Before you draft a profile on a matchmaking website, it’s crucial to decide what you’re looking for and your deal-breakers. Once you connect with a potential match, questions inevitably arise: Are you more interested in suburban or rural living? Do you own a tractor? Would you rather have goats, sheep, cows or all three?
OK, these may not be the queries you’d encounter on a Tinder or Hinge date. But you might if you strike up a conversation through Vermont Land Link.
Founded in the early 2000s under the auspices of University of Vermont Extension, the program was designed to match growers and producers seeking property with landowners who wanted their acreage to be used for agriculture or forestry, whether through a long-term lease or outright sale.
Former UVM Extension employee Ben Waterman took charge of the project in 2005. Originally, said Waterman, who is no longer involved with Land Link, the service was managed laboriously by hand. Its first coordinator, Debra Heleba, took detailed paper notes during interviews with land seekers and personally made phone calls to prospective matches.
When he took the project’s helm, Waterman recalled, “It became pretty clear that we were overwhelmed with inquiries and we weren’t able to do all of the work to make the matches.” The solution? Go digital, automating portions of the cumbersome process. With funding and support from the Vermont Farm Access Network, Tamarack media cooperative built the original Vermont Land Link website.
These days, the website is managed by Burlington’s nonprofit Intervale Center, which took the reins from UVM in 2016 and launched a long-awaited upgrade in January, funded by a Working Lands Enterprise Initiative grant from the state. The new site, which allows profiles to be more expansive and intricate, will better meet the changing needs of farm seekers and property owners.
Or that’s the hope of Intervale Center farm business director Sam Smith, who recently found himself in charge of Land Link after Nikki Lennart, a farm business specialist who was instrumental in building the new site, left the Intervale. In the 10 years he’s held his role at the Intervale, Smith said, he’s noticed “a shifting in the type of land access opportunities” folks are seeking. Increased land values and “challenges around access and capital” have made it harder for farmers to buy land outright, as have the difficulties of “making a livable income out of farming.”
Without charging a penny, Vermont Land Link serves a wide range of potential land users and owners, from a group looking to set up long-term communal arrangements to someone studying how working dogs communicate with herds to someone who wants a medicinal herb garden. By allowing users to consider alternative arrangements beyond leases and sales, Smith explained, the new version of Vermont Land Link will better assist farmers, whether beginners or those with more experience, as well as folks who have land to share.
“We conducted a really intensive survey of the users of the former site before we put the [new] site together and integrated that feedback into it,” Smith said.
After a great deal of thought, Smith noted, and in an effort to avoid outdated information, the work group decided to wipe existing Land Link listings before launching the new site. A farmer who was seeking space 10 years ago and already discovered their heart’s desire might never have removed their old profile. Now, every listing represents a current searcher — around 15 landowners and nearly 30 farmers as of press time.
Farmer Vince Foy, 67, who owns Badger Brook Meats in Danville with his wife, Deb Yonker, is in the process of working up a new listing. It will detail ways in which the couple are open to sharing their land, the management of an on-site farm store, their longtime customer list and, potentially, some labor.
The modernized Land Link profile builder, Foy said, allows for added flexibility and more in-depth explanations than its previous incarnation. In addition to cataloging how many barns the property holds and which pieces of farm equipment he’s willing to let others use, Foy noted, the new site has room for nuance.
For instance, he can express his interest in having someone help with his beef, pork and lamb operation as a learning opportunity; start their own, complementary animal project on the land; or do something entirely different, such as grow vegetables. With 482 acres to work with — some leased but most owned by Foy and Yonker — there’s plenty of space to go around and ample room for creativity.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the state in Charlotte, experienced farm manager Ian Johnson is using Land Link as a farm seeker. Though he recently accepted a job outside his field, he’s still casually looking for opportunities that might arise nearby.
After going through UVM’s Farmer Training Program in 2016, interning at the Farm & Wilderness Foundation in Plymouth, making cheese at von Trapp Farmstead, and working in other grazing and management-related jobs, Johnson feels ready to helm his own large-scale meat business, but he hasn’t been able to make it happen.
“For me, the biggest obstacle as far as starting a farm is financial … that’s really been the biggest hurdle,” he explained.
Vermont Land Link, he went on, “provides an alternative for land access, which is really attractive. I think it’s a great goal that they have, but lightning has to strike.”
That is to say, for any given farmer, the likelihood of finding a specific arrangement of land and infrastructure, in a part of the state that is workable for them and their family, is statistically improbable. Nevertheless, it does happen.
Margaret Aiken, 47, owner of Flower Gap Farm and goat dairy in Charlotte, is one of the lucky ones. Through the previous incarnation of Vermont Land Link, she learned that Roelof Boumans and Tiny Sikkes, owners of a 14-acre property just down the road from where she was living, were seeking a steward to cohabitate, maintain their pastures and use their 10,000-square-foot barn.
Aiken had purchased Nigerian dwarf goats when she lived in Virginia and brought them with her to Vermont in 2017. During the pandemic, she sold yogurt and cheese from a fridge in her garage and watched her sales double every year.
She knew her business had potential, but purchasing a suitable farm property outright was out of the question, and she’d need a facility that met strict requirements for her products to be U.S. Department of Agriculture Grade A certified. In 2021, she’d connected with another property owner on Land Link and worked with her extensively before their agreement imploded, leaving her discouraged.
“I can’t imagine farming and not having this support network around me.” Margaret Aiken
When she found Boumans, 68, and Sikkes, 66, she said, she had little hope that things would pan out. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to afford property in Vermont,” Aiken said. “This was kind of a last-ditch effort. I was very skeptical.”
The couple, who are originally from the Netherlands, placed a listing on Vermont Land Link in the hopes of “bringing back the energy” of sharing their home and farm with others, Boumans said.
They’d spent 2004 to 2014 involved in the extensive project of raising a 10,000-square-foot, eco-friendly straw bale home while also working and producing nearly all of their own food. The build involved hosting a series of friends, helpers and interns to aid with construction.
In 2014, when Sikkes was diagnosed with colon cancer, the couple slowed down, but they missed having people around. Since they don’t have children, they began to think about who would maintain their beloved home into the future.
“We were hoping to find somebody with a heart and soul who would want to take care of the land,” Boumans said. “Someone who would have a good eye on how to manage it, how to get all of the products and the fertility and care for the trees we planted and the pastures we nurtured into the next generation.”
Just two months after they posted their Land Link listing, in March 2024, Aiken reached out, Boumans recalled. Three months later, she moved in.
For Aiken, Boumans and Sikkes, the hardest part of crafting the Land Link agreement was dealing with money details and creating legal protection for both parties in the case of complex or unforeseen circumstances.
Aiken, who spent her own money to renovate the barn into a legal goat dairy, will become the land’s trustee if Boumans and Sikkes die. For now, she’s not a property owner, although she does have a long-term lease on the barn.
That barn holds Aiken’s new USDA-inspected milking parlor and processing plant, which includes refrigeration, pasteurization equipment and a place to incubate yogurt. She sells her products at the Burlington Farmers Market, on-site at a farmstand and at nearby Philo Ridge Farm, whose owners are her former employers.
The 28 goats in Aiken’s herd produce milk higher in butterfat than most goats’ milk, with a more delicate flavor. She hopes eventually to increase the herd to 60 or 80 head and, through scaling up, be able to hire help.
Although Land Link allowed Aiken to create a business that might otherwise never have existed, the new professional farmer still faces plenty of challenges. For instance, she’s working 100 to 120 hours per week.
“That’s down from kidding season,” she noted. “There’s no work-life balance right now.”
Nevertheless, Aiken is delighted that she overcame her fears and took a second look at Vermont Land Link. “I feel so good about where I landed,” she said. “Now, I can’t imagine farming and not having this support network around me. If I’d been closed off to the idea, I never would have ended up here.”
Boumans, who began building the straw bale house after a devastating fire destroyed the land’s original farmhouse, shared a similar sentiment: “You need collapse before you can build something new.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Cultivating Connection | With a newly modernized website, Vermont Land Link pairs farmers with landowners”
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