Rachel Dandeneau is a professor of environmental science at White Mountains Community College in Berlin, New Hampshire, not far from where she grew up. She also chairs WMCC’s STEM and Advanced Manufacturing Department and is an advisor for the Environmental Science program and the Conservation Law Enforcement program. On the side, she manages her own small woodlot, as well as a small herd of goats and a large garden. Just down the road from where she spent her childhood, Dandeneau is raising her own two boys and fostering a strong connection to the landscape around them.
I definitely grew up in the woods. We lived in Milan (New Hampshire) when I was little, but my parents own a parcel in Dummer, and that is where I really grew up. My grandparents lived right across the street, my aunt and uncle lived right down the road. My parents built a house there over the course of several years, and we moved in when I was in 8th grade. Growing up, I had something like 120 acres of land to just play on. My grandparents have a sugar orchard, and I have a lot of great memories there. My dad has maintained trails on his property for snowshoeing and cross-country skiing. I know those woods like the back of my hand.
In September of 2015, I bought my house and this parcel in Stark and just fell in love with it. I have 37 acres, about 27 of which is woodlot. From my parents’ doorstep to my doorstep is exactly one mile. So, we live right down the road from my folks and my grandparents and another aunt. I have two boys, a 4-year-old and 1-year-old, and we are outside a ton, even if it’s just a quick walk around our property. The moment we had enough snow, we were out sledding. There are a lot of mornings where we go out and take a couple of runs before I take them to my mother’s for the day. It’s so good for them, and it’s so good for us as a family to just get out and get that fresh air.
My family and I have always worked hard and played hard together. When I was a kid, my mom managed a farm stand for my grandparents, who had several acres of vegetables. During the summer, my sister and I did a lot of helping with that, too. Even at 6 and 7 years old, we were the ones running the cash register. I have a really clear memory of my grandmother, with her hands chapped from working, teaching us how to count back change.
My father is small scale, self-employed logger and has been his whole life. It’s him and a John Deere 640D cable skidder and chain saws. He’s in the woods all day long, every day. When we were really little, we would bring a picnic lunch to wherever my father was working. Part of his logging business is firewood. When I was around 10 years old, we started doing firewood to sell. Year-round, most Saturdays were devoted to doing many cords of firewood. Last year my parents did over 100 cords of firewood by hand – no firewood processor. They are just amazingly hard workers.
We had lots of adventures when I was a kid. We fished. We hiked. My sister is about a year older than I am, and my brother is 12 years younger. When he was little, we would do these overnight camping trips up in the Kilkennys. We’d go hiking in with our big packs – no tent, just a tarp that we’d lay over some boughs and string up with rope, and we’d cook over the fire. A lot of this was not on trails, it was bushwhacking. My father took us on these adventures that were sometimes ludicrous. And we’d go every time, because we knew it would end up being a great memory and we’d have fun.
All through junior high and most of high school, I thought I was going to be a farmer. I was going to go to UNH to get an agriculture or horticulture degree of some kind. I grew up doing a lot of farming with my grandparents, and I really, really love farming. In the second half of my junior year of high school, I took an Introduction to Ecology class. When it came to the science, my teacher got me hook, line, and sinker. I always really enjoyed science, but ecology is so much cooler than biology if you’re an outdoors person, because it really applies science to the natural world around you. That changed me, and I decided to go to school and be an environmental science major.
During college, I worked as a summer seasonal employee for the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department in the fisheries division. That was in 2007 and I worked for them for five summers. I ended up doing my research project for my master’s degree with New Hampshire Fish and Game as part of a great big restoration project in the Nash Stream State Forest. My data collection for my thesis was one little part of that big project.
The job that I have right now is one of my two dream jobs. Teaching is really where my passion is. My other dream job would be a fisheries biologist. This fall I taught dendrology and tree and shrub ID, introduction to environmental issues, and environmental sampling and analysis. This spring I’m teaching introduction to environmental science, forestry resources, and a chemistry course. Other classes I’ve taught are conservation biology, environmental projects classes, and geology and soils.
One of my biggest goals as a teacher, partly because of how my progression through college worked, is to incorporate a lot of field work into my classes. Field work is what really got me jazzed. You’re out there catching fish, you’re putting tags on them, you’re weighing them and measuring, taking water quality samples. That’s the cool stuff. Most of the classes I teach are 4-credit lab courses, but we do all of our lab work in the field. We’re working with Fish and Game. We visit my dad’s logging jobs almost all winter. I’ve worked with small scale lumber mills, toured the biomass plant, we’ve worked with the White Mountain National Forest folks. I’ve gotten really good feedback from our graduates that the fieldwork experience is what got them into a technician position or a really good internship.
I think right now my favorite classes to teach are the forestry courses. This fall I had five stellar students in my dendrology and tree and shrub ID class. For nine straight weeks we were in the field for 4 hours every Thursday afternoon. I’ve been doing this for a decade and a half, and I’m still learning. One thing about beaked hazelnut I learned this year is that it has male and female parts on the same shrub, and there’s this little, tiny thing at the base of the catkin that turns into a blossom in the spring, and I’m in the field learning this stuff almost with my students. I just feel really jazzed about that stuff right now.
In the last three years, because I’ve been on my woodlot more, I have started to love little pockets on my own woodlot. This fall, with my dendrology class, we spent a lot of time there, and I discovered I have this gorgeous witch hazel shrub that I didn’t even know was there. I also discovered this huge patch of mayflower in a spot out in the middle of the woods, and I’m so excited to see if it blooms in the spring, if it’s got enough sunlight. In my forestry resources class last year, I used my woodlot as a case study. I created a whole portfolio about the acreage and the different species and overview maps with different stands labeled. All of the content we were talking about in lectures could be connected to a specific part of the woodlot. Getting to know my woodlot more has enriched my teaching, because I have such concrete examples to give students. I’ve also, sort of by default, had to become familiar with the more economic side of forestry. And it’s been really cool to incorporate some of that stuff into my classes.
I always knew I wanted to own my own property and I wanted to do some farming and that forests and woods were going to be part of my life. I try to model to my students that you don’t have to own 450 acres or have land that’s passed down to you in order to do these things. You can do it on your own. I think that’s really important, especially for single people, to know. I don’t have a 500-acre parcel. I have 37 acres, but it has all the things that I really want, and probably all the things I really can handle.
I bought this property 5 years ago. The first couple of years you have a property, you’re kind of getting to know it, getting your feet under you. It all used to be farmland. I have some pines on this property that are just tremendous – 120-140 years old. You can’t fit two people’s arms around the base of these pines. That obviously has market value, but also has intrinsic value staying right where it is. About two years ago, my dad and I walked the woodlot together, marked the boundary lines, and he asked what I wanted to do when it came to harvesting. My goal was to be able to clear some of the blowdowns so we can get through the woodlot, to provide firewood for my house for a few years, and take down some of the big pines, because the mills were taking big pines at the time. And I want to have some trails to be able to snowshoe and cross-country ski and walk through. I’m also thinking a little bit about wildlife management and trying to keep some diversity. It’s largely softwood, so I’ve thought a lot about how I can introduce a little more diversity for wildlife.
I do some farming, really just for personal production. I have a small herd of four female goats. They’re a dwarf breed. They have really mild milk, really high butter fat content, which is great for cheese making. They were a hobby for a little while, but this year my little herd went from just truly hobby to me being able to sell milk to folks in my neighborhood. My tiny micro-dairy produced enough milk – 3 to 5 gallons per week – to pay for the entire year of hay for my little farm. I raise a batch of turkeys one year and do a batch of meat chickens the next. I have laying hens all the time for eggs. I have an eight-tree apple orchard. I have a garden, and I would say I grow between 30 and 50 percent of the produce that my little family eats throughout the year.
On the very lowest corner of my property, where my boundary line runs perpendicularly into Phillips Brook, we found this perfect spot for a campsite. I asked my family to come spend a day with me – my dad, my mom, my sister, my brother, and my two boys – and bring chainsaws down and rakes. In four or five hours, we made this campsite. We did a big overnight there in the spring and another one on Labor Day. Falling asleep with my boys on either side of me and hearing the brook right there – I’m going to have a lot of really good memories of me and my boys on this spot.
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