Spring crops up at South Burlington development

By Joel Banner Baird, Staff Writer
Reproduced from The Burlington Free Press
Originally April 24th, 2009

SOUTH BURLINGTON — Home-starts have slowed in northern Vermont, but some developers in South Burlington see encouraging growth in a long-fallow field.

Long rows of garlic and bright green butterhead lettuce span the first two acres under cultivation at South Village, at Spear Street and Allen Road.

A watercolor illustration at the development's Web site shows an abundance of crops, flowers, fruit trees and greenhouses on 20 acres at the project's northern edge. Many more acres of wetland and forest extend east, toward Dorset Street.

Housing remains clustered, for the most part, at the 220-acre project's southwest corner.

Will Raap of Shelburne, one of the founders of South Village, explained why Thursday.

“The first question for us was not ‘Where do we put the houses?’” he said. “It was: ‘What do we want to protect?’” Viewsheds qualified. So did agricultural land — albeit land long neglected and gone to shrub and weeds; and wetlands. David Miskell, a Charlotte farmer, signed up as a consultant two years ago.

“Most of this was heavy-duty, worn-out clay,” he said. A bonus of the long-discussed hayfield: Organic certification should come easily, he added.

Before launching the first full growing season, Miskell oversaw the field's clearing, and tilled in a season of cover crops and load after load of manure. Last fall, he supervised the planting of garlic.

Raap and Miskell said inspiration for a community with a built-in commitment to landscape restoration came from a housing development west of Chicago, called Prairie Crossing.

Unlike Prairie Crossing, South Village does not lie on a commuter rail route.

But, Raap said, it might offer residents a link to the land that predates suburbia: An incentive to raise and eat what they grow.

“We hope we’ll be creating the bridges back to agriculture,” he said. Provisions for small livestock (perhaps chickens) are still in the early planning stages, he added.

Thursday afternoon, Bobby Young of Burlington joined Miskell on the wind-buffeted field to transplant lettuce seedlings.

A young veteran of the Intervale Center Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), and coordinator of Burlington’s farm-to-school produce program, Young said developments such as South Village might offer more young Vermonters a chance to dig in.

He’s already signed up 23 of 30 subscribers needed for the South Village CSA this season.

Does he think there’s a future in farm-bound communities?

“The best way to bring people to the table is food,” he said.