Innovation happens in small, community-rooted places, where farms double as classrooms

By Madeline Raynolds

Owner Madeline Reynolds demonstrates her vertical hydroponic growing setup at Sustainable Woodstock’s March open house at Ferndean Farm.

Sustainable Woodstock hosted a tour of Ferndean Farm this past March. The farm is now continuing to turn this public event into long-term partnerships for local food, youth opportunity, and year-round growing in the Upper Valley. As a follow-up to the March visit, the farm is sharing more about several initiatives that were already well underway before the event—and that the tour briefly brought into public view.

One key effort is the Prosper Valley Farming Collective, a collaboration among local farmers, educators, and community partners. The Collective’s goals are to strengthen year-round local food production, support farmer viability, and make cutting-edge growing practices accessible to small operations across our hill towns. By coordinating trials, sharing data and lessons learned, and pooling resources for infrastructure and technical assistance, the Prosper Valley Farming Collective aims to help farms stay resilient in the face of changing weather, rising costs, and shifting markets. A central motive is to ensure that the knowledge generated at places like Ferndean Farm can quickly translate into practical tools and strategies for other growers in the region, rather than remaining isolated on a single site.

Another initiative underway prior to the tour focuses on education and career pathways in controlled environment agriculture. Ferndean Farm has been working with the Community College of Vermont to shape a Controlled Environment Agriculture Certificate that high school students can begin before graduation. This builds on an already approved Entrepreneurship Certificate, with the shared goal of braiding technical skills—how to grow—and business skills—how to build a viable enterprise—into a coherent pathway that keeps young people rooted in the region.

A third strand, also in motion before March, is the expansion of work-based learning and pre-apprenticeship opportunities connected to Ferndean’s operations. Through partnerships with the Hartford Area Career and Technical Center, SEVCA, BRIC, and local employers, the farm has been helping to design placements where students can earn while they learn in agriculture, food systems, and related fields. The motive is to align local workforce needs with meaningful youth experience, so that businesses see students as valuable contributors and students can imagine real futures here at home.

Ferndean Farm has likewise been deeply involved in the Community-School Roundtable and community asset mapping work that predates the Sustainable Woodstock tour. This initiative asks, “What do we already have, and how can we connect it better?” By treating farms, food shelves, youth programs, makerspaces, and employers as shared community assets, the Roundtable helps partners coordinate rather than duplicate efforts. Ferndean’s hydroponic units and workshops are important pieces of this map, giving teachers and community groups a tangible place to connect climate resilience, food access, and hands-on learning.

Standing together amongst the vegetable-lined walls of the warm shipping container with the snow piled outside, it became easier to imagine a future where fresh, local food is available year-round, where young people see pathways into meaningful green jobs, and where local businesses thrive by partnering with students and educators. From that vantage point, Ferndean Farm and its partners are not just fine-tuning individual projects; they are seeking to sketch a new vision of what is possible in our region. It is a vision in which innovation happens in small, community-rooted places, where farms double as classrooms and laboratories, and where every new collaboration moves us closer to a resilient, locally fed, and youth-powered economy.

Madeline Raynolds is an educator, farmer, and community builder based in Woodstock, Vermont. She holds a Doctorate of Education from Northeastern University and believes that good food and good learning belong in the same conversation.