Vera Simon-Nobes
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Christa Hein: I'd like to welcome. Vera Simon Knobs. Thank you so much for talking with me today. Vera, you have such a interesting background. I can't wait to dive in and ask you all about your life experiences. So I wanna start by having you tell us about the Farm-Based Education Network and your role there.
Vera Simon-Nobes: Sure. Well thanks Christa. It's really nice to be here and I'm just so excited to be able to put the Farm-Based Education Network sort of into one of your early episodes. So thank you for having me. And yeah, my name is Vera. I coordinate the Farm-based Education Network and.
I use she her pronouns, and I'm based in Shelburnee, Vermont. My role with the network right now is to most simply sort of to learn about amazing projects that are happening across the United States and sometimes beyond. And then to find creative ways for folks to share what they're doing so that we can really learn from one another.
Right now, our network. Has about 4,600 members who have joined over the years. We started in 2006 and it, it grew pretty quickly. I, I think the best sort of structural description of us right now is sort of a peer learning network, and in 20 21, 1 of my goals is to. Look at other network models and think about what ways we can find spaces for kind of distributed leadership within the network.
And also not asking any one member to step up and, and carry too heavy of a load because they're all doing so much amazing farm-based education on their own sites. But really look at how we can be most responsive to what farm-based educators need right now.
Christa Hein: Wow, that's amazing, that membership numbers.
So how have people found out about the network?
Vera Simon-Nobes: , I think that a lot of people have found out about FBEN, which is our, our acronym, through past workshops that we've had either at Shelburne Farms or sometimes [00:02:00] offsite, through past conferences. And a lot of people, will google us and or have a friend, um, tell them about it, sort of your typical channels.
But we do, we do have a lot of people who are able to attend workshops back when we were doing in-person gatherings. And once we've gotten to know someone from one organization, we often will get to see other people from those same organizations come back to a training year after year. And so we get to know several people working at the same place and sort of develop relationships with, with people in that way.
Christa Hein: That's fantastic. So you get to meet people from all over the country doing farm education?
Vera Simon-Nobes: Yeah.
Yeah, definitely. And sometimes beyond as well.
Christa Hein: Nice. So one of the things that, the Farm-Based Education Network does is share resources. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Vera Simon-Nobes: Yeah, so some of the resources that we share in our workshops, or through our website, or through our newsletters might be activities that we can do on a farm.
They may also [00:03:00] be tools for engaging like different audiences or methods for training summer camp, educators who may be newer to the field and coming into farm-based education. So yeah, sharing resources can happen sort of formally, like through a piece of paper or an online PDF, but it's also about like just creating space for person to person communication, sometimes in a zoom breakout room, sometimes in a sheep barn during a workshop, sometimes in a conference room or around a, around a dining table at one of our conferences.
So resource sharing looks like many different things within our network.
Christa Hein: That's fantastic. And I noticed just from your experience that the farm-based Education network isn't the first time that you've stepped into this kind of training for resource and farmers. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience at the Northwest Organic Farming Association of Vermont?
What brought you there? I'm really [00:04:00] interested in learning today a little bit about your journey in farm education and so. Looking at where you are now, but also what got you to where you are now?
Vera Simon-Nobes: Yeah, yeah. , I learned about the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont as a college student. I was at the University of Vermont in Burlington. And I had a childhood friend who invited me to one of their annual conferences, a winter conference, which was held at the Vermont Technical College, in Randolph. And at the time, the conference was small, probably three or 400 people.
Organic farmers everywhere. Toddlers and moms and babies, and it was potluck. I love a good potluck. And so to, to go to a conference where you walked into the cafeteria and there was like a 50 foot table in front of you with all sorts of amazing, dishes, though it's in February in Vermont, so that means there's a lot of like quiche and root vegetables and pickled ferments and all sorts of good bread.
so the conference won me over instantly and I became [00:05:00] really interested in nofa Vermont.
I also. I have to mention that NOFA was run for many years by a unbelievable person named Enid Kott. Enid was this champion for organic agriculture and for farm to school, and had one of the biggest hearts that you could imagine, and just gave the best bear hugs. Enid passed away in 2019 after a fight with cancer. And it's been a big loss for our Vermont community. And I just have these vivid memories of Enid always leading the Winter Conference attendees in song. So she would stand up on stage and sing a song and we would sing along, and it was just this unbelievable sense of being in community around. A cause of bringing, sustainable agriculture to more people and., She was a champion for food access as well, which were some of my interests at the time. So I Went To a workshop at that first conference that I attended probably in 2007. It was a [00:06:00] farm to school workshop with someone named Abby Nelson.
Abby was the director of the Vermont Food Education Every Day Project, and that was a a partner project with. Three organizations, nofa, Vermont, Shelburne Farms, and FoodWorks and Vermont Food Education every day takes this three C approach to farm to school. They're integrating the cafeteria with the community and the classroom, and they're making sure that the food service professionals working in the cafeteria have the tools and the skills to be able to bring local food into the cafeteria.
Teachers are learning exciting ways to integrate food education and farm education into their curriculum. And then that kids are also able to get out onto farms to, to have field trips to farms. So that three C model really clicked with me and I got really excited about farm to school and I was, , probably a sophomore at, at the University of Vermont and quite nervously, like, you know, approached Abby Nelson just with kind of a shaking voice and shaking hands and introduced myself to [00:07:00] her and told her that I'd love to get more involved. And so I then attended a couple other workshops that Abby was coordinating, learned about a wonderful program called the Farm to Community Mentor Program where, classes of children would write letters to farmers and there would be this correspondence back and forth. And I got to attend a workshop with Virginia Holleman, who was a retired kindergarten teacher that really valued, her kindergartners and other teachers bringing kids out to dairy farms to learn about the culture and work of dairy farming in Vermont.
So I really caught the bug. In 2007, NOFA had a small job opening for somebody to help a farmer's market pilot accepting EBT, which is also known as food stamps for the first time. And that was one of the first times nationally that farmer's markets were starting to be able to accept food stamps, which is a really huge, really significant development in the.
Bringing food, local food to all people and, and the idea that all people deserve local food, [00:08:00] even people who are receiving, benefits in that way. So I got to be the person at that farmer's market running food stamp card, running the EBT cards and getting to know the market vendors and getting to know the customers.
And later I did my undergraduate thesis with NOFA Vermont, working with, , someone named Jean Hamilton, who was working on a variety of food access projects There. And I also have to mention Enid. Was also my field hockey coach when I was a freshman at high school. So my stories, my, my story of my entry point into this world of farm to school and farm-based education really starts as someone like learning about field hockey for their first time.
Sweating as I ran around the field. And, just recognizing that growing up in this small town, there's sort of this one degree of separation between many people. , And then that I had this. Very supportive family, a great education, and I could see myself in the work of NOFA Vermont. And so I had the confidence to approach Abby [00:09:00] Nelson at that workshop and to approach Enid later to ask her about , getting that job there and just, I had this very strong network that I was really privileged to have, uh, at that time.
Christa Hein: Was yours a farming community that you grew up in?
Vera Simon-Nobes: Yeah, I grew up in a pretty rural place. It's sort of a bedroom community for Burlington. It's, a beautiful town, right on Lake Champlain between Burlington and Middlebury. And it's a rural town that is seeing a lot of development.
Many, many farms have gone out of business and a lot of dairy farms have been transitioning out, and a lot of land has been developed into housing, but there's some strict zoning regulations that preserves a lot of open space as well. So, it's been a beautiful place to grow up.
And it's the town that I currently live in, it's called Charlotte. Yeah, I didn't grow up on a farm, but I did grow up in a farmhouse on three and a half acres with some falling down barns and, the ghosts of a dairy farm, were around there. So I had a very [00:10:00] kind of agrarian upbringing, though I did not grow up on a farm.
Christa Hein: Uhhuh.
Yeah, those influences were there.
Vera Simon-Nobes: Yeah, definitely.
Christa Hein: You mentioned Shelburne Farms, and I forgot when we were talking about the Farm-Based Education Network to ask you about that connection, because Shelburne Farms is the host to the Farm-based Education network. Can you share with me what that connection is?
Vera Simon-Nobes: Yeah, for sure. So Shelburne Farms is a nonprofit education for sustainability organization and also a working farm. And we, I'll say we, because I am an employee of Shelburne Farms, through my role with the Farm-Based Education Network, So, we are based Shelburne Farms is based on unseated Aki land in so-called Shelburne.
And our mission is around, cultivating learning for a sustainable future. So that means we have a lot of professional development programs that teachers come to. And, teachers who are looking to integrate education for sustainability into their classrooms globally. So we [00:11:00] have many Vermont teachers who come, but we also will work with teachers from around the world.
And, we also have a lot of visitors who come with their families to meet animals and attend a, maple open house, or a felting and sheep festival or a dairy day. We have a pasture based, flock of sheep that we raise. We have, dairy and we make cheese, and we also have an inn that guests can stay in.
But one of the things that's really wonderful about this connection, is that me in my role as farm-based education network coordinator, I get to do that part-time, but I get to then be part of the Shelburne Farms community. In a lot of different ways.
So I sometimes will be teaching a little bit of summer camp or working in our early childhood education programs. I also work in the farm store a little bit, selling cheddar cheese and maple syrup. And then I'm sometimes at the market garden just helping out when I can. We have a, a seven acre organic market garden that we, grow all sorts of vegetables and some perennial fruits in.
And then I also work [00:12:00] occasionally with our educational farm animals doing some farm yard chores. So that integration in my position gives me this really stronger sense of all the many hats that a lot of farm-based educators wear at their respective sites
And so it's a really nice partnership that I feel like I benefit from. And I always ask myself, how am I, how am I also, Help reciprocating the, the idea that, Shelburne farm staff can be learning from other farm-based educators in other places too.
Christa Hein: That's amazing. That Shelburne Farms does training for teachers in the classroom to help them incorporate farm curriculum.
That sounds very unique to me. I've not heard of another place that really focuses on classroom teachers like that. Was that the launch that created the farm-based education network? Like, was that the beginning of it?
Vera Simon-Nobes: I think that the beginning of the farm-based Education network was more coming from a sense of, there was a group of founding partners, probably 18 or [00:13:00] so, people who were starting to see, so they weren't formal classroom teachers, they were directors and managers at different educational farms who had.
Who had grown over the years and were starting to definitely see themselves in the environmental education movement, but also saw themselves as kind of different. So we're, we have a lot of overlap with. Places like NAAEE which I can never remember exactly what they stand for, but it's an environmental education organization association.
Uh, also the children and nature network. Like there's many things that do apply to farm-based education as well, but we also wanted to have a place that could be a network for people who are specifically growing food and fiber and talking, bringing kids specifically to a farm. And so we founded the Farm-Based Education Network in 2006 to be that place for peer learning about what specifically farm-based education looks like, which integrates [00:14:00] nature-based education and environmental education, but also has some elements that are more exclusive.
Christa Hein: Yeah. So I wanna also look at some of your other past experiences. I see that you worked at Philo Ridge Farm.
Can you tell us a little bit about that site?
Vera Simon-Nobes: Yeah, for sure. Philo Ridge Farm is a really wonderful, newer farm. The land that Philo Ridge is on, was a conventional dairy farm for many generations in two until 2012 when it was sold to a local family.
But prior to that I had been living in San Francisco and I had a great experience out there. I lived there for two years and just loved the Bay Area and, um. Didn't really realize how much I had been missing, sort of a deeper connection with my food and my food sources and with farmers themselves. So I moved home from San Francisco in the fall and my parents had the space to take me in to support me during that transition as I moved back in and was getting started to work at NOFA Vermont [00:15:00] again.
But I, pulled all my dad's tools out of his workshop. Grabbed all the scrap lumber and started to build a chicken coop just with this like total haphazard like animal energy of just needing to design and build something and saw wood and use power tools and needed to do something with my hands to sort of like just transition to a more, a, a life that was a little bit more grounded in using my hands and my body more.
And so, I did that as I was kind of reacclimating to my life back in Vermont and at the same time, oh, oh, so we never got the chicken. So I built this little chicken coop. It was supposed to be mobile, had this idea of just having a little flock of chickens, which I had had as a child growing up in that very same homestead. But we never got the chickens. Instead, my partner, Michael and I, we decided to get a couple of lambs and we were really in awe of the sheep as a animal because of the way it can efficiently convert grass to protein. [00:16:00] Michael at the time was working at Farm and Wilderness in Plymouth, Vermont, and we got to learn all about sheep and wool and lambing and the process of raising sheep and, you know, moving flexible fencing, what sheep need from their pasture-based diet to be healthy. And we got really inspired to raise a few lambs of our own. So we, we purchased our, a couple lambs in 2011, the fall or maybe the spring of 2012. And that was right around the time that this farm, Philo Ridge Farm, just up the road from my parents' home, was going through their transition and they had this big empty barn.
Um, they had a little empty house. Michael and I were looking to move somewhere where we could bring our sheep along. And so we moved in there in the spring of 2012 with probably, maybe six or eight sheep at the time, and we started a teeny, teeny little farm that was very community oriented. We raised, three to three to 500 meat chickens in the summertime. And we raised [00:17:00] just a few lamb, probably like, probably 10 to 15 lambs and sold them directly to customers. It was really inspiring to see people who I had, some of whom I had known from growing up in this small town, but many of whom I had never met before, come out and come to the farm to pick up their chicken and, and watch us grow these gardens, which the farm is on a really prominent corner in our town.
It's sort of this one crossroads right by the elementary school, so it was neat for the community to sort of watch the farm go through a, a change from being a, a dairy farm with a lot of equipment all around all the time and change into a more, just a much smaller operation. So we grew this tiny farm, with a few chickens, few, few lambs, and then the farm owners who we were renting from got really inspired about the model and decided that they wanted to hire me and hire Michael, and started to hire a few other people as well to expand the farm.
So it became Philo Ridge Farm and we started having some pigs and [00:18:00] a, a herd of cattle. The vegetable operation took off. And eventually we started a very small farm stand right there, which then grew into a really large market. And in 2017, Michael and I, took off down the road and we purchased a small home in a little homestead that's about a mile away.
So we migrated over there and we don't have any animals here, but through Philo Ridge. I got to, we got to really see, we got to be a part of a kind of community oriented startup of a farm business, which was exciting and it was a place. That is just so blessed to be located across the street from the elementary school in the town.
So I was able to host a few field trips where renting school buses was out of the question because we could just walk the kids across the road. So I would do a few field trips, a few family events on weekends sometimes, and sometimes a playgroup with toddlers.
and this was on top of my work at Shelburne Farm, so it just gave me this. Opportunity to be [00:19:00] plugged into farm-based education through Shelburnee Farms and the farm-based education network, but also to be kind of experimental and trying new things out in my home community at home, at Philo Ridge Farm.
Christa Hein: That's fantastic.
Vera Simon-Nobes: Yeah,
Christa Hein: So, location sometimes is everything to being able to access. Fresh food, farm education, these different experiences. I know in my own work I do a lot of inner city programs and some of the librarians that I work with, they tell me that. Their kids have never left the neighborhood.
Mm-hmm. And so, you know, to have access. And I know that in other parts of your work, you've also worked with people who don't necessarily have access. , Can you tell us a little bit about before you moved back to Vermont, when you were in the Bay Area, I know that you worked with Cooking Matters a little bit, volunteered with, La Cocina, is that how you pronounce it?
Vera Simon-Nobes: Yeah.
La Cocina. Yeah,
Christa Hein: Okay. Can you tell us a little bit about those food experiences that you [00:20:00] had and how those kind of shaped the farm educator that you've become?
Vera Simon-Nobes: Yeah, for sure. I think, yeah, the access is such a tricky thing. I think I just wanna say something about access for a moment, which is around, The idea that many people, that it's not a coincidence that some people don't have access and that the issue of who has access to healthy food or a farm field trip or, uh, community space where they can safely gather with their family or their community that a lot of, a lot of people are experiencing systemic racism and oppressive systems that have prevented access to those things. So I am very interested in how we can be fighting against those oppressive systems, looking at what we, what I as a white person and a white individual am doing to both perpetuate those systems of white supremacy and how I can be halting that, [00:21:00] um, so that more people do have access.
And I'm trying to examine myself more as, uh, someone who needs to listen to the communities that are experiencing some of that systemic, like disinvestment by their cities or, um, experiencing some of that racism or other forms of oppression.
And it's incredibly important that I listen to them and never assume that I know what's best for that community. Um, that we need to listen to the wisdom that's coming out of that community and listen to the answers for, for what they need when it comes to access. One thing that the Farm-Based Education Network has done recently is made our programming all sliding scale so that at least one thing we can do right now is remove a financial barrier to participating.
Oftentimes we're able to go all the way down to zero and sometimes, like for our 2019 national conference, we were able to start the participation fee at $25 and then it went up to 400. Um, but we've been able to experiment a [00:22:00] little bit because of some support that we have from some funders who have given us the flexibility to experiment with what it looks like to offer broader financial access to our programs.
Christa Hein: Mm-hmm.
Vera Simon-Nobes: Uh, and it's been really. Successful in that people, if they're able to choose what rate they're paying, we're seeing many people choose zero or the lower rates, but a lot of people also choose the higher rates and somehow it's, it's balancing out pretty nicely.
So yeah, in. In 20, let's see, 2009 to 2011. I lived in San Francisco and worked with a really innovative, exciting program called the Cooking Matters Bay Area Program. And I was an AmeriCorps service member at the time. And that model was that participants from a community, um, sometimes a lower income community, well, always a lower income community.
Sometimes an immigrant community would come into a class that they would sign up for and it would be in. A space that they were already going to. So we weren't trying to encourage people to [00:23:00] come out to some building that they had never attended. We were going into their communities and they would sign up for a six week class.
That would be one part, like the first hour would be a nutrition lesson, and the second hour would be cooking together. And the AmeriCorps member like me would be the schlepper of all the bins and the utensils and the portable stoves, even the pots and pans and all the food. So we would show up each week with all of that equipment to turn any room in a community center or a school or a, sometimes even an outdoor space.
We would turn that into sort of the instant kitchen and we would set up. And then we would sometimes teach the classes, but mostly we would work with a nutritionist or a chef and they would be following a six week curriculum. Sometimes in the Bay Area. We went a little bit rogue and we wouldn't always follow the recipes exactly from the textbook, but that was part of our model.
Because we sometimes had chefs and nutritionists who were coming right from the [00:24:00] immigrant communities, that we were working with. And so, if somebody there had an idea for a recipe, we were absolutely gonna, integrate that fun recipe into the workshop because it would be more culturally responsive.
And if they're the ones coming from that community, we just trust them that they know best with that. So it was a really fun way to. Kind of get to be part of those communities. I was someone, I think I said again, like as a white person and , living in San Francisco, I was part of this wave of gentrification in the city and working with communities that were primarily Spanish speaking immigrant communities.
They, the people in the classes were incredibly welcoming of me, and I just will never forget, like washing dishes and getting to know people side by side and setting the table and how we would just all help each other out with carrying each other's bags up and down all the flights of stairs. And so when I think about going into other farm-based education spaces. I always think [00:25:00] back to that sort of sense of welcome and that they offered to me, and try to recreate that in some of the, the farm education spaces that I am helping to create as well.
Christa Hein: What do you think those food focused classes mean to people?
Vera Simon-Nobes: Oh, I think that in some cases they were affirming. I think that sometimes people get messages around their body shape or, the choices that their children sometimes make around food from a convenience store and sometimes those messages can be sort of like breaking people down a little bit. And I think one of the things we did in those classes was create some space for conversation where people would tease out all the healthy habits that they actually do have and be reminded of those or sometimes, not necessarily habits that were coming from their family, but maybe habits that they grew up with. So sharing that they were all, you know, they were in, the family that [00:26:00] they grew up in El Salvador for example, would, you know, eat fruit smoothies all the time.
And it was just part of their culture and oh, they had maybe not done that as much since they've been living in San Francisco. so making space for those food memories to come up and the sharing of the challenges that people are facing, but also just the strengths that they have, among them.
I, I think that that was inspiring for people and I hope it was affirming. For me as a so-called um coordinator, I just learned so much and still have a lot of recipes that I learned in those classes that I use today in my family.
Christa Hein: I can see a lot of intergenerational, benefit coming from that with.
Older people being able to share those memories, as you mentioned, but memories through food, just connect us in a different way and for them to maybe come back to their own recipes and share that with kids who maybe haven't experienced that as well. I can see that, [00:27:00] throughout the ages, that being applicable for the young and the old in the community.
Vera Simon-Nobes: Definitely. And some of the classes would be structured to be children with their parents. Those were always my favorite classes. 'cause you get such a window into the relationships and, and, the struggles and the beauty that exist in those parent-child relationships.
Christa Hein: Oh, that's fantastic. Vera, your experiences have been so diverse.
And I just have to ask you about one other part of your experience in that you have a certificate in humane education. I'm so interested in that. What is that? And what made you interested in pursuing that?
Vera Simon-Nobes: Yeah. Well, I will say I've never heard of the field. I had never heard of it until I attended a conference at Green Chimneys in Brewster, New York.
It was called the Human Animal Interaction Conference, and it was a really. Neat event. There was a lot of social workers and people who use animals in, , behavior [00:28:00] intervention work, LA largely with, with children. Um, so my Shelburnee Farm's colleagues and I, I, I remember when we were asked, you know, where's everyone coming from?
And we were the only three people coming from a farm setting, I think, aside from Green Chimneys, which does have an educational farm component, and was the host of the conference. So I had no idea this field existed, but I got interested in it because I realized that there was research behind a lot of the things that I believed to be true.
For example, I remember hearing one of the speakers there talking about her work with children who have autism spectrum disorder, who were working on specific verbal goals, and how when they were working with the same instructor when they had a Guinea pig in their lap, they were. Some statistic that I won't remember, but they were much more likely to be able to speak and to be able to meet the verbal goals that they were working on with your instructor in the presence of an animal with the animal on their lap.
Yes. [00:29:00] And that just rocked my world and I felt like, um, I felt like I see that in farm-based education. I think one of the beauties of farm-based education is how it can often open kids up to new parts of themselves. And new places where they can experience growth and experience self-esteem in a way that they didn't experience in a classroom or in their home setting.
When they find out that they're actually really good at carrying a green bag, or they can actually very carefully pour water from a bucket into a chicken water or whatever task they're working on. So it was exciting to learn that there was actually research taking place in that with that sort of finding.
And so I became interested in it. I had the privilege of having the resources to take to do the certificate, and I did it in 2000, I think 2018. And I, it was through the University of Denver Graduate School of Social work. Uh, they also have another part of their name. Maybe it's a, I think it's the Institute for Human Animal [00:30:00] Connection there.
And I met really great peers, really wonderful professors, and just got to see the world through this lens of humane education, which is really encouraging character value development. En encouraging compassion, respect, empathy, inclusion, um, and really thinking about how young people can develop a sense of responsibility and self-esteem and be solutions oriented as they grow up in this, in this time as we face a climate crisis.
Christa Hein: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, in that course of study, were you also looking at the human animal relations? Or was it more focused on, humane as in the human?
Vera Simon-Nobes: Yeah, it was definitely all about the human, human animal connection and mm-hmm it was looking sometimes at humane, humane treatment of animals. For example, I remember reading about class pets, which I had never, ever imagined that that would [00:31:00] not be a beneficial thing, but I looked at it through the lens of being that class pet and what it's like every weekend when the teacher may leave the classroom or may bring it home, maybe bring the animal home with them, depending on what the animal is. But it just kind of opened my eyes to different. Different lenses, different perspectives, and yeah, definitely looking at the ways that humans interact with animals and a lot around animal welfare, the importance of giving animals lives in which.
They're living as most, most naturally as they can.
Christa Hein: Mm-hmm.
Vera Simon-Nobes: And yeah, it was, it, it was a very interesting certificate and something I would like to pursue more of. However, I don't like to sit still very much, so it was hard to, it was hard to sit, do it on top of my, my work job than to sit down and be reading more articles and, and writing was a challenge for me.
Christa Hein: Well, I can see that you [00:32:00] definitely can't sit still because this isn't all your experience. 'cause I still wanna get to, you're an entrepreneur as well and you have your own company, rhubarb Leather. So tell us a little bit about that. What gave you the idea and how did you get started in that?
Vera Simon-Nobes: Sure. Rhubarb Leather is a side business. Um, it's what I would. Call like a micro, micro business. I think I probably create under a hundred pieces per year. But I became interested in leather really as I was thinking about what it meant to raise animals for meat. Uh, I am a meat eater and it's something I don't take lightly, but I was interested in practices we could do to use the whole animal.
And so with our lambs, I would always, we would always have the lambskins. care for them and salt them and then have them tan so that they could be sold and used in people's homes. And with the leather, I was curious about that, that same thing as it relates to cattle, to cow hides either dairy [00:33:00] or beef animals.
And I became interested in what the process was to create locally made leather. I found out that nobody was doing it around here. So I source leather. So today I, I source leather always from local farmers and local butchers. And I have it tanned out in New York State in the Hudson Valley there. Uh, the tannery there is one of, I think it's the only, environmentally friendly vegetable tanning tannery in North America.
And I was feeling really lucky that it's a four hour drive from my house so that I could really make, the journey with these hides and then get them back to begin creating something, designing, bags, wallets, um, small purses, uh, different kinds of different styles of tote bags, and then selling those to people and.
My dream is really that people will begin thinking more about where, not just where their food comes from, but where the [00:34:00] fiber products come from. That they wear our cotton and our clothing, um, our wool, and then also our leather. If, if people are purchasing leather. Just that curiosity of where does it come from and was that animal treated with respect and was it, processed in a environmentally responsible way.
And so, yeah, right now I work with farmers to find out when their slaughter dates are, and then I show up at the back of the slaughterhouse or at the farm. And I usually I can't lift a whole hide, so I usually cut a hide down the middle, fold it up, and then it begins, its transport, down to the tannery.
But yeah, as I said, it's a very micro enterprise and I'm mostly self-taught, though I did go in 2017 to a leather school in, uh, tote totes England, and I got to learn some more hand sewing skills there, which I use to this day because I love, I love hand sewing and machine sewing. I, I still don't, haven't quite gotten the hang of.
Christa Hein: So how does [00:35:00] being an entrepreneur and an artist, both because your leather work is certainly an art, how does that fit into your perception of farm education?
Vera Simon-Nobes: Hmm.
I think it centers around that question of what our impact is as. Consumers and as humans and what our relationship is with other living species. I think that it's really important for us to, I guess. I guess just ask questions around the products that we use and that we choose to bring into our lives.
And so when I get to create something out of a cow hide who, where I knew the farmer and I knew that that cow had an exceptional life and grazed on a beautiful pasture for 12 months out of the year, actually we're in Vermont, so maybe 10 months out of the year. It just gives me a sense of, um. Respect that I think the animal deserves, and it allows me to be creative, work with my [00:36:00] hands, and hopefully create something beautiful and practical that that can, help other people also expand their thinking around what agriculture.
What, what connections agriculture has in their lives beyond just the farm to table connection.
Christa Hein: Yeah, and you know that beauty sometimes is the thing that draws people in. And so if one of your bags introduces people to this concept of. Doing for oneself and doing things in a sustainable manner that could open them up to a deeper understanding, that they can go on to explore.
Yeah. It's finding those little connections and that that artistry, sometimes is that, that thing that catches people's attention first.
Vera Simon-Nobes: Yeah, definitely.
Christa Hein: Um, so you're obviously always growing and always learning. What part of your work are you curious about learning? What do you, what have you been researching lately?
What are you working towards?
Vera Simon-Nobes: Yeah. Um, I was very moved recently by an article that I. Found [00:37:00] it was actually published in 2015, so I was, it's not a new article, but it was something by Robin Wall Kimmerer, who's a botanist and an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. , And it was an article in, in Yes magazine about nature needing a pronoun and the way that we sometimes call things that we come across in nature, we, we sometimes refer to them as it.
And how that doesn't help us, create kinship with nature or, or model and teach kinship, to our children around, around what they can, what relationship they can have with nature and how they can feel a sense of belonging with nature. So I'm interested in language. I'm interested in, in something that Robin Wall Kimmerer said in that article.
Grammar is how we chart relationships. I really, believe that and believe that there's so much, potential in how we speak. And so the idea in this article is that we need to stop at objectifying nature and we need to [00:38:00] start referring to it as one of us and one of our family. And there's a new pronoun that she suggests, which, which is Ki KI.
Um, and so we can refer to that tree as ki. Gave us apples. Thank you so much to that tree. And it just, promotes more reciprocity and more, um, love.
Christa Hein: Oh, that's beautiful.
Vera Simon-Nobes: And I think that that's, yeah, it's something I'm working on in myself with my family. And work on that with the students that I work with as well.
Christa Hein: Mm-hmm.
Nice. So you're always offering learning and resources to others. Is there a certain book, a certain learning resource that really shaped who you are and what you do?
Vera Simon-Nobes: Let's see. I'll have to give a shout out. I have to give two. The first shout out is a book that we use at Shelburne Farms, especially in our early childhood learning.
And it was written by our Shelburne farm staff, namely someone named Linda Wellings, who is a. Facilitator of, of joy and wonder, and that book is called [00:39:00] Cultivating Joy and Wonder, and it weaves the ideas of sustainability. Into several different activities that we can do. Baking bread, dissecting wheat, making felted wool balls with kids, dressing up like a bean or dressing up like a sheep.
Just all sorts of very joyful, playful activities where kids are using all their senses and using their bodies and getting to, um, experience farm activities. Yet those activities don't have to happen on a farm.
Christa Hein: Mm-hmm.
Vera Simon-Nobes: That book is something that's really guided me and shaped me, and something that we often bring into many of the workshops that we do in the Farm-Based Education Network.
And then personally, one that I'm, I've just started, but I can just tell immediately that it's going to be transformational for me, is a book by Resmaa Menakem, which is called My Grandmother's Hands. And, ?Menakem is a trauma therapist and a healer, and looks at the ways in which white supremacy sits in our [00:40:00] bodies and our souls, and how we as a, as people can choose to either let it settle there and let it sit there and cause trauma or we can choose healing. And so this book is for people of color and white people, and it's about, , how we can be working towards justice, not just intellectually, but really through exercises we can do with our bodies and our hearts. And I just started it, but it's a really powerful book and I, I hope that, I hope that farm-based educators and anybody working anybody, actually just anybody would will read it and it could resonate with them.
Christa Hein: Oh, fantastic.
Great. Well, you know, we've had so many great, Looks into your background. To wrap it up today, I just wanna ask you kind of a fun question.
If you had any extra and you can kind of think what amount that would be in your program budget, what would you spend it on and why? What, what dream would you like to include in your farm education [00:41:00] programs that you just don't have the resources for, but wish you did?
Vera Simon-Nobes: Yeah, I. Hope that this is not just a dream, and I hope that I can make this a reality eventually, but, uh, I would definitely set up a giving model where we could give money to people who are working on reparative justice projects.
Mm-hmm. Specifically thinking of something called the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust, which is a newer, uh, organization or a newer network, newer land trust model that's really reimagining land access and is uplifting global, indigenous, black and people of color with, securing permanent land tenure.
For, for those audience, for those people who have been. Who have experienced systemic disinvestment and racism that has prevented them from having land and access to land in the past. So I would absolutely think about some way to put resources into their hands.
Christa Hein: Hmm.
Beautiful. [00:42:00] Well, Vera, you are just so amazing and I am so appreciative of your willingness to talk with us today and to share your life and your experiences and, and how you became the farm educator that you are today at the Farm-Based Education Network.
So grateful to have you as a resource. And is there any way that people can keep in touch, how would they contact you or the Farm-based Education network?
Vera Simon-Nobes: Yeah, my email is on the website, farm-based education.org, and I love hearing from people with ideas. Collaborations are like the engine of our network, so I just love thinking about, new projects that could come from, from you all listeners and, and network members.
Our network is free to join, so anybody is welcome to join on that website as well. We are available or we're, we have some presence on Facebook and Instagram. Occasionally you might see us on Twitter, and then we also have a Google group. So lots of ways to get involved and I, yeah, [00:43:00] really love, love hearing from people and I'm so appreciative of you too.
Christa, thank you for taking the time to hear my story and center farm-based education in this way and center our network. It's great to, great to hear about what you're doing and how you are advancing this work through this podcast.
Christa Hein: Well, thanks so much, Vera. Take care.
Vera Simon-Nobes: Thank you, you too. Bye Christa.
Christa Hein: Bye.
