A Conversation with Chuck Wooster of Sunrise Farms

Twenty years ago, Chuck Wooster bought Sunrise Farm with his wife, Sue. The reason, Chuck said, is that one, he wanted to find a way to work outside, and two, he believed that in terms of sustainability and environmental conservation, farming is "where the rubber meets the road." Farming can be incredibly harmful, or it can be a powerful source for healing. Sunrise Farm is striving for the latter. 

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Sunrise Farm, located right in White River Junction, grows fresh produce, raises sheep and chickens, and even produces their own maple syrup and honey. All of this (eventual) food is grown very thoughtfully. The animals are raised on the farm's hills, where growing vegetables would be difficult. Honey is simply harvested because the farm has bees for pollination. The chicken and sheep roam freely in the pastures. It's the kind of farm that might appear in a children's book. 

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Sunrise Farm has also integrated numerous sustainable farming practices into operating the farm. They have a large solar array and a static pile composting system. They work with local organizations who guide them in correct forest management of their 750 acres of forest. Sunrise Farm is also the residence of the farmers, so their energy use includes the home. They have solar panels, subscribe to GreenerGMP to make their energy from the grid more sustainable, and have a wood gasifier to heat their home more efficiently. So naturally, when I began asking around about who I should interview about sustainable farming, Chuck Wooster was immediately recommended. We met over Zoom, and he gave some incredible insight into sustainable farming.

 

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I clicked the all-too-familiar "join meeting" button and logged on. Chuck Wooster was already there, and he looks as I imagined- dark brown hair which is a bit messy, a short, scruffy beard, blue eyes, rosy cheeks that come from working outside all day, and of course, he's wearing a flannel shirt. The first thing he does is ask where I went skiing that day. (We connected earlier over our love of cross-country skiing.) We chatted for a bit about the sad snow conditions. Then he asks, "how can I help you?" What followed was a lively discussion where Chuck shared his vast knowledge and thoughtful opinions about all matters of the food world. 

 

Eating Regionally 

Over the past few years, people have begun to search for a way to eat that benefits the health of the Earth. The food industry jumped on this growing need, and unfortunately, has led to much confusion around sustainable eating. I asked Chuck what he thought about the plant-based movement. He jumped to answer the question immediately, as if he had been waiting for someone to ask it for awhile. "I'm so glad you brought that up, actually. This is like a hot topic in my brain. It's something that I've been thinking a ton about these days," his voice was animated. "My current thinking is that vegetarianism, or veganism, it's the wrong answer to the right question." His voice became deep and drawn out, and his gaze was turned away from the camera in thought. He turns back to face me. "The right question is, how should we be eating?" 

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Chuck's answer was simple: "wherever you live in the world, you should start from where you are and you should work out from there." In short, eat as much local food as you can, but if you need to get olive oil, spices, or coffee from faraway places, that's okay! Some essential staples cannot grow in your local environment. 

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Every region is suited to grow different food, so everyone's diet, if they eat locally, is going to look a little different. In Vermont, eating local meat can be super sustainable. Why? Because, Chuck wisely explains, "if you look around here, Vermont, the Upper Valley, and New Hampshire, we're not a vegetable landscape, we're a meat landscape. Meat grows here amazingly!" Chuck's voice raises in excitement. "We've got great rainfall and incredible grass. There's no place on Earth that grows better grass than we do." This kind of environment is where ruminants thrive, says Chuck, because they are "designed to eat grass. Not grain, they shouldn't be eating grain, they shouldn't be in the feedlot, they shouldn't be in the rainforest, they should be eating grass!" Cows from a small, local farm in Vermont are going to be raised the way nature meant them to be raised. They are going to be happy and healthy in life. Then, they become "this incredible protein here [in Vermont]. To say that we're not going to eat that protein, that that protein is bad, then we're going to be eating Impossible Burgers and that is just the epitome of industrial crap!" Chuck laughs and he talks fast, obviously passionate about this subject. This "industrial crap," a.k.a fake meat products are often "coming from gigantic farms that are growing soybeans with herbicides and the whole nine yards," says an exasperated Chuck. Beef has been condemned as one of the largest contributing factors of climate change, not just of food, but of everything humans do. Perhaps this is closer to the truth in factory raised, grain-fed beef. But is beef really worse than a veggie burger, made from ingredients with questionable farming practices, highly processed in a factory before being shrink-wrapped in plastic, and shipped halfway across the world, to land at your table? Perhaps this is quite damaging as well. 

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Of course, vegetarianism is good in some landscapes. Chuck used Northern India as an example, where vegetables thrive. "So fantastic, grow vegetables there. It'd be silly to grow pigs there. But in VT, it's silly for us not to put animals on the hillside." However, Chuck also advises that we shouldn't be "diving into prime rib every night." Eating whole-food protein sources such as beans or lentils are also quite good in terms of health and sustainability. Just don't go for all the vegetarian, packaged, processed "industrial crap" that is so heavily advertised as being sustainable. 

 

The Power of Local Farms

As Chuck explained, the landscape around you should determine how you eat. But what exactly are the benefits of that? For one, it keeps money in the local economy. For example, "you spend a dollar at our farm and then I spend a dollar hiring local people" says Chuck. "Also I think around here, generally the farms are a little bit smaller and a little bit more thoughtful. And then, there is a big carbon piece that comes with transportation. Like, right now most of the lettuce that we're eating in the U.S. is coming from Southern California and Arizona. So it's got to be trucked here and it's got to be refrigerated. All of that is using fossil fuel. Local reduces that quite nicely." Eating locally saves fossil fuels and boosts the economy. 

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Supporting local farms can also foster a sense of connection to the land within the community. To Chuck, "Far and away the most important thing" about local farming, "is that people feel that connection to their place and their town and their community." Small, local farms are places where students, small children, and families can all come together and learn where their food comes from. It shows people the importance of the land. The way Chuck sees it, "if people feel connected to their land and their place then they will then help to protect it and conserve it and save it for the future." This connection is being lost in the world of large grocery stores and industrial farms. Now, more than ever, people need to be aware of the importance of preserving and restoring the land. Local farms really make people aware of this importance. 

 

Eating Seasonally 

Eating locally naturally leads to eating seasonally. This can be an adjustment. Imagine not eating tomatoes all winter long. Chuck, well-versed in seasonal eating, " just pigs out on tomatoes for like four months." He says this while smiling, surely remembering how delicious summer tomatoes are. "When the season's over," he continues, "I feel like I've had enough, that I'm ready for a break." Which is probably the best way to do it, because winter tomatoes are basically just mealy water. If you think about it. 

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Eating seasonally proves to be very delicious, which is surprising to most people, says Chuck. "When vegetables are fresh, they are surprisingly sweet, which people often don't know. If you've never had a good carrot, it's like, yeah, a carrot." He says "yeah, a carrot" in such a flat,  uninterested way. But then his voice picks up enthusiastically. "When our first carrots come out in the spring, it's like, oh, yeah, that's a carrot, that's what we're talking about!" As a bonus, fresh vegetables don't just taste better. They are better for you. "There's vitamins and things in vegetables," Chuck says. "If you harvested it a couple weeks ago and kept it on ice, it's not going to have the same nutritional profile as something you harvested that same day." So, eating seasonally is not just mitigating climate change, it's also incredibly delicious and nutritious! 

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Of course, there are a few months out of the year where local produce is really not an option, especially in Vermont. As Chuck so nicely put it, "don't worry about January and February. Don't let that be the excuse for why you're getting asparagus from South America in June." Even eating locally has its limits. 

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Soil Health

Sunrise Farm runs a yearlong CSA, so growing organic vegetables is a very important part of the farm. Chuck explained that "organic growing is really focused on soil quality, soil health. We sort of joke that what we're doing for work is improving the soil, and we're selling vegetables to help us achieve that." He laughs and you can tell by the way he says "we" that he loves working with the farm crew. Healthy soil has many benefits, Chuck explained. It is more productive, withstands heavy rainfall, and holds more carbon. Healthy soil is like good bread, he says. "If you picture a really nice slice of bread, it kind of holds together, it's big, when you've got a lot of carbon in the soil it's kind of like that. It's got air, space, it holds water." Now imagine you "just smashed [the bread] down into a teeny ball, which I remember doing in elementary school," he says, amused. "That's like bad soil: it doesn't hold water, it doesn't hold carbon, there are no places for the roots." Soil health is essential for the health of our planet, and it also benefits the farmer. Because of this, Chuck encourages people to buy organic vegetables. 

 

Eating Meat 

Eating meat seems to be a hot topic in today's world. Some swear it is the main driver of climate change, others swear that if raised right, animals could restore our ecosystems. Others just want to eat their bacon without judgment. Who do we side with? What should we eat? What should we not eat? As Chuck said, "here we are, omnivores. We have choices and choices are hard." 

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Chuck's philosophy on eating meat is that sourcing meat from small, local farms, where you can actually see the animals and see how they're being raised, that's the way to do it. If the animals are being raised in an environment they're meant to live in (not inside, not crowded, not fed on grain) then they won't be causing harm to the environment. Chuck also explained that organic meat doesn't really mean much. Animals can still be raised indoors on grain and be called organic. So again, look for the local stuff!

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Local, grass-fed meat is always more expensive. Why? Chuck explained, and the answer is a shocking one. Big farms get a large government subsidy for their use of fossil fuels. This means that they pay very little for the vast amounts of fossil fuels they use. The consequences of this are twofold: one, meat from industrial farms is far cheaper than meat from smaller farms, and two, those large farms are incentivized to guzzle fossil fuels without second thought. This isn't the only thing causing such a price difference. As Chuck puts it, "in a feedlot, the animals don't move. You just like, throw the food at them. Whereas in our case, we're out there chasing them around." Here he laughs. "We have people trying to find them and bringing them into the fence and all this stuff. It's never going to be as cheap." So, his advice? Eat less meat, and pay more for the good stuff! 

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Before I logged off from Zoom, I thanked Chuck for meeting with me and talking about so many different aspects of farming. I said that it was amazing to have a farm like his in the community. In response, he said that "one of the things I love about being in farming is that it's just endlessly complicated and interesting and I'm sure I'm never going to at any point feel like I know exactly what I'm doing." He laughs. "I love that we have a farm in our town and I love that it's me doing it!"