As solar arrays continue to pop up across rural Northeast communities, some local farmers have found ways to integrate the technology into their landscape.
The Adirondack Explorer's Jaysa Dold reported on one farm’s effort to let alpacas graze between panels. She spoke with Southern Adirondack Bureau Chief Aaron Shellow-Lavine about how this can give new life to Jennifer St. Pierre and Bert Barber's land. But, not everyone is on board.
Click the play button to listen to the full conversation.
Read Jaysa Dold's reporting here: Crown Point farm uses alpacas in a solar grazing twist
See the full interview transcript below.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:
Editor's note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Dold: I think it was a really special introduction to the area. I myself am from rural South Jersey. I feel like people hear New Jersey and they think of New York City suburbs, but the area that I'm from is actually pretty pretty farmland adjacent.
But, this was still unlike anything that I had ever really experienced, like truly being you know in such a rural area, and Jennifer and Bert, they were a treat, there's no better way to adapt to a new area and to learn about the area that you're reporting on than to just get out there and talk to people and see the place, so it was a really wonderful opportunity to do that and I got to jump right in, which is what I was hoping to do when I came up here.
Shellow-Lavine: How did they end up becoming farmers? What was that journey like for them?
Dold: Jennifer's family bought the farm when she was 16, back in, I believe the early 90s. Then in the late 90s, Jennifer took over the farm, and now her and her husband Bert run it, but they're from the area. Bert grew up in the town, and I think Jennifer had mentioned that when he was little as a Boy Scout, he actually planted trees on the farm before it was the farm, and then ended up ended up running it decades later. So, kind of like a nice little circular moment for them
Shellow-Lavine: More of a recent addition to the farm is now this adjacent solar field, which is a whole can of worms. At least, currently in our part of upstate. Talk to me about you decision to get those to even agree to having that kind of solar farm adjacent to their very rural, animal friendly space, what was that conversation like?
Dold: Jennifer actually reached out to the solar company. She saw an ad on Facebook that the company had posted, and she had this plot of land that they weren't really using for anything particular, the land itself that the solar panels are now on has kind of had this really interesting history.
Back in the 30s, it was the town dump at one point. It was used for logging. It was used when Jennifer's parents owned the property. It was used as a recycling lot, so they would take metal scraps and take technology keyboards and things like that, and they would break them down for the copper and for the parts, and then sort it out, and then send them to different manufacturers.
So, the land was used for that for a while. Bert is a logger, so they used it for logging, but never really had one sole purpose. In recent years, Jennifer was using it as pasture for her alpacas for her sheep. So, she saw this ad on Facebook about an opportunity to put in solar, maybe have some financial benefits, and she thought her land would be a good fit because she, you know, wasn't really profiting off of it, and it ended up working out.
She said that the land actually hasn't really changed from her perspective because her animals still graze it. They still use it as pasture, so it wasn't really much of a big change for her after the solar panels went in, other than you know the passive income and being able to produce clean energy for 200 homes in town.
Shellow-Lavine: That that kind of raises the point as far as you know that can be for some farmers a pretty difficult decision to commit to as energy needs are shifting and changing. But, it seems like it kind of just worked for these guys in particular.
Dold: I think it was a special situation for them. You talk to people in the North Country about solar panels, and it's very divisive, and for understandable reasons. A lot of the time, especially when it comes to agriculture, we need places to grow our food, and that's a serious issue.
I think there's a real fear that solar is going to come in and take away this this land that's being used for agricultural purposes. But what's so great about Jennifer and Bert's story, and I know you know the stories of other farmers in the region, is that the two don't have to be mutually exclusive. They can actually coexist, and I think that's a really beautiful thing when one solution to one problem also kind of ends up being a solution to another.
Shellow-Lavine: What also jumped out to me that I've been wanting to ask you since this story and this conversation began percolating was, what kind of backlash one did the farmers receive? What were Jen and Bert seeing? And as a reporter, to put this piece out, what what were you getting if you were getting backlash or comments or whatever kind of feedback?
Dold: As far as Jennifer and Bert, Jennifer actually said that the only negative of the entire solar panel process was the backlash she received [on] Facebook. You know, people being nasty in the comments. I think she ended up turning off the comments on most of her Facebook posts that had to do with the solar panels. Just a pretty largely unpopular decision in the in the eyes of a lot of people.
As far as myself, I actually didn't receive too much backlash. I was a little bit worried once I started getting into the weeds about how controversial this is and how strongly some people feel about it. There [were] a couple comments on the story itself, a couple comments on social media, just expressing concerns about solar panels, expressing concerns about toxins and runoff, and you know all of the all of the things people are worried about, but nothing that was directed at me or directed at the reporting, which which was refreshing. I think people were just using the space around the story to express concerns that they've had and that they've been expressing.
Shellow-Lavine: You know, it's not easy being a farmer right now. It's not something that that a lot of people, especially young people, are signing up for and and going out and being like, 'you know what I want to do when I grow up? I'm gonna buy a farm and do it, and do the thing.' So for them, for this kind of opportunity to present themselves, was it kind of a, I don't want to say you know a rescue line, but a way to make it make more sense financially in the current moment that a lot of farmers across the country, not just in New York, are finding themselves in.
Dold: Yeah, absolutely. I think farming is not a passive source of income by any stretch, it's probably the least passive form of income that there is, and I was doing some research.
I think the median farmer age is 56 somewhere in that range, and there's like a quarter of, or half of all farmers are between 56 and 75, or something like that. So, it's a real problem, and I think that this kind of presents some sort of solution to that, where you can have passive income almost, and you're still utilizing your land, and you're still utilizing your land for the same thing that you were using it for in the first place.
In the case of Jennifer and Bert, they're still grazing their animals there, they're still housing them there. I had the opportunity to speak with Josh Pierce, who is also involved in the solar grazing world. He has sheep that he rents out to farmers for the same purpose as the alpacas, and he said that a lot of the farmers he works with are elderly, they're getting into their 70s, and the solar grazing is able to actually replace some of the income that they lost just by not being able to do the manual labor anymore. So, it's not a complete solution to the problem, but I think that it's something to consider, and it's definitely interesting to see how these things interact with each other and how you know creative solutions can arise.
