Barbara graduated with a BS in Wildlife Management from the University of New Hampshire in 1977. After a short stint in teaching wildlife courses and working on a prescribed burn project, she and her husband started a dairy farm, eventually settling on a farm in eastern New York. During the 20+ years of farming, Barbara worked at the then Soil Conservation Service, now Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). She worked in the local NY field office assisting other farmers with water quality and soil erosion issues.
She attended graduate school at the State University of New York to obtain a degree in geography with an emphasis in Geographic Information Systems. Before completing the degree, she was offered a promotion within NRCS to be the GIS Specialist in the State office in Amherst, MA. Since their children were not coming home to the farm, she and her husband sold the dairy farm in NY and ‘downsized’ to 150 acres of FLT-protected land in Ashfield.
She later became the state program manager for all NRCS Farm Bill Programs in Massachusetts and supervised a staff to administer most of these. She personally managed the Federal farmland protection program, which allowed her great insight into the workings of the state APR program and working with land trusts.
Since retiring, she has focused more on gardening, forest management, volunteering, and watching grandchildren develop, and traveling, not necessarily in that order.