploring with some farm partners on what the implications would be to add a uh a Vermont um organic potato chip line which is something a northeast uh you know chip is something that I'm still the guy old does not exist in the marketplace and I see having a huge opportunity uh opportunity for us to really be uh further synthesizing raw agricultural products and devaluated products and getting those products into markets where they otherwise might not have access um and hopefully doing it in a way that is holding up the good work of the the farms that make it all happen along the way and then yeah down at cloud water farm which this past April the farm that bean crafters has been renting for the last six years we were able to um close on it's it's a conserved farm which is important right because my partner and I were been looking for most of this last decade for a place and I haven't found one that was quite affordable so the fact that we could have a farmstead that was less than a two bedroom in Burlington goes for is speaks a lot to the role of land conservation in this broader conversation I don't know too many people looking to enter agriculture right now that uh can you know be spending the time developing agricultural expertise and ag you know and then build up a nest egg with which to acquire agricultural land let alone capitalize that land to make it profitable so um at that land we're doing uh we're growing beans and small grains um in the context of uh doing perennial plantings and I'm really interested in the opportunity over time for mass bearing crops planting hazelnuts and chestnuts and really looking forward to the opportunity for the interplay of these perennial crops with the annual crops from a resilient economic and ecological resiliency and in particular because we have the commercial kitchen on the farm there also building the value out of products to support what I see as emerging sectors to be able to as other growers are planting these things we can be part of that patchwork quilt of making these things help meet the market um in turn key ways so those are you know I I'm really excited about you know the the decades ahead because I still see so much not getting done but also all these little embers that are just like glowing and waiting waiting to ignite across the the working landscape here I think that's the most concise way I can answer that question sorry if it was a little thank you Joe thank you you inspired me today I really want to try one of your bean burgers I might have to take a field trip you're all welcome to find me anytime all right that would be really fun if we could do that uh thanks so much Joe for that answer it sounds like you've got a lot of irons in the fire that's very exciting um and I'll just say that this is one of you know when I look back on my career this is one of my favorite bills that we ever worked on and you know I remember as we were finalizing the committee of conference on this um Shaps Smith gave me till midnight of this particular night and for those of you who know me well you know I like to be in bed by eight thirty or nine but we we sat in the room uh down in the senate um and we hammered this out and at five minutes to midnight we shook off this and I was really excited about that for a couple of reasons number one we got this done and it was I just had a really good feeling about it but also I had gotten a call from my son that my daughter-in-law was it was in labor and was probably going to have my first grandchild the next day so it was totally exciting I got to shake off it and I got to head down to Albany hospital for the birth but anyway um I want to thank you all for all of your hard work this really takes an incredible amount of um networking and thoughtfulness and I like Charlie's thought partnership um expression and for those of you who I are the do people volunteer to be on the um board um or are we now paying you they volunteer Alison um well there's stipends for our meetings but there's an awful lot that goes in beyond uh those meetings for time and uh the stipends are mere fifty dollars with mileage reimbursement yeah that that's what I thought so you put in a lot of extra time we really appreciate all of that and um so thank you from the bottom of my heart anyway uh Bobby did you want to say a few words well just at the moral of your story I'm getting this started uh you go back to the old saying that you know you should never watch uh sausage being made um and uh you know it takes a a lot of work on our parts uh to get get the necessary votes um to get things passed but uh it sometimes takes late hour meetings to achieve that um the only thing uh besides Chris and I that have asked a few questions uh we also have Corey parent senator parent from Franklin County Brian Collamore from Rutland County and of course eighth and he's Polina uh from Washington County uh that serve on the senate ag committee and it's always easier to get a smaller crew to agree that it is a great big crew and uh we work we all work very well together and uh it uh it's certainly been great uh for us to be here with you folks this morning uh listening to all the positive very positive uh outcomes of of the working lands program so it's all I'd say is I guess keep up the good work you're all doing uh we'll keep up trying to get you enough money to make it uh worthwhile and and together uh you know we should have a positive outcome so thanks a lot uh to all of you and thank you Bobby um it was interesting that night um all those years ago 11 years ago or so when every member of my committee was sitting around the room at five minutes to midnight which I was just felt so supported by and couldn't quite believe but today some of the folks who haven't asked questions but are here on my committee thank you Bobby for introducing yours uh Rodney Graham as our vice chair um we have Terry Norris from Shoreham Heather Supernaut Tom asked some questions he's our ranking member Bicky asked questions and we have Henry Pearl here who is a young dairy farmer from Cabot and hit it's his no you're from Danville and it's his birthday today so happy birthday we're gonna have a cake later any of you in the building come on in so anyway uh thank you all again for um working so hard and um being a part of this process we can't thank you enough and with that I think I'm just gonna what who John O'Brien oh John O'Brien sorry well he asked questions that's true anyway we're gonna take about a 15 minute break for those out you out there on YouTube


Learning is like eating a cheesesteak. We don't know where to start from. It is pretty messy, it is pretty hard, but in the entity it is 100% worth it. Hey, I'm Nikolai, I'm a meta engineer at Automatic. You can find me on the web. But now back to learning. Learning seems kind of important, especially now since in the past few years the tech around WordPress has been calm like a Wednesday morning high in the mountain. Not much has changed. Stability is good, but the world is pretty big and it happens to be changing a bit. We noticed this head first in the past year in a half at Automatic where we kind of wrote a brand new WordPress.com admin which used totally different technologies because success is a moving target and it may require a bit different technology stack. So a lot of developers' world has changed. A lot of people had to get used to a totally new development stack to do purely JavaScript stuff in the browser using GitHub and in a single page app. And I noticed something very interesting. Very often the people for whom it took a bit longer time to get used to all of this new stuff were people who were used to only one paradigm or people used to only one language, for example PHP or people who had only done stuff on the back end and not in the browser or on mobile or desktop. And we can find partial explanation in the old saying that if the only thing you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And it turns out that a pretty big part of learning is actually unlearning, especially if we want to learn something radically new. For example, in Calypso, we had to unlearn a few things. For example, how instead of starting fresh on each web request, we had to carefully apply changes and if we wanted to carefully apply those changes instead of changing the DOM manually with something using jQuery, this was actually a terrible approach and we should just let React do it by itself. But unlearning those things that were very deeply ingrained in our way of working takes time. And the other realization was that the more concepts you keep in your head, actually it is easier to learn new ones and either you don't have to unlearn things because it's not a radical new change for you or unlearning itself is actually easier. And of course we come back to the cheesesteak analogy again because the more you learn, the more appetite for a learning you actually have and it is much easier for you to stomach new learning. There are countless examples of why broader learning is really good. First, I noticed that the people who had either mobile or desktop experience had a much, much easier time learning how to develop single page apps even though in the beginning it seemed slightly unrelated experience. Of course, broader learning is not always immediately useful. Sometimes it is just flexing the learning muscle and sometimes it is something that is useful just a bit further in the future. I'll give you an example. For example, one of the reasons our live blog plugin managed to scale was that it used two concepts which were very, very far away from the WordPress and even web universe. One of them was using commutable data which allowed us to cache a request to the servers indefinitely which makes it really simple and easy. The other one and the concept of commutable data comes from functional programming many, many years ago. The other concept was event sourcing which means instead of keeping the data in itself you keep all of the events happening and when you need the actual data you reconstruct the events which is a concept from early 2000s enterprise Java stuff and combining those it made it really easy to make a performance live blog. Of course, we probably could have done it any other way but still having those broad knowledge was really, really useful. Of course, here comes the question couldn't we just learn it when we needed it? The idea and it's probably even a movement learning by doing is incredibly popular today. But when we have to learn something radically new and we are doing something especially when we have the pressure of shipping something learning by doing is very often reduced to doing by doing where if we have even the slightest pressure it is a lot easier for us to default to our old ways and it becomes a lot easier to fail to unlearn. I have a few examples. I've seen WordPress plugins which needed to be extended and had almost zero hooks which is pretty classic. Outside of programming there are a ton of examples of people failing to unlearn old habits for example. Have you ever seen some especially older people using a computer as a typewriter when they always print stuff instead of saving files and never correct things and just start a new page? And there are countless examples like this in history for example the change between riding a horse and riding a car is pretty big and if you don't forget how to ride a course probably kicking the car on the side wouldn't really help even if you try. And why does even our learning time need to be so productive? If you look at marathon runners do they run marathons so the time? No, most of the time they actually run much shorter distances or they lift weights, aka they practice. If you look at musicians do they always play good sounding pieces? No, most of the time they play weird sounding ketudes and I've heard this saying from musicians that if you sound good you're probably not practicing. Martial arts is another great example where people don't fight all the time but a lot of the time they do the so-called cutters we are carefully choreographed patterns which are designed just for practice. And for example if you want to learn ES6 which is the new JavaScript thing there is a pretty great website called ES6 Cutters which breaks it down to a very small exercises whose goal is to just teach you very, very, very small pieces and it's totally unproductive you're not building a real project but you're learning a lot more targeted and specific things. Another example are code reads which are not incredibly productive but still are very targeted and specialized exercises meant mostly for learning. And the best learning is not always doing an actual project. Of course the motivation of seeing the end result of our labor is great but if it's something radically new and we want to learn a new concept and we want to go deep deliberate and unproductive learning is almost always the way to go.  Probably a lot of you care a lot more not about some weird terms like deliberate and unproductive but what do we do now? How can I here help you probably learn more or better? And before the end I have two small action items for you. The first one is pick a new skill. I'm speaking mostly about developers but I'm pretty sure it's not too hard even if you're not a developer to choose a new skill something that can be broadly useful to you.  Of course everybody has been talking about JavaScript this is an easy item on the list. Functional programming is really interesting a lot of great ideas even if you don't use it directly. Looking in the world of single page apps is pretty interesting because it's totally different. Or just learning about any new language or library there is no saying that every developer should learn one new language a year. There is a pretty cool book if you haven't seen seven languages in seven weeks or something like this which is also pretty quick when they're totally different if you want higher exposure for a long time. Or you can look at totally different concepts like reactive programming. Again, picking something totally new every year is a great idea. Even if you're a developer knowing a bit more about user experience and design is incredibly helpful it helps you understand your colleagues better and your users better. In general anything about product and business is also pretty useful. You can even get into lower level things like algorithms or how a machine works. There are a ton of ideas here. So let's say we pick something. There are a ton of ways to learn it but before that I have something else and the other item on the action list is let's just get better at learning this would be the universally helpful thing. I have two ideas here because learning is a skill like any other and we can learn it in the same old ways. First, I can recommend you a great book even if you're not a book person which is totally understandable not everybody likes letters on a piece of paper or on a screen. I promise you this one will be worth it it's called Pragmatic Thinking and Learning it's a great resource about ways to learn finding the best way for you to learn and a lot of very practical ideas about learning plan. And the other resource is a course on Coursera called Learning How to Learn Luckily there is a new edition starting in January I think when you can do it together with many more people I've done it in the past and it's pretty cool it's not very developer focused but still it's incredibly useful. And just have fun. Learning is a lot of fun especially as you learn more and you start having the shivers when you're not learning new things every day. I will leave you with probably the most influential idea at least in my life and which coincidentally happens to be the first line of the automatic creed which is a funny story and this was the time when I almost left the company but then the creed came out and like oh okay I guess I'll have to stay. Thank you. I'm pretty sure we have plenty of time for questions. Yeah we have 10 minutes for questions if you have a question the microphone is over there I'm not like Nathan I will not be offended if nobody asks a question. Okay you have 10 more minutes to get to the mic. Do you have any tips about how to fit learning into your routine? This is a great question. I have a few tips. I'm not sure if all of them will work great for you. Probably the best one is even if you're super busy probably learning is better investment in the future so even if I have a lot of work to do I just sometimes put learning time on my calendar when I read a book. To be honest I'm a book fan which is pretty convenient so one other trick is that I put the Kindle app on my home on my main row on my phone so now when I have 5 minutes instead of checking Twitter or something I accidentally open the Kindle app and I continue reading my book. But mostly it's just pushing back against all of the stress most of the stuff we do are not so urgent even if we have deadlines and stuff and sometimes I don't tell anybody I have spent some time learning I sometimes don't include it in my weekly or bi-weekly or whatever report but I just do. Even if I work less on other things. Once you've learned something how do you bring it into the team context how do other people around you on the team benefit from your learning? Any tips about that? Me being here is probably one of those ways but it very much depends on the team to be honest I work on a distributed team and it's a little bit harder but just talking about it is a great starting point if you learn something share with others it helps very much if you summarize things and especially if you know the people just tell them directly oh I think you would love this but to be honest I don't have anything more specific sure go I can always repeat the question I just wanted to ask your personal opinion on speed reading and if you do it or if you think it's a real thing like a viable thing to read like a page in 10 seconds or something like that To be honest I don't know I've been interested in it I almost went to a course once but I've heard very conflicting opinions I've heard it's a scam some people have told me it totally worked for them so again I don't know but if it's not incredibly expensive and if it doesn't take so much of your time I would try it's on my list I found that learning often works best in context like in a project do you have any recommendations or resources or ways to find projects that fit and suit the level and skill that you're attempting to learn like trying to match a project to whatever language or skill you're trying Not many but I have a few one of them is a book I skimmed through recently I can't totally vouch for it but it was called exercises in programming or something similar it's by pragmatic programmers so you can find it there the idea was to have a set of exercises in different varying in difficulty and in size so that every time you learn a new language you go through the same thing and you go through the same exercises and you can compare your experiences with what you knew before and this can give you a good idea about projects in the JavaScript community there is an incredibly popular project code to do NVCE whose idea is to compare a lot of the front-end frameworks and basically when you create a framework together with it you create a project like this so if you want to learn something new you can just not look at the reference implementation you can try it yourself and it's a pretty clearly defined task one interesting, another interesting small thing is just to implement a game of life in every language or to implement actually I don't want to run my imagination loose because it usually ends badly I hope this was enough we have time for one or two more questions Hi, so learning one thing a year seems like a really good idea and viable for most of us so what's your opinion on technologies that are deemed trendy or bleeding edge or doesn't have a lot of real-world use yet? Sure, this is a great question actually because there are a ton of technologies and we can spend all of our days just following the brand new thing usually at least what I do first is to try A, see how is this different from everything else and if it seems different enough this usually means it is worth more because it's a totally different approach and most of them are just approaches to things which you can use even if you're writing in a totally different language or framework or anything most of them are just ideas and the cool thing about ideas is that you can extract them even without learning the whole thing so probably this would be the first thing extracting the ideas out of the hype and the actual implementation and then you can make a much more informed choice of what is cool for you and how much time do you have and if you just want to try something Thank you I don't have a question I just wanted to respond to the person that asked how do you integrate this because you get really busy I have scheduled every Wednesday from 9 to 1 to be at my public library where it's quiet nobody knows me, no one's bothering me and I sit there and that is my scheduled time to learn new things I'm a sponge, I want to know what the latest is and I don't take any appointments during that time and one of my office knows I'm not there and it's hard to do but I've been doing it now for four months and it's worked wonderfully so if you just put it in your calendar and you stick to it and you're serious about it you can set the time aside and be in an environment where you can learn I just wanted to share that, thanks Great, thank you Okay, thank you so much