Future foresters get experience in new Smokey House Center apprenticeship program
- Rutland Herald
- Jul 10
- 4 min read
Press Rutland Herald
Author Janelle Faignant
Published July 10, 2025
DANBY — This is the true story of five strangers, picked to live in a house, work together, and find out what happens when they take what they’re learning in college and start using it in the real world.
“I’m learning the things they don’t teach you in school,” said Daniel Simler, a senior from the University of Massachusetts.
He’s one of the five college students chosen for Smokey House Center’s inaugural Future Foresters Apprenticeship program this year, where they get to live on the stunning 5,000-acre property for a 10-week, hands-on program covering everything from forestry skills to guest lectures to expert-led field work. It’s designed for the students to hit the ground running, already using new skills in the field just two weeks in.
“The program is structured for us to talk to so many people, and try out a bunch of different things,” said Carmen McFadden, 20, of Silver Spring, Maryland. “Last week we learned how to do trail work and what makes a good recreational trail, and how to manage water flow, because a trail can easily become a stream if you do it wrong.”
“We’re a land-based nonprofit, and this is our 51st year, so we’ve been around for a long time but there have been ebbs and flows. We’re coming out of a relatively quiet period,” said Walker Cammack, Smokey House co-director.
“In the context of climate change impacts that farmers and foresters are facing, making it hard to make a living off of land, we do a lot of research on the property,” he said.
The apprentice program helps train the next generation in an industry with an urgent need for them as the current workforce ages.
Kaumyar Esmael, 21, a senior year at University of Michigan, said, “The agroforest, the forest farming of rare forest botanicals, a lot of these species are not as abundant as they were 100 years ago. The research being done is not just for forest health, it’s for farmers to implement these forest farming techniques.”
In 2024, Smokey House celebrated 50 years and Board Chair Curtis Rand wrote, “I am reminded of the vision that brought this place to life — a vision of land stewardship, hands-on education, and strong community connections.”
“There’s 50 years of history here, but our task was to create something new out of it,” said Cammack, who has a master’s degree in forestry and created the apprentice program. “It has definitely been the most amazing job I could imagine.”
Smokey House partners with universities and on-the-ground practitioners like farmers and foresters to better understand the ecological, economic and social impacts of farming and forestry, and the apprentices learn the ins and outs of what it means to be a forester. They’re also given freedom to develop their own projects from a list of Smokey House’s long-term goals, which could range from how to start a nursery, to invasive plant management.
Peter Herrick, 20, of Washington, D.C., studies forestry at the University of Maine. “A lot (of this) I’d only heard of in a presentation, like climate adaptive research and agroforestry — what does that actually look like? So I was pretty intrigued to come and learn about what that means,” he said.
“We went out with Marlyse (Duguid), who is one of the lead researchers at Yale doing invasive species research in the northeast. (She) said there are a bunch of invasive plants that are still widely sold at nurseries and it’s a big issue,” Herrick said. “She gave an example of a land trust in Connecticut that had a power company abutting it, and the land trust was removing Japanese barberry, but the power company was trying to mitigate erosion and hired a crew to plant it, and it’s that problem of what’s invasive and how do we get that knowledge out.”
Duguid said by email, “I think Smokey House is a magical and wonderful place. The combination of forestry, agriculture, workforce development seems to be a special niche, especially with the focus on agroforestry/forest farming in the northeast region. There are some programs in other regions that have similar aspects, but nothing exactly like it.”
“A big part of what we do is trusting that young people have something to contribute instead of holding their hand and explaining things to them,” Cammack said. “Let’s trust them (to) do it, that’s the big picture.”
“We also work with about 15 area schools, and we’re hoping to get more Rutland kids here,” he added. “In the spring and fall we have this mad dash of school visits and those are always fun to have the little kids running around.”
Smokey House has always used its land to empower students by learning through experience and Herrick said, “It’s cool to be the boots on the ground getting those visions to reality.”
Plus, about 80% of the program is outside.
“I notice substantial differences in my fulfillment levels in my life when I am outside,” McFadden said. “And it’s very gratifying to put a name to what you’re seeing, the sugar maples and the black-throated green warbler inside of it. You get to see so much when you’re outside in the forest, and it’s really wonderful.”
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