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New Eastern States Exposition logo |
Last week,
Eastern States Exposition held its Annual Meeting in Storrowton’s Carriage
House. It was a day packed with special announcements, a look at what’s in
store for 2014 and a celebration of the Exposition’s accomplishments this past
year.
The day’s
events included an early morning press conference, trustee meeting, luncheon
(provided by the wonderful staff at Storrowton Tavern) and the presentation of
the Agricultural Adventurers Award. During the press conference, we announced
the Exposition’s regional economic impact of an astonishing $479 million and
officially unveiled the new Eastern States Exposition logo!
During the
luncheon, the prestigious Agricultural Adventurers Award was presented to the
Audet Family’s Blue Spruce Farm, located in Bridport, Vermont.
Dick
Nickless, Chairman of the Agricultural Adventurers Committee, introduced the
recipients. “You’ve heard me say many times that the Agricultural Adventurers
Award is for innovation and pioneering, with the recipients having made
significant contributions to the agricultural revolution,” Dick said. “The
award winners this year have even surpassed these goals. The farm, has been,
and is now, extremely entrepreneurial and has never seen nor heard of an idea
they haven’t explored,” he said.
Blue
Spruce Farm is committed to experimenting with renewable energy and best known
for pioneering “Cow Power.” The farm also supplies Cabot Creamery with milk to
make Cabot cheddar cheese – about 100,000 pounds of milk every day. The Audets
even brought us some samples of Cabot cheese. It was delicious.
Now, what
is Cow Power? Basically the entire farm and about 400 homes in the community
are run by electricity generated from cow manure. It’s pretty cool process. All
manure from the farm is collected and pumped into two 14-foot deep, 600,000
gallon “bio-digesters.” The naturally occurring methane gases collect at the
top. That methane gas is then used to power generators that push enough
electricity into the grid for hundreds of homes in the community.
In
addition to cow power, the farm has a wind turbine that generates 165,000
kilowatt hours of electricity per year – about enough to power 25 homes – and
will host a 2 megawatt solar farm on their land this fall.
Impressive,
huh? And this explanation is only scratching the surface of the Audet’s
eco-friendly operation. I also haven’t mentioned that this is a
multi-generational family business. Out of the 25 employees on the farm, 12 of
them are Audets.
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From left: ESE President & CEO Eugene J. Cassidy, Eugene, Marie and Norman Audet, and ESE
Chairman of the Board, Donald R. Chase.
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“This is
really a story about family,” Marie Audet said upon accepting the award. “It’s
about the strength of family and character that was instilled from early on and
its fearlessness and making good choices and seeing them through.”
The more
we can share, the more people understand that farming is still hard work. Maybe
we don’t do it perfectly, but we are doing it better, and the more we know, the
more we do. We’re evolving like the rest of society and we are doing a much
better job of feeding people a sustainable food,” she said.
When asked
what made Blue Spruce Farm stand out, Dick said, “Everything, everything! They
have been so entrepreneurial and so innovative and they haven’t seen any
research that they haven’t played with. They even work with algae for making
diesel fuel. They’re taking some left-overs from today to put through the
digester and make electricity. It’s just a terrific farm.”
The Audets
are clearly leaders in the agricultural revolution with renewable energy and
have since inspired other Vermont dairy businesses to do the same. Vermont now has
17 dairy farms utilizing bio-digesters, giving the state more digesters per
capita than any other in the US.
“We’re
really proud to be dairy producers,” Marie said. “Dairy is one of those foods
that’s going to be there in the future to feed a growing population. It can be
produced in a way that is good for the planet, for the community – we provide
jobs – and it’s a good family thing to do.”
On behalf
of the Exposition, congratulations to the Audet family! There could not be a
more deserving recipient of this award. We look forward to seeing your future
research in renewable energy!