By Tom Ayres , Senior Staff Writer
The proprietors of the Feast & Field Market, the collaboration of three farms in Barnard that operate as a collective, are hoping for a legislative solution to a notice of alleged violation of the Act 250 land use regulations that the Fable Collective received from the former Vermont Natural Resources Board (NRB) in November of last year.
Christopher Piana and his brother Jon cofounded what is now the Fable Farm & Fermentory as a community-supported agriculture (CSA) vegetable and wholesale farm in 2008, eventually evolving the Barnard property into a diverse vegetable and fruit farm, winery and cidery. Fable is today part of the Fable Collective, a three-farm agricultural collaborative that leases and works the land on two large, legacy dairy properties located just across the road from one another off the Royalton Turnpike in Barnard. Eastman Farm raises grass-fed Belted Galloway beef and pastured heritage pork and Kiss the Cow Farm is an organic, grass-fed dairy selling raw and pasteurized milk and small-batch ice cream from a small herd of Jersey and Normande cows. Fable Farm & Fermentory has been presenting the weekly Feast & Field Market seasonally for the past 12 years. It’s a showcase and, the collective’s member farmers say, an economically essential point of sale for the products of all three farms.
Most germane to the issue at hand regarding Act 250, the Feast & Field Market gatherings have been a seasonal venue for 15-20 live concerts from May through September each year, featuring music performances from traditional folk to Celtic and world music to singer-songwriter fare and jazz that speak directly to the collective’s rural, agricultural, and community ethos. Therein lies the rub for the Fable Collective’s current issues with Act 250 regulators.
Early last summer, the Piana brothers erected a 16-by-18-foot pole barn near the main barn on the leased Fable Farm & Fermentory land where the Feast & Field events are held. The small new barn was intended as a multiuse agricultural structure in keeping with the exemption from Act 250 regulations that Fable Farm was granted in a jurisdictional opinion from the District 3 Environmental Commission of the former NRB in September of 2016. (The newly constituted Vermont Land Use Review Board succeeded the now-defunct NRB in its role of Act 250 oversight and enforcement at the beginning of this year, following the enactment of new land use legislation, Act 181, during the 2024 session of the Vermont Legislature.) The Fable Farm proprietors envisioned one of the uses of the new pole barn as being a small stage for the summertime Feast & Field concerts. During the rest of the year, the diminutive barn is used for storing farming equipment, hay, and other materials.
All was well for the Pianas and the Feast & Field-associated music events until Nov. 6 of last year, when then-NRB Compliance and Enforcement Officer Christopher Kinnick sent the Fable Collective a notice of alleged violation of the Act 250 regulations, contending that the Pianas “commenced development by constructing an outdoor stage at Fable Farm just south of the Main Barn and have been using it for a commercial purpose (and not for the primary purpose of showcasing/marketing products from the farm). This stage has been used for live music performances on several occasions.” The notice went on to say that “the Board is alleging that Respondent has violated [the Act 250 provisions] by commencing commercial development — an outdoor stage — without a Land Use Permit and has since undertaken certain activities and held events that extend beyond the definition of ‘farming,’” thereby conflicting with the jurisdictional opinion the NRB issued six years ago.
At the advice of counsel, the Pianas and their Fable Collective partners responded to the NRB’s November allegation, acknowledging its receipt and taking exception to the facts and conclusions cited by Kinnick. The Fable Collective did not, however, file a land use permit application with the newly named Land Use Review Board by the requested deadline of Jan. 31. Instead of filing for an after-the-fact permit for the pole barn construction with the District 3 Environmental Commission, the collective’s partners opted to work with Windsor County State Sens. Joe Major and Alison Clarkson and State Rep. Heather Surprenant of Barnard to try to craft a legislative workaround to the Act 250 contretemps involving a potential amendment to the Act 181 bill passed by lawmakers last year.
Major is the vice chair of the Vermont Senate Agriculture Committee and Surprenant holds the same role on the House Agriculture Committee. On March 26, Christopher Piana testified before both committees to press his case for exempting multiuse structures on Vermont farms from Act 250’s purview. During his testimony — and in a subsequent newsletter sent to Feast & Field Market supporters, as well as in follow-up conversations with the Standard — Piana articulated the farming collective’s position on the pole barn issue.
The notice of the alleged Act 250 violation “misrepresents the reality of our farm,” Piana wrote in an email on March 31. “The structure is primarily used for agriculture — storing hay, bottles, and farm equipment most of the year — and is only occasionally used [15-20 times in the summer] as covered space for live music,” he continued. “Good design allows for multi-use flexibility — and small farms like ours depend on it.”
Appearing before the lawmakers on March 26, Piana defended the use of the pole barn as a stage for seasonal music performances by stating, “Furthermore, our music programming has never been separate from our agricultural mission. For 15 years, we’ve hosted musicians using a sliding-scale donation model, the low end of which was zero dollars for many years and is now $5, keeping access open to all. This isn’t commercial entertainment — it’s an expression of agricultural life, fostering community connection and ensuring the survival of small farms like ours.” Piana pointed out to the legislators that virtually all the agricultural products sold at and the food served at the Feast & Field gatherings is produced by one or more of the three farms in the Fable Collective.
“It is important that Act 181 reflects these realities,” Piana said in speaking before both the Senate and House Agriculture Committees. “I propose to clarify Act 181 by crafting an amendment that exempts multiuse structures primarily used for farming or accessory on-farm businesses from requiring an Act 250 permit,” Piana offered. “We live in a world of nuance and this amendment would provide necessary flexibility for those of us genuinely making a living from farming and enriching rural communities, while ensuring that unrestricted event spaces do not proliferate under the guise of agriculture,” the Barnard farmer, wine and cidermaker averred.
In the wake of Christopher Piana’s appearance before legislators late last month, Senate Agriculture Committee Vice Chair Major has stepped up to take a strong role in fostering a potential legislative solution to the Fable Collective’s pole barn issues with the Act 250 enforcers. Contacted Monday morning during the customary one-day-per-business-week break from the busy legislative wranglings at the State House, Major spoke about the potential solution to the Fable Collective dilemma that he is attempting to craft.
“I’ve been working with Senator Clarkson to try to solve this issue — and one of the entities we’ve also been working with is the Vermont Land Use Review Board — the former NRB,” Major said Monday morning. “We are looking at this issue a little differently from working through Act 181. I am currently working with the [Office of] Legislative Counsel to draft an amendment to our annual miscellaneous agricultural bill to be able to have exemptions for events, so that every time you had an event at a farm location, it would be covered.
“Take Fable Farm, for example,” Major continued. “Let’s say they have 10 events — they’d basically have to apply for permits for those events and there would be a process that would be very easy for them to do that,” the lawmaker explained. “This would seem to be the easiest way to solve this issue, because it’s a small number of events that are likely to be held just several times a year and a stage is not the main use for that pole barn. The main use is for agriculture for most of the year. This is more of a commonsense thing than anything else.”
Under the amendment to the annual agriculture appropriations bill that Major is proposing, applications for permits for concerts, theatrical performances and other special events on farms with Act 250 exemptions would have to be filed with the recently formed Land Use Review Board, which has assumed the oversight and enforcement roles of the former NRB. Major concluded during Monday’s conversation that he hoped to propose a viable legislative solution to the question of agriculture-related ancillary events on Vermont farms within the next week or two.