Monday, Nov. 20, 2017

Page 1

MONDAY EDITION

ADDISON COUNTY

INDEPENDENT

Vol. 29 No. 31

Festival goes to the dogs • Town Hall Theater will screen the Bow Wow Film Festival this Saturday. See Arts Beat on Page 10.

Middlebury, Vermont

Monday, November 20, 2017

32 Pages

$1.00

Turkey producers reach the home stretch Tens of thousands of birds raised By GAEN MURPHREE ORWELL — Two thousand five hundred turkeys gobble as they mill about in one of Stonewood Farm’s eight massive turkey barns. Up in front is a pen of huge critters that will each yield a 50-pound bird, once roasted. Imagine that on your Thanksgiving table (and the oven that could hold it!). A little over a week before Thanksgiving, Orwell’s Stonewood Farm is going full speed, close to 12 hours a day, seven days a week to

process the 22,000 birds raised for this year’s Turkey Day. Stonewood’s turkeys are raised, slaughtered, processed and packaged on the farm. In large refrigerated rooms, thousands of turkeys now wait in cardboard boxes — labeled by weight, some shrink-wrapped onto palettes — to be packed into a waiting distributor’s truck and make their way to grocery stores around New England. The Middlebury Natural Foods Coop will soon make its annual drive to the farm to pick up this year’s turkey order. And many longtime customers will simply come to the farm themselves to get their

bird and take it straight home to the refrigerator. Looking at the semis parked outside Stonewood’s loading dock early last week, Stonewood founder Paul Stone (now ostensibly retired) reflected that in an earlier time some turkeys even walked to market. “They used to make them walk all the way to Boston,” he said. “You’ve heard of the town Goose Green? You know why it’s called that? Because they used to drive turkeys and geese to Boston. The turkeys and the geese would spend the night on the green, so that’s why it was called (See Turkeys, Page 14)

Cut a tree in the national forest • The U.S. Forest Service is offering $5 permits for Christmas tree removal. See Page 13.

Panther men’s hoop debuts • The reigning NESCAC champs hosted a four-team tournament this weekend. See the results on Pages 18-19. MORE THAN 2,000 turkeys fill a barn at Stonewood Farm in Orwell. The farm is raising 22,000 turkeys for Thanksgiving this year.

Independent photo/Trent Campbell

New venture to turn manure and food waste into energy Learn about this mysterious canine

• Naturalist Sue Morse will share photos and insights into Vermont’s coyotes. See Page 21.

By JOHN FLOWERS area’s biggest organizations, MIDDLEBURY — A “My job is to make sure including the Agri-Mark/ Salisbury farm will soon be that everyone in Vermont Cabot cheese making plant in turning on-site cow manure never looks at a halfMiddlebury. and Addison County food eaten piece of pizza the “My job is to make sure that waste into renewable energy same way again.” everyone in Vermont never that will push Middlebury looks at a half-eaten piece of — John Hanselman College’s campus beyond its pizza the same way again,” goal of carbon neutrality. John Hanselman joked to those The Goodrich Farm will host a Farm Powered- assembled at the project unveiling at Middlebury brand anaerobic digester that will, on a daily basis, College’s Kirk Alumni Center on Thursday. process 100 tons of manure from the 900-cow Hanselman is CEO of Vanguard Renewables, farm off Shard Villa Road and 165 tons of organic the Wellesley, Mass., company that is equipping (See Digester, Page 17) food waste per day from some of the Middlebury

COWS LIKE THESE at the Goodrich Farm in Salisbury will produce some of the fuel that will be converted into gas for heating. Middlebury College photo/Todd Balfour


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