What Erik Andrus is Doing to Protect Vermont Food Production

How hip are farmers? Ones that think outside the box? Support their community, environment, economy and provide creative angles of community engagement and education? One New England green thumb has put the cool alarm on the world of the farm.

This is the story of one Erik Andrus, a farmer from Vermont. An old-fashioned beer and bread New Englander, he has not seen much success lately in the quality of grains he grows on the grass of his farm. Alas, the grass gets splashed by the springtime mizzle.

So…he began last spring to experiment with rice.
On a damp acre on the land he used an excavator to make room for two rice paddies, a reservoir and canals; as foreseen, spring rains filled the paddies. A drain on one side allows him to regulate the aqua level on the paddies, while a pump pulls more water when needed from the reservoir.

He says he wants to harvest 4,000 pounds of rice this year, and if all goes well, he will expand. Setting a model for Vermont’s dairy country to boost food production and make the region increasingly self-sufficient is vital to protect the industry from the likes of blizzards and terror attacks, according to Lisa Rathke of Associated Pross.

Erik bought Boundbrook Farm beck in 2005 and two years later added a bakery. He is one of the few farmers in the region to actually attempt rice production.

Writes Rathke:

“Most rice produced in the U.S. is grown in semi-tropical conditions in the South. Arkansas produces half the country’s rice in an area where typical temperatures range from the 70s to 90s, and it’s also grown in California, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas. But rice is a versatile crop, thought to have originated near the Himalayas and grown in cold areas of Japan and China as well as the tropics.”

She continues:

“Most of the cold-hardy varieties that can withstand lows in the 40s are short-grain, Japanese-style rice. Whole Systems Design LLC in Warren has been growing short-grain brown rice in paddies carved out of a hillside for three years. Its website describes the rice as an exciting, climate-change adaptable staple crop.”

In Vermont in the spring, the ground is too cold to put rice right in the ground like they do down South say, so Andrus started 50,000 rice plants in a hoop house, that is a greenhouse with plastic sides – transplanting the seedlings into his paddies after they grow a little. A local high school assisted in moving the seedlings. Andrus said transplanting rice is a community building activity in Japan, and this inspired him to invite the local high school freshman class to help.

In addition to these benefits, the paddies make a habitat for amphibians and birds, the rice acting as living filter, removing nitrogen and phosphorus from the water supply.

The Good Companion Bakery is the name of the bakery owned by Erik and Erica Andrus. It opened on April 22nd.

Share/Bookmark

Read more at Natural Buy