Some of Jason Struthers’ ducks mingle in his Essex Junction backyard in fall 2023. File photo by Charlotte Oliver/CNS
Charlotte Oliver is a reporter with Community News Service, part of the University of Vermont’s Reporting & Documentary Storytelling program.
Jason Struthers makes a living selling the cannabis he’s licensed to grow in his half-acre backyard in Essex Junction — but his growing and raising of ducks on his property has gotten him into tiffs with neighbors and tangled in legal ambiguity.
In August, Vermont Superior Court Judge Thomas Walsh sought to put the question over the Taft Street backyard to rest, siding with Struthers after the Essex Junction resident sued when local officials tried to ban him from raising ducks last year. But now an appeal from Struthers’ neighbors could call the ruling — and legal precedent — into question again.
It seems straightforward to next-door neighbors Stephen and Sharon Wille Padnos, who say they shouldn’t have to smell Struthers’ cannabis or hear his ducks in their residential neighborhood. In turn, it seems straightforward to Struthers, who has legal permission from the state to farm and cultivate in his yard.
Struthers sees his ducks as essential to his cannabis farming because he uses their manure to fertilize his plants, he told Community News Service last year. He sells their eggs, along with vegetables he grows, and says he meets the standard to legally label his operation a farm.
Walsh, of the Vermont Superior Court’s environmental division, determined in August that Essex Junction officials can’t regulate Struthers’s farming or his cannabis growing because both are protected by state law. It was the first time the court had ruled on the two legal issues at hand, Walsh wrote in court documents.
When city officials barred Struthers from raising ducks, they misconstrued language in laws about agriculture regulation in a way that “would upend” longstanding practices in Vermont, Walsh wrote in an Aug. 7 decision.
Jason Struthers of Essex Junction holds a young duck in his backyard. Struthers’ ducks and his cannabis growing operation have been the subject of controversy in his neighborhood. Photo by Charlotte Oliver/CNS
Now the Wille Padnos family is appealing the decision, opening up the case for review again.
“I am very confident,” said Struthers, explaining he thinks the court will rule in his favor one more time.
But neighbors are still upset he’s allowed to farm and grow weed when he lives in an area zoned as residential by the city.
“It’s been pretty tough,” Wille Padnos said, explaining that his wife didn’t want to be outside in their yard for a long time, so they paid to put up a new tall fence between the properties. In the past year the couple’s same qualms over the smell and sound still stand, he said, and not much has changed.
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The saga came to wider attention when the Wille Padnos family and other neighbors complained in an Essex Junction Developmental Review Board meeting in September 2023. The city tried to stop his operation — before deciding they couldn’t fight his growing license from the state and renewing his license ever since.
Then the city’s development review board decided last September that Struthers couldn’t have his ducks in a residential area. Struthers filed a lawsuit contesting the decision, which is what Walsh ruled on this past summer.
In court papers from August, Walsh reasoned that Struthers’ duck raising is exempt from municipal regulation because it is a necessary farming practice protected by state law. The judge also reasoned his weed cultivation is protected by his license and exempt from local regulation.
“It was basically a slam dunk,” Struthers said. But he also said the suit was more than he bargained for. “I want to focus my time on other things,” he said.
Wille Padnos decided to appeal because “it seems wrong,” he said. He and his wife, who both grew up in Vermont and have lived in Essex Junction for years, are thinking about moving out of state if they lose the appeal, he said.
Struthers could be forced to close his operation or relocate in the coming years even if he wins the appeal, once the city takes advantage of a state law passed this June. The law lets municipalities create cannabis cultivation districts for all outdoor cultivators to grow in those zones.
Wille Padnos is hopeful things will go his way. “I hope he can make his business work,” he said of Struthers, “but where he should.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Court appeal coming for Essex Junction weed and ducks case.