Core Focuses
A Living Lab
Smokey House Center is a 5,000-acre nonprofit in Danby, Vermont dedicated to maintaining a thriving working landscape while connecting people–especially youth–to the land in meaningful and lasting ways. Since 1974, it has served as a place where sustainable agriculture, forestry, youth education, and community resilience are not separate pursuits but a single, integrated mission rooted in place.
Through applied research Smokey House Center is developing innovative and replicable practices in collaboration with farmers, foresters, and scientists to help the region and local communities adapt to the climate crisis. By engaging directly in the land-based research taking place, youth are empowered to develop the courage and hone the skills needed to build a future that is full of abundance, resilience, and beauty for everyone and the ecosystems they exist within.
Smokey House Center's main campus in Danby, Vermont
Applied Research in Climate Adaptation and Future Viability of Forest and Farm Systems
As a non-profit whose 5,000 acre mosaic of fields and forests closely resembles Vermont as a whole, we see Smokey House Center as a place to trial land stewardship practices that can help our rural communities secure a vibrant and dignified future.
Our forests are on the frontlines of the climate crisis as they endure intensified disturbance events like drought and flooding and a range of devastating new pests and pathogens. As forest-loving humans, we feel a deep obligation to help our forests continue to persist in the face of these threats by experimenting with adaptation strategies grounded in the principles of ecological forestry.
Climate Adaptive Forest Management
Vermont and the Northeast are experiencing the most significant housing shortage in decades at the same time that our region’s ability to process locally harvested wood into sustainable building materials has plummeted with the widespread closure of sawmills. Through experimental building projects and regional supply chain mapping, we are trialing building techniques that can jumpstart a new era of local wood use in modern green building.
Local Wood Utilization
Maple syrup is core to Vermont’s identity and economy, but less predictable sap flow seasons and increased climate-related impacts on sugar maple trees are posing new threats to syrup producers. All three of Smokey House Center’s sugarbushes house long-term experiments in collaboration with UVM’s Proctor Maple Research Center and Vermont Audubon focused on building both ecological and economic resilience into this forest-based industry.
Maple
A transition to a more bioregional food system that centers perennial crops grown in ecologically-designed agroforestry systems can secure a more abundant and dignified future for our farmers, communities, and landscapes. Smokey House Center is trialing various agroforestry systems alongside its long-term partner farms including forest farming at-risk forest botanicals, creating sheep silvopasture, and growing a diversity of fruit and nut crops in a variety of systems.
Agroforestry
Youth Education, Empowerment, and Career Pathways
Instead of designing a curated curriculum, the land itself—and all the research and adaptation strategies we're trialing on it—becomes the medium from which young people learn at Smokey House Center.
Saplings to Stewards, Smokey House Center’s flagship youth education program, brings more than 1,000 students from 20+ local schools to Smokey House Center each year for immersive field trips rooted in agriculture, forestry, and ecological science. Students plant trees, study forest systems, engage in community science monitoring, and participate in nature-based humanities programs. All at no cost to schools, teachers, or families.
Saplings to Stewards
A better future for people and land is dependent on training a new generation of land stewards in strategies that seed abundance rather than feed destruction. The Stewards Rising Apprenticeship is Smokey House Center’s flagship 9-month program for regional youth dedicated to building careers in ecological land stewardship. Participants build skills in a wide variety of fields while acting as the primary workforce helping steward the organization's 5,000 acre mosaic of working and conserved forestlands, productive agroforestry systems, dynamic riparian systems, public trails, and facilities.
Stewards Rising Apprenticeships
Building Community and Rural Resilience
The bioregional future we are helping to seed must be built upon a tapestry of community connections that is fostered when people gather together on land.
Smokey House Center hosts a variety of free and low-cost community events throughout the year, from seasonal celebrations and public workshops to community science programs and technical training experiences. Whether it is nature lectures in late winter, picking blueberries in July, or gathering around a potluck on the fall equinox, there is always something happening on the land and a place for you in it. Check our events calendar to see what is coming up and join us for a day in the valley.
Community Events
Smokey House Center’s trail network winds through 5,000 acres of working forest and farmland in Danby, Vermont, offering visitors an opportunity to explore a living, actively managed landscape. Trails pass through diverse habitats including hardwood forest, riparian corridors, open meadows, and a sugarbush, with views of Dorset Peak, Vermont's 99th tallest peak. Whether you are out for a quiet walk, a snowshoe, or a community science adventure, the trails at Smokey House Center are open to the public and free to enjoy year round. Support ongoing trail restoration work by making a donation today.
Recreation
Smokey House Center’s historic campus is available for private rentals, offering a one-of-a-kind setting for retreats, meetings, workshops, and gatherings of all kinds. With several farm sites on 5,000 acres of Vermont working landscape, including the Conference Barn, Hilliard Farm House, Herrick Farm House, and surrounding grounds, there is space to host everything from an intimate team offsite to a larger community event.