By promoting environmentally friendly practices and providing a sustainable alternative for wood furniture buyers, we hope to do our part to help preserve and protect one of our planet’s more valuable resources.
The creatures that soar in the air, displaying their orange, black and white patterned wings known as the Monarch butterfly, are now few and far between in Vermont.
The Monarch population has dropped 90 percent in North America and Mexico, according to Peggy Farabaugh, founder of Vermont Woods Studios. The monarchs cannot survive without milkweed plants. As caterpillars they only eat milkweed plants and as butterflies, they need milkweed to lay their eggs.
In late May our pods filled with milkweed seeds started to sprout. While some will be given away during our Save the Monarchs Tour with Jose Luis Alvarez and planted here at our showroom, we wanted to allow those interested to have a chance to stop by and pick up a few pods for their homes. If properly cared for common milkweed can reach heights as high as 7 feet.
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Rock stars like Maroon 5, Guster, Mick Jagger, Willie Nelson, Sting, Jason Mraz & Dave Matthews are bringing attention to rainforest conservation… hooray!
Our friends at the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and REVERB have teamed up with rock stars the likes of Maroon 5, Guster, Mick Jagger, Willie Nelson, Sting, Jason Mraz, Dave Matthews, Deborah Harry and dozens of other musicians to bring attention to a subject that’s at the core of our mission at Vermont Woods Studios:
It’s Field Trip Time For the Kids at Vernon Elementary School
Every Vermonter looks forward to the sound of Spring Peepers (those little green frogs that sing their hearts out) in March and April, signalling that Spring is finally here. And if you haven’t already investigated where those sounds are coming from, well you really need to get started. For the last few years, Vermont Woods Studios has been affording this opportunity to the third graders at our local school, Vernon Elementary. They get to spend some time outdoors in the forest and we get to go along for the ride. It’s great fun!
A monarch butterfly on it’s favorite source of food and habitat. Learn how to plant milkweed & save the monarch from extinction. Photo by Elizabeth Howard, founder of Journey North.
Calling all nature nuts and monarch butterfly enthusiasts! You can help save the beautiful orange & black monarch butterfly from extinction. It’s easy and you can do it no matter where you live, whether that’s a Manhattan apartment, a suburban ranch or an organic horse farm in Vermont.
Jose Luis Alvarez has devoted his life to conserving monarch habitat in Mexico. He’s traveling to Vermont this summer to help us conserve the butterfly’s habitat here in New England.
I’m super excited today because our friend Jose Luis Alvarez is coming to visit Vermont this fall to collaborate with us on a project to help save the Monarch butterfly. Jose Luis is a silviculturist in Mexico who has devoted his life to restoring the forested winter habitat of the Monarch. Last month I traveled to Michoacan, Mexico to meet Jose Luis & see his work. I love Monarchs & we’ve been conserving their summer habit here in Vermont for many years so I thought maybe we should collaborate and get some Vermont-Mexico synergy going!
Last week I visited Michoacan, Mexico, the winter home to Vermont’s big, beautiful orange and black Monarch butterfly. As a wood furniture company we at Vermont Woods Studios wanted to support a reforestation project that would help protect the endangered butterfly’s habitat. I did quite a bit of research, trying to understand who was leading area environmental efforts and then I traveled to Mexico to see if we could help them.
A freak spring storm just struck Michoacan, Mexico leaving a foot of snow & putting the future of the Monarch Butterfly in jeopardy. Can the species survive the snow and cold? Photo courtesy of Homero Gomez Gonzalez, Chairman at the el Rosario Monarch Sanctuary.
Believe it or not that’s why our small business was born. We’re not a furniture company that “went green”. Vermont Woods Studios was actually a product of my mid-life crisis/desire to make a difference in this world. Weird, right? For some people it’s all about fast cars, loud motorcycles, sex, drugs or rock & roll. For me it was about forest conservation. It’s a long story (which I did tell to Laura Dunn of the Huffington Post, in the remote case you may be interested) but the point is:
The World Is Losing It’s Forests
Many people may not see it as a big deal but if you somehow found your way to this quirky green blog, there’s a good chance you’ll be concerned about these statistics:
More than half of the world’s 193 countries have already lost 90% or more of their forest cover
Rainforests that once covered 14% of the earth’s land surface now cover a mere 6%, yet they are home to over half the species of plants and animals in the world
We are losing the rainforest at the rate of 1.5 acres every second
Experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be gone from this earth before you are
We sell furniture made of sustainably harvested North American hardwoods in an effort to keep rainforest trees in the ground and out of the timber trade. The idea is to conserve habitat for endangered species like the tiger as well as indigenous peoples.
So We’re Trying to Help
Last year we celebrated our 10th year in business. Since 2005 we’ve planted about 7500 trees, many of them through The Nature Conservancy’s Plant a Billion Trees project. More importantly we’ve kept a similar number of rare rainforest trees out of the furniture market as we’ve used only sustainably harvested North American trees. Who is responsible for this progress? You… our customers, our readers and our partners. Your support enables us to throw our energy into environmental projects we think are important and for that we are immensely grateful.
Monarch butterflies over-winter in oyamel trees in Mexico but illegal logging has almost entirely wiped out their forest habitat. Over the past 20 years the monarch population has declined by 90 percent. So we’re supporting LCHPP and the reforestation of monarch habitat in Mexico. It’s an exciting project which I invite you to follow on this blog.
Planting Trees in Mexico
Recently we’ve focused our support on a tree-planting project called the La Cruz Habitat Protection Program LCHPP in Michoacan Mexico. This is a reforestation initiative that I discovered during my efforts to help save the Monarch Butterfly, which is native to Vermont but it over-winters in sunny Mexico. I wrote about it recently and will be visiting LCHPP’s project in Mexico next week. Stay tuned for a full report. Anyway…
Conservation Matters To Our Customers, Partners & Staff
Does it matter to you? Post your thoughts on our Facebook or contact me directly at peggy@VermontWoodsStudios.com. I want to know what you think. Thanks for reading!
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This is the El Rosario Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve I’ll be visiting next week. It’s a World Heritage Site that provides over-wintering for almost the entire gene pool of the monarch butterfly. It is under assault by illegal loggers. Photo courtesy of El Rosario Monarch Butterfly Preserve.
At 7am on Sunday morning I’ll be boarding a flight to Morelia, Mexico. Woohoo! The trip evolved out of my obsession with forest conservation and the Monarch Butterfly. If you’re a frequent flyer on this blog, you’ve probably noticed we love environmental projects like this.
The other day, Megan (our ace Marketing Maven) suggested I try to boil down some of my previous blogs and summarize why a Vermont furniture store would want to help save the Monarch Butterfly. So here goes… the Top 4 reasons are:
The Environment Is Important To Us
It’s not just me. At Vermont Woods Studios we are a community of nature lovers, idealists, world travelers and outdoor enthusiasts. Most of us grew up in rural places and have had much interaction with butterflies, birds and other critters throughout our lives. Monarchs are such a big, beautiful butterfly! They were everywhere in Vermont. It used to be practically a right of passage for kids to collect them and watch their metamorphosis every August. Now they are extremely rare and we worry about that.
The Environment Is Important To Our Customers
Our customers have many options as to where they buy their furniture. Often times they tell us that when it comes to the final decision, with all else being equal, they are looking for an environmentally responsible company. We are trying to live up to that.
We Want to Change the World
Margaret Mead said: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
Getting a paycheck is not enough for all the hard work that goes into making this Vermont furniture store a success. We want to feel like our efforts matter. Like there’s a purpose behind our work.
Milkweed. We’ve been restoring Monarch habitat in Vermont. But what difference will that make if the butterflies lose their over-wintering habitat in Mexico?
Changing the world is a little hard to get our arms around though. But we can change a little part of it: like restoring habitat for the Monarchs. And that’s totally possible because in Vermont, Monarch habitat is primarily one plant, milkweed. It’s easy… we collect milkweed seeds in the Fall and plant them in the Spring. This year we’re hoping to have a sizable plot of milkweed habitat in the backyard here at Stonehurst.
We Believe Business Has a Responsibility to Make the World a Better Place
With our business behind us (founded on the mission of forest conservation) we don’t have to stop at planting milkweed in Vermont. We can extend our conservation efforts. We know that Monarchs don’t spend their winters here– they migrate to Mexico and roost in evergreen (oyamel) trees in the mountains of Michoacan. Those oyamel trees are being illegally logged and the Monarch’s habitat is disappearing.
What difference does it make if we restore their habitat here in Vermont? The species will still go extinct if they lose their winter habitat. So that brings me back to my trip to Mexico. I’ll be working with Jose Luis Alvarez of the La Cruz Habitat Protection Program to help conserve existing forest habitat and replant what’s been destroyed. You can find details here in last week’s blog. By the way, there’s still time to join me on this adventure!
I’d love to hear what you think about butterflies, business and changing the world. Please comment on Facebook or in the section below. Thanks for reading.
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The creatures that soar in the air, displaying their orange, black and white patterned wings known as the Monarch butterfly, are now few and far between in Vermont.
