Benefit Baskets

South Burlington, Vermont

Well, Libby has sold a number of her pine needle baskets.  She has also taught as many as 100 women how to do the craft.  Today, she put the two together and taught a new group of students for a fee; she's now a professional pine needle basket trainer.   She didn't pocket the money though; benefits go to the hort farm.

And here are her student's first fruits after a couple of hour's labor.

While she did that I wandered around the hort farm. What is the hort farm anyhow?  Officially called The University of Vermont Horticulture Research Center, it is a research farm.  Jenny is a volunteer for the Friends of The Hort Farm.  I wandered the fields, greenhouses and trails snapping some pictures.

 

There are lots of apple trees nearly ready for picking.  There are also vineyards with many species of grapes.  There are row after row of tree  seedlings such as the Dutch Elm disease resistant elms shown.   There are also experimental plots for organic apples.  As you can see, some apple species fare less well than others organically.  Indeed, that's the purpose of a research farm.   The red flypaper captures evidence of the species of insects buzzing around the trees.  It is all very cool and scientific.