Community

Some say that Thanksgiving, with its emphasis on gratitude, family, and food, might be the most beloved holiday of the year. Though each family celebrates in their own unique way, certain themes are woven into the fabric of this special...

When Jenna Howlett, the recently crowned Miss Vermont Teen USA 2019, travels around the country to compete in pageants, the first question in the interview segment is always the same: “What’s it like to live on a farm?” And Jenna always responds: “It’s a lot of fun. I get to work...

“You never know where life will lead you,” chuckles Lorraine Stuart Merrill, a working dairy farmer in Stratham, New Hampshire who is also closing in on a decade as the state’s Commissioner of Agriculture. “There was no grand career plan...

Back in 2009, nine-year-old Beck Johnson of Sunapee, New Hampshire had a dream. Like lots of kids, he dreamt of ice cream—but in this case, he wanted to make it, not just eat it. The young man—the tenth generation farming...

The 225 students at The Putney School in southern Vermont drink some of the freshest milk around. They also play a major role in producing it through their work with the school’s 35-cow dairy herd. Milk is far from the...

Newmont Farm already plays a big role in their community of Fairlee, Vermont. This weekend marks their fifth annual Open Farm event during which they will welcome hundreds of visitors to peek behind the scenes of a 21st Century dairy.  “A lot of people drive by...

Margaret Gladstone grew up on a Vermont dairy farm and loved everything about it. “I was driving a tractor at 8 years old,” she recalls. “It was very family-oriented. We all worked together.” But, she says, her father encouraged her...

It was 1919 when 94 central Vermont farmers joined forces to turn their surplus milk into butter. Each contributed $5 per cow and one cord of wood to fuel the cooperative venture in a creamery in the small town of...

Fall is farmer Steve McCray’s favorite season, even though he barely has the time to appreciate it. “It’s just beautiful here with Mount Tom in the background,” he says of the western Massachusetts farm his parents, Don and Gertrude, bought...

The Orleans County Fair in northeastern Vermont has all the classic activities: tractor, oxen, pony and horse pulls; 4-H show competitions; a bustling poultry and rabbit house and prize-winning homegrown vegetable displays. Like other similar agriculture fairs, it is an...

Jon Lucas grew up in New Hampshire helping out on his family’s small beef and hay operation. It was not their main source of income, but slowly and surely it directed him towards what would become his. He chose to...

Every Cabot farm is unique in some way, but Don Kimball manages a member farm that he believes is among the last of its kind. Grafton County Farm in North Haverill is part of a New Hampshire county jail operation...