SUMMER / FALL 2018 FREE
STOWE G U I D E & M AGA Z I N E
ARTS & EVENTS • DINING • SHOPPING • OUTDOORS • HOME • PEOPLE • THINGS TO DO
SUMMER & FALL ADVENTURES
At Vermont’s Highest Peak
ZIPTOUR & TREETOP ADVENTURES, STOWE ROCKS CLIMBING CENTER, GONDOLA SKYRIDE & HISTORIC AUTO TOLL ROAD
800.253.4SKI | stowe.com
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Seldom Scene Interiors
Wendy Valliere – Principal Designer All Aspects of Interior Design STOWE
BOSTON
2038 Mountain Road, Stowe 05672 www.seldomsceneinteriors.com
802.253.3770
CONTENTS s u m m e r
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features
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Will robots save the family farm? by Robert Kiener
As low milk prices and other challenges beset Vermont’s dairy industry, the third-generation farming Plante family hopes a robotic milking setup will lock in the next generation.
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The big blow: Cady Hill Forest on the rebound by Tommy Gardner
Freak Halloween windstorm decimates part of this popular MTB network. But amid disappointment, opportunity arises.
86
Pictorial: Backyard habitat by Paul Rogers
Photographer sets his lens on common Vermont wildlife, with stunning results.
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Stowe serves world-class warmup by Tommy Gardner
Pro tennis is back! Thanks to Grand Slam Tennis Tours, some of the sport’s top contenders make a pit stop in Stowe to get ready for U.S. Open action.
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Ned Dallas: From slave to Stowe by Julia Shipley
A chance encounter in 1865 with a Union soldier wending his way to Vermont brings a 10-year-old to his a new home.
128
Striking Iron: Shaping objects of beauty out of metal by Kate Carter
Metal. Heat. Flame. Shape. Bend. Two masters take metalsmithing to a whole new level.
162
Outstanding in the Field: A roving culinary adventure
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CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT: GORDON MILLER; GLENN CALLAHAN; PAUL ROGERS; MILLER
by Hannah Marshall
Dine al fresco on superlative cuisine. Stir in a stunning outdoor setting. Invite 150 for dinner ... outstanding!
184
A sense of place: Vicious farm fire by Peter Miller
Author and photojournalist Peter Miller remembers Rosina Wallace and her iconic Vermont farm, lost to fire.
196
From so-so to gee-whiz: Drop-dead views rediscovered by Robert Kiener
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Massachusetts couple reimagines their vacation pad with an eye toward the view—360° style.
220
When pigs fly: Weathervanes as art, culture by Kevin Walsh
CONTENTS 24
Rural Route
Contributors
12
From the editor
18
Goings on
24
Rural route
55
Getting outdoors
63
14
First person: Bucket list
40
Party pix: The Stowe scene
56
On mountain: Enchanted forest
58
Vermont quirky: Guide to the unusual
64
Cool things: Racing sisters, Squier, Duke
66
Trail journal: Gravel grinding
68
Stowe history: Trapp family touring
72
Fish story: Fly fishing 101
114
Road trip: Bridges of Lamoille County
124
Coffee house: Stowe Arts Week
126
Stowe people: Pat Haslam’s big dig
142
Found in Vermont: Shopping list
192
Q&A: Steve Sisler
Galleries, arts, & entertainment
Nuzzo found inspiration from growing up in artsy communities. “I spent my toddler years in Rockport, Mass., watching artists make paintings by the sea. My family then moved to Coronado, Calif., where I was influenced by the beauty of the West Coast and spending time at Balboa Park’s San Diego Museum of Art. Coming to Stowe in 2008, I spent my summers at the Helen Day Art Center where my love and curiosity for the fine art world continued to grow.”
Edibles: Local food & bar scene
GETTING AROUND
6
GETTING OUTDOORS
104
SHOPPING & GALLERIES
144
RESTAURANTS & LODGING
182
REAL ESTATE & HOMES
228
BUSINESSES & SERVICES
240
INDEX TO ADVERTISERS
Gravel grinding
A 2017 graduate of St. Olaf College, with degrees in biology and studio art, Nuzzo, who grew up in Stowe, is building her portfolio in illustration, printmaking, and animation. Currently a productions assistant for Next Day Animations in Minneapolis, Nuzzo spends her spare time at the Walker Art Center as a gallery assistant.
Outdoor primer
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This summer’s cover is “Knee-High by Fourth of July,” gouache and soft pastel, 15"x22.5", 2016, by Jacqueline Nuzzo.
Helen Day Art Center • Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center • Guides to exhibits, music, and mixed media 144
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ON OUR COVER
Rec path • Golf • Swimming holes Hiking • Biking • Paddle sports 104
f a l l
departments
essentials 8
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FROM TOP LEFT: JESSE SCHLOFF; DANIEL JORDAN; LUKE PLINE
s u m m e r
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Jeff Daniels & Ben Daniels Band
“Knee-High By Fourth of July” is inspired by the fields of corn across the street from the artist’s childhood home near Stowe’s Mayo farm. “As a frequent wanderer of the recreation path, this is a scene I enjoy so much and look forward to returning to whenever I visit home. I strive to promote truth in my work by accurately representing my surroundings, but also authentically expressing the emotions that are formed from viewing such a scene. I find that I articulate the emotional nature within each piece through form, movement, and color. View Nuzzo’s work at jacquienuzzo.com.
CONTRIBUTORS
CALEIGH CROSS IN THIS ISSUE: Stowe Motel sells, p.44. Behind the scenes: The Ruschp family is ski royalty in Stowe, but I had no idea how fiercely protective Carolyn Ruschp was over the guests at Stowe Motel, the inn she ran for 40 years. Carolyn told me plenty of stories she didn’t want in print about times she helped guests going through hard times, often reaching into her own pocket or free time to help out. Currently: Cross, a reporter with the Stowe Reporter, News & Citizen and Waterbury Record,
contributes to Stowe Guide & Magazine. At home, she writes poetry, plays the violin, reads obscure 1970s books about the history of the space program, and chases chickens.
HANNAH MARSHALL IN THIS ISSUE: Outstanding in the Field, p.162. Behind the scenes: I’ve had some pretty memorable meals with some really nice views (ethe-
real pasta and wine on a hillside at sunset in Tuscany; tender-crisp calamari and creamy gelato at sunset in Madrid; fresh seafood harborside in Norway at 11 p.m. as the sun didn’t set), but there’s no place like home—Vermont is blessed with some of the most delicious food and the best views anywhere. A dinner at Ploughgate Creamery at the Bragg Farm in Fayston, overlooking the Green Mountains—at sunset—is pretty great on its own, but add in a long table set for 150 by an artist-led nomadic crew arriving on a vintage bus, and you’ve got a recipe for absolute magic. Most memorable takeaway: Parker House rolls slathered with almost indecent amounts of
tangy, creamy butter, flecked with radishes and sea salt. Currently: Managing editor for the Stowe Reporter, Waterbury Record, and News & Citizen, plus Green Mountain Weddings. Next big project: Getting married in June.
TOMMY GARDNER IN THIS ISSUE: Cady Hill Forest rebounds, p.82. Behind the scenes: Stowe may be best known
as a ski resort, but mountain bikers have been picking lines through the same forests for decades, usually under the radar, with near-contiguity from Morrisville to Waterbury. In recent years, trail makers and local single-track riders have shaped the Stowe area into a major draw for mountain biking. A freak Halloween windstorm last year laid flat a third of the trails in the most popular area, Cady Hill Forest. Now, thanks to brow sweat and elbow grease, chainsaws and skidders, the trail network is already on the mend after just one winter. And there’s still a ton of other trail around town to tackle. Currently: News editor for the Stowe Reporter, Waterbury Record, and News & Citizen who long
ago perfected the art of the endo.
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KATE CARTER IN THIS ISSUE: Flashback: Darby Chambers? p.36. Behind the scenes: When I began researching Darby Chambers I didn’t find much, so I started poking around. People referred me to other people who might have remembered her and I began to get a sense of who she was. She was big. She was outspoken. She was brave. She liked a good party and loved her friends, dogs, and evening gowns. She was bigger than life. I began to sense a kindred spirit and I wish I’d known her in person, but alas, she died in 1986, the year I moved to Vermont. Some day I will visit her grave in Stowe and see if I can channel her powers. Or just start wearing large, floral organza hats.
Currently: Kate is a freelance writer and photographer, and when she’s not researching stories
or sitting at her computer, she’s photographing real estate for Vermont Realtors, hiking with her dogs, and digging in her and others’ gardens.
ROB KIENER IN THIS ISSUE: Will robots save the family farm? p.76. Behind the scenes: Watching Randall Plante’s dairy cows as they line up to take their turn at the
Elmore farm’s fully automated, robotic milking machines is like getting a front-row seat at a “Future of Farming” exhibit. Will this high-tech innovation prove to be the salvation of the heavily endangered dairy farm? Like other dairy farmers who have invested in these high-tech robotic milkers, Plante hopes so. “It’s a way of life we are fighting to hang on to,” he says. Most memorable takeaway: For someone who is waging a daily struggle with the
economies of dairy farming, Plante is quick to laugh and joke, often at his own expense. That makes this third-generation dairy farmer all the more appealing, but also proves that he has an important element that will help get him through these uncertain times—-a sense of humor. Currently: Kiener, a frequent contributor to the Stowe Guide & Magazine, has been an editor and staff writer with Reader’s Digest in Asia and Europe, and now writes for the magazine and other publications from his home in Stowe. More at robertkiener.com.
GUIDE & MAGAZINE
Robert M. Miller
Gregory J. Popa
Irene Nuzzo
Gregory J. Popa
Kate Carter, Tommy Gardner, Thomas Kearney, Robert Kiener, and Hannah Marshall
Leslie Lafountain
Ed Brennan, Michael Duran, Lou Kiernan, Bryan Meszkat, and Lisa Stearns
Mitzi Savage
Glenn Callahan & Gordon Miller
Katerina Hrdlicka, Kristen Braley, Bev Mullaney, and Joslyn Richardson
Stuart Bertland, Kate Carter, Orah Moore, Roger Murphy, Paul Rogers, Kevin Walsh
Mark Aiken, Kate Carter, Evan Chismark, Caleigh Cross, Nancy Crowe, Willy Dietrich, Elinor Earle, Tommy Gardner, Robert Kiener, Brian Lindner, Hannah Marshall, Andrew Martin, Peter Miller, Mike Mulhern, Roger Murphy, Julia Shipley, Nancy Wolfe Stead, Kevin Walsh
Stowe Guide & Magazine & Stowe-Smugglers’ Guide & Magazine are published twice a year:
Winter/Spring & Summer/Fall Stowe Reporter LLC P.O. Box 489, Stowe VT 05672 Website: stowetoday.com Editorial inquiries: gpopa@myfairpoint.net Ad submission: ads@stowereporter.com Phone: (802) 253-2101 Fax: (802) 253-8332 Copyright: Articles and photographs are protected by copyright and cannot be used without permission. Editorial submissions are welcome: Stowe Reporter LLC P.O. Box 489, Stowe VT 05672 Publication is not guaranteed. Enclose SASE for return. Subscriptions are $12 per year. Check or money order to Stowe Guide, P.O. Box 489, Stowe, 05672 Advertising inquiries are welcome.
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Best Niche Publication, New England Newspaper & Press Association 2010 through 2017
GREG POPA
FROM THE EDITOR
SUMMER RITUAL Jim Rice visits a herd of heifers on a mountainside meadow in the Cold Hollows.
Brush hog, or bushhog? When I first came to Vermont nearly 40 years ago on a summer road trip with a buddy from Ohio, cows dotted what appeared to be every square inch of green across the state, from Bennington to Montgomery and from Peacham to Athens. Lots of working farms, with their ubiquitous red barns, sheds full of tractors, balers, and spreaders, rambling farmhouses, a clump or two of ancient lilacs, and maybe a few potted geraniums. I miss seeing those cows grazing contentedly on hillside meadows and fertile bottomlands and cow pastures. I miss waiting in a line of cars as a farmer directs her girls across the road, and that cow—you know the one—that just can’t stay in line. I miss following a loaded hay wagon as hay rains down on the windshield. I miss windrows of freshly mown grass and square bales of hay waiting for pickup. But ... cows don’t go outside anymore. Giant, fast-moving trucks now carry massive loads of hay for sileage; no one makes square bales. Jeezum, hardly anyone even bales any more. And, cows that don’t leave the barn don’t need to cross the road. Small, family dairy farms have been going under at a steady rate, nationwide. Over 11,000 farms existed in Vermont in the 1940s. Today, that number is around 750, according to state officials. Low milk prices. Property taxes. Environmental regulation. Mega-farms. Nonsensical federal farm policies. Global competition. The trend is likely to continue, and cows still won’t go outside. Small farmers face intense pressures to increase yields and cut costs. To meet those challenges, farmers find they must keep their cows indoors, 24/7. At least those farmers who hope to survive. We should root for them. Imagine, if every Vermont town added five or ten family farms (hay, veggies, butter, milk, garlic, hemp, cheese) … just imagine. (See “Outstanding in the Field,” p.162.)
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In 2016, The Plante family of Elmore added a robotic milking system to cut labor costs, increase output, and help monitor cow health. “Robotic milkers let each cow decide how often she wants to be milked, milks them via a 3-D camera-guided system, keeps a computerized log that monitors each cow’s yield and health, and tracks any abnormalities in her milk,” according to writer Robert Kiener. (See “Can robots save the family farm,” p.86.)
Occasionally, you can still find a herd munching on grass, that is if you’re lucky enough to live by someone who raises or boards heifers—as pictured above—or a farmer who still pastures his cows. No one seems to have a family cow anymore. For nearly two decades, we raised a handful of Jerseys, and one lucky Hereford, on our little village farm, heading out to the barn by 6 to milk and being home by 6 to do it all over again. We hayed the hillside meadow and bottomland with the help of a reformed farmer who played the fiddle and did people’s taxes. One year he showed up a day early, despite a gig that afternoon to play at the annual bluegrass festival in Belvidere. He wanted to help us beat the impending rain and switched his set with another musician. It only took him two hours to bale and he still had time to jawbone for awhile. (See “Vicious killing farm fire,” p.184, to understand that sort of character.) Today, it’s near impossible to find someone to hay a field. Or even bushhog one. And some day, sadly, it might just be impossible to find a dairy farmer in Vermont. n —Greg Popa
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FIRST PERSON
KAT 14
Stowe Resort
Homes
LUXURY VACATION HOMES FOR THE SAVVY TRAVELER THAT’S IT, I’M GOING SPEND A WHOLE MONTH LIVING IN A YURT AND SURVIVE BY FORAGING JUST LIKE THE VERMONT PIONEERS WHO COPIED THAT BUNCH OF MONGOLIANS. WAIT. DOES FORAGING INCLUDE SNEAKING INTO NEIGHBORS’ HOUSES AT NIGHT AND GRABBING ARMFULS OF BAKED GOODS? NO? I BETTER MAKE IT A WEEK THEN.
Stowe Resort Homes offer: •Many superb homes in Stowe and at Topnotch Resort & Spa
BUCKET LIST Live like your dying, people! I’ve decided I want a terminal illness. You know, the sort of thing that gives you six months to live. Honestly, wouldn’t that be cool? You get that “six months to live” diagnosis and boom—you’re free to do anything you want. The world is wide open, baby! Instead, here I am stuck with being alive, forced to assume I’ll be alive six months from now too, and I’ll need to maintain some stupid job in order to pay for the several thousand Pop-Tarts I’ll consume in that time period. It also occurred to me, I’ve lived in Stowe for 10 years. Ten freakin’ years. I’ve become a local. And you know how locals never end up doing any of the cool things in their area? Like New Yorkers who never go to the Statue of Liberty or Nevadans who don’t bother to go out and look for aliens in Area 51. Seriously, there are people living in Area 52 who just go on with their humdrum lives while aliens are just one area over. That’s craziness. But that’s me. Living right here in Stowe, Vermont, but never really living it. Well no more. I’m making a Bucket List, baby! Something about the idea of planning cool things to do, with the cold, terrifying inevitability of death lurking in the background seems very appealing to me.
ESSAY BY
/ Mike Mulhern
So, here’s my Ultimate Stowe Bucket List. Or: “6 Things To Do Around Stowe Before I Die A Horrible Death, Likely Caused By One Of The Things On My Bucket List.”
#1. You’ll float too
I still remember that day in 2008 … the first weekend I spent in my beautiful Stowe condo, so peaceful and private on my wooded hillside. I stepped outside on a spectacular summer morning wearing nothing but my tighty-whities, coughed, and snorted, as I tend to do in nature. Suddenly, I realized there was a hot-air balloon hovering approximately three feet over my head with several people peering down at me with varying expressions of revulsion. I stood there staring slack-jawed at the ballooners, absolutely horrified that I was hocking loogies on the ground when I could be hocking them onto people in hotair balloons. Stoweflake does a balloon festival every summer; why have I not gotten in on this?
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View our luxury homes and book online. All names and trademarks are property of their respective owners.
#2. SUP, boater dudes?
Stand up paddleboarding has become extremely popular in recent years, based on the notion that if you’re going to >>
ILLUSTRATION BY
/ Katerina Hrdlicka 15
FIRST PERSON experience the wonders of nature on a beautiful pristine lake or pond, you might as well be standing awkwardly on a wet, slippery piece of plastic, too. I’ve actually been SUPping before, so I really should qualify my Bucket List as “Go SUPping Without Wiping Out Like A YouTube Fail Video.” I made it all the way around Waterbury Reservoir on that damn board, quivering on my feet like a newborn calf, then 50 yards away from shore a stinkin’ motorboat dumped me in its wake. On purpose, I tell ya. What jerks. Which reminds me …
#3. Wipe out SUPs with a motorboat and laugh like a maniac The jerks did seem like they were having fun.
Vermonters are always taking some random bit of nature and tapping/boiling/mulling/ marinating/churning/brewing it into something awesome. Every farmers market has something like: “Artisanal Honey-Infused Rutabaga Mead (127 percent ABV), organically pollenated—straight from the bee’s butt to your mouth.” Why can’t I be doing this? I gotta come up
#4. DIY VT-style
by mice, so I’ll just spend an afternoon in a yurt. With a six-pack. And webstream a Sox game on my phone.
with something unique though, and by now everything in the forest has been tried … Ooh, how about, Mike’s Bathroom Fungus IPA? That’s something never before seen in the known universe, I guarantee it. It’s local, natural, well-aged and exhaustively fermented— shower curtain-to-table goodness. Hey, while we’re getting back to nature …
They have actual glider rides at Stowe Soaring. Gliders. I don’t get gliders. There’s no engine? They use air? How can air keep an aircraft up? It just doesn’t make sense. Anyway, just once I’d like to go up in one to listen to the quiet rush of the wind and see the beauty of the Vermont landscape … along with some Twilight Zone gremlin out on the wing trying to rip the engine to pieces, so I can be like, “Ha! There is no engine, gremlin-boy!” And then the gremlin will scurry over and rip my head off, because I assume that’s what gremlins do when they don’t get their way. Divas. So Bucket List in style, people. Live like you’re dying. And die like you’re living. No regrets allowed in my world. I’m not even regretting the end of this article, which is going nowhere fast. Come to think of it …
#6. Soar spot
#5. Yurt totally living here
Everyone in Vermont seems to be going off to live in a yurt. And by “everyone” I mean a guy at work I know. But yurt-living seems like such a Vermontish thing to do. Even though Google says that yurts originated in Mongolia. (Author’s note: That 10 seconds I just spent on Google represents the extent of my research for this article. You’re welcome.) That’s it, I’m going to spend a whole month living in a yurt and survive by foraging just like the Vermont pioneers who copied that bunch of Mongolians. Wait. Does foraging include sneaking into neighbors’ houses at night and grabbing armfuls of baked goods? No? I better make it a week then. Actually, that lack of indoor plumbing might be a sticking point, so maybe just an overnight. Also, yurts seem pretty loose, and I’m kinda freaked out
#7. Write an ending, just once, that makes sense Boy, I’d die to see that. n
[RETIREMENT COMMUNITY]
Come home to Stowe...
Walk to the village; skiing, golfing, shopping are minutes away. Spacious 1100-square-foot condominiums with options to own or lease. Enjoy our amenities and fine dining.
Call Penny to take a tour today.
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802.253.7200 | www.copleywoodlands.com | 125 Thomas Lane, Stowe, Vermont
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PHOTOS BY PAUL ROGERS; BLUEGRASS: BENJAMIN HEWITT
GOINGS ON
ONGOING
MAY THROUGH SEPTEMBER Free Fly Fishing Casting Clinics Wednesdays 4 - 5:30 p.m., Saturdays 9 - 10:30 a.m. Fly Rod Shop, Route 100 South, Stowe. Reserve a spot at (802) 253-7346.
JUNE – OCTOBER Club Racing at Stowe Yacht Club Watch Soling 1 Meter sailors in action. Monday and Wednesday afternoons, 4:30 - 6:30 p.m., weather permitting. Commodores Inn, Route 100 South, Stowe. stoweyachtclub.com.
JUNE 28 – SEPTEMBER 6 Art on Park Artists and artisans—jewelers, potters, painters, fiber artists, food producers. Music, local food. Park Street, Stowe. Thursdays 5 - 8 p.m. No July 5; Wed., July 4 from 11 a.m. - 3 p.m. stowevibrancy.com.
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July 7 – 9 S T O W E F L A K E B A L L O O N F E S T I VA L JUNE 29
MAY & JUNE
B3 Festival Block Party Kickoff the B3 Festival—a town-wide celebration of bikes, brews, beats—with a Stowe Village block party. Brews, beats, vendors, music. 4:30 - 6:30 p.m. Followed by Critical Mass Ride. Park Street. stowevibrancy.com.
MAY 1 – JUNE 30 Vermont Taste Community celebration of the area’s chefs, brewers, bakers and creators. Events at restaurants, resorts, breweries, roasteries, throughout North Central Vermont. Participate in the Vermont Taste Dine Out, donations benefit Copley Hospital. Full participants, schedule, tickets at vermonttaste.org.
JUNE 29 – JULY 1 B3 Fest: Bikes, Bevs & Beats Festival Celebrating music, craft brews, and mountain biking. Stowe-wide event. An all-ages block party, family friendly events, food and drink, epic group rides, more. stoweb3fest.com.
Beg, Steal or Borrow.
MAY 31 – JUNE 1 Region 1 Green Mountain Regatta Championships Watch beautiful remote-control sailboat races on Commodores Inn pond. Thursday 4 p.m., Friday 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Route 100 South, Stowe. stoweyachtclub.com.
JUNE 2 – 3 EC12 Green Mountain Regatta Watch remote-control sailboat races on Commodores Inn pond. Saturday 10 a.m. - 4 p.m., Sunday 10 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. Route 100, Stowe. stoweyachtclub.com.
JUNE 10 North Country Animal League’s Mutt Strut A 5k walk and run, costumes, festival. Pet contests, center ring demonstrations, music, food, animal adoptions. 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. Stowe Events Field, Weeks Hill Road. ncal.com.
JUNE 16 Rattling Brook Bluegrass Festival Regional bluegrass bands in all-day festival. 11 a.m. - 8 p.m. Admission. Belvidere Center stage, Route 109.
JUNE 21 – 24 Joe Kirkwood Memorial Golf Tournament Amateur event honoring Joe Kirkwood, worldfamous trick-shot artist who lived in Stowe. Benefits Stowe junior golf. Stowe Country Club. kirkwoodgolftournament.com.
JUNE 23 Catamount Ultra Marathon 25k & 50k courses through highland pastures and hardwood forest. Trapp Family Lodge trails, Stowe. 7 a.m. start. catamountultra.com.
JUNE 15 – 17
JUNE 23 – 24
USDAA Dog Agility Trials Dogs perform the sport of agility. Farr’s Field, Route 2, Waterbury. Great for spectators. Outside, all days. nomadagility.com.
Vermont Renaissance Faire Local craft vendors, fight demos, performance troupes, medieval encampment, Silver Knights Joust Team. Mayo Farm, Stowe. vtrennfaire.com.
JUNE 24 Gardens of Stowe Self-guided tour sweeps through town’s most interesting gardens. Tented reception with master gardener Charlie Nardozzi. Tickets at event or stowevibrancy.com. 12:30 - 5 p.m. Jewish Community of Great Stowe, Cape Cod Road.
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EXHIBITS: p.104
•••
MUSIC: p.118
•••
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JULY
JULY 1 Spruce Peak Independence Day Bash Vermont entertainer Rusty DeWees. 4:30 p.m. Fireworks at dusk. Spruce Peak Village Center, Stowe. stowe.com.
JULY 4 Moscow Parade World-famous shortest 4th of July parade. Starts promptly at 10 a.m. in Moscow Village. Old-fashioned Fourth in Stowe Village Live music, food, entertainment, Art on Park artisan market, and other entertainment—all in Stowe Village. Bouncy house, dunk tank, pie-eating contest, 11 a.m. - 3 p.m. Village festivities start after Moscow Parade. Village parade starts at 1 p.m., winds into village. stowevibrancy.com. Stowe Independence Day Celebration & Fireworks Starts at 6 p.m. Enjoy live music with the Lesley Grant Band, face painting, balloons, carnival games, ice cream, bouncy house, hay rides, popcorn, cotton candy, more. Fireworks at dusk. Free, but food and gaming fees apply. Mayo Farm events field, Weeks Hill Road.
MIXED MEDIA: p.110
•••
THEATER: p.122
MUSIC IN THE MEADOW 2018 Trapp Family Lodge Concert Meadow
Vermont Symphony Orchestra July 8 U 7:30 pm 2018 TD Bank Summer Festival Tour Sarah Hicks, Conductor; Rubén Rengel, Violin “Gifts of Nature”
Marcia Ball July 15 U 7:00 pm A welcome ray of sunshine...Ball is a killer pianist, a great singer and songwriter. Potent blues, sweet zydeco, soulful, fast and furious Texas boogie... heartfelt, powerful and righteous." –Billboard
The Dustbowl Revival July 29 U 7:00 pm Americana and Soul band with eight full-time members who mash the sounds of New Orleans funk, bluegrass, soul, pre-war blues, and roots music, into a genre-hopping, time-bending dance party.
Free Concert!
Phoebe Hunt & The Gatherers August 5 U 7:00 pm
Acclaimed Americana songwriter and instrumentalist Phoebe Hunt and her virtuosic band put a global spin on American folk music.
GAZEBO CONCERTS Free concerts; Stowe Free Library Lawn, Four Tuesdays in Summer
The meadow opens two hours prior to concert time. Alternate site: Stowe High School Weather Hotline: 802-253-5720 or 802-253-7321 ext. 3
stoweperformingarts.com
PAUL ROGERS; OTHERS: COURTESY PHOTOS
GOINGS ON JULY 6 – 8 Stoweflake Hot Air Balloon Festival Music, food, beer and wine garden, balloon launches, tethers. More than 25 balloon experts launch Friday and Saturday, sunrise and sunset, and Sunday at sunrise. $10. Stoweflake Mountain Resort & Spa, Mountain Road. (802) 253-7355. stoweballoonfestival.com.
July 27 – 29 L A M O I L L E C O U N T Y F I E L D D AY S
JULY 8 Vermont Symphony Orchestra 2018 Summer Tour Sarah Hicks, guest conductor, and Rubén Rengel, violin, “Gifts of Nature,” 7:30 p.m. Trapp Family Lodge concert meadow, Trapp Hill Road, Stowe. stoweperformingarts.com.
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AUGUST
JULY 29 – AUGUST 12 JULY 8 Stowe 8-miler & 5K Popular foot race. 8:30 a.m. Mayo Farm events field, Weeks Hill Road. Preregistration. Post-race party at Golden Eagle Resort. stowe8miler.com.
Phlox Fest Dozens of varieties of phlox displayed at Perennial Pleasures. 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. except Mondays. Brick House Road, East Hardwick, Vt. (802) 472-5104. perennialpleasures.net.
JULY 10 – 29
AUGUST 18 – 19
JULY 14
NADAC Dog Agility Trials Dogs perform the sport of agility. Topnotch Field. Great for spectators. Outside, both days. nomadagility.com.
47th Antiques & Uniques Festival 100 booths of antiques, woodcrafts, paintings, sculpture, flowers, garden accessories, quilts, more. Music, baked goods, and lunch. 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. rain or shine. Craftsbury Common, Route 14.
JULY 14 – 15 & JULY 21 – 22
AUGUST 3 – 4 Stowe Brewers Festival Three tasting sessions. Food trucks, music. Friday 5:30 - 9:30 p.m.; Saturday noon - 4 p.m. and 5:30 - 9:30 p.m. Mayo Farm Events Field, Weeks Hill Road. Admission. stowebrewersfestival.com.
JULY 27 – 29 Lamoille County Field Days Agricultural fair. Horse, pony, and ox pulling, draft horse show, gymkhana, midway, much more. Route 100C, Johnson. lamoillefielddays.com.
JULY 29 Music in the Meadow—The Dustbowl Revival Americana and soul band, 7 p.m. Trapp Family Lodge concert meadow, Trapp Hill Road, Stowe. stoweperformingarts.com.
JULY 29
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AUGUST 26
Stowe LAX Festival I & II Comprehensive lacrosse event. Great sport, music, special guests, non-stop fun for the entire family. On fields throughout Stowe. bitterlacrosse.com.
JULY 15
Mansfield Double-Up Footrace Race across Vermont’s highest ridgeline. 11 miles, 5,500 vertical, 70 racers. Stowe Mountain Resort. nativeendurance.com.
AUGUST 18 100 on 100 Relay 100-mile team-based distance event along scenic Route 100. Fundraiser for youth charities. Starts at Trapp Family Lodge, Stowe. 100on100.org.
Stowe Free Library Giant Book Sale Community book sale on the porch. New stock daily, specials for children. Starts at 9 a.m. July 10, then dawn to dusk. Stowe Village. stowelibrary.org.
Marcia Ball—Music in the Meadow Pianist, singer, songwriter and band performs blues, ballads, zydeco, Texas boogie. 7 p.m. Trapp Family Lodge concert meadow, Trapp Hill Road, Stowe. stoweperformingarts.com.
AUGUST 16 – 19 Stowe Tango Music Festival U.S.’s premier tango music festival. Worldrenowned tango musicians, festival orchestra, workshops, concerts, milongas, dance. Concert Aug. 18, Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center. Various locations around Stowe. stowetango.org.
AUGUST 4 – 5 CanAm Challenge Regatta Head over to the Commodores Inn to watch Soling One Meter Sailboats. Canada competes against U.S. team. Saturday 10 a.m. - 4 p.m., Sunday 10 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. Stowe. stoweyachtclub.com.
North Face Race to the Top of Vermont A 4.3-mile hill climb up Mount Mansfield Toll Road in Stowe. Run, mountain bike, or hike to the summit—2,564 vertical feet. BBQ, music, prizes. Benefits Catamount Trail Association. rtttovt.com.
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SEPTEMBER
AUGUST 5
AUGUST 31 – SEPTEMBER 3
Music in the Meadow—Phoebe Hunt & The Gatherers Global spin on American folk music. 7 p.m. Trapp Family Lodge concert meadow, Trapp Hill Road, Stowe. stoweperformingarts.com.
Lawn Fest & Food Sale Crafts, books, reusable items, collectibles, food sale, more. 9 a.m. - 4 p.m. Waterbury Center Community Church. Route 100. (802) 244-8089.
AUGUST 11
Jay Peak Trail Running Family Festival Series of trail races for all abilities. 5k races, 11, 22, and 33 milers—plus a kids race. BBQ. Jay Peak Resort, Jay. jaypeaktrailrun.com.
Jeffersonville Festival of the Arts Dozens of regional artists display on charming Main Street. Music, children’s activities, local food. Free. 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Park at Cambridge Elementary. cambridgeartsvt.org.
SEPTEMBER 1 – 2
COURTESY PHOTO
GOINGS ON SEPTEMBER 14 – 16 British Invasion Car Show North America’s largest British classic sports car and motorcycle event. Cultural activities, crafts, auto jumble, and the car corral. Over 600 cars on field. Stowe Events Field, Weeks Hill Road, Stowe. Admission. britishinvasion.com.
SEPTEMBER 22
SEPTEMBER 7 – 9 Stowe Jazz Festival Over two dozen musical acts play at various venues around Stowe. Afro-Cuban, Gypsy, and Brazilian jazz, big band, smooth, soul, swing, more. Festival main stage is The Alchemist, Cottage Club Road. stowejazzfestival.com.
SEPTEMBER 8 Chicken Pie Supper Great old-fashioned supper in an old-fashioned mountain town. Starts at 5 p.m. until all are served. Waterville Elementary School, Route 109.
SEPTEMBER 13 – 16
PAUL ROGERS
Tunbridge World’s Fair Old-fashioned Vermont country fair. Tractor pulls, midway, food, music, animals. Tunbridge, Vt. tunbridgeworldsfair.com.
Fall Foliage Art on Park & Apple Pie Contest Autumn market celebrates local artist and artisans. Local food on the village green. Live music with Phineas Gage, a “Pholk-Phunk” band. 11:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. Park Street, Stowe. (Rain date Sept. 23) stowevibrancy.com.
SEPTEMBER 23 Stowe Trail Race Series: Trapp Cabin Half marathon, 5k & 10k trail races to Trapp cabin. Return on single track or take a shorter but thrilling route. Party, prizes, bib raffle, food. Benefits Friends of Stowe Adaptive Sports. stoweadaptive.org.
SEPTEMBER 29 RocktoberFest All-day street festival music, food, games, No Strings Marionette shows, crafts, vendors, pumpkin bowling, face painting, more. 5k. Oxbow Park, 9 a.m. Morrisville Village.
SEPTEMBER 30 Vermont Pumpkin Chuckin’ Festival Send the pumpkins flying. Music, kids’ activities, 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. Chili cook-off. $5, free for kids under 4. Stoweflake Mountain Resort, Mountain Road, Stowe. vtpumpkinchuckin.blogspot.com.
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OCTOBER & NOVEMBER
OCTOBER 4 Chicken Pie Supper Chicken pie supper with all the fixings. Seatings noon, 5, and 6:30 p.m. Waterbury Center Community Church. Reservations (802) 244-8955.
OCTOBER 5 – 7 SEPTEMBER 14 British Invasion Block Party The British invade Main Street, Stowe. From 6:30 - 9:30 p.m. dance to Joey Leone’s Chop Shop and mingle among beautiful British cars. Food court and beer garden. stowevibrancy.com.
Stowe Foliage Arts Festival 200 artists—fine art, craft, cuisine. Wine tasting, music, craft demos. Vermont beer and sausage. Under heated Camelot-style tents. 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. Topnotch field, Mountain Road. craftproducers.com.
NOVEMBER 4 Vermont 10-miler Challenging run through beautiful Stowe countryside. Mayo Farm Events Field. vermont10miler.com. n
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September 13 - 16, 2018
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JAZZED!
George Petit.
Stowe festival promises to be bigger, better
nown as the first truly American art form, jazz is now a global superpower and it’s coming to Stowe for three days in September. The Stowe Jazz Festival established its roots just last year, with 27 bands from as far away as Brazil. It returns Sept. 7 – 9, with bands playing at seven venues around town. Festival founder is jazz musician George Walker Petit, who has been playing professionally for 50 years. He started working in recording studios at age 17, moving through the ranks to recording producer and engineer. Since age 13, he has had a steady gigging life, playing in the U.S. and abroad at jazz clubs, bars, concert halls, and jazz festivals. He currently plays four to seven nights a week in Stowe and Burlington. Petit has already received over 100 submissions for the 2018 Stowe Jazz Festival from Italy, Israel, Brazil, Argentina, the United States—and Burlington. “The word got out that we have great musicians and a great venue,” Petit said. “People want to come to Stowe. If you provide a great venue and treat musicians well, they beat a path to the door.” At press time, 27 groups had committed to performing in Stowe, and everyone who played last year is returning. Having performed at many festivals, Petit has a birds-eye view of how they work, and the Stowe Jazz
GORDON MILLER
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Festival breaks the mold. All shows are free; just park your car and walk to the different venues. “It’s not a beer event with music and it’s not a craft fair. It’s a jazz festival with beer and food available at local restaurants, pubs, and on-site food and beverage vendors,” Petit said. “Jazz is for everyone because of so many sub-genres. At the Stowe Jazz Festival you will hear Afro-Cuban jazz (salsa), Gypsy jazz, Brazilian jazz, big band, smooth, soul, swing, and more.” The appropriately named Jasmine Bigelow is the volunteer marketing consultant for the festival. She got involved because she attended last year and wanted to see it succeed. She is working to involve the entire community. “Not only is the festival a fun thing that makes Stowe unique, but it brings international music culture to the community,” Bigelow said. “Keeping it free makes it a festival for all people.” Once again, the outdoor main stage will be at The Alchemist brewery, which brewed an IPA called Stowe Jazz Festival just for the occasion. Proceeds from the beer sales went to charity. “The support from the community has been unexpectedly positive,” Petit said. “We raised $39,000 last year.” —Kate Carter
ESSENTIALS: Stowe Jazz Festival, Sept. 7 - 9, various venues •••• Main stage: Alchemist Brewery •••• stowejazzfestival.com
RECORD SETTING
In our story about Stowe’s Bunny Club (Stowe Guide & Magazine, Winter / Spring 2017-2018) we incorrectly reported that former Vermont Gov. Tom Salmon was a frequent guest at the club in the 1960s. In fact, it was Gov. Phil Hoff who was the frequent guest of club founders and owners Stu and Margaret Ireland. Due do the genetic laziness of our editing staff, waiting too long to track down the names of the people pictured in our “Flashback” feature, we couldn’t tell our fine readers who joined broadcaster Lowell Thomas in the photo, reprinted at right. Thanks to Ken Biedermann of the Green Mountain Inn, now we can. Here goes: “Lowell Thomas broadcasts ‘live’ from Stowe’s Green Mountain Inn in 1938, and from coast to coast the nation heard about the joys of skiing in Vermont. Left to right: Joe Fountain, publicity director for the Central Vermont Railroad; Lowell Thomas; Bob Isham, manager of the Green Mountain Inn; and Jacques Chaimoz, a ski instructor.
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An interesting side note on Joe Fountain, supplied by Martha Lang, whose great grandparents raised Fountain after he was orphaned: Fountain had the distinction of being the only news reporter at Calvin Coolidge’s inauguration in Plymouth Notch, Vt., on Aug. 3, 1923, following the death of President Warren G. Harding the previous evening. Fountain, then 24, was the editor of the Springfield Reporter. —Greg Popa
ASHES EVERLASTING Widow takes hubby to his fave spots Shawn Hayden is doing a lot of traveling these days, which is no mean feat, considering he died more than a year ago. His wife, Dot, has been spreading Shawn’s ashes at his favorite spots, in locales like the Ruby Mountains in Nevada, Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, Centennial Field in Burlington, and several special spots around Lamoille County. “Shawn had a lot of favorite spots,” Dot said. Last December, thanks to some heroics on Dot’s part and a little inside help, some of Shawn’s ashes were spread on the 20-yard line at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia during the annual Army-Navy game. It was a big and tiny secret moment in a huge game, as will be revealed in a bit. Many dearly departed find their remains in urns on a mantle. Sometimes, they end up in little mason jars with labels, stashed in carryon luggage and transported around the country, later to be reunited with a cherished place. Shawn Hayden is in that second camp Dot came up with the Mason jar idea when she went to Nevada last year to go heli-skiing, and she researched how to get cremated ashes through airport security. The labels indicate final destination for a particular trip. Hayden was a decades-long fixture in the local rugby scene, playing for Johnson State College and Mad River-Stowe, and serving as president of the latter when his playing days were done. Many of his teammates have participated in ash-spreading ceremonies on local fields since Shawn died Nov. 20, 2016 at the age of 60. Last month, the man known to his friends as “Lucky” brought a little bit of that luck to his widow, his friends, and a country of Army football fans. According to Dot, Shawn had gone to the annual Army-Navy game for about 30 years in a row—the same length of time they were married— usually with a group of guys from college and the area rugby circuit. On Dec. 9, though, the ladies were invited. Dot went with her friend Maggie Morrissey and Maggie’s sister Beth Bradford, and figured they’d tailgate. But they got lucky. Someone had three extra tickets and the trio started to think they could spread some of Shawn’s ashes in the stands. They got lucky again during the pat-down process, making it through security with the ashes, and into their blustery, snowy, OK-but-could-bebetter seats. It wasn’t good enough for Dot: “I said, ‘I want to get onto the field, not in the stands.’ ” The three friends went inside to wander around, grab some beers, escape the snow for a bit. They soon found themselves in a plush luxury box with cozy views of the field. An Army cadet came in from the cold to warm up during halftime. He was working the sidelines at the game.
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20-YARD LINE Shawn Hayden. Dot Hayden, right, in Philadelphia with Maggie Morrissey, Beth Bradford, and Adele Taplin. Shaun’s ashes on the field at the Army-Navy game in December.
Oh, you mean, like, right next to the field? Hmm. Said Dot: “I told him the whole story, and he was, at first, ‘Well, security’s pretty tight,’ but we gave the ashes to this Army guy and hoped for the best.” The ladies headed back into the stands to watch the second half. Army was down. Dot’s cellphone buzzed. She had a text message: “Mission accomplished. He’s on the 20-yard line.” Then everyone got lucky— unless you’re a Navy fan. Anyone who watched the game knows what a corker it was, with the Black Knights pulling off a comefrom-behind win with a little help from the Midshipmen, who missed a 48-yard field goal with no time on the clock. “I’m telling you, right after I got that text, the game changed and Army pulled out the win,” Dot said. “Everything just happened the way it was supposed to.” Dot Hayden was married to Shawn for 30 years, and she still has plenty of him left. … The adventure continues. —Tommy Gardner
The STOWE GUIDE & MAGAZINE won Best Niche publication for the 8th consecutive year in the 2017 New England Newspaper & Press Association’s Better Newspaper Competition. STOWE WEDDINGS magazine took third in the same category. The award considers publishing strategy, content mix, audience and advertiser appeal, plus quality of writing, design, and production. Judges said: “Very impressed with the OVERALL QUALITY OF CONTENT, DESIGN, AND ADVERTISING. Loved the feature on mountain jobs by Kate Carter. Great use of photos by Gordon Miller. Very nicely done.” For Stowe Weddings, the judges wrote: “BEAUTIFUL WEDDING MAGAZINE. I enjoyed reading the editor Hannah Marshall’s note with her own story—any woman would. Great quality advertising as well.” Overall, the STOWE REPORTER weekly newspaper, which publishes both magazines, won 23 awards in the contest with more than 3,000 entries from organizations in six states.
COURTESY PHOTOS
RURAL ROUTE
COCLICO | FRANK & EILEEN | DEMYLEE | JULIE MILES | FRYE | CHAN LUU | SALPY | L AMBERTO LOSANI OLD GRINGO | CALLEEN CORDERO | MAJESTIC | J BRAND | FRENCH SOLE | ECRU | CLARE V.
Daily Classes | Individual + Private Groups Customized Retreats The Yoga Barn – a serene yoga studio located in the red barn behind Well Heeled – offers a full range of classes from vigorous flow to restorative practices. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned yogi, the talented instructors at our peaceful studio offer something for everyone. 2850 Mountain Road, Stowe | Behind Well Heeled | theyogabarnstowe@gmail.com | theyogabarnstowe.com
COURTESY PHOTOS
RURAL ROUTE
More at@theguidinglens and #endlesscaravan.
SNOWBOARDING TOUR VIA
AIR Stowe couple spent two months in an Airstream trailer, cruising the nation’s snowboard spots—on the company’s dime. Airstream, known for its iconic shiny aluminum travel trailers, sent Danielle Visco and Ryan Rabidou out in style so the pair could represent the company’s Endless Caravan lifestyle campaign. Visco and Rabidou are used to adventure. Last summer, they spent about 60 days camping so they could rent their Edson Hill home to vacationers. Since they were spending so much time on the road, the pair looked into buying an Airstream to make their outdoor adventures more fun. That idea snowballed into a tour of the nation’s snowboarding hotspots with a pair of Siberian huskies, representing Airstream on the road. “We’re minimalists,” Rabidou, 34, said. “Even though we have a pretty big house, we just don’t need much.” Visco and Rabidou have lived in Stowe for almost three years. Visco, 29, a photographer, and Rabidou, a marketing consultant, often work together on projects. They also own a furniture import business, Om Home Furniture, which sells its Balinese home goods at Stowe Kitchen Bath and Linens. Since the couple spends so much time outside their home, they’d put a deposit on an Airstream. Then came an idea: reach out to Airstream and try to get some work out of their outdoorsy lifestyle. By the next day, they had a
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fully fleshed ad campaign they were calling #OutsideTheCubicle, meant to “inspire employees and employers” to draw their creativity from the outdoors. They approached Airstream with the idea and got a counter-offer—they could apply for the Endless Caravan campaign, paid for by the company, in exchange for documentation of their adventures. The couple applied in September 2017, and didn’t hear back until December, when Visco was working toward a yoga teacher certification in Bali. “I just felt like I had to check my phone,” she said, laughing, when she learned they’d been accepted for the adventure they’d dreamed of. Airstream officials still had to interview to ensure they’d be personable enough to represent the brand, but the company liked the idea of winter camping. “They’d never done a winter campaign,” Visco said. They left Jan. 22 from Airstream’s headquarters in Ohio. The couple’s two Siberian huskies, Oso and Ketut, made the journey too. They charted a course from Jackson Hole, Wyo., to Sun Valley, Idaho. From there, they headed north to Mount Baker and Crystal Mountain in Washington before meeting up with family in Napa, Calif., and then to Lake Tahoe and a stop at Heavenly Mountain Resort. The best part, though, was getting to know people all over the nation. “We met so many people who were following along,” Rabidou said. He especially remembers the warm welcome the couple received when they made it back to Airstream in Ohio. “There was a bunch who had remembered us and threw us a party with live music and food when we got back.” —Caleigh Cross
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Scott Brinkman, Stowe’s EMS chief ‘It’s an honorable duty to help people.’ Scott Brinkman, emergency medical services chief for Stowe, oversees and determines the direction of the department, sets the budget, creates the schedule, and takes care of people. “I’m the top dog making sure this town has the ability to respond to emergencies with an ambulance.” He grew up in Royal Oak, Mich., a suburb of Detroit, and moved to Stowe in 1997. In 1998 Brinkman began volunteering for Stowe Rescue, now called Emergency Medical Services, and has gradually moved up through the ranks. He lives in Stowe with his wife, Cheri, and their four canine dependents.
What made you want to work in EMS? It is a bit cliché, but I enjoy helping people. It’s easy for others to think EMS folks are adrenaline junkies, but that’s not what it is. It’s an honorable duty to help people when they are in trouble and scared.
Has it always been your career goal? In a way, yes. I was a Boy Scout, and my years in scouting were probably most elemental in shaping the person I became. There was an annual first-aid meet where we moved through multiple scenarios to be tested on our readiness and knowledge. Local ambulance service providers and firefighter/EMTs graded us. I was in awe of these folks. In 10th grade, during a career counseling session, I said that I wanted to be a firefighter or EMT or park ranger. Landing in Stowe is what brought EMS back into my life, because here I didn’t have to make it a career to participate. We depend on volunteers, and all I had to do was take a class to get started. In 1998 I was accepted as a new member of Stowe Rescue, the EMS provider in Stowe from 1975 to 2008. I volunteered for 13 years and took courses, increasing my certification level to advanced EMT, and looked for a way to make EMS a career. In 2010 Stowe’s EMS chief was stepping down. ... I’ve worked here since.
the interview Did you go to college?
I first studied in Detroit at Wayne State University in technical theater—set design, construction, lighting, and sound—then moved on to Oakland Community College, obtaining an associate degree in general studies. It was there that I took my first, first-responder-level certification course in first aid. I was also an American Red Cross water safety instructor, lifeguard, and life-guarding instructor—I got into excellent physical shape and began looking into service with the U.S. Coast Guard. But my focus changed to furthering my knowledge of the natural world, so I got a bachelor’s in forestry.
How many people volunteer for Stowe’s EMS? Roughly 30, with some more active than others. We have a few who are on ski patrol and have the same qualifications. We also have four full-time employees and a few per diem employees who work elsewhere in the medical field.
What’s the difference between Stowe’s rescue squad and emergency medical services?
GORDON MILLER
Stowe Rescue was the original squad providing services. In 2008 the town took over the license to provide that service and acknowledged that EMS was now being provided by the town entity. Stowe Rescue Squad still exists as a private non-profit, with the mission of supporting the town. They provide funding for classes and provide other services, but they don’t do any rescue.
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Is it hard to recruit volunteers? Yes. It’s a long road for people to get started. If they are genuinely interested they tend to be willing to put in the training hours. It is very hard to explain to anyone exactly how much work goes into gaining and maintaining certification, however, in my experience, most people that do don’t even think about it that way. Most are here to be a part of the team, to do what needs to be done, regardless the effort required. Stowe’s all-volunteer service makes it easy to get hooked and keep working. In the beginning of Stowe Rescue, I’m sure most, if not all, members lived in Stowe. They worked jobs in town and could leave at a moment’s notice if the need arose. With the growth of the town and the number of people visiting, the needs of the public safety infrastructure have increased as well. INTERVIEW CONDUCTED & COMPILED BY KATE CARTER
RURAL ROUTE How many calls do you get a year? Approximately 700 to 720 calls a year, roughly two a day. This year on President’s Weekend we had 17 calls in one day, and not all on the mountain.
The most frequent type of call you get? Lift assist, usually from an elderly person who has fallen. Even if we get there and find they are just sick, it’s still their emergency and it’s our job to help.
What is the strangest call you’ve received? Probably when we joined Mountain Rescue on a call for a couple trapped on the Chin in the middle of a thunderstorm. They had driven up the Toll Road and took a walk in flip flops to the Chin. Mountain Rescue coached them down to shelter and a crew drove up, found them, and brought them down to evaluate and treat. Another happened at Bingham Falls. Some people still think it’s OK to jump off the top of the falls. Sometimes they don’t clear the rocks and we have had many traumatic injuries.
What is a typical day like? We see it all, from mountain bike collisions with trees to the sadness of elderly people stuck in their homes and no longer living the way they once did. We also see plenty of mental health issues, substance abuse, and true accidents. One interesting thing for me is seeing the same person over and over. We develop a relationship with that patient. Chronic health conditions can cause several emergencies a year. I cherish that we have the opportunity to spend time with those people. In this small community we get to know a lot of people. It’s nice to not be a stranger.
How can the public make it easier for EMS folks on a call? Reflective address signs! It makes finding people in an emergency so much easier, and that’s huge. Also, if every person took it upon themselves to learn CPR we would have fewer deaths. We teach CPR at this facility once a month and it’s free.
Has EMS introduced any new treatments or services? In November 2016, we introduced nitrous oxide (to help relieve the symptoms of anxiety and pain) and used it 38 times the first year, 15 for people on the mountain, 23 for accidents in Stowe. I can see the change immediately if the patient cooperates and uses it correctly.
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What do you like most about your job? I still get to go out and ride on the truck and help others. The administrative side of my job allows me to be a problem solver and to improve the job we do, while continuing to honor the rural initiative of volunteerism and neighbors helping neighbors. Having this job as my full-time career affords me the ability to participate at a district level and engage with the staff at the state EMS office as we all work to build a system that functions well and continues adapting to the needs of our towns and our state. n
From power tools to parties, we are your Go To Girls of Vermont. www.KellyCanLaunch802.com info@KCL802.com
802.522.3832
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MORE GLOBETROTTERS ON PAGE 34
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③ 1. Say rimaykullayki napaykullayki (hello in Quechuan) to the family of Peggy and
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Shapleigh Smith of Stowe, who visited Machu Picchu, a 15th-century Inca citadel high in the Peruvian Andes, in February 2018. Shapleigh, a partner in Patterson Smith Construction, holds our magazine surrounded by some of the couple’s family. Left to right: Eli Smith, Maggie Macdonald, Shap Smith, Sr., Shap Smith, Jr., Melissa Volansky, Jerry Marshall, Chapman Smith, Jennifer Macdonald, Mckee Macdonald, Coulter Smith, and Gunnar Smith. Peggy, who is not pictured, owns Coldwell Banker Carlson Real Estate. 2. Matt Arco, of Elmore, and Vicki Hartley, a North Carolina resident and frequent Stowe visitor, at the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland last fall. “We wouldn’t board the flight without this reading material!” 3. Ryan Cochran-Siegle, a member of the U.S. Ski Team, who competed in the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic
② Winter Games, with Pat Duran (holding magazine) of Avon, Colo. CochranSiegle was 11th in the giant slalom, 14th in the super G, and 23rd in the downhill. He grew up in Starksboro, and his mother, Barbara Ann, won the gold medal in slalom at the 1972 Sapporo Olympics. Duran attended the Green Mountain Valley School and grew up in the Mad River Valley and raced on the 2010-2011 Skiers Cross World Cup circuit. His partner, Alice McKennis, placed 16th in the super G and 5th in the downhill in PyeongChang. Do you have a photo of our magazine on some far-flung island or rugged peak? Send a high-res copy to ads@stowereporter.com, with Stowe Magazine in the subject line. We’ll pick the best ones and run them in a future edition.
RURAL ROUTE
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③ 1. Amy Marshall of Stowe and her daughter, Hannah, managing editor of Stowe Reporter, News & Citizen and Waterbury Record newspapers, took the magazine all over Scandinavia in June 2017 looking for the perfect shot. They found it after a ride in a speedboat through the Nærøyfjord, a breathtakingly beautiful branch of the deepest fjord in Norway, notably on UNESCO’s World Heritage list—and reallife inspiration for the stunning scenery in the movie “Frozen.” 2. Last summer, Gail Parent, of Northfield, Vt., her brother LeRoy Parent, and her boyfriend’s son, Forrest Spencer, toured the Audi manufacturing plant in Neckarsulm, Germany. “We went to visit my brother and attend my great nephew’s wedding,” said Gail. “We enjoy the magazine, the information about dining and special events in the area. I’ve attended performances at the Spruce Performing Arts Center and I’ve watched ski
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② races at Stowe.” 3. “We brought the magazine with us to Israel to show friends and family our beloved new home. It was fun taking pictures on the boardwalk on a bright, warm January day holding up a magazine with a ski-themed cover,” said Beth Liberman, pictured with her husband Moni. “People kept stopping and asking us what contest we were in. We stood there for a long time to get the shot with the Hebrew sign on the carousel. It says ‘The First Hebrew Carousel’ and it is really the original from 1932 when the port of Tel Aviv was built.” The couple moved to Stowe in 2016. “For years we dreamed of moving here and finally it all came together and we fell in love with the Stowe area and all it has to offer, not in the least a vibrant Jewish community, where I’m excited to say I have just been hired as director of family and youth education at the Jewish Community of Greater Stowe.”
Jason Michaelides
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RURAL ROUTE
flashback
DARBY CHAMBERS
Her name was Rosamond. Everyone called her Darby. She lived in Stowe from the mid1950s to the 1980s. She loved to cook, throw parties, show English and Gordon setters, and was Stowe’s first woman selectman when it was an all-boys club. (Some might say it mostly still is.) Everyone knew her. No one remembers why she was called Darby. Lila Rosamond Almy was born in 1926 in Boston and grew up in Dedham, Mass. She attended Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery in Boston. An independent, educated woman with guts, she moved to Stowe in the 1950s when everybody knew everyone and colorful
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THE HAT LADY Darby Chambers in one of her ubiquitous hats.
characters were common. She quickly became a part of the community and quickly left her mark. Darby married John Chambers, who owned, with his previous wife, a ski inn called 10 Acres Lodge from 1946 to 1965. Darby became the chef at 10 Acres, where she spent much of her time entertaining locals and her social class from the past. “Darby was bigger than life, from a Boston South Shore pedigree background. She had tons of nerve and lived the way she wanted,” said Nancy Stead, who attended many of Darby’s shindigs. “She could knock back more drinks than most men. Once she drove her vehicle into the side of The Shed (no one was hurt). Another time she and Arthur Kreizel rented a helicopter to fly from 10 Acres to Spruce Peak for a party. Her social life was hilarious.”
‘Very much a force’
Not only was Darby’s personality formidable, so was her size. She was over 6 feet tall and matronly, and she favored large, fancy hats. She was smart, laughed a lot, and was a good conversationalist. She loved dogs and became involved in the Green Mountain Dog Club. In 1959, she brought the club’s point show and obedience trial to the Topnotch Field in Stowe and served as show chairman for nine years. At one point, Darby opened a catering business, Custom Catering, with Hank Cushman, who still lives in Stowe. Cushman also grew up in Dedham and their families knew each other. >>
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RURAL ROUTE “We were great friends and had a good time. It was a nice experience for both of us,” Cushman said. “Back then, Stowe was a dry town and there were no bars. We had to go to Waterbury to pick up our hooch. There was a lot of drinking going on, but no one got hurt. There was only one constable and he would drive you home and keep your keys.” In the Stowe Speaks Oral History Project, Katharine Greenwalt has a lot to say about this formidable woman. “Darby Chambers was very much a force and enjoyed being so, too. She was very outspoken and everybody knew Darby. She’d go to Sister Kate’s quite a bit and had a sweatshirt she wore that said Pussy Galore. Nothing shy about Darby. “She had quite a following of young men who were her buddies, like Hank Cushman and I think David Stackpole. It was a group of American men and they were all ski instructors and they all hung out at The Shed.” Darby served three terms as selectman for the town of Stowe and was chairman for two of those terms. “When I was elected in 1962, I was the first woman selectman in 109 years in Vermont,” she said in an interview with The New York Times in 1974. Barbara Baraw of the Stowe Historical Society remembered Darby as a community leader. “She was extremely conscientious about the town functioning well and she impacted the town in so many ways. She was a mentor to younger people, always treating us as peers.” On March 1, 1977, there was a case of ballot stuffing during the Stowe election for the select board. Six more votes were cast in the election than the number of voters on the checklist, and Mary Heath lost to Dale Percy by six votes. Darby led the charge, along with the Stowe League of Women Voters, to have the election disputed in court, alleging violations of the Civil Rights Act. Ultimately the case was dismissed because the town is a municipal corporation and not a person within the meaning of the Civil Rights Act. However, the incident led to a change in the election laws.
Breaking political ground
Memories and stories about Darby abound, according to Mark Fucile and Linda Hunter, current owners at Bistro at 10 Acres. “Literally every day someone comes with a story about Darby,” Fucile said. “I hear she wore a ball gown every night at 10 Acres, which made her seem even bigger than her already large size. We also heard that she once threw her husband through the bay window here.” Kitty Coppock’s favorite recollection is about Thanksgiving dinners at Jim Jackson’s home. “She used to come to Thanksgiving dinner sometimes dressed in flowered overalls and sometimes in a long black evening dress and pearls. “Once we all went out to look at the cows in the barn and there was Darby in her evening gown, pearls, and a glass of champagne, checking out the cows. She was known to leg-wrestle men in those flowered overalls at The Shed. She was a lot of fun and definitely had her opinions.” Trina Brink was a ski bum at 10 Acres for three winters. “Darby was quite a character,” Brink says. “She ran 10 Acres like a country club and dressed up like she was going to a ball. She was great to work for. She was a lot of fun and treated us well. She gave us a season pass and our own room, and we could come in late and have a midnight snack as long as we cleaned up.” Brink remembers when Darby was a judge at the Easter parade at Spruce Peak. “She was always dressed up in a special Easter outfit.” Darby died unexpectedly Sept. 15, 1988, in Dartmouth, Mass., where she had been living for a few years. She was 62. She is buried in Stowe’s West Branch Cemetery beside her second husband, John Sterling, who she married in 1976. His son is buried there as well. —Kate Carter
Out in the barn
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SOUTH SHORE PEDIGREE Judging costumes at the Stowe Easter parade, 1970s. Showing one or her English setters at the Green Mountain Dog Show, once held in Stowe every summer. Addressing the crowd at Stowe town meeting.
k wlledge knows no bouunds. kno
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Helen Day Art Center Gala ‘Pop Art’
Raouf and Sarah Greiche.
Spruce Peak at Stowe, April 7
Bobby and Anne Roberts.
Ellisa Doiron and Huntly Armbruster.
Chris Curtis and Tari Swenson.
Frank Motter and Linda Shaw.
Robert Liljeadhl, Peter Thorndike, Ryan Krukar, and Josh Novotny. Glenn Sautter and David Morrill.
Sandy and Genevieve Thompson.
PHOTOS BY JESSE SCHLOFF PHOTOGRAPHY
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Helen Riess, Larry Rowe, Jay Wallace, Gala and Helen Day chair Diane Arnold, Ileana Martin-Novoa, Jonathan Katz, Lisa Hagerty, George Gay, and Dean Goodermote.
Lance and Vanessa Violette and Giulia and Erik Eliason.
DJ Luis Calderin.
Alex and Tessa Rawson.
Sam and Tom Sequist.
Kathleen and Mark Doehla.
Robyn Alvin.
Kathrine Smith and Max Levine.
Martin Werth, Katerina Hrdlicka, Greg Popa, and Irene Nuzzo.
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Carrie Nourjian, Jessie Morton, and Bruce Nourjian.
Casino Royale 2018
Stowe Rotary Club fund raiser, Stoweflake Resort, March 16.
Kevin D’Arcy.
Ginny and Cap Chenoweth, Hal Boyd, and Tim Meehan (dealer).
George Nelson. Pall Spera.
Reid Williams and Caren Merson.
Anna Black and Ken Forbes.
Katie Nichols, Kat Dwyer, and Allison Ruschp.
Leo Clark.
Susan Kennedy and Iain Davies. Jen Colin.
Marian and Stu Baraw. 42
PHOTOS BY GORDON MILLER
Jasmine Bigelow and Eric Santini.
RURAL ROUTE 40 YEARS OF HISTORY Carolyn, 71, son Andrew, and daughter Alli Ruschp at the Stowe Motel & Snowdrift after it was sold in November for $2.6 million. The Ruschp family owned the motel for 40 years. Inset: The late Peter Ruschp.
sale of ruschp’s stowe motel
BITTER
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It’s impossible to tell the Stowe Motel’s story without also telling the story of the Ruschp family. Its late patriarch, Sepp Ruschp, came from Austria in the 1930s and founded the ski school at Stowe Mountain Resort. His son, Peter Ruschp, was on the U.S. Olympic Ski Team in the 1960s, although a broken back in 1966 sidelined his burgeoning career, and he took over directing the ski school. Sepp Ruschp wanted to make sure the Peter and Caroline stayed in Stowe, so he urged them to buy the Stowe Motel. They bought it in 1977 after moving to Stowe from Long Island, N.Y., in 1968. Carolyn had been waitressing, and the pair had been teaching skiing at the resort before Peter took the job as ski school director. The couple bought the Snowdrift in 1995 and after considerable financial investment, added it to the offerings at Stowe Motel. Ten years later, Peter Ruschp died at 61, leaving Carolyn, his wife of 32 years, and their two children, Andrew, then 27, and Alli, then 18, to run the motel.
GORDON MILLER
Carolyn Ruschp will tell you she’s done. That it’s a relief to have sold the Stowe Motel & Snowdrift after 40 years. But as she says it, her eyes grow a little too bright. Last fall, Ruschp sold the motel where her children grew up, where her first husband died, and where she has spent most of her life. She’s been trying to sell the Stowe Motel since 1997, so to finally unload the property, with its 56 rooms, five houses, and two huge buildings is a goal realized. But it’s still bittersweet. Ruschp, 71, looks forward to “playing,” as she puts it—travel, skiing, hiking, biking, and spending time with her children. She’d like to go to Africa and Iceland, and fly fish in Idaho with her husband. First, though, she had to “clean up her act,” boxing up 40 years of guests, crises, holidays, and day-to-day life as the owner of one of Stowe’s largest and well-known local inns.
When Ruschp first considered selling, she was advised by a real estate agent friend to hold on to it, use it as an income source, and scale back her personal involvement. Three years ago, Ruschp married Walt Levering of Stowe, and she held on to the Stowe Motel & Snowdrift for 20 years longer than she’d planned. It’s been a good 40 years, she said. “People would often say to me, ‘Oh, it’s got to be so awful dealing with people all the time,’ and it’s not. The people are the best part of the job. It’s not like people think it is. The type of guests that we get here are family. It’s been like that from the beginning.” The land that holds Stowe Motel & Snowdrift is one of the largest developable properties left along Mountain Road, and it’s zoned for commercial use. Carolyn entertained a $2.4 million offer from Vermont Country Store to buy the property this year, but the family-owned retailer backed out after protests from other local retailers. Now, it’s going to Sean Kearney of Stowe and Ted Steers of Vail, Colo., who paid $2.6 million for the property and the buildings and who so far have declined to comment on their plans. —Caleigh Cross
PAUL ROGERS
RURAL ROUTE
ACCESSIBLE PATHWAY Tasha Wallis, executive director of the Lamoille County Planning Commission, addresses the assembled crowd on hand to celebrate the opening of a new boardwalk at Barnes Camp, the visitors center to Smugglers Notch. The walk makes a small portion of the Long Trail accessible to the disabled and offers stunning views of the Notch’s cliffs and a closeup view of wetlands and beaver habitat.
BOARD WALK barnes camp
isabled people in northern Vermont will finally get a chance to hike on the Long Trail—at least an eighth of a mile of it. A new boardwalk in Stowe opens a small portion of the Long Trail to people with disabilities, connecting Barnes Camp visitors center with the Long Trail in Smugglers Notch. Lamoille County Planning Commission runs Barnes Camp, which it helped to restore in 2014. The boardwalk is 5 feet wide, allowing two wheelchair users to pass at a time, and has safety curbing. Some spots, depending on the height of the boardwalk, also have a safety railing. Four viewing areas feature interpretive panels about wetlands, wildlife, and the area's natural history. Gov. Phil Scott cut a ceremonial ribbon at the entrance to the new boardwalk; at the event
d
were U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, planning commission members and staff, local officials and residents, and members of the Green Mountain Club, the steward of the Long Trail. Scott praised the planning commission’s ability to work with other organizations to get the boardwalk done, despite challenges posed by beavers and wetlands. Scott said his father was a double amputee, so the boardwalk had personal meaning. “When we all get together and pull in the same direction, I believe we can accomplish a great deal.” The 272-mile Long Trail follows the main ridge of the Green Mountains the length of Vermont, from the Massachusetts state line to the Canadian border. Barnes Camp is just past the entrance of the Stowe ski area on Route 108. —Caleigh Cross
NOW THAT’S A BOOK SALE! The Stowe Free Library’s 34th Annual Book Sale begins July 10 at 9 a.m. The sale is held daily, dawn to dusk, through July 29 on the porch and grounds of the library, 90 Pond St., in the heart of the Village of Stowe. •••• Over 25 categories of books are available, including collectibles, antique books, coffee table items, and historical editions, as well as classics, history, travel, cooking, art, biography, gardening, and parenting, self-help, and more. There’s a selection of large print books, music CDs, audio books, and DVDs. The sale includes a separate area in the gazebo with children’s books, audio books, CDs, and DVDs. •••• The book selection is restocked continuously so be sure to visit the sale several times to find treasures that were missed or not on display the first, second, or third time around. •••• There is also a permanent ongoing book sale inside the library, to the left of the main desk. This sale is open to the public during Stowe Free Library hours. •••• Proceeds benefit the Friends of Stowe Free Library, which supports library resources, activities, and programs. stowelibrary.org/friends.
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RURAL ROUTE
Stowe Rotary is packing up its lederhosen and bier steins for good. Its popular Oktoberfest, a weekend-long event for 21 years, is no more. Declining revenues and declining interest led to its demise, said Stowe Rotary president Jen Colin. The event raised money for the club’s community service projects and scholarships, as well as the Stowe Fire Department.
Over the course of its run, the festival brought in more than $1 million. Rotarian Heidi Scheuermann, who also serves as Stowe’s representative in the Vermont Legislature, said she’s excited for the opportunity to try something new. “We’re a small club, and it’s become more of a challenge to put Oktoberfest on and produce it. I’m excited for our new phase, and I think the community will be excited to see what we’re endeavoring to do,” she said. One of those new events took place last winter when the club hosted Casino Royale, a night of music and gambling-table favorites, like blackjack, roulette, poker, and craps, presided over by Rotary members. From all indications, Rotarians dealt a royal flush. (See Party Pix, p.42)
ESSENTIALS: Casino Royale •••• Saturday, September 29, 7 - 11 p.m., Stoweflake Mountain Resort •••• stowerotary.com
If Amtrak decides to pull out of Vermont over safety concerns, it could put a dent in tourism business in Stowe and Waterbury. “Train tourism is really big,” said a spokesperson for Revitalizing Waterbury, a nonprofit promotional group. “People like to travel around, not necessarily on trains, but to see trains, and to check out train stations, and they love the history of trains. Having a working train station that we have restored makes that train station a real tourist draw for Waterbury.” •••• Amtrak operates two train routes in Vermont—the Vermonter, which runs from St. Albans to Washington, D.C., no more and the Ethan Allen Express, a daily route from Rutland to New York City. But Amtrak’s CEO, Richard Anderson, said the railroad could halt service on those routes at the end of this year. •••• Under federal regulations, positive train control—a technology designed to automatically stop trains before crashes or derailments can happen—must be installed on about 60,000 miles of the nation’s rail routes by the end of the year. Those rules don’t apply to the Vermont routes because they have relatively light ridership. However, Amtrak is worried about safety on those lines. •••• “To be clear, Amtrak has not made any decisions to cease train operations across our network or on any specific routes at this time,” Anderson said. Waterbury’s station, built in 1875, was restored in 2006. It’s now home to a Green Mountain Coffee café and a tourist stop, as well as a budding history museum. About 200,000 people go through the station every year.
train?
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RURAL ROUTE
a seven decade
love story HILDE & HEINZ MORGENSTERN When Hilde and Heinz Morgenstern married in 1944, the thought that they’d still be married seven decades on never occurred them. “Why would it? Back then, no one lived that long, so there was no reason to think we’d still be married,” Heinz said. But on Sept. 9, 2017, they celebrated their 73rd wedding anniversary, dining out with friends at Michael’s on the Hill. Both Hilde and Heinz were born in Germany in 1922 and met at a dance club at the youthful age of 19. Heinz was a good dancer, said Hilde. “He was cute, he made me laugh.” Heinz was similarly smitten. “I liked the whole essence of her. She’s a warm human being, beautiful, and is still beautiful in my eyes, even after 73 years.” Heinz was drafted into the German Luftwaffe shortly before their dance club encounter. A pilot, he flew all types of planes and reconnaissance missions for three-and-a-half years. Meanwhile, Hilde kept books for a large German firm. Heinz survived the war and when he returned home in 1944 he and Hilde married. “We were in love. We still are. We are good friends, good to each other.” Heinz came from a long line of bakers, so when his uncle moved to Clifton, N.J., Heinz and Hilde followed. “We came to the U.S. to better ourselves. It was bad in Germany and we didn’t want to stay. It was different back then and we were welcomed in New Jersey.” The couple opened Allwood Bakery, named for an area of Clifton. Word spread that a German bakery was coming to town and on opening day 6,000 people showed up. “We worked 80 to 90 hours a week for the first three years. We slept and worked and ate together,” Heinz said. The bakery was wildly successful and the Morgensterns were active in the community. They sponsored a well-fed Little League Team and, in 1968, Heinz baked a birthday cake for Richard Nixon when he was campaigning for the presidency. The bakery’s success carried them through to retirement. “We started as one store
50
girl and one baker. When we sold the bakery it had 47 employees.” In 1969 the couple moved to Stowe, a town they had come to on ski vacations. “It reminded us of where we grew up, and we loved to ski,” Heinz said. “We came and took private ski lessons. We paid $15 for two hours.” They stopped downhill skiing when they turned 75 and started cross-country skiing at Trapps. Avid gardeners, the couple grew their own food and filled up a root cellar. They still live in the same home they built in Stowe Hollow with the help of local architect Peter Scheuermann. Hilde babysat for the Scheuermann’s six children, including Heidi, who currently serves in the Vermont House of Representatives. Heidi’s mother, Anne Marie Scheuermann, remembers when they met the Morgensterns. “We were introduced to Hilde and Heinz when they first came to Stowe by Ann and Herb Hillman, who owned the Golden Eagle at that time. The Morgensterns knew Herb’s family, who had an ice cream business in Clifton.
‘DON’T OVERDO IT! Hilde and Heinz Morgenstern on their wedding day, Sept. 9, 1944, and on their 73rd anniversary.
“They are very thoughtful people and were always very gracious hosts. They are very kind and generous people. They would oftentimes bring a lovely gift to our children.” Heinz and Hilde returned to Germany every year to visit relatives until they were 87, when there was no one left to visit, except a niece, with whom they remain in close contact. In 2014 Hilde was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. She still remembers a lot and smiles easily, but struggles with speech and the ability to recall words. Otherwise she is perfectly healthy. Heinz attributes their longevity to never overdoing anything. “We ate good hearty food and never drank sodas. We have an occasional glass of wine or beer.” Heinz had one brief stint with cigarettes. “I smoked for five years when we first came to this country, when a pack of 20 cigarettes cost 20 cents. I was stupid. Everyone told me it was bad for my health, so I stopped.” Now, at 96, they both have good days and bad days. Heinz still drives and cooks and is witty and sharp as a tack. They have live-in help from three different caregivers who share, on a rotating schedule, a basement apartment in the house. The Morgenstern’s are doing what most people hope to do: age gracefully in their own home. Looking back, Hilde and Heinz have no regrets. They agree that getting married was one of their best decisions and their wedding day the best day of their long lives. And then, after some thought, Heinz adds wistfully, “It’s wonderful to live with the same person for 75 years. It’s too bad it’s coming to an end.” —Kate Carter
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Israel Brooks owns a taxi company but you’re more likely to find him behind the camera shooting a film than driving the cab. Brooks, who has owned Snowflake Taxi since he and his then 8-year-old son arrived in Stowe six years ago, finally found office space last fall in Stowe village for his true dream: Fast Fire Films. His parents sent him to the Prospect School, an experimental school in Bennington that allowed children from first through eighth grades to focus on their own creative inclinations, from poetry to French language to filmmaking. The Prospect School ended operations in 1991. Brooks, 45, the youngest of 11 children, now has three children himself. He got his first video camera at age 7 and began making films for school projects. The first one he can remember is a scene from “King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.” His father was pretty supportive of his filmmaking, Brooks said. When he was about to enter the ninth grade, the family moved to South America, and rather than being homeschooled as his parents wanted, Brooks traveled to six countries with his father’s support, and he credits those travels as a teen for his creativity in film. Now, he has several films in pre-production. “Spanish Class” was close to completion before hurricanes badly battered Puerto Rico, where it was being filmed. He hopes work will resume soon. “The Four Keys” is a short about foreign nationals fleeing America for Canada. —Caleigh Cross
taxi
driver makes films
doodle
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KRISTEN BRALEY
RURAL ROUTE
STOWE LOSES ICONIC TREE towe lost one of its most prominent trees this winter. The massive silver maple on Park Street, held up by as many as seven cables in recent years, was cut down. It took about four days to remove the tree, said Steve Rocha of AVA Tree Service. The tree received a few olive branches over the years to keep it in good standing. In 2014, the Talarico family, which owns the property, said they’d spent around $10,000 to stabilize the tree. This time it couldn’t be saved. In 2014, about a third of the tree fell onto Park Street during a storm. Fortunately, no one was hurt and it didn’t damage any cars or nearby buildings, but it was a wakeup call for the Talaricos. Then this winter, a few more of the majestic maple’s limbs fell to the street. Rocha estimated the tree was between 75 and 100 years old. Its trunk was about 4 feet in diameter, and it stood about 70 feet tall. After getting a look inside the tree, Rocha confirmed it was time to cut it down, as some of the branches were hollow and “maple rots pretty quickly. This is what happens. They get big and fall apart. There’s nothing you can do for it anymore. “Everyone’s sad to see it go,” Rocha said. Stowe Town Manager Charles Safford routinely takes walks around the village, and has admired the massive maple. “It was a spectacularly beautiful tree. ... Its natural beauty was surreal. Some days, you’d sit there and look at the big limbs going in every direction. It takes a little while to get to that state of majesty.” Charlie Lusk, Stowe’s tree warden, said at one point he thought the tree was a contender for tallest silver maple in the state, but he no longer believes that was the case. “It’s always sorry to have a big tree go.” —Caleigh Cross
S
A Stowe resident hoped to see a Vermont icon on Google’s search page. Beth Liberman worked with students at Stowe’s Helen Day Art Center to create drawings of Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley, whose birthday was Feb. 9. She wanted Google’s featured doodle that day to be one of the drawings the students created. •••• Some of Google’s doodles are chosen through the Doodle 4 Google contest, open to kindergartners through seniors in high school. The contest ran from Jan. 8 through March 2. •••• Liberman shares a birthday with Bentley. This year was her 50th. It would have been his 153rd, and she wanted to honor that milestone. She visited the Snowflake Bentley Museum in Jericho (snowflakebentley.com) when she moved to Vermont and fell in love with the story of the photographer who perfected a process of catching snowflakes on black velvet so they could be photographed. •••• “His photographs were so impeccable and scientifically accurate that nobody repeated his work.” •••• Liberman thought a Google Doodle of Bentley’s birthday would be the perfect way to celebrate her own and to honor his. •••• “I think he embodied a certain Vermont spirit and relationship with the weather.” Alas, Google passed. But there’s always next year.
by Caleigh Cross
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O N M O U N TA I N COURTESY PHOTO
ENCHANTED FOREST Under-the-radar playground at Spruce
W
hen you mention Spruce Peak, the Enchanted Forest surely isn’t the first thing to come to mind. Over the last decade and a half, development at Spruce Peak has included hotels, luxury homes and condominiums, a timber-framed adventure center, a performing arts center, base lodge, and townhomes. However, some development features, like the Enchanted Forest playground area off the Spruce Community Pathway near the Adventure Center and Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center, are a bit less obvious and STORY / MARK AIKEN can’t be measured in square footage, number of rooms, or revenue-generating power. Never noticed the playground? That isn’t a big surprise; by design, the casual passerby wouldn’t realize it exists. The Enchanted Forest is a clearing in the woods with equipment that blends into its natural and woodsy surroundings. But within walking distance (even for the smallest and youngest of playground enthusiasts) of the buildings and parking area of Spruce, it’s perfect for families and kids, and it’s free. A person entering over a walking bridge and path from Red Sled Road would discover that the Enchanted Forest has two parts. The first, the more traditional playground side, was built in 2011 and includes slides, climbing structures, and a jungle gym made of ropes. The second, built in 2016, is more a mini-adventure course. “We had installed some more traditional playground equipment in a clearing nearby, but realized we needed to expand and give something that kids a little older might enjoy more,” said Jeff Nichols, homeowner liaison for Spruce Peak Realty, a title he holds after wearing many hats, involving him in most aspects of Spruce development, not least of which was project manager for the Enchanted Forest. Shopping around, Nichols found that modern playground equipment trends increasingly toward bright colors and cheap plastic. “Not what I was looking for the Spruce Peak aesthetic,” he said.
No plastic, thanks
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Somewhat embarrassed, Nichols admitted that the idea for the adventure course concept came to him one night while watching “American Ninja Warrior” on TV. He worked with Kompan, a Danish company that specializes in equipment constructed from natural products, including the locust wood used in the Enchanted Forest. Nichols chose features like multi-vines, hanging beams, and swinging ropes that would together create a challenge course for 7-yearolds and up. “My goal was to make it a little bit hard to get from one end to the other without touching the ground, so when kids do make it they feel a sense of accomplishment,” Nichols said. The Enchanted Forest is actually a part of the larger Spruce Community Pathways project—a network of trails through the woods around the Spruce Peak community and golf course. Like many good ideas, the original concept for walking paths was unplanned and largely spontaneous. “In 2009, the economic slowdown had affected construction and, having a little time, I started poking around in the woods with an idea of maybe creating a few pathways,” Nichols
‘I started poking around’
said. Steering clear of wetlands and steeper slopes, he cut a couple of trails with his clippers. The pathway concept became more formalized several years later, and now the trails link up with the Long Trail and feature timber bridges, stairways, and railings over drop-offs. The Enchanted Forest and the Community Pathways come with less hype and fanfare than other development features, but Nichols said they are no less important: “Families spending time enjoying the outdoors and making memories together are at the core of our vision.” The trails and playground do both, and promote fitness, exercise, and getting out in the woods. “I’ve done many projects in my 13 years here,” Nichols said. “But the Pathways and Enchanted Forest course are two of my favorites and most rewarding.” n
•••• Mark Aiken is a supervisor in the Stowe Ski and Ride School. In the winter, he can be found skiing everywhere, from the sidecountry and backcountry of Mansfield to the Meadows Carpet lift with his 3-year-old. In the summer he can be found running the trails with his endurance-athlete wife, or at his writing desk at their home in Richmond, Vt.
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A GUIDE TO THE UNUSUAL compiled by kate carter
CHAPEL TO THE DOGS
SOCK IT TO ME
“Welcome all creeds, all breeds, no dogmas allowed!” So reads the sign at the entrance to the Dog Chapel at Dog Mountain. The small white chapel resembles a 19th-century New England church, with a winged Labrador atop the steeple. Inside, thousands of remembrances of loved dogs who have crossed over the Rainbow Bridge cover the walls. When artist Steven Huneck (1948-2010) built Dog Mountain and the Dog Chapel he created a place for quiet reflection and spiritual renewal, where visitors could honor animals as the feeling, spiritual beings they are, and to also help them find closure and healing. Dog Mountain is set on 150 acres in St. Johnsbury, and the grounds are always open to people and their dogs. The unspoiled sanctuary has hiking trails, dog ponds, and a profusion of wildflowers. It’s a place where dogs are not only welcome, they are cherished. Dog-themed celebrations are held year-round, culminating with the Summer Dog Party, this year on Aug. 4. INFO: dogmtn.com.
Originally coined a party for hunters’ widows, the Cabot Hosiery annual sock sale draws thousands—women, men, children, and even hunters—who paw through mounds of made-in-Vermont factory seconds and overstocks. More socks than you can shake a foot at. Merino wool socks, cold weather hunting socks, run, bike, ski, and snowboard socks, novelty holiday socks, military surplus socks, and Darn Tough socks. Cabot Hosiery, located in Northfield, Vt., has been in the Cabot family for three generations. They are the only sock company remaining in Vermont and one of the last sock companies in the country. The sock sale has become an annual event for locals and out-of-staters. If you go, expect to spend a lot of time parking, walking, waiting in lines, and being surrounded by enthusiastic sock lovers. Food and beverages available on site. This year’s sale is Nov. 10-11 and 17-18, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. all four days, at the hosiery mill, 364 Whetstone Drive, Northfield. INFO: darntough.com.
POLITICAL PUPPETRY ... & BREAD
>>
Massive street protests may be passe, but Bread and Puppet Theater’s work is still unapologetically political. Bread and Puppet, as it is more commonly known, is a politically radical puppet theater, active since the 1960s, and currently based in Glover, Vt. The giant puppets have been a familiar presence at political demonstrations since the anti-war protests of the 1960s. The traveling puppet shows range from theater pieces, presented by members of the company, to extensive outdoor pageants that require countless volunteers. Today, it continues to be one of the oldest, nonprofit, self-supporting theatrical companies in the country, with numerous festivals and shows held at its home base. The name Bread & Puppet comes from the theater’s tradition of sharing its own freshbaked bread with the audience at each performance. Peter Schumann, who founded the theater company in the early 1960s on New York’s Lower East Side, once said, “We have two types of puppet shows: good ones and bad ones, but all of them are for good and against evil.” INFO: breadandpuppet.org. MORE
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VERMONT QUIRKY
A GUIDE TO THE UNUSUAL compiled by kate carter
ANTIQUES & UNIQUES ON THE COMMON
JIM MENDELL
Every July, this year on the 14th, over 100 vendors set up shop in the most quaint and picturesque village green in Vermont, Craftsbury Common. On the Common expect to find uncommon antiques, collectibles, jewelry, quilts, uniques, live music, and barbecue. This year’s Antiques and Uniques Festival will also feature a specialty food area. Drive an antique car to the festival and get preferred parking. The festival is a beloved Vermont summer event that has been recognized by Vermont Chamber of Commerce, Yankee Magazine, Vermont Life, and Vermont Magazine, and was mentioned in an episode of the popular TV show “Everybody Loves Raymond.” Community non-profits receive any proceeds.
PROM FOR THE PEOPLE
RUNNING OF THE OUTHOUSES In Bristol, Vt., celebrating the 4th of July is pretty much like most Vermont towns—the proverbial parade, barbecue, fireworks, and beer—except for one thing you’ll won’t find in too many other places in the world: The Outhouse Race. Yup, outhouses on wheels, careening down the street in hopes of crossing the finish line first. Teams consist of two runners who push the outhouse and one who sits on the throne. Rules state that outhouses must not exceed certain dimensions, and must have three sides, a roof, a front door, and four casters. The winning team gets $75, a trophy, and fame. Sorry, there’s no prize for number two, but there is a prize for the best-decorated outhouse. On the sidelines, things heat up as fans who are privy to team strategy bet on their favorites. It’s great fun and no one gets pissed, although a few are pooped by the time they cross the finish. This year is the 38th running.
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INFO: bristol4th.com.
Miss your high school prom or just want to relive it? Well, here’s your chance. The Montgomery People’s Prom, held every year on the last Saturday in May at the Montgomery Town Hall, is a formal prom for grownups. Dress up in tuxes, prom gowns, or a costume that reflects the theme. Or just come as you are. Past year’s themes have included Casablanca, Ain’t Misbehavin’, La Dolce Vita, All That Jazz, Mad Men, and Copacabana. This year’s theme is … wait for it … From Russia With Love! Nearly 50 years ago Tim Murphy, a Harvard grad, brought the tradition to town when he and his Ivy League buddies bought a saloon in the center of town in a building commonly referred to as Kilgore’s. Murphy may be the only person to attend every People’s Prom, and he can remember the times the band played until 3 a.m. and dancers stayed to watch the sunrise. The prom is BYOB, but overindulging is highly frowned on. At midnight, a wonderful spread of food is laid out, donated by area restaurants and helpful volunteers. Cost is $40 per couple for the night. INFO: Montgomery People’s Prom on Facebook.
36 Holes of Golf Two Distinctive Courses Save up to 40% on golf rounds when you stay and play! Guests of Stowe Mountain Lodge receive exclusive access to the private Stowe Mountain Club golf course.
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MTB & ROAD BIKE EVENTS JUNE 29 – JULY 1: Bikes, Bevs, & Beats Rides for all ages, abilities. Music, food, and family fun. Block Party June 29 at 4 p.m., Stowe Village. Various venues around Stowe. stowemountainbike.com. JULY 8: Raid Lamoille Long and short rides. Craftsbury Outdoor Center. raidlamoille.com. AUGUST 26: Race to the Top of Vermont 4.3-mile hill climb, bike or run up Mansfield’s Toll Road, 2,564 vertical. rtttovt.com. JULY 27 – 29: Vermont Mountain Bike Festival Rides, music, food, brews, families. Ascutney Basin, Brownsville. vmba.com. GOLF: DON LANDWEHRLE. HIKING: KATE CARTER. FISHING: PAUL ROGERS. OTHERS: GLENN CALLAHAN.
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OUTDOOR PRIMER Golf
More than a dozen courses are within an hour’s drive, but two of the state’s most spectacular are the 6,213-yard, 18-hole Stowe Country Club, and Stowe Mountain Club, both operated by Stowe Mountain Resort. Stoweflake Resort features a 9-hole, par-3 course, professional putting greens, and a 350-yard driving range. Don’t have time for a full 18? Try Stowe Golf Park, an 18-hole putting course that simulates a real golf course.
Bike in the woods
Whether you want a gentle ride along the 5.3-mile award-winning Stowe bike path with its views of Mount Mansfield or a teeth-chattering, lung-burning trip through Adams Camp trails, strap on your helmet and get riding. Varied terrain and hundreds of miles of trails make the region a perfect biking destination. To get started, stop into a local bike shop or go to stowemountainbike.com.
Adventure mountain
The Gondola at Stowe Mountain Resort takes skiers up Mt. Mansfield in winter to some of the best ski slopes in the East. In summer, it takes passengers to just below the summit of Mount Mansfield for some of the best views around, and serves as a starting point to the rocky summit of Vermont’s highest peak. Or try the Auto Toll Road, which winds 3.7 miles through cool, green tunnels of vegetation and past sweeping vistas to the top of Mansfield. A thrilling zipline course down the mountain and an adventure park round out the offerings. Access the Long Trail and the extensive trail network from the summit area, or just enjoy a relaxing picnic and the views of Vermont’s Green Mountains, the White Mountains, Lake Champlain, and the Adirondacks.
Glider rides starting at $99 Morrisville – Stowe Airport I Route 100, Morrisville, Vermont (802) 888-7845 I (800) 898-7845 I stowesoaring.com
Paddle sports
Local outfitters offer river trips on the Lamoille and Winooski rivers, where you can canoe past dairy farms and through quintessential Vermont villages, all the while soaking in sweeping views. Or if you prefer, launch a kayak on Lake Eden, Lake Elmore, Caspian Lake, Wolcott Pond, or Waterbury Reservoir. Canoes and paddleboards are welcome everywhere, such as Long Pond in Eden, Green River Reservoir in Hyde Park, and Little Elmore Pond.
Swimming holes
Innumerable mountain streams meander through the Green Mountains, serving up a Vermont-style swimming experience and a unique kind of solitude. Some are a cinch to find: A walk up the Stowe Recreation Path to a spot on the West Branch River, or the well-known Foster’s swimming hole. Better yet, find your own!
Stowe Recreation Path
Stowe’s nationally recognized 5.3-mile walking and hiking greenway starts in the village behind the Stowe Community Church. While never far from civilization, the path offers scenic views of the West Branch River and Mt. Mansfield. Other access points are on Weeks Hill Road, Luce Hill Road, on the Mountain Road across from Well Heeled, and at the path’s end on Brook Road.
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CALEIGH CROSS; INSETS: COURTESY PHOTOS
COOL THINGS
uxbury’s debutante driving duo, Peyton and Reilly Lanphear, are shifting gears in their young racing careers. Peyton and Reilly, 16 and 18, respectively, have been racing stock cars at Thunder Road International SpeedBowl in Barre for more than a year. Now, they’ve signed with Mike Calinoff Driver Development, a Charlotte, N.C.-based company that works to skyrocket young drivers’ careers. The sister’s racing skills caught his eye. “I believe that they feed off each other,” he said. “Being siblings definitely helps.” The sisters may come as a pair, but they take to the pavement differently. “They have two different driving styles,” Calinoff said. “Peyton is a little more on the aggressive side. Being aggressive is important, especially the races that they race,” which are short distances. “Sometimes, you gotta get up and go, and it really depends on where you start in the field. “Reilly is a little bit more conservative. She’s a little more cerebral about it, where she’s going to kind of assess the situation, and see how the race is playing out, and make decisions accordingly. Obviously the goal is to be in the front at the end,” Calinoff said. Having a dad equipped to set up their cars just right also helps. The girls’ father Mark Lanphear owns Duxbury Auto-Tech and has been part of NASCAR crews in the past. Calinoff will use media outlets, partnerships with sponsoring companies, and in-car training to give the Lanphears some street cred in the wider stock-car racing world and, hopefully, net them more sponsorships. Peyton and Reilly have two official sponsorships for the 2018 season. Reilly admits she thought it was a joke when their dad approached the girls about signing with Calinoff. “It was exciting because we were stepping out of our shells and we were able to progress in the marketing and getting our names out there. This is going to help us do that,” Peyton added. —Caleigh Cross
D
Fast track
SPEED RACERS Peyton and Reilly Lanphear are familiar faces at Barre’s Thunder Road International SpeedBowl.
Ken Squier is now a member of NASCAR royalty. In January, the broadcaster from Waterbury was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame, honored as racing’s most recognizable voice. The town and village of Waterbury declared Jan. 19, 2018, Ken Squier Day, in honor of his achievements. Dale Earnhardt Jr., the noted driver, introduced Squier at the Hall of Fame ceremony. Squier, the 1970 co-founder of the Motor Racing Network, called the watershed 1979 Daytona 500 the race that put NASCAR on the map for CBS television. “He made watching a race an introspective portrait of our own journey,” Earnhardt said. “Tonight, fittingly, the NASCAR Hall of Fame becomes part of his journey.” Squier, 81, lives in Stowe. Here’s part of what the NASCAR program said about him: “With a smooth voice and knack for weaving a simple note into an epic tale, Ken Squier carved a massive footprint during NASCAR’s formative broadcast years. He is perhaps best known for calling the 1979 Daytona 500, a milestone moment for the entire sport, as Squier’s voice on CBS welcomed millions to the first live flag-toflag coverage of ‘The Great American Race’—a moniker he coined.”
Hall of Fame
KEN SQUIER
LANPHEAR SISTERS
Sixty-nine world-ranked skiers were in Beaver Creek, Colo., in early December, thinking about the next day’s giant slalom, one of the longest, hardest, thigh-burning-est courses on the World Cup circuit. Exactly one of those skiers was also finishing a paper on African American sexuality for his gender studies class at Middlebury College. On race day, Angie Duke was atop the Birds of Prey trail, looking down, waiting his turn to take his first-ever World Cup run. It probably didn’t help that it was Duke’s first race start since March 2017, and only his eighth time on snow since then. But then any butterflies went away and, he said, “It’s just red gate, blue gate, left turn, right turn. It’s just skiing.” Oh, and the race? “My goal was to ski confidently, have fun, and finish,” Duke said. Check. Check. And, check. He finished in last place and he’s completely stoked about it. Because you know what? Ten world-class racers never made it to the bottom of the grueling course. The 22-year-old junior races for the school during our North American winters, and races for Argentina when it’s winter in South America. Duke, who grew up in Stowe, has been on the endless winter loop for as long as he can remember. Duke was born in Argentina and when you’re born in Argentina, you become a citizen of that country. After his family moved to Stowe, Angie held on to that dual citizenship. Check. (Editor’s note: Angie’s father Biddle is former owner and publisher of the Stowe Reporter). —Tommy Gardner
Endless winter ANGIE DUKE
RACE DAY Angie Duke.
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TRAIL JOURNAL
GRAVEL GRINDING
Dirt gives cyclists new avenues for adventure STORY
/ ROGER MURPHY
Fantastic views, light traffic, history all around, welcoming people—no wonder bicyclists enjoy Vermont’s 16,000 miles of roads. Every spring, as soon the snowbanks have melted, cyclists emerge in their spandex, wheeling alone or in groups through valleys and farmland to famous passes like the Appalachian Gap in Fayston or Smugglers Notch in Stowe and Cambridge. Increasingly, those cyclists are choosing to ride on Vermont’s 8,650 miles of dirt road. They’re much more peaceful, cars go more slowly, the landscape is largely untouched, and you can ride for hours without bumping into tourists. Dirt roads have been a regular part of Vermont life—the way to get to school, to church, to the neighbor’s house, to the post office. And, “dirt road” covers a huge range of quality. Some dirt roads are smooth and wide; others are barely more than a footpath.
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For cyclists, dirt roads are a route into the Vermont that used to be—rural, unpretentious, sparsely settled. They take people where paved roads won’t go. “Most Vermonters, if they don’t already live on a dirt road, have one in close proximity to their home,” said Ryan Thibault, owner and editor of Mountain Bike Vermont. His group— an advocacy, event management, and media production company—helps to promote riding on dirt roads by promoting “Gravel Grinders,” cycling events held almost exclusively along dirt miles. Thibault says these events are not races, but “group rides done in a mostly noncompetitive nature, although some people do push hard.” The Gravel Grinder is the major fundraiser of the year for the Waterbury Area Trail Alliance. The alliance builds and maintains the mountain bike trail network in Waterbury, and aims to connect it with the trails in Stowe, managed and maintained by the Stowe Trails Partnership. Alex Showerman, a board member of the Waterbury group, loves the Gravel Grinder
PHOTO COURTESY OF XVT; INSET: TRISTAN VON DUNTZ
because “it brings the whole community together,” up to 350 riders and lots of spectators. Many like to ride hard, but others are there to support the Waterbury Area Trail Alliance mission, or to take a long, meandering ride with friends. This year’s grinder had two routes: 27 miles with 2,600 vertical feet of climbing, and “the Big Grind,” 44 miles with over 4,400 feet of vertical. Lots of riders use gravel bikes—similar to a road bike but with more stable geometry and wider, more heavily treaded tires—while others enjoy the event on mountain bikes, fat bikes, and tandem bikes. And some people run the route.
Vermont Bikepackers specializes in using dirt roads to link routes together on extended rides through the state. The Bikepackers, a chapter of the Vermont Mountain Bike Association, has formally organized itself, with a four-member board and a membership that has more than tripled in the last year. The Bikepackers maintain two routes. One is the XVT, the bikers’ equivalent of the Long Trail; it runs 300 miles from the Massachusetts border to Canada. The other is the Super 8, which covers a 550-mile figure-8 around the state. The XVT, conceptualized and laid out by avid riders David Tremblay and David Blumenthal, is usually ridden south to north,
DIRT BIKE Dirt roads are becoming increasingly popular with cyclists. Inset: Minimalist gear laid out for a bikepacking trip into Groton State Forest. Since you carry it all on the bike, wise packing is imperative.
primarily on dirt roads and doubletrack mountain bike trails. About 10 percent of the route incorporates singletrack mountain bike trails in 10 distinct trail networks. For some variety, the route weaves through the Lincoln Gap, which is the steepest mile of paved road in America, with a maximum gradient of 24 percent. The Super 8 uses some of the XVT route, but offers options for those who want to avoid the singletrack—or when the singletrack should be avoided because of wet conditions. The Super 8 is intended primarily for a gravel bike, but many go by the “run what you brung” philosophy—whatever bike you own is the perfect bike for you. Some riders carry camping equipment (that’s where the name “bikepacking” comes from). Others map out day trips, piecing legs together so they eventually cover the entire distance—the way hikers piece together the Long Trail, and backcountry skiers the Catamount Trail. Daniel Jordan, a Bikepackers board member, is an evangelist for bikepacking, a sport he picked up out West, where it’s booming. He said organizers make sure that “the route goes past plenty of local general stores, which offer not just refreshment and food, but become part of the Vermont experience as well.” While the Bikepackers don’t maintain any trails of their own, they do maintain the GPS files for both routes. The Super 8 is available free for download, since it uses solely public roads, and the XVT is available for club members. “We intend to use the money collected from members for signage and to eventually help support the trail networks utilized by the XVT,” Jordan said. Those GPS files are important because, “due to a variety of factors, we have to reroute the XVT almost every year.” Whatever its form, the XVT has gained the notice of record-seekers. Vermonter Calvin Decker has posted the fastest XVT time, completing the 300-mile route as it existed in 2015 in just over 37 hours—a seemingly superhuman feat. But you don’t have to be Calvin Decker. You can move at your own pace, making your own decisions about taking on tough terrain. What’s true for every rider is this: Getting off the pavement delivers a remarkably different experience. All you need is a bike of some sort, a sense of adventure, and a willingness to slow down a bit. n
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STOWE HISTORY
TRAPP FAMILY TOURING A kick-and-glide legacy, now 50 years old
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Mix one part alumni reunion and one part celebration, add a pinch of nostalgia, and pour it into a large 1960s-era decanter filled with frosty memories, and what do you get? A savory 50th anniversary cocktail recalling the now-historic winter of 1968 high up on Luce Hill in Stowe, when the Trapp Family Lodge opened up the first commercial ski touring center in the United States—and launched a brand new sport in America. Last January Trapps commemorated that seminal moment in cross-country skiing, when a lodge mostly famed for its ties to “The Sound of Music” also became the place that kick-started America’s adoption of Scandinavia’s national kick-and-glide tradition. Johannes von Trapp, the youngest son of Maria von STORY / ANDREW NEMETHY Trapp, recalls that was hardly what he had in mind when PHOTOGRAPHS / GORDON MILLER he imported 50 wooden Trysil-Knut hickory skis and a 24-year-old Norwegian named Per Sørlie to teach Nordic skiing in a downhill-dominated world. For him, it was a semi-desperate Hail Mary pass to lure some paying winter guests up to the family’s 27-room lodge. Back then the infamous hairpin climb to Trapps was unpaved, and SUVs and all-wheel drive Subarus were a distant glimmer in some auto engineer’s eye. When virtually every lodge and motel on the Mountain Road was closer to Mount Mansfield, getting winter visitors was a tough sell. Thankfully, Mother Nature gifted him with copious white stuff in 1968. That snowy serendipity was matched by Sørlie’s ample gifts of personable enthusiasm, a fact noted by Sam von Trapp,
MILESTONE The von Trapp family and friends celebrate the 50th anniversary of the touring center in January. Inset: Sam von Trapp poses for a fan at the event.
now 45 and the executive vice president of the lodge. “Without Sørlie and four really good snow years in a row, this might all have been just a bad idea,” he said. During the celebration, Sam von Trapp and his mother Lynne joined Sørlie, who visited from Norway with his wife for the celebration, and led a reminiscence ski tour for a group of festive skiers attired in vintage ski gear and clothing. Among those joining was Ingrid Prouty of Johnson, in knickers and a colorful Norwegian sweater, using wooden Eggen skis that Trapps sold in the 1970s. Her father, Jed, was half-Norwegian, and in the 1970s called weekly square dances at the Lodge, while she worked in the coffee and ski shop. To honor their heritage, she recalled her dad decided “our family’s got to get involved,” and she became an avid cross-country skier and racer.
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STOWE HISTORY That tale of embracing the new sport was repeated thousands of times in the 1970s as Trapps became known as ground zero for a sudden Nordic ski boom. For his part Sørlie, now 73 and still hale and hearty, had no grandiose schemes in mind when he came to the U.S. for the first time. Recruited through a Norwegian roommate of Johannes at Dartmouth, his main qualification was being a good skier and up for an adventure. “I was 24 years old and the world was open for everything,” Sørlie said. Johannes, he recalled, said not to worry about his not very good English, saying, “you just have to speak with an accent.” The touring center was a repurposed garage near the lodge. Sørlie hired a couple of Norwegian girls living in Stowe and a Norwegian student from Michigan to help run it. That Norwegian connection continued for several years. “You’d walk into the ski shop and think you were in Norway,” quipped Jared Gange of Shelburne, who was hired in 1972 to man Trapps’ then-new log ski cabin high up in the woods. “The grooming consisted of Per going out in the morning and skiing in the track,” said Johannes with a chuckle. The 1970s brought back-to-the-landers interested in getting back to nature, and as some alpine skiers also began to look askance at lift lines and crowds, the idea of a quieter and active winter alternative took off. It didn’t hurt Trapp’s growth that a bevy of expert instructors worked there, such as Norway’s cross-country Olympic gold-medalist Babben Enger, along with Vermonters like four-time Olympian Larry Damon, touring center director and adventurer Ned Gillette, and Olympian Joe Pete Wilson, widely regarded as one of the greatest salespeople in the sport. A lasting, and less appreciated, legacy is that of Johannes von Trapp, who had a forestry degree from Yale, but found himself stuck running a family lodge, fed his forestry interests through trailwork and land conservation. Gange was one of the first to join a legendary bushwhacking trail crew of amazing skiers that included Dudley Rood, Ray Leggett (now Dhyan Nirmegh) of Huntington, and others who created many of the iconic backcountry trails that now symbolize Stowe, such as Skytop and the Trapp-to-Bolton trail. “He was totally into it,” recalled Gange of von Trapp, who hired him almost accidentally after they met in the old lodge when Gange wandered in looking for a job. Johannes, now 79, says, in hindsight, that land conservation is one of the things he is most proud; the property around the lodge now totals 2,600 acres, up from the original 700. As for Sørlie, ever humble, he said it took him a while to accept his role in Trapps legacy. But seeing what has happened over time and knowing thousands of skiers a day sometimes cruise the trails, he now feels that “I have really done something, and that makes me feel very good.” n Writer and journalist Andrew Nemethy worked at Trapps for two years at the front desk, and badly caught the crosscountry ski bug.
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FOUNDERS CLUB Torrill Sørlie and Johannes and Lynne von Trapp with Per Sørlie at the 50th anniversary celebration.
TRAPP FAMILY TIMELINE 1938 Georg and Maria von Trapp; Georg’s children Rupert, Werner, Johanna, Agathe, Maria, Martina, and Hedwig; and Maria and Georg’s children Rosmarie and Eleonor flee Nazi-occupied Austria. 1939 Family emigrates to Merion, Pa.; Johannes von Trapp is born. 1942 Family purchases part of the old Gale Farm in Stowe and names it Cor Unum (One Heart), later to become the Trapp Family Lodge. 1945 Trapp Music Camp opens. 1947 Georg von Trapp dies. 1948 First addition made to lodge to accommodate guests. 1950 Stone chapel built in honor of World War II soldiers. 1956 Final Trapp Family Singers concert in U.S. 1959 Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “The Sound of Music” opens on Broadway; von Trapp family concentrates on lodge business. 1965 “The Sound of Music” movie is released. 1968 Johannes von Trapp oversees the opening of the cross-country ski center, the first of its kind in the U.S. 1980 Lodge burns to the ground on Dec. 20. 1984 Maria von Trapp dedicates new lodge. 1987 Maria von Trapp dies after short illness. 1996 The New York Times names Trapp Family Lodge “Finest Cross-Country Ski Resort in the United States.” 2004 First villas completed and sold. 2010 von Trapp lagers introduced. 2015 von Trapp Brewing opens brewery. Bierhall opens to the public in 2016.
LAUGHING
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FISH STORY
CAST OFF Using the right equipment for the right situation simplifies the art of fly fishing.
FLY FISHING 101 Learn to walk before you run
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Guiding and teaching fly fishing in Vermont for 22 years has made me understand an eternal question anglers pose. What is fly fishing? Many anglers aren’t clear on the difference, if any, between fly fishing and spin/cast angling. So here it is: It’s the equipment and fashion in which the lure (fly) is delivered to the target. Fly fishing is the act of casting a flexible rod, using a STORY & PHOTOGRAPHS weighted line, to deliver a weightless fly to the target. There is no more active way to fish and it is truly the ultimate method of tricking fish to eat. I knew the first time I cast a fly rod that the reward was worth all of the challenges. Fly fishing dates back several hundred years. The sport’s beginnings in the U.S. started in New England, with anglers pursuing native brook trout. Today, fishermen chase freshwater and saltwater species all over the planet with fly gear. Fly fishing equipment is now designed for anglers chasing tarpon in the Florida Keys or stalking wild trout in a small mountain stream in Vermont. Fly fishing equipment is created for a wide array of applications, and a general understanding of gear can be helpful before beginning to learn how to cast a fly. The fly line is the most important facet of fly casting. Lines are designed for different uses and need to be matched with fly rods. Fly lines are tapered, weighted, and designed to float or sink.
There are two types of tapered fly lines; weight forward (WF) and double tapered (DT). Weight forward is the best bet for beginners. The weight of the fly line is concentrated in the front end and it is a larger diameter than the back end. Double-taper fly lines are thinner in diameter in both front and back ends, with a / WILLY DIETRICH heavier diameter in the middle. Doubletaper fly lines are nice for roll casting and longevity. When one end of the double taper is beat up, you can flip it around and use the other end. Fly rods come in different lengths and are designed to cast the different weighted lines. They are a flexible lever. The action of the rod can vary from very stiff to medium flex to super soft. Stiff or fast-action rods are suited for distance casting, propelling heavy flies into the wind, and fighting big, strong fish. Soft or slow-action rods are perfect for accuracy
>>
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casting, fishing light leaders, and presenting delicate, dainty fly patterns. A medium-action rod can offer an angler a multipurpose taper suited for a variety of applications. The length of the fly rod can vary from a very short 6-foot brook trout rod to a long 14foot Spey rod for steelheading. Short rods are perfect for small, tight environments where accuracy and delicacy are required. Longer fly rods are great for distance-casting when fly fishing large open rivers, big lakes, and the ocean. Matching your rod to the fly line is critical. A 4-weight fly line, whether it is a WF, DT, floating or sinking, needs to be matched with a 4-weight fly rod. In Vermont, I prefer a 8-foot to 9-foot medium-action 4-weight rod when fishing trout in the Winooski and Lamoille. The perfect fly-line match would be an earthtoned weight-forward 4-weight line. With small-stream fly fishing, I prefer a 6foot to 7-foot, 6-inch 2-weight or 3-weight medium-to-slow-action rod. All a matter of gearing your tackle to the size of the environment being fished. When venturing out on the Waterbury Reservoir to pursue smallmouth bass, I prefer a 9-foot to 10-foot fast-action rod that casts a floating or sinking 6-weight or 7-weight fly line. Typically, the heavier fly line and rod relate to fishing in bigger environments for larger and stronger fish. Another facet of fly fishing gear: the reel and the leader. The reel for most freshwater fly fishing simply stores the fly line. The reel is not used actively in casting, unlike in spin/cast fishing. Some fly reels do not have a drag system and the anglers apply resistance by using the palm of their hand. Fly reels used for pursuing big trout, salmon, and ocean fish have elaborate drag systems. A reel is needed in fly fishing, but the fly line that it stores with the attached leader is much more important. The fly is tied to the end of the leader. The leader is either monofilament or fluorocarbon fishing line that is attached to the fly line. Leaders are tapered. They begin with a heavy diameter butt section and end with a thin diameter tippet. The tippet is the end of the leader. Its thickness has to do with the size of the fly being cast. The leader tapers in the opposite direction of a weight-forward fly line and varies in length. Leaders range in length from 7 feet to 15 feet. Leader length is determined by water clarity, creating separation between fly and fly line, and ultimately fussy fish. A simple solution is to keep the leader at least as long as the rod being cast. A general understanding of the gear and its function makes learning to fly cast a bit more simple. Fly fishing is a lifelong pursuit. Owning the right fly fishing equipment will offer anglers a great starting point in unraveling the many questions of fly fishing. n Willy Dietrich is owner and guide at Catamount Fishing Adventures.
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WILL ROBOTS SAVE
THE FAMILY FARM?
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Opening spread, clockwise from top left: Randall Plante in his Elmore cow barn surrounded by several of his herd, a mix of Holsteins and Lineback cattle. Feeding time. Randall checks the monitoring system on the farm’s robotic milking machine. Cow barn portrait: Randall, Penny and Phillip Plante. This page: Cow #160 in the calf barn. A Holstein inside MiOne, the robotic milking machine. Computer monitors help the Plantes track each cow’s yield, health, and any abnormalities in her milk.
WILL ROBOTS SAVE THE FAMILY FARM? Dairy farmer Randall Plante sure as heck hopes so
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STORY
: robert kiener |
PHOTOGRAPHS
: glenn callahan
Randall Plante is laughing. It’s a deep-throated guffaw that sets the dairy farmer back on his heels, threatens to double him over, and makes you like him almost immediately. His wife, Penny, is also laughing; hers is more of a giggle, but no less earnest than her husband’s. We are at the couple’s Morrisville farm in their two-year old dairy barn—that’s “essentially brand new” in the farming game, Randall tells me—and they are both greatly amused by my stupid questions. I’d just asked them how much free time they have since they installed their high-tech, stateof-the art robotic milking system. Were they able to fit in a vacation now and then? “Free time! What’s that?” Randall shoots back at me before rocking back and breaking into another laugh. He steadies himself, glances at Penny and asks, “What does he mean by ‘vacation? ’ ” She grins and chuckles loudly. Their laughter is infectious. Even the Holsteins seem to be smiling. “Well,” says the 58-year-old Plante in an accent as thick as maple syrup, “we did have that vacation when we got married. Our honeymoon, 40-some years ago. At the Holiday Inn in Waterbury. But that was just one night.” “Why just one night?” I ask Without missing a beat, he replies, “Had to get back here to milk the cows.” Penny adds, “There was that one other time we got away from the farm. It was our 25th wedding anniversary. We went to Lake Willoughby, where we planned to spend several days.” Randall laughs and says, “Water line broke down here. Had to get back after just one night.” “So that makes it twice in 25 years you’ve gotten away from the farm?” “Well, we’re dairy farmers,” says Randall with a big smile. He’s on a roll and asks me again before cracking up, “You never told me; what’s ‘free time?’ ”
I’ve come to the Plantes’ dairy farm to see what some people have been calling “the future of dairy farming”—a robotic milking machine, also known as the GEA Farm Technologies Two Box Milking System, the MiOne. These fully automated milkers help dairy farmers cut labor costs, increase milk yields, and keep a close eye on the health of their cows. Instead of farmers having to manually milk their cows twice a day, robotic milkers let each cow decide how often she wants to be milked, milks them via a 3-D camera-guided system, and keeps a computerized log that monitors each cow’s yield and health, and tracks any abnormalities in the milk. As I watch one of the farm’s 92 Holsteins and Linebacks amble over to the robotic milker, Phillip, the Plantes’ 40-year-old son, joins us and explains, “We started looking at the robots about 10 years ago and visited several Vermont dairy farms to see them in operation. Eventually we decided this was the way to go.” They installed this two-station system in February 2016. >>
Fully automated milkers
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When asked why they wanted to make the change from traditional milking, Randall offers a concise, one-word answer. “Survival,” he tells me. “You know dairy farming’s been going downhill for some time, don’t you?” “Downhill” may be putting it mildly. Because of an oversupply of milk, record-low prices, rising labor costs, and a barn-full of other reasons, the nation’s diary farms have been shutting down at a frightening pace. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, over the last decade the nation has lost nearly 17,000 licensed dairy farms, a decline of about 30 percent. Vermont has been especially hard hit; in the last year alone, according to Vermont’s Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets, more than 60 dairy farms have closed across the state, leaving it with just 749. A decade ago there were 1,091 and more than 11,200 in the 1940s. Small farms like the Plantes have been most at risk. Most of Vermont’s recently shuttered dairy farms had fewer than 200 cows. Lured by a full udder of milk and the prospect of a tasty grain-based “treat,” Cow #2433 nudges its way into the $100,000 robotic milking station and Plante pauses to reflect on the local dairy industry’s decline. “When I was a kid, there were four dairy farms on this road,” he tells me as he gestures out to Earl Gray Road. “Today I am the only one left. And there used to be tons of farms in Elmore. If my neighbor sells his farm, which he wants to, there won’t be any left in all of Elmore. Same thing in Wolcott. When I was a kid, there were lots of dairy farms there. All gone.” This time Plante is not laughing.
‘All gone’
The milking station entrance gates close behind Cow #2433 and the system’s computer reads the responder tag on the cow’s ear to make sure she hasn’t recently been milked. She hasn’t. A cup full of pelletized “robot grain” tumbles into a feeder and 2433 begins munching away. At the same time, an automated arm swings into place and sanitizes the cow’s teats. As we watch, Plante explains that the latest price he was paid for his milk was just $14.25 for every hundred pounds, or hundredweight. That’s a perilous drop from September 2014, when the average bulk milk price in Vermont was $27.20. How bad is today’s pricing? Fourteen dollars is about what Vermont dairy farmers were being paid per hundredweight some 40 years ago, when Phillip was born. Randall shakes his head and explains, “It costs us anywhere from $18 to $19 a hundredweight to produce that milk. So we are losing money every day.” He pauses, takes a deep breath and says, “And it’s not just us. I don’t care how big or small you are, no one can produce milk for $14!” Teats clean, the robotic milker retracts its arm and, based on a computerized program, automatically positions four plastic teat cups that attach themselves by vacuum action to 2433’s udders. For the next seven and half minutes, about 30 pounds of milk will flow through the system’s clear plastic tubing to a nearby holding vat. When 2433 is dry and after the robot sanitizes her teats, the milking station’s gate opens, urging her to join the rest of the herd in the dairy barn.
40-year-old prices
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Like other farmers, Randall Plante is used to navigating the inevitable years of boom, followed by bust. Farming has always been a cyclical business, but this extended downturn in milk prices is making Plante, like other dairy farmers, wonder how long he can hold out. The New England-based Agri-Mark dairy cooperative, which also owns Cabot Creamery, recently wrote its members, alerting them that milk prices were due to decline even more in 2018. Included in the letter were numbers for several farmer suicide hotlines. In Plante’s favor: He and Phillip have increased their herd’s milk production by nearly 50 percent. Thanks to the robotic milkers, their cows are now being milked on average 2.9 times a day instead of twice. And they’ve lowered labor costs; the two of them now handle nearly all the farm chores by themselves. To earn extra income, they’ve sectioned off part of their acreage to operate a seasonal game farm that caters to pheasant hunters. “The state keeps talking about helping but ... well, best not get me started about politicians!” Randall says. Although their two robotic milking stations have streamlined their dairy farm operations and freed them from the twice-daily chore of milking their herd by hand, the Plantes report they are “busier than ever.” Says Randall, as he watches his dog Rocky, a McNab shepherd, lap up spilt milk alongside the robotic milker, “The big difference now is that, because everything is computerized, we are on call 24 hours a day. Machinery can break down, a cow may have kicked off a hose from the milker, a valve may malfunction. It can be simple things like that, but the computer will alert me or Phillip and we have to go the barn anytime it texts us.” He smiles and chuckles, admitting, “It’s why I laughed before when you asked me about ‘free time.’ ” Despite an uncertain future, the Plantes show no signs of slowing down. “I’m a third-generation farmer,” says Randall, as he, Phillip, and Penny give me a tour of the various farm buildings his father built over the years since he bought the farm in 1958. “I guess you just have to say it’s in my blood.” Adds Penny, “Our blood.” In the calf and heifer barn, where a dozen or so calves are contentedly feeding on grain and milk, Plante says, “Who knows what the future may bring? Gosh, if you’d told me 20 years ago that I’d be milking cows by a robot today, I’d have told you that you were crazy.” Just then his smartphone emits a “moo-moo” ring tone, indicating he has a text. “Got t’ go,” he says. “The robot’s calling.” n
Boom and bust
Clockwise from above: Phillip Plante stands next to the robotic milking
system as a cow is being milked. Rocky, a McNab shepherd, laps up spilt milk alongside the robotic milker while his buddy drinks excess milk from a 5-gallon bucket. A chalkboard records the name and birth date of a calf in calf barn. Since cows set their own milking schedules, transmitters are used to help track their movements.
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THE BIG BLOW
Cady Hill Forest trail network rebounds from freak Halloween windstorm STORY
: tommy gardner |
PHOTOS
: gordon miller |
OPENER
: mike hitelman
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he span of time between when the last leaves fall from the trees and the first snowflakes come sprinkling down is a grayscale portrait with sharp pencil-stroke outlines known in Vermont as stick season. In Stowe’s Cady Hill Forest, for about a third of the popular mountain biking and hiking areas, it looked like it was going to be stick season for quite a bit longer. A freak windstorm the day before Halloween last year snapped trees and dropped them like a clumsy giant discarding a handful of uncooked spaghetti noodles. Through toils and organization that surprised even those who toiled and organized, however, the trail network will still be partially open to start the summer, even as trail architects work in closedoff areas to rebuild what was destroyed. “We’re a lot further ahead than I ever thought we could be after one winter,” said Tom Jackman, Stowe’s town planner, in April. Jackman is also a board member of Stowe Land Trust, which has a conservation easement on the town-owned forest. The trust purchased the 258-acre property, located on the west side of Route 100 and the south of Route 108, for about $1.5 million in 2012, and transferred ownership to the town. The main parking lot for the trail network is a 19-car lot on Mountain Road, but there are other access points as well—near the town’s electrical substation on Cady Hill Road and from the parking lot shared by iRide bike shop and the Backyard Tavern. All winter, those entries were roped off, warning people to stay out, for their own protection. “It was just so dangerous out there right away,” Jackman said. “So many widow makers.” Evan Chismark, then director of the Stowe Trails Partnership, formerly known as the Stowe Mountain Bike Club, said the winds were estimated to be 80 to 90 miles per hour, blowing in from the east, destroying a total of three miles out of the 10-mile trail network. “Essentially, every tree was laid flat,” Chismark said of the damage. Jackman said the first order of business was roping off the forest and keeping people out. The
second order was to get a logger in there and clear what the town manager called “stacks of pickup sticks.” After all, one man’s detritus is another man’s treasure, and loggers can fetch good money from the wreckage—pine, spruce, hemlock, birch, or maple, Mother Nature is indiscriminate. Stowe logger Jed Lipsky all but volunteered to do the work, consulting with the towns’ consulting forester, Allan Thompson, and county forester Rick Dyer—“this great dynamic duo of foresters,” Jackman called them. Lipsky, for his efforts, agreed to give the town 10 percent of the sale of trees already laid flat and uprooted, and 30 percent of the sale of trees that will be removed to let the forest regenerate. He would then take home the rest of the profits, rather than being paid by the town for his work. Jackman said foresters and loggers all dropped whatever they were doing and went to work over the winter. Amazingly, crews will be able to get at least a couple contiguous sections of Cady Hill open—probably the popular Snake and Florence, or “Flo,” trails, and the Schween Haus loops—for the summer mountain bike season, and open more as work commences. “We’re cautiously optimistic,” Jackman said. “The process happened as fast as it is possible.”
For all the mourning done for the trails that were lost, it’s important to remember that forests are living things that have changed countless times over the millennia, with fires, floods, ice storms, and wind changing them each time. Humans have played no small part, either. Take a look through any photo collection of 19th- and early 20th-century Stowe, and you’ll see bare hills with stumps and trunks poking up like pins in a cushion. Less than a century ago, much of Cady Hill was rolling pasture land. Forests do, though, have a tendency to grow back, and not always the same. This brings in opportunities for conservation and recreation. For trail designers, stumps and logs are potential playthings—ramps, skinny bridges, launch pads. The parts of Cady Hill Forest that need the most work are blank canvases. Chismark added that the windstorm didn’t hurt anybody, and only 3 miles of more than 30 miles maintained by the trails partnership are offline. There are still plenty of places to ride in Stowe. “We could cry in our beer and say we lost all of our trails in a blink of an eye,” he said. “But once we really got our heads around it, we realized there may be some opportunities.” The opportunities for wildlife are even more vast. Jackman said signs of a more diverse forest are already visible. One area that was blown down was a stand of Norway spruce, which may have looked nice but is a monoculture. Same with a stand of white pines that got thinned out. With a lot of those tall trees downed, the sun gets a chance to penetrate the canopy and give a lot of small vegetation a chance to thrive. And with that, you start to see more birds, deer, and other animals come to eat. After the silence of the windstorm’s wake passed, it wasn’t long before a chorus of chittering started up. Said Jackman, “It’s like the squirrels sent out a text message that said, ‘Whoa, look! Pine cones on the ground everywhere!’ ” n
Room for improvement
ROAD TO RECOVERY Stakeholders and others view the destruction in Cady Hill Forest in Stowe after a severe blowdown in late October. The Feb. 24 tour was led by Stowe Land Trust Conservation Program Manager Kristen Sharpless and forester Allan Thompson, who bring a group through the forest to survey the damage. Inset: Stowe town planner Tom Jackman. ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ESSENTIALS: Stowe Trails Partnership (STP) manages over 30 miles of trails in Stowe—one of the Northeast’s most extensive networks, including Adam’s Camp, Sterling Forest, Cady Hill Forest, Little River, Cotton Brook, Kirchner Woods, and Alex’s Trail. While open to the public, Stowe Trails Partnership membership is strongly encouraged to help maintain and sustain this valuable resource. STP membership costs as little as $49/year for an individual. stowemountainbike.com.
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Black bear (Ursus americanus)
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Snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus)
O
E S S AY
& PHOTOGRAPHS
|
PAUL ROGERS
ne doesn’t have to go far afield to spot and photograph Vermont wildlife. Backyards, roadsides, hiking trails, and local waterways afford opportunities to glimpse this treasured natural resource. Many of my favorite local photos were achieved this way: black bear through a bedroom window in Stowe; red fox from a car in Morristown; mink from a canoe in Hyde Park.
Most of us are burdened with shots that are almost good, if not for the focus, the exposure, the composition. Yes, preparation is key, even in your own backyard. Having a camera at the ready (especially if equipped with a telephoto lens) makes success more likely. Heed the common advice to preset the camera and know your equipment. Frame your photos with intention—it might help to think of your animal photos as portraits. Predict your subject’s behavior, so knowing something about wildlife behavior will help. Be considerate of other photographers working with the same subject.
If you’re a newcomer to wildlife photography, you may wish to begin with common, plentiful subjects: birds at a feeder, squirrels at a park, or anything in a zoo or aquarium (if the facility allows photography). For those willing to venture further for wildlife imagery, consider visiting such accessible Vermont “hotspots” as Dead Creek Wildlife Management Area in Addison (autumn goose migration) or Willoughby Falls Wildlife Management Area in Orleans (spring rainbow trout migration).
Most of all, have fun and enjoy yourself and the wildlife.
Snow geese (Chen caerulescens)
Moose (Alces alces) 88
Common porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum)
Wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo)
Mink (Mustela vison)
Pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) 89
White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)
Spotted salamander (Ambystoma maculatum)
Eastern crayfish (Cambarus bartonii) 90
Red fox (Vulpes vulpes)
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STOWE SERVES
WORLD-CLASS WARMUP 92
Pro tennis comes back to the mountains in Stowe Mountain Lodge Classic STORY
: tommy gardner |
PHOTOGRAPHS
: gordon miller
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Clockwise, this page: A birds-eye view of the tennis stadium at Spruce Peak. (Photo by Andrew Martin) Spaniard Albert Ramos-Viñola beat Frenchman Jérémy Chardy last year in the finals in a three-set match—best of two wins in the Classic. Ball kids huddle waiting for the next round of action. Opening spread: Chardy in a hard-fought volley.
S. Open, 2017. Roger Federer’s having a tough time with this teenager from Maryland, and although it’s mostly the Swiss legend’s fault, the kid keeps capitalizing on those mistakes, taking Federer five sets before the five-time U.S. Open winner finally shakes him off. That was the world’s introduction to Frances Tiafoe. But a week earlier, tennis fans who headed for the hills of Stowe got to see Tiafoe in action. They’d already seen Jérémy Chardy, a Frenchman who’s bested both Federer and Andy Murray. They also got to see Caroline Garcia, ranked among the world’s top 10 for women, and Tommy Haas, a former world No. 2 whose 2017 season was his swan song. These players were among a half dozen who competed in last year’s inaugural Stowe Mountain Lodge Classic, a four-day professional tennis tournament held at Spruce Peak in a specially built stadium that evokes Arthur Ashe stadium, if it were on a mountain, rather than in Queens. “There are a lot of serious tennis events in the world. And this is distinct in the vibe and approach,” said Kyle Ross, of Grand Slam Tennis Tours.
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Grand Slam, along with sister company Topnotch Management, organizes the event, which runs from Aug. 18-22 this year. For many, it is the optimal way to see world-class tennis from pros who mix salty, funny barbs with triple-digit serves and tricky returns. Grand Slam creates tennis vacation packages to go see worldclass tennis on courts all around the world, so it was a natural fit to bring some of the up-and-coming professionals to Stowe. The company shares ownership with Topnotch Management—not to be confused with Topnotch Resort and Spa, also located in Stowe and one of the best places in town to swing a racket. If the purpose of Grand Slam is place, then the purpose of Topnotch is people. The company represents professional tennis and golf athletes, and that plugged-in networking allows Grand Slam to field a tournament in Stowe. Chardy and Garcia are both Topnotch clients, among nearly 20 others. >>
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Chardy was a whole lot of fun during the 2017 tournament, funny with a mixture of cockiness and self-deprecation. And he said he enjoyed his week in Stowe, which included a zipline run down the face of Mount Mansfield. “The Classic was a great event and I really enjoyed warming up for the U.S. Open in the mountains. The town was charming and the caliber of play was great,” he wrote in an email. “It’s important for me to be able to challenge myself against top players before a Slam, and
In 2007, Chmura helped lure to Stowe the Fed Cup, the world’s largest international women’s team tennis competition, but there hasn’t been anything since. “There’s been a bit of a tennis desert here for at least a decade,” Ross said. “We’re really hoping to pack the stands this year.” (At press time, Tiafoe and up-and-comer Yoshihito Nishioka of Japan had committed to the tournament, with organizers adding more throughout the summer.) As a friendly but competitive warmup to the U.S. Open, the organizers made sure the courts looked the part, and then some. The courts at the 2,700-seat Spruce Peak Stadium are the same surface—in material, color, and dimensions—the athletes will play on the following week at the Open. Fun fact: The blue hue used on the tennis courts at Flushing Meadows is officially trademarked as U.S. Open Blue, and is engineered to be the opposite color of a regulation tennis ball, which helps players, judges, and spectators keep an eye on the game.
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Clockwise from top: Fan
favorite Jérémy Chardy signs autographs for admirers. Vasek Pospisil gets two hands on a serve. Tommy Haas gives the old “who me?” gesture after a questionable call. Ball kids wait for a break in the action. Fans. Andrew Chmura, founder, Grand Slam Tennis Tours.
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nowhere else can I do that before going on a thrilling zipline adventure with my team!” Tennis players can be spotted around town throughout the week. One of last year’s players, veteran Tommy Haas, chatted with tourists atop the Chin of Mount Mansfield, Vermont’s highest peak, after a post-practice hike. Tiafoe was zipping around the resort on a golf cart. Players practiced on the courts at Stowe High School as locals stopped by and watched. “Stowe was the perfect warm-up for the Open. It was a beautiful stadium, the player party was a blast, I had a great time with the fans, and a few days later I pushed Roger to five sets on Arthur Ashe. I couldn’t have asked for a better, or more relaxing, preparation than Vermont,” said Tiafoe. Ross offered some helpful advice in spotting a player around Stowe: “If they have one forearm that looks more developed than their other one, it’s definitely a pro.”
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ennis is big in Stowe, and Grand Slam founder Andrew Chmura thinks the town has at least 300 courts, about one for every 14 residents. And, the game used to bring the big names to town. The Head Classic was an annual tournament in the 1970s and 1980s that attracted players such as Jimmy Connors, Ivan Lendl, Brad Gilbert, Guillermo Vilas, Johan Kriek, and Tom Gullikson. Lendl once held up a bumper sticker at a press conference that read “I Love Stowe.”
he Stowe classic is a more laid-back vibe in a mountain setting, and players call their own fouls and engage in some great trash-talk, both for their benefit and for the crowds. But playing loose and having a bit of fun isn’t the same as simply phoning it in. These are professional players with high hopes for a Grand Slam over the following weeks, competitive athletes with hundred-mile-per-hour serves. “It’s not a hit and giggle,” Ross said. “You see the movement, the physicality, the way the ball moves. It’s a thrill.” It’s a thrill, too, for the “ball kids,” those locally selected pre-teens tasked with running down errant serves and missed returns and running them back to the players without getting in their way. They’re the hard-court versions of legislative pages who have to run messages back and forth between lawmakers without disrupting the process, except for the fuzzy yellow missiles zipping narrowly past their heads. Ross said many of last year’s players have said they’d like to come back this summer. That includes last year’s champion, Spaniard Albert Ramos-Viñola. He beat Chardy in the finals in a three-set match—best of two wins in the Classic. “Anytime we see Ramos-Viñola, he keeps saying how much he wants to come back,” Ross said. There is room for gender equity at the Stowe Mountain Lodge Classic, something the organizers are trying in their recruitment process, and hope to see as the Classic builds in popularity. Indeed, the highest ranked player at last year’s event was a woman, Caroline Garcia, a two-time French Open doubles champion and ranked 7th in the world going into this summer—the 24-year-old has been as highly ranked as 2nd in the world. “Let’s get some of the top ladies out there smacking the ball,” Ross said. n ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
2018 STOWE MOUNTAIN LODGE CLASSIC
Aug. 18 – 22, Spruce Peak at Stowe. Meet-the-players party Saturday night, followed by an 8-man tournament Sunday through Wednesday. Prize pool of $35,000, with $5,000 for each match win. Tckets: stowetennis.com.
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ned dallas From slave to Stowe, one man’s journey toward a future of freedom
STORY
: julia shipley
In late summer of 1865, Ned Dallas, age 10, born a slave in Lynchburg, Va., saw people running away with the Union Army as it began mustering out of the South. He wanted to go, too. A split-second decision changed his life forever, and took him to Stowe, Vt. Ned’s mother Mary, enslaved as a maid on a Lynchburg plantation, “took him down beside the road as the Union troops were passing through and told him to go with them, and they would look after him and he would not be a slave anymore,” according to an account published in the Stowe Reporter in 1965, 100 years after that fateful day. A few months before the blue-coated Union soldiers marched past the plantation, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox Court House, about 20 miles away. The story of Ned Dallas’ journey, from a slave child to a free citizen, comes from a tiny stack of census documents, a book about Stowe’s founding, and a recollection written by a woman whose father employed him. Taken together with other historical accounts, they reveal the risks and rewards of Ned’s journey from Virginia to Vermont as part of the greatest refugee crisis in America, the Great Migration. In 1860, in Ned’s hometown of Lynchburg, a center of the tobacco industry, 40 percent of the people were slaves, denied the right to marry, to earn wages, to own property, to get an education, and to vote. >>
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A portrait of Ned Dallas, courtesy of Stowe Historical Society.
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Clockwise from left: Ned Dallas as a boy. Census records for both Ned Dallas and his wife Margaret. Seth Mansfield. (Stowe Historical Society)
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The documents say Ned had a “good” master, who had only punished him once, caning him for sleeping instead of fetching the mail as directed. Ned later said the master had entrusted him to look after his grandson, “the same as Vermont farmers give a child a lamb or calf.” Mary Dallas must have wondered, with growing joy and some trepidation, what changes were coming for her and Ned. Everything about their lives would be in flux—how they lived, how they made decisions, where they would go. Perhaps Mary thought new freedoms would bring new dangers—the end of plantation society, economic upheaval, chaos and violence among angry whites. Maybe Mary and Ned had heard good things about Vermont, where the soldiers marching out of Lynchburg were headed. The 9th Regiment of Union soldiers was headed home to Vermont, which in 1777 had become the first state to prohibit adult slavery in its Constitution. Others had already sought refuge in Vermont, including Jeffrey Brace, who titled his autobiography “The Blind African Slave.” Brace was born in Africa, captured, forced into slavery in Barbados and then Connecticut, and emancipated himself through armed service in the Revolutionary War. He then sought his fortune as a free man in Vermont. Perhaps Ned’s mother wanted to head north with her son. Census records indicate that Mary Dallas also had a 2-year-old son, Robert, and possibly another child on the way. Maybe she considered the 800-mile journey too difficult. What we know is this: Ned’s mother secured soldier Seth Mansfield to take her son north, trying her best to give him a future of freedom. In 1865, Ned started walking, barefoot, with white men he’d never seen before, leaving his birthplace and everything and everyone he’d ever known. According to the reminiscence that appeared in the Stowe Reporter, when Ned asked the soldiers where they were from, they all said Vermont. He concluded, “Vermont must be an awful big city.”
Grounds for a decision
Other Virginia slaves had also headed north with Vermont soldiers. William Anderson escaped slavery with a member of the 11th Vermont Infantry. After settling in Shoreham, he married Philomen Langlois, a French-Canadian woman who was part Native American. Together they produced remarkable children—daughter Marion Annette Anderson became the first African American woman to attend Middlebury; son William John Anderson became an orchardist and member of the Vermont Legislature. George Washington Henderson, a few years older than Ned, became a servant to an infantry member of the 8th Regiment, and accompanied him home from the war. Henderson eventually graduated first in his class at the University of Vermont in 1877, graduated in 1883 from Yale Divinity School, served as the principal of three Vermont graded schools, and became dean of Fisk University.
The road to Vermont
As Ned left Virginia, Mary no doubt hoped her son was destined for a better life, even if that meant he would never see her or his siblings again. Ned traveled hundreds of miles by horse and on foot and probably by train. The 1965 account says that, as the Vermont 9th Regiment marched north, Ned had a hard time keeping up, so his chaperone, Seth Mansfield, found a stray horse for the boy to ride. However, Ned had “no idea of values, and a soldier soon offered him a pair of shiny cavalry boots in exchange for the horse.” As Ned had no shoes, “he let the horse go and had to walk.” However, he could not wear the ill-fitting boots. Ned accompanied Seth Mansfield all the way to his father’s home in Nebraska Valley, two miles southwest of Stowe village, a house that no longer stands in what’s now part of the Mount Mansfield State Forest. The unattributed account written by a woman whose father later employed Ned revealed that it was already evening when they arrived. Ned settled in at the farm with Seth and Seth’s father, but after about two weeks, became terribly homesick. As the reminiscence puts it, “The hills and fields were so different and not one black face could he see.” According to the 1860 and 1870 censuses, there were communities of African Americans in Vermont, but many were in the cities. In Burlington and St. Albans, each about 40 miles from Stowe, there were about 70 and 90 African Americans, respectively. However, in Lamoille County, black residents were scarce. In nearby Morrisville, a Vermont-born African American worked as a shoemaker. And while the 1840 census lists two unnamed “free colored persons” in Allan Burt’s household—a girl under age 10 and a woman age 24-35—by the time Ned arrived, the only other person of color in town was John Fairbanks, a mulatto farmer who was sometimes cited as “white” on censuses. At first, Ned lived with the Mansfields, but eventually he moved across the brook from the Mansfield farm and roomed with the Presson Gale family. According to Chuck Dudley’s book, “The Stowe I’ve Grown to Know,” Ned probably attended District No. 7 Gale School. However, a 1900 census listing indicates he grew into adulthood unable to read or write. By 1870, Ned’s soldier escort, Seth Mansfield, had moved in with the family of his future wife, and Ned, then 16 years old, lived in the nearby town of Duxbury, where he worked as a farm laborer for Hiram McDonald.
A horse for the boots
Meanwhile, back in Virginia, the Freedman’s Bureau was offering help to free slaves in securing food, clothing, water, health care, jobs, and communication with family members. In addition, an apprenticeship program allowed white people to take in black orphans by pledging to provide food, housing, and education for the children, who were expected to do chores. As James Marten wrote in “The Children’s Civil War,” as many as 2,500 black children were made apprentices within one month of the war’s end. But scholar Amanda Liskey noted, “Whites were able to declare almost any black child an orphan, owing to the fact that slave children were born to unwed parents.” And, Liskey added, apprentices, like the slaves before, could be hired out by their legal caretakers. >>
Down South
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Even with the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery, there was no guarantee that Mary’s son could have continued to live with her. Ned might well have been removed from her care to serve elsewhere in the South as an apprentice. Nonetheless, the 1870 census shows Mary Dallas living with her inferred spouse, farm laborer George Dallas, in the town of Lee in Prince Edward County, 60 miles east of Lynchburg, with her children Robert, 6, Martha, 4, and Catharine, 1. In 1874, Ned moved back to Stowe. Now a young adult, he began to work for and live with one of his old neighbors, Frank Gale. Frank and Ned were close in age; Frank had married and purchased his father’s farm. Seth Mansfield and his wife lived nearby. By the 1880s, Ned was working as a teamster for one of the town’s main employers, C.E. Burt, who owned a wood mill and freight company. According to Walter J. Bigelow’s “The History of Stowe,” “One spring morning Ned started for Waterbury with 2 tons of butter” packed in tubs weighing 10 to 30 pounds each. In the swampy flats at the bottom of Shutesville Hill, now part of Route 100, Ned’s wagon became so mired in the mud “the horses could not stir it.” Ned unloaded the butter, tub by tub, stacking the cargo on drier ground, until the horses were able to pull the empty wagon out. Then Ned reloaded his wagon and continued the journey. Instead of reaching the Waterbury depot at noon, it was dusk when Ned rolled up. He unloaded his butter for the last time; then he reloaded his wagon with materials bound for Stowe (likely salt, hops, fertilizer, flour, coal, or other merchandise) and drove the horses home. “It was long after midnight when he reached the village and stabled the horses after 20 hours of unbroken toil,” Bigelow reported.
A long day and night
Was Ned faring better than he would have in the South? According to Vermont historian Jan Albers, “In the years after 1860, the landscape (of Vermont) reached its lowest point, as the state’s fragile soils gave out, deforestation ran rampant, the economy struggled in the face of competition from the opening West and the population was hard-pressed to maintain itself.” Author and historian Cynthia Bittinger said, “Vermont was the most rural state in the Union in the 1870s and considered a land of despair.” But she also noted that when Union soldiers left the South, violence against blacks erupted and militant vigilante groups ended the civil order. Another unverified account of Ned’s horse-driving indicates how he’d settled into life in Vermont. While Ned was driving a pair of horses hauling a load of logs up Tannery Hill, Ned’s boss, Mr. Burt, happened to be in the area and got upset that the horses weren’t working very hard. “Burt ran beside them, waving his arms and calling to them to pull harder. Ned didn’t like this and he called out very loud, ‘Say, Mr. Burt, who’s driving these horses?’” Most testimonies regarding a black Vermonter’s life acknowledge some level of racism and bigotry. Dr. Scott Nay, a white schoolmate of ex-slave George Washington Henderson, wrote, “It was a most satisfactory privilege for me to protect him from the jibes of some discourteous students who, because of his color, thought themselves superior.” William John Anderson, the son of a slave, served two terms in the mid-1900s in the Vermont Legislature, yet was refused lodging at some hotels in Montpelier.
A land of despair
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Elise Guyette, author of “Discovering Black Vermont,” wrote that a tract of land in Hinesburg, where a group of African American families settled and farmed for a hundred years, was know locally by a derogatory term. Vermont was one of the few states that never had laws prohibiting marriage between races. On Christmas Eve 1888, Ned married a 40-year-old white woman of Irish ancestry, Maggie Carr (Margaret Carroll). Two years later, Mr. and Mrs. Dallas moved into an apartment in a brick building at Main and School streets in Stowe, which is now the Black Cap Café. The newlyweds lived there for five years and then, in 1895, moved to Montpelier. The 1900 census reports Edward and Margaret Dallas residing in the capital city, where Ned was listed as a laborer for a builder. No documents show that they ever had children. That same 1900 census found a 60-year-old widow, Mary Dallas, in the town of Lockett in Prince Edward County in Virginia. She lived with her son Robert, 38, who had learned to read and write. Mary owned her house (with a mortgage) and worked as a farmer. In addition to Robert, she lived with her son Sam, 23, and his wife Annie; her son John, 18; her son Richard, 13; and her daughter Mamie, 10. The census indicates that Mary had given birth to 14 children, and nine were still alive. In 1904, Ned’s wife Maggie slipped on ice and fractured a knee. That same year, Seth Mansfield, the soldier who brought him north, died. Five years later, on Jan. 4, 1909, on the heels of their 20th wedding anniversary, Maggie died of chronic nephritis. Ned then moved to Shelburne, Vt. The 1910 census lists him as living with Seth Mansfield’s son, George. Later, he moved back to Stowe one last time and worked as a “chore man” at the former Spear Farm on the Mountain Road, where Piecasso is now located. There, on the morning of Sunday, Aug. 26, 1917, Ned died of neuralgia of the heart. He was 65, although his birth year, as reported on the census and tombstone, varies by up to four years. Three years later, the 1920 census showed Mary Dallas had outlived her son. She had moved to an apartment in Philadelphia where she lived with her sons, Sam and Richard, and her daughter Lizzie. Ned Dallas is buried in Stowe’s Riverbank Cemetery. His tombstone (which spells his last name Dallis) is in the back of section 2B, where it abides by “Loved One,” a woman who died in her mid-30s, and a headstone for a trio of babies who scarcely lived at all. As a recent visitor noted, “There’s something fascinating about walking through such an old cemetery. Some of the headstones are from the late 1700s. Whole families buried together who lived through the Revolutionary War and saw the birth of our republic.” As well, men who fought in the Civil War, and a freed slave. Ned’s grave faces the mountains, part of the rugged Appalachian chain running all the way down to his birthplace. n
Ned in love
Julia Shipley is a Vermont-based writer whose curiosity lures her beyond the state’s borders and back again. A contributing editor to Yankee Magazine, her work has also been featured in the Boston Globe, Burlington Free Press, Northern Woodlands, Orion Magazine, Seven Days, Vermont Life, and Utne Reader. She writes on a couch in the Northeast Kingdom where she lives with her husband and pug.
GORDON MILLER
Ned Dallas’s headstone in the Riverbank Cemetery in Stowe. Note the misspelled name.
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SHOPPING & GALLERIES
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Damascene Moments I by Syrian artist Mohamad Hafez, plaster, paint, found objects, and wire on rigid foam, part of the upcoming exhibit Fragile about political upheaval in the world at the West Branch Gallery in Stowe. Inset: Mountain Brook in Spring, detail, by Robert Aiken, Bryan Memorial Gallery in Jeffersonville.
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EXHIBITS & OPENINGS BREAD & PUPPET MUSEUM Route 122, Glover. (802) 525-3031. Daily June to Nov. 1, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. Museum tours: 1:30 p.m. Sundays and 6:30 p.m. Fridays, July and August. June 3 Museum Open House, 2 - 5 p.m. Bread & Puppet show, Paper Mâche Cathedral, 4 p.m. Suggested donation $10; no one turned away.
BRYAN MEMORIAL GALLERY 180 Main Street, Jeffersonville. Through June 24: Thursday - Sunday, 11 - 4; June 28 – Oct. 8, daily, 11 - 5; after Oct. 9, Thursday – Sunday, 11 - 4. (802) 644-5100. bryangallery.org. May 3 – June 24 2018 Legacy Collection, Main and East galleries The Russians and Their Friends, Middle Room June 28 – September 3 The Sky’s The Limit, Main Gallery The 2018 Legacy Collection, East Gallery The Head of the Class, Middle Room September 6 – November 5 Land and Light and Water and Air, Main Gallery Location, Location, Location, Middle Room The 2018 Legacy Collection, East Gallery >>108
COURTESY PHOTOS
HE HELEN DAY ART CENTER OCCUPIES THE CENTRAL PLACE IN STOWE’S ART scene, both literally and figuratively. Since taking over the top floor of the old Stowe High School building at the head of School Street in 1981, the Helen Day has provided Stowe with world-class exhibits, community programs, art education, and outreach to tens of thousands of schoolchildren. Notable artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Wolf Kahn, have shared the space with local artists such as Stan Marc Wright, Rett Sturman, and Walton Blodgett, and with countless others from throughout Vermont, the region, and the world. On the other side of the mountain, the Bryan Memorial Gallery in Jeffersonville is named for Jeffersonville artists Mary and Alden Bryan. Mary Bryan died in 1978 and her husband, also now deceased, built and opened the nonprofit gallery in her memory in 1984.
EXHIBITS & OPENINGS
HELEN DAY ART CENTER THE HELEN DAY ART CENTER and the Stowe Free Library share a beautifully restored 1863 Greek Revival building in the heart of picturesque Stowe Village. The center, with a focus on contemporary art, offers exhibitions of local, national, and international artists. Art classes and workshops, lectures, and children’s programs are offered throughout the year.
HELEN DAY ART CENTER 90 Pond St., Stowe Village. Tuesday – Saturday 10 a.m. 5 p.m. Free; donations welcome. helenday.com. (802) 253-8358. Through September DREAMCATCHER
Large-scale, interactive sculpture installation by LA-based artist James Peterson, inspired by magical Siberian ice caves. Installation at Spruce Peak Village Center. Curator: Rachel Moore.
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June 15 – September 8 Reclamation
Nationally acclaimed, contemporary figurative women artists paint women from their perspective, reclaiming and transforming the way women are portrayed. Opening reception Friday, June 15, 5 p.m. Talk on August 4, 7 p.m., Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center. Curators: August Burns, Diane Feissel, and Rachel Moore.
Clockwise from top: Dreamcatcher by James Peterson, made from polystyrene, acrylic, steel, aluminum, LED lighting, and electronics. Margaret Bowland, The Artist, 2010, oil on canvas. Member art show.
July 21 – October 20 Exposed 27th annual outdoor sculpture exhibition. Sculptural, site-specific, and participatory work from regional and national artists is exhibited throughout the town of Stowe. Opening reception and walkabout with progressive hors d’oeuvres, July 21, 4 8 p.m.
September 21 – November 3 Kiki Smith and Valerie Hammond
Opening: Friday, September 21, 5 p.m. November 30 – December 29 Members' Art Show and Festival of Trees & Light
Celebrate the season and community through decorated evergreens, Hanukkah display, and over 100 artworks by members. Opening reception: Friday, November 30, 5 p.m.
Bringing the Outdoors Indoors for Over 10 Years
EXHIBITS
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THE BUNDY MODERN 361 Bundy Rd., Waitsfield. (802) 583-5832. bundymodern.com. Modern, contemporary and industrial art, design, craft, and furniture. Through September 3 The Safety of Objects: A Visual Discourse Between Father and Daughter
Work of Michael and Jessica Craig-Martin. September 8 – October 21 Field Notes
Group show featuring work by Monica Carroll, Rebecca Kinkead, Jill Madden, and Eben Markowski.
Matt Brown, Mansfield above Lake Champlain, woodblock print, 10"x10".
802-496-9290
Visit Our Website for Shows and Online Ordering or Call Us to Schedule a Free In-Home Estimate.
EDGEWATER GALLERY 151 Main Street, Stowe. (802) 760-6785. edgewatergallery.co. Featuring exhibitions of contemporary and traditional fine art from emerging and established North American artists and beyond. Through June 29 Rachel Moore: Traces
Solo exhibition. June 16 Woodblock printmaking demo with Matt Brown July 2 – August 30 Exploring Air
Group exhibition. September 1 – 29 Connections
Juried group show to benefit the Travis Roy Foundation. October 1 – 31: Homer Wells
Solo exhibition.
GRACE OLD FIREHOUSE The art of Grass Roots Art & Community Effort. 59 Mill St., Hardwick. (802) 472-6857, Tuesday – Thursday 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. graceart.org.
GREEN MOUNTAIN FINE ART GALLERY 64 S. Main St., Stowe Village. (802) 253-1818. greenmountainfineart.com. Traditional and contemporary works by Vermont and regional artists.
HELEN DAY ART CENTER Stowe Village, Stowe. (802) 253-8358. Tuesday – Saturday, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. Donations welcome. helenday.com. See exhibits, page 106.
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CHAPIN: JONATHAN STEWART; PIZZARELLI: JACOB BLICKENSTAFF
MIXED MEDIA
SPRUCE PEAK ARTS CENTER Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center
122 Hourglass Drive, Spruce Peak at Stowe Mountain Resort. sprucepeakarts.org. (802) 760-4634. Subject to change. May 27
Raul Malo The Mavericks frontman. Mix of country, cow-punk, and standards, with a rhythmic fervor and Latin machismo. 7 p.m. June 8 Séan McCann of Great Big Sea Newfoundland and Labrador folk songs. 7 p.m. June 10 “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” Tennessee Williams' masterpiece via the London National Theatre, on film in HD. 2 p.m. June 22 – 23 Castle on the Hill King Arthur’s legend with the Vermont Youth Dancers. June 22, 7 p.m. and June 23, 2 p.m. June 28 10,000 Maniacs Enduring band from the early alternative rock movement. 7 p.m. July 7 John Pizzarelli Trio World-renowned guitarist and singer. 7 p.m. July 19 Mary Chapin Carpenter Accomplished songwriter reimagines 12 of her most beloved songs. 7 p.m. July 21 Tab Benoit Louisiana’s No.1 roots export—a Delta and Chicago blues and soul combination. 7 p.m. July 29 Cirque Us Workshop Try your hand at Circus Arts with members of the modern circus collective. 11 a.m.
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Starstruck: A Cosmic Circus by Cirque Us Nine acrobats explore circus through a cosmic lens. 3 p.m. August 1 Jeff Daniels & Ben Daniels Band Sounds that span Americana, blues, jazz, and rock. 7 p.m. August 4 Reclamation Speakers explore how gender bias impacts women’s lives, building on the #MeToo movement. 7 p.m. August 11 Spruce Peak Folk Festival All day event featuring Josh Ritter & The Royal City Band, Anaïs Mitchell, Daniel Rodriguez of Elephant Revival, and Vermont busker acts. 1 p.m. August 18 Stowe Tango Music Festival Concert See p.112. 8 p.m. August 25 Paula Cole & Jane Monheit Two powerhouse singers, one amazing night. 7 p.m. September 8 Rickie Lee Jones Grammy winner unveils first new music in a decade. 7 p.m. September 13 Livingston Taylor Folk, pop, gospel, jazz and upbeat storytelling and touching ballads to full orchestra performances. 7 p.m. September 22 Mountainfilm on Tour: Stowe Rich, adventure-packed documentary short films curated from the Mountainfilm festival in Telluride, Colo. September 22 matinee, 3 p.m.; festival screening, 7 p.m. >>112
POWER LINEUP Some of this summer’s acts at Spruce Peak. (Clockwise from above): Mary Chapin Carpenter. 10,000 Maniacs. Anais Mitchell, Spruce Peak Folk Festival. Insets: Cirque Us and John Pizzarelli.
MIXED MEDIA
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ROCKTOBERFEST
October 6
Jason Bishop: Magic and Illusion Grand illusions and elegant, agile sleightof-hand magic. 7 p.m. October 10 Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant 50th anniversary of the film. Guthrie’s daughter opens the show. 7 p.m. October 12 Capitol Steps Satirical comedy about the issues of the day. 7 p.m. October 20 Vermont Philharmonic Opera Concert Operatic selections and orchestral music of Bellini, Donizetti, Puccini, Rossini, Verdi, and others. 7 p.m. October 27 David Kaplan, Jia Kim, & Siwoo Kim Chamber music masterpieces. October 28 Spooky Silents Three ghostly silent films paired with the original historic orchestral scores. 5 p.m.
6 Sunset St. stowelandtrust.org.
September 29
June 2 Happy Tails & Trails: Responsible use of public trails with a dog. Improve your dog’s recall in the woods. 9 a.m. - noon, Wiessner Woods, Edson Hill Road, Stowe. June 16 Forestry for the Birds Walk Spring bird walk with a twist. See/hear woodland songbirds and learn about nesting habitat and timber quality. 7 - 9 a.m., Kirchner Woods, Taber Hill Road. July 7 Scavenger Hunt Saturday: Waterbased scavenger hunt. 10 a.m. - 3 p.m., Little River, Mill Trail Property, Notchbrook Road. July 21 Nature Photography: Mike Hitelman offers tips for taking beautiful pictures. 9 - 11 a.m., Mill Trail Property, Notchbrook Road. July 26 Sunset Rock Family Art Walk: Mellow hike. Enjoy views of Stowe; learn about new trail markers. 4 - 5 p.m. Meet at Stowe Land Trust, 6 Sunset St. August 19 Checking on the Heifers: Watch Ryan Percy call in the heifers from their pasture in Stowe. 9:30 a.m., location TBA. September 1 Tree ID Walk: Identify common trees just in time for foliage season. 10 a.m. - noon, Mill Trail Property, Notchbrook Road.
All-day street festival music, food, games, No Strings Marionette shows, crafts, vendors, pumpkins bowling, face painting, more. 5k.
SPRUCE PEAK INDEPENDENCE DAY BASH Spruce Peak Village Center, Stowe. stowe.com. July 1
Entertainer Rusty DeWees. Fireworks.
STOWE & MAD RIVER DANCE ACADEMIES Dibden Center for the Arts, Johnson State College. Tickets: stowedance.com or (802) 253-5151. June 1 – 3
Snow White & An Evening of Dance: 6 - 9 p.m. June 3, 1 p.m.
STOWE FREE LIBRARY SUMMER EVENTS Pre-registration required for most events. 90 Pond St. (802) 253-6145 or stop by the library. stowelibrary.org. Summer Storytimes
ARTS WEEK 2018 Arts Week will feature events from a wide variety of local arts and cultural organizations. Various venues. stoweartsandculture.org. Full schedule on p.124. July 21 – 29 Scultpure exhibit walkabout, nature photography, Swing Peeper concert, Art on Park, film showing of Coco, Heathers in the Town Hall Theatre, “Songs of the Vikings, and much more.
FRIENDS OF STOWE FREE LIBRARY 7 p.m., Stowe Free Library, 90 Pond St., Stowe Village. stowelibrary.org. September 20
Robin McArthur, talk with author of Half Wild and Heart Spring Mountain. September 27 Gordon Haywood, talk on The Inevitable Garden with garden designer, author.
SATURDAY CINEMA ON THE LAWN Free movies on the lawn, Stowe Free Library, Park and Pond streets, Stowe Village. Dusk. Subject to change. stowevibrancy.com. July 28
Disney/Pixar’s Coco
August 11 The Sound of Music
ART 100 Rivers Arts building, 74 Pleasant St., Morrisville. (802) 888-1261. riverartsvt.org.
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Fund-raising event. Admission two people, one original, artwork or fine craft, appetizers, cash bar, silent auction, and art raffle.
STOWE LAND TRUST
Oxbow Park, 9 a.m. Morrisville Village.
Mondays, June 25 – Aug. 10, 10:15 a.m., ages 2 - 4; Fridays, June 25 – Aug. 10, 10:15 a.m., babies & toddlers. June 20 Tom Joyce Magic Show. 3 & up. 10:30 a.m. June 27 Ellie’s Preschool Party, music and movement. 3 & up. 10:30 a.m. July 6 Jerry Schneider: Learn about bats and make a bat t-shirt. 1 p.m. 5 & up. July 10 – 12 History Camp: Early American history with crafts, food, fun. 10:30 a.m. 7 & up. July 18 Puppet Show & Stories. 10:30 a.m. 3 & up. July 24 Teddy Bear Sleepover Storytime. Starts at 5:30 p.m. Bring a stuffed animal. Ages 3 - 5. July 25 The Soundtrack of Summer. Vermont insects, make a cricket box. 10:30 a.m. 4 & up. August 2 Modern Times Theatre: Music, puppetry, comedy. Co-sponsored with Stowe Rec. 1 p.m. 5 & up. August 4 & 11 Lesley Grant Music & Movement. 10:30 a.m. 3 & up. August 7 – 9 Lego Lunch Club. Bring a lunch, noon - 1 p.m. 6 & up.
STOWE TANGO MUSIC FESTIVAL World-renowned tango musicians, orchestra, concerts, milongas. Various venues. stowetangomusicalfestival.org August 16
Tango Jam! Bring your instruments, dancing shoes, and jam. 7:30 - 11 p.m. Town & Country Resort, Mountain Road, Stowe. Free. August 18 Tango Trail: Talk at Stowe Free Library, 2:15 - 3:30 p.m.; Showcase Concert, Stowe Community Church, 3:30 - 4:30 p.m.; and Tango Takes Stowe!—Mini Milongas, tangueros dance around town. Free. August 18 Festival Concert: Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center. 8 p.m. Ticketed event.
VERMONT TASTE Various venues around Stowe. Full list of participants, schedule, and tickets at vermonttaste.org. May 1 – June 30
Community celebration of the area’s chefs, brewers, bakers, and creators. Events at restaurants, resorts, breweries, roasteries throughout North Central Vermont. Participate in the Vermont Taste Dine Out and donations benefit Copley Hospital. n
ROAD TRIP ‘TUNNELS INTO YESTERYEAR’ The Scribner Covered Bridge crosses the Gihon River and is named after one of the area’s former farm owners. Built in about 1919, the bridge is 47.8 feet long. Inset: In a secluded, wooded area in Morristown, the 1896 Red Covered Bridge services what was once a busier area in the long-abandoned town of Sterling.
BRIDGES OF LAMOILLE COUNTY 13 covered bridges span local rivers, streams Some historians call them history on the land. Others, such as Vermont Covered Bridge Society co-founder Joseph Nelson, consider them “stand-alone museums.” Whatever name you call them, Vermont is filled with covered bridges, and no county has more of these historic relics than Lamoille County, home to Stowe. It has 13 covered bridges that remain standing. In his book “Covered Bridges of Vermont,” historian Ed Barna fittingly called them “tunnels into yesteryear,” and wrote, “Vermont’s covered bridges stand as symbols of an honored past and as part of that past’s enduring relevance.” The first covered bridge in the United States appeared in Pennsylvania—opening in 1806. Vermont’s earliest covered bridges appeared in the early 1830s, likely including one in Lamoille STORY & PHOTOGRAPHS / KEVIN M. WALSH County. According to Barna’s book, the oldest existing covered bridge in the county is the 48-foot, 5-inch long Emily’s Bridge (also called the Gold Brook Bridge) in Stowe Hollow. Vermont originally had over 500 covered bridges, with more than 60 in Lamoille County. But the massive 1927 Vermont flood wiped out over 200 of them, including many in the county. Additional floods, fires, and other events further reduced the number of bridges to current levels. Picture Lamoille County in the late 1800s. Towns were expanding in size as people and businesses moved deeper into undeveloped areas for farming, mill operations, and easier access to natural resources, such as trees and water. And mountainous Vermont’s many rivers, streams, and brooks needed to be crossed.
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Northern New England’s harsh weather—rain, snow, and wind—would quickly ruin a bridge’s uncovered wooden deck, so bridge builders began covering these spans to lengthen their useful lives. Vermonters did not invent covered bridges—they had been used in Europe for quite some time— but builders in Vermont and other nearby states helped make covered-bridge building an art form. “Covered bridges embodied the technology of wood,” said Ed Barna. Facing the need to cross rivers without the use of mid-river piers, as was the custom in Europe,
Vermont bridge builders helped develop new architectural styles that permitted the use of large interior spaces without intrusive support beams. According to Nelson, our covered bridges “enable us to look back into our past >>
Winter Logging in Jeffersonville
30x40 oil on linen
Aldro T. Hibbard
Legacy of Logging and the Landscape Painter in Jeffersonville.
Visions of Vermont Fine Art Galleries.
LLC
Before ski lifts, there were logging trails. And these trails brought some of the first cross country and downhill skiers to northern Vermont in the 1920’s and 1930’s from Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. The history of skiing here has been captured by landscape painters for over one hundred years. And is illustrated by this Aldro Hibbard’s painting of 1948. So join us on the Jeffersonville side of Smugglers’ Notch where history was made for skiing and landscape painting. Explore and discover the lure of the open and unspoiled landscapes that have attracted master painters for over a century. Both skiing and painting continue today with the recent visit of over 40 artists from the US, Russia, Italy, Spain and Nova Scotia. “The 2018 Jeffersonville Winter Painting Rendezvous”.
See the representation of these contemporary artists and works of those who preceded them. 100 Main Street, Jeffersonville, Vermont
Open Tuesday through Sunday 10 AM to 5PM visionsofvermont.com | 802.644.8183
ROAD TRIP LINKS TO THE PAST Clockwise from top left: Gates Covered Bridge services the Gates Farm in Cambridge. Built in 1897, this 60-foot-long bridge has moved twice, once by man, and once by nature. Antique car enthusiasts visit the Kissin’ Bridge, also called the Codding Hollow Covered Bridge, built in about 1877 in Waterville. A more modern version of a covered bridge is the 56-foot-long Whitecaps Bridge, built in 1969 on Brook Road, near the west end of Stowe’s Recreation Path.
to see how we developed special talents and building innovations to use the natural resources that were available in Vermont so as to develop Vermont’s infrastructure.” Design innovation became the rule for bridge builders, permitting some of these bridges to survive with fairly minimal structural change for over 150 years. As technology developed and heavy vehicles replaced horse-drawn wagons, many of the county’s bridges were strengthened for safety reasons. The few bridges that retain their original materials and design usually come with a limited load capacity. As a concession to time and technology, many of the county’s covered bridges now have steel beams that serve as supports under their wooden decks. Weather and aging have also necessitated other types of structural repairs on some bridges, but engineers are careful to maintain the essence of their original designs to the best extent possible.
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Once built, the original covered bridges “became Vermont towns’ first level of infrastructure to service industries, farms, and mills,” said Joseph Nelson. And even today, added Barna, these old covered bridges “are still essential to connecting many parts of the Vermont transportation grid.” Lamoille County’s covered bridges developed secondary purposes. Barna described how people used these bridges for meetings, political rallies, church social gatherings, militia meetings, play areas for children, and badweather shelters. And the bridges’ dark shadowy interiors also served to hide more than a few young lovers as they stole their first kisses. Today, in addition to still serving to facilitate transportation, covered bridges have become cultural icons that represent the rural, peaceful, country life synonymous with
Vermont. They engender thoughts of a time when life was less hectic and when people were more connected to the land. The county’s covered bridges are located in Stowe, Cambridge, Johnson, Waterville, Belvidere, and Wolcott. Many of these bridges are located on secondary roads and offer scenic views of rural lifestyles that seem to be quickly fading. While visiting these bridges, grab a smart phone and check out their interesting histories. For example, Wolcott’s Fisher Covered Bridge, while now part of a walking trail, was for many years used solely as a railroad bridge. Take note of the lengthy roof cupola, a design feature that allowed burning embers to escape from train engines and keep the bridge from catching on fire. While at Emily’s Bridge in Stowe, read about the bridge’s namesake. Emily was said to be connected with the bridge in a few different ways, none of them pleasant. Local lore has it that Emily’s ghost still visits the bridge some nights. Other bridges have a history of movement. In Cambridge, for example, the Gates Farm Bridge has been moved twice, once to accommodate a change in the course of the river below it, and a second time after the great 1927 flood moved the bridge 20 feet downriver. Barna wrote in his book that in 1968 a psychedelic band played inside Cambridge’s Poland Bridge, where the acoustics were reportedly terrific. Another Lamoille County bridge built in nearby Waterville was called, oddly enough, the Cambridge Bridge, and is also worth seeing, as it is a 168-feet-long, double-lane covered bridge. But you can’t see this bridge in Waterville anymore, as it was moved in the 1940s for preservation purposes and now serves as an entrance to the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne. n
resources: To learn more about Lamoille County’s historic covered bridges, check out: lostbridges.com and vermontcoveredbridges.com.
the bridges: Fisher Bridge: Route 15, Wolcott Gates Farm, or Little Bridge: Route 15, Cambridge Montgomery Bridge: Montgomery Bridge Road, Waterville Lumber Mill Bridge: Back Road, Belvidere Center Morgan Bridge: Morgan Bridge Road, Belvidere Center Power House Bridge: School Street, Johnson Scribner Bridge: Rocky Road, East Johnson Emily’s, Gold Brook, or Stowe Hollow Bridge: Gold Brook Road, Stowe Village, or Church Street Bridge: Church Street, Waterville Grist Mill, Grand Canyon, or Brewster River Bridge: Canyon Road, Jeffersonville Cambridge Junction, or Poland Bridge: Poland Bridge Road, Cambridge Junction Jaynes, or Kissin’ Bridge: Codding Hollow Road, Waterville Red, Chaffee, or Sterling Bridge: Sterling Valley Road, Morristown
TALLEY MEDIA; VSO; INSET: MARY BRUTON
S TOWE PERFORMING ARTS
IN THE TRAPP CONCERT MEADOW Clockwise from left: The Dustbowl Revival, Rubén Rengel, guest violinist for the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, and Marcia Ball.
MUSIC IN THE MEADOW
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Stowe Performing Arts presents another stellar lineup of music this summer in the incomparable Trapp Family Lodge concert meadow, kicking off its season July 8 with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra in a program entitled, “Gifts of Nature.” How fitting, considering the stunning setting. Next up is Marcia Ball—July 15—described by one reviewer as a “sensation, saucy singer and superb pianist ... where Texas stomp-rock and Louisiana blues-swamp meet.” The American roots orchestra, The Dustbowl Revival, takes to the meadow on July 29, and Phoebe Hunt & The Gatherers offer a global spin on American folk music August 5 for this free concert. As always, midsummer sees the return of Tuesday evening free gazebo concerts on the lawn of Stowe Free Library. See details this page.
STOWE PERFORMING ARTS MUSIC IN THE MEADOW Trapp Family Lodge Concert Meadow, Trapp Hill Road, Stowe. stoweperformingarts.com for times and tickets. Meadow opens two hours prior to concert. July 8 Vermont Symphony Orchestra 2018 Summer Festival Tour, “Gifts of Nature”: Sarah Hicks, guest conductor, and Rubén Rengel, violin, “Gifts of Nature”, 7:30 p.m. July 15 Marcia Ball Pianist, singer, songwriter and her band perform blues, ballads, zydeco, and Texas boogie. 7 p.m. July 29 The Dustbowl Revival Americana and soul band, 7 p.m. August 5 Phoebe Hunt & The Gatherers Global spin on American folk. Free. 7 p.m.
STOWE PERFORMING ARTS GAZEBO CONCERTS Tuesdays on the lawn of the Stowe Free Library. Free. 6 - 7 p.m. July 24 The Swing Peepers: wacky songs for kids … and the young at heart
July 31 Will Patten Ensemble: Gypsy jazz, swing, Brazilian music August 7 Morrisville Military and Waterbury Community Combined bands: traditional town band concert August 14 Cold Chocolate: Americana/bluegrass band
ART ON PARK Thursdays, 5 - 8 p.m. Artists, artisans, live music, local food. stowevibrancy.com.
Dale & Darcy—Bluegrass Group No Art on Park/Main Street music with George Petit Trio and Frank Springer Band July 12 High Summer, pop July 19 Scott Forrest, singer/songwriter July 26 Open August 2 Seth Yacovone, blues/rock soloist August 9 Cooie DeFrancesco, Americana, blues; Free family photos with Jesse Schloff August 16 Jane Boxall, percussion soloist, rock and marimba August 23 Cooie Sings August 30 Open Sept. 6 Lesley Grant, family music set; free family photos with J. Schloff June 28 July 4
ADAMANT MUSIC SCHOOL Wednesdays (7:30 p.m.), Fridays (7:30 p.m.), and Sunday afternoons (3 p.m.). Admission. adamant.org. July 25 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; August 10 Piano concerts in Waterside Hall.
CRAFTSBURY CHAMBER PLAYERS World-class musicians with music director Frances Rowell. Wednesdays, Elley-Long Music Center, St. Michaelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s College, Burlington, 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Hardwick Town House, 7:30 p.m. $25; students $10; 12 & under free. craftsburychamberplayers.org. July 8 Taryn Noelle sings timeless treasures, old and new, standards, more. Joe Davidian, piano, Don Schabner, guitar, Rob Morse, bass. Donation. On Craftsbury Common. 7 p.m. July 11 & 12 Sousa, Burleigh, Dvorak, Gershwin, & Bartok July 18 & 19 Ravel, Ibert, Saint-Saens, & Mendelssohn July 25 & 26 Brahms, Hindemith, & Mozart August 1 & 2 Boccherini, Grief, & Mozart August 8 & 9 Haydn, Williams, & Franck August 15 & 16 Rossini, Mozart, and Beethoven >>120
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MUSIC CRAFTSBURY CHAMBER MINI CONCERTS FOR CHILDREN July 11, 18, 25 & August 1, 8, 15 Elly-Long Music Center at St. Michaels College, 4 p.m. July 12 & 19 Hardwick Town House, Hardwick, 2 p.m. July 26 & August 2 East Craftsbury United Presbyterian Church, 2 p.m. August 9 & 16 Greensboro United Church of Christ Fellowship Hall, 2 p.m.
HIGHLAND CENTER FOR THE ARTS 2875 Hardwick St., Greensboro. (802) 533-9075. highlandartsvt.org.
COURTESY PHOTO
June 9 Stephane Wrembel: Jazz guitar, 7:30 p.m.
Michael Franti.
JAY PEAK MUSIC SERIES Stateside amphitheater, Jay Peak Resort, Jay. (800) 451-4449, jaypeakresort.com. July 21 Michael Franti & Spearhead. 7:30 p.m. July 28 Jeezum Crow Festival: Gov’t Mule, Robert Randolph & The Family Band, Seth Yacovone Band, more. 1 p.m. All day. $45. August 4 Evening with Dark Star Orchestra. 8 p.m. August 10 – 11 Strangefolk: Garden of Eden Festival. 6 p.m.
MONTGOMERY SUMMER SESSIONS Montgomery Recreation Center, Route 105. Thursdays 6 - 9 p.m.
Dead Sessions (heavy) Dr Rick July 19 Balkun Brothers July 26 High Summer August 2 Josh Panda/tribute to Led Zeppelin August 9 Mal Maiz August 16 Benefit (Blue Grass Against Blue Green Algae) June 28 July 12
OXBOW PARK Oxbow Park, downtown Morrisville. Free, unless noted.
ROUTE 15 • JOHNSON, VERMONT (11⁄2 miles west of the village)
Open 7 days a week: 10AM – 7PM 120
Famous Label, OFF PRICE Clothing for Men, Women & Teens
June 13 – August 22 Wednesday Night Live at the Oxbow, 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. August 18 Green Mountain Support Services flea market. All day. August 25 Oxbow Music Festival, big lineup of bands. 2 - 11 p.m. Fee.
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RATTLING BROOK BLUEGRASS FESTIVAL 11 a.m. - 8 p.m. Admission. Belvidere Center stage, Route 109. June 16 Regional bluegrass bands.
ROCKTOBERFEST Portland Street, downtown Morrisville. Most events free. rocktoberfestvt.com. September 29 All-day street festival music, food, games, No Strings Marionette shows, crafts, vendors, pumpkins bowling, face painting, more. 5k. Oxbow Park, 9 a.m. Morrisville Village.
RUSTY PARKER PARK CONCERTS Waterbury Rotary Club concerts, Rusty Parker Park, Main Street, Waterbury. Free, Thursdays 6 p.m.
FUNK SHUI Michelle Fay Band June 21 Room Full of Blues June 28 Starline Rhythm Boys July 5 A House on Fire July 12 Jenni Johnson & the Junketeers July 19 The Phineas Gage Project July 26 Mellow Yellow August 2 Northern Flyers August 9 The Cop Outs August 16 Robin Gottfried Band June 7
June 14
STOWE JAZZ FESTIVAL Festival main stage is The Alchemist, Cottage Club Road. stowejazzfestival.com. September 7 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 9 Over two dozen musical acts play at various venues around Stowe. Afro-Cuban, Gypsy, and Brazilian jazz, big band, smooth, soul, swing, more.
USAF CLARINET QUARTET CONCERT Stowe Community Church, Main Street. 7 - 8:30 p.m. Free. June 12 American clarinet quartet.
VERMONT MOZART FESTIVAL Trapp Family Lodge, Stowe. 7 p.m. vermontmozartfestival.org. July 27 Orchestra. Symphony No.40 in G minor, K.550, Clarinet Concerto, K.622, and Symphony No. 41 in C, K.551. Trapp Family Concert Meadow. Fireworks. August 1 Chamber players. String Quartet in F, K.590 and Piano Quintet in E flat, K.452. Mozart Room. August 3 Orchestra. Symphony No.39 in E flat, K.543, Cello Concerto No.1 by Franz Joseph Haydn, and Symphony No.35 in D, K.385. Trapp Family Concert Meadow. Fireworks.
Over 35 years bringing you new American-made jewelry, art, sculpture, functional handmade crafts, gifts and an inspiring furniture showroom. Offering unique interior design planning and project management. In two landmark buildings: 55 Mountain Rd. and 34 South Main St., Stowe. Open 7 days a week.
VERMONT FIREFLY FESTIVAL 6:30 - 9 p.m. Starts at kiosk, bottom of Pleasant Street, Morrisville. June 16 Firefly magic, make wings and crafts, firefly sighting adventure. n
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GORDON MILLER
S U M M E R T H E AT E R
From a 2017 Lamoille County Players’ production of Brigadoon.
SUMMER STOCK STOWE THEATRE GUILD Town Hall Theatre, Main Street, Stowe. 7:30 p.m. Tickets $14/$18/$20. (802) 253-3961, stowetheatre.com. June 13 – 16, June 20 – 23, June 27 – 30 Gypsy
The story of the ultimate show mother and the reluctant vaudeville star. July 18 – 21, July 25 – 28, & August 1 – 4 Heathers
The darkly delicious story of Veronica Sawyer, a brainy, beautiful teenage misfit, who hustles her way into the most powerful and ruthless clique at Westerburg High: The Heathers. August 22 – 25, August 29 – September 1, & September 5 – 8 The Bridges of Madison County
Based on the best-selling novel. A forbidden love affair between a photographer and a housewife changes both forever. October 3 – 6, October 10 – 13, & October 17 – 20 The Odd Couple (Female Version)
Unger and Madison are at it again. Florence Unger and Olive Madison, that is, in Neil Simon’s hilarious contemporary comic classic.
LAMOILLE COUNTY PLAYERS Hyde Park Opera House, 85 Main Street. Adults $18, seniors/students $12. Thursday through Saturday, 7 p.m.; Sunday matinees, 2 p.m. (802) 888-4507. llcplayers.com. July 19 – 22 & July 26 – 29 Hello Dolly!
Romantic and comic exploits of Dolly Gallagher-Levi, turn-of-the-century matchmaker and “woman who arranges things.” Humor, romance, high-energy dancing, and some of the greatest songs in musical theater history. September 27 – 30 & October 4 – 7 All Shook Up
It’s 1955, and into a square little town in a square little state rides a guitar-playing young man who changes everything and everyone he meets in this hip-swiveling, lip-curling musical fantasy. Inspired by and featuring the songs of Elvis Presley. November 2 – 4 & 9 – 11 The Cripple of Inishmaan
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Set on an island in Ireland in 1934, a strange, dark comic tale about Cripple Billy, who, after hearing that a Hollywood director is coming to make a film, learns that not everything we dream is what we envision.
December 7 – 9 Every Christmas Story Ever Told Three actors perform every Christmas story ever told, plus Christmas traditions from around the world. Madcap romp through the holiday season.
QUARRYWORKS THEATER Quarry Road, Adamant. Unless noted: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 2 p.m. Free. (802) 229-6978, quarryworks.org. July 5 – 8 & July 12 – 15 It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman: A Musical July 21 – 22 & July 28 – 29 Peter Pan Saturdays 2 and 5 p.m., Sunday 2 p.m August 2 – 5 & August 9 – 12 Who Killed Agatha Christie? An original mystery. September 7, 8, 13, 15, & 16 Tru: Life and times of Truman Capote Sept. 15 and 16, 2 p.m. September 6, 8, 9, 14, & 15 Into My Head Richard Ames autobiographical work. Sept. 8 and 9 at 2 p.m. October 6 – 7 & October 13 – 14 Tale of the Quarry Ghost Saturday 2 p.m. and 5 p.m., Sunday 2 p.m.
BREAD & PUPPET THEATER Route 122, Glover. Shape Note Sings: Tuesdays, 7:30 p.m. Paper Maché Cathedral. (Starting date subject to change.) Suggested donation for all shows is $10. No one turned away for lack of funds. June 5 – August 28 Sunday afternoons. The 2018 Circus and Pageant in the Circus Field. Side Shows and Ding Dongs start at 2 p.m.; circus folBread & Puppet. lows at 3 p.m. All ages. July 8 – August 26 Paper Maché Cathedral. Fridays, 7:30 p.m. June 15—into September Changing program. n
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COURTESY PHOTOS; BELOW; ADAM SILVERMAN
COFFEE HOUSE
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he Friends of the Stowe Free Library is bringing back its popular In Our Own Backyard program. The free event series focuses on the talents of local people and shares them with the community. Past presenters include brewers, writers, artists, and gardeners. The program kicks off Sept. 20 with Vermont author and musician Robin McArthur of Marlboro. She is the author of “Half Wild and Heart Spring Mountain,” the editor of “Contemporary Vermont Fiction: An Anthology,” one-half of the indie folk duo Red Heart the Ticker, and the recipient of two creation grants from the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. On Sept. 27 garden designer and author Gordon Haywood will talk about “The Inevitable Garden.” Owner of a successful garden design business, Haywood gardens, in Putney, Vt., and has written 11 books on garden design, contributed to Horticultural Magazine for 25 years and Fine Gardening magazine for six years, and is now a contributing editor at the newly revamped Organic Gardening magazine. Haywood is also a popular nationwide speaker on garden design.
Backyard series LOCAL TALENT
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ESSENTIALS: 7 p.m., 90 Pond St., in Stowe. stowelibrary.org. Long known as the Ski Capital of the East, this summer Stowe will be the epicenter of the arts when Stowe Arts and Culture Council presents for the first time, Arts Week 2018, to celebrate Stowe’s long history and involvement in the arts. Running from July 21 – 29, Arts Week will feature events from a wide variety of local arts and cultural organizations. The week opens with Exposed, Helen Day Art Center’s annual outdoor sculpture exhibit, with opening and walkabout on July 21 from 4 - 8 p.m. The center’s “Reclamation” exhibition will also be showing inside the gallery. Also on July 21, Stowe Land Trust will host a nature photography walk with Mike Hitelman. Featured events during the week include The Swing Peepers, presented by Stowe Performing Arts in the Helen Day gazebo (July 24), Art on Park in the village, Stowe Historical Society’s “Steve Perkins: Vermont” (both on July 26), and Stowe Vibrancy’s showing of the Disney/Pixar film “Coco” in the village park on Main Street (July 28). During the week, Stowe Theatre Guild will produce “Heathers” in the Town Hall Theatre at the Akeley Memorial Building while the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum will present a photography exhibit and discussion. The Stowe Jewish Film Festival will show the film “Itzhak” at Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center, and gallery walks will be scheduled to highlight the excellent fine arts and crafts galleries in Stowe. Stowe Free Library will host Nancy Marie Brown, discussing “Songs
Stowe Theatre Guild’s The Addams Family, 2017.
Arts Week 18 CULTURE COUNCIL
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of the Vikings,” sponsored by the Vermont Humanities Council. An artists’ showcase and sale is planned by the 1860 House Inn. Wrapping up the week, Stowe Performing Arts will present The Dustbowl Revival at the Trapp Family Lodge Concert Meadow and Spruce Peak Performing Arts will have a workshop and performance of Cirque Us on July 29.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ESSENTIALS: Stowe Arts and Culture Council (SACC) promotes Stowe as a global center for the arts. stoweartsandculture.org.
EXHIBITS
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INSIDE OUT GALLERY 299 Mountain Rd., Stowe. insideoutgalleryvt.com. (802) 253-6945. Ongoing exhibits of paintings, photography, and art glass by Vermont artists and fine crafts in glass, metals, wood, ceramics by American and European artists.
JEFFERSONVILLE FESTIVAL OF THE ARTS Jeffersonville. Park at Cambridge Elementary. cambridgeartsvt.org, (802) 644-1960. August 11 Dozens of regional artists display on Main Street. Music, children’s activities, food. Free. 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.
LITTLE RIVER HOTGLASS STUDIO 593 Moscow Rd., Moscow. littleriverhotglass.com. (802) 253-0889. Nationally recognized art glass studio, features Stowe artist Michael Trimpol’s studio.
MONTSHIRE MUSEUM OF SCIENCE 1 Montshire Rd., Norwich, Vt. (802) 649-2200. montshire.org. Daily 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. Exhibits include Big Blue Blocks, Andy’s Place, Discovering the Natural World, Bubble, Air Works, and more. Nature trails.
NORTHWOOD GALLERY 151 Main Street, Stowe. (802) 760-6513. northwoodgallery.com. Work by Vermont artisans: jewelry, fiber, wood, pottery, glass, sculpture, illustration, soaps, paintings, photography, more. Woodworking bench demos daily.
RIVER ARTS CENTER 74 Pleasant St., Morrisville. (802) 888-1261. Fees, registration, materials: riverartsvt.org. Through June 19 The Enigmatic Art of Endangered Alphabets
Wood carvings by Tim Brookes.
ROBERT PAUL GALLERIES Baggy Knees Shopping Center, 394 Mountain Rd., Stowe. (802) 253-7282. robertpaulgalleries.com. Original paintings, sculpture, and photography from dozens of noted artists.
designer labels & personalized service in Stowe
STOWE CRAFT GALLERY & DESIGN 34 S. Main St., and 55 Mountain Rd., Stowe. (802) 253-4693. stowecraft.com. Art and craft gallery, fine crafts, art, sculpture, jewelry, more.
VERMONT SKI & SNOWBOARD MUSEUM One S. Main St., Stowe. Wednesdays – Sundays 12 - 5 p.m. Handicap accessible. Suggested donation $5. (802) 253-9911. vtssm.com. Ongoing ski/snowboard related exhibits, past and present. Through October Curious & Cool: Unusual and seldom-scene objects from museum’s eclectic collection. >>143
Open 10 - 5:30 Daily | 10 - 5 Sunday 344 Mountain Rd., Stowe | 802.253.4595 | incompanyclothing.com
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STOWE PEOPLE
A BIG DIG
Uncovering a Revolutionary War site in Greensboro
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When a certified genealogist/historian and an independent researcher in ancient Near Eastern archaeology get together, something interesting will surely come out of it. Like a dig, artifacts from the Revolutionary War, and a book about a blockhouse in Greensboro, Vt. A blockhouse is a Revolutionary-era log structure built to protect soldiers and civilians in a time of war. Blockhouses have no windows, just slits big enough for a rifle to poke through to shoot the enemy. They usually have an underground entrance, a beehive-style oven for cooking and heating, and underground food storage. The second floor is bigger than the first, stockade fencing usually encircles it, and water is always nearby. Vermont had four blockhouses, strategically located on the Bayley Hazen Road, built for soldiers as they traveled from STORY & PORTRAIT / KATE CARTER Newbury to Canada. One was located on Blockhouse Hill Road, part of the Bayley Hazen Road in Greensboro. In 1959, Dan and Thelma Haslam purchased a property on Blockhouse Hill Road. They found evidence that a blockhouse once stood there. Also nearby is a memorial stone, erected in 1941 to commemorate scouts Constant Bliss and Moses Sleeper, who were killed and buried where they fell in 1781. The Haslams willed the property to their son, Peter, and his wife, Pat Haslam, the aforementioned genealogist/historian. Haslam, who lives in Stowe, was naturally curious and began researching the history of the military road and blockhouses.
The property changed hands again, and the current owners found an unusual pile of rocks next to the Bayley Hazen Road. Haslam took a look, and her niece, archeologist Jill Baker, joined her. Baker brought maps, tools, and knowledge to locate the ruins. They identified the site and conducted a survey, revealing architectural remains. The new property owners granted access to the site, and the six-year project was launched. Haslam focused on background and research work on blockhouses and Bayley Hazen Road. Bakerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s focus was the dig. She has extensive experience with archeological digs, having held fellowships at the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, which both Israelis and Palestinians claim as their capital, and excavation experience with Harvard
HISTORY BUFF Pat Haslam.
University’s Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon and the Gesher and Tel Zahara excavations. This was a very small dig in comparison, but important nonetheless for filling in missing pieces in Vermont’s role in the Revolutionary War, and the establishment of the town of Greensboro. Although there are four blockhouses in all, the site in Greensboro is the only one that has been excavated. The small team of volunteers found brick and pottery, nails, rusty old scissors, an old-fashioned hoe, and animal bones. The bricks appeared to be part of what the team thought was the beehive oven, and the pottery indicated military presence. The artifacts are now at the Greensboro Historical Society and more information about the dig is available at the Vermont Archeological Society. Haslam and Baker agreed their research should be documented and came up with the idea for a book, “The Greensboro Blockhouse Project, An Historical and Archaeological Investigation in Greensboro, Vermont.” “The book is for recording our research and it was a mutual decision. It just made sense to publish our findings. We call it the Dig Book,” Haslam said. “It was a family adventure. We took our lunch, went rain or sun, got dirty, often looked terrible, and had a lot of fun.” Though Haslam and Baker have not been able to definitively prove that the location is indeed the site of the Greensboro blockhouse, their evidence indicates it most likely was. “My hope is before I go to heaven, we find out for sure it was the blockhouse,” Haslam said. “If we could get the funding, we’d love to have ground-penetrating radar shot from a drone to find the extent of the site. We funded the project ourselves and also from private donations from local residents and friends. We had a wonderful time as a family, getting together every summer for over six years. We miss it, and we want to do more, but it’s expensive. It was a true labor of love.” n
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ESSENTIALS: “The Greensboro Blockhouse Project, An Historical and Archaeological Investigation in Greensboro, Vermont” is published by IndieGo Publishing and available on Amazon. 194 pages, paperback, $36. Libraries and institutions can obtain a discount by emailing archaeologicalhorizons@gmail.com. Archaeological Horizons Inc. is a nonprofit organization founded in 2010 to help support archaeological excavation and research.
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STRIKING IRON shaping objects of beauty out of metal
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STORY
: kate carter
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PHOTOGRAPHS
: gordon miller |
INTERIORS
: various artists
HOME IS WHERE THE IRON ART IS Detail of a wine cabinet, cross with wine and grapes, created by Brad Robertson and Kate Sprague of IronArt, in collaboration with Cushman Design Group (CDG). An infill of pine needles and cones into a white pine timber frame. (IronArt/CDG collaboration). Robertson and Sprague took a homeownerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s idea of light fixtures made with cylinders of glass, nautical ropes, and iron work and worked with Brooke Michelsen of TruexCullins Architecture + Interior Design and glass blowers in Burlington to create these light sculptures that hang in the stairwell of a Stowe home. IronArt also made the wrought-iron stair railings. Large iron and glass living room fixture in a home in Robinson Springs (IronArt/CDG collaboration). Another iron and glass fixture (IronArt/CDG collaboration). An artistic collaboration with Robertson and Sprague, paper artist Kathryn Lipke Vigesaa, and designer Milford Cushman. An IronArt hanging lamp made from classic canoe paddles and iron light fixture (IronArt/CDG collaboration).
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: CUSHMAN DESIGN GROUP (CDG), CDG, GLENN CALLAHAN, CALLAHAN, CDG, CALLAHAN, CDG, GORDON MILLER
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Brad Robertson and Kate Sprague.
W
hen Nick Nunez and his family moved to their home in Stowe Hollow, they wanted an Argentine barbecue to honor the traditional way their ancestors grilled meat. Their custom-built asado resembles a small stone hut. On the front is a built-in cubby, about 4 feet square and recessed about 2 feet, where the grilling happens on a large steel grate that can be raised and lowered above the coals with a pulley system. The grate is fashioned so that it catches the juice from the meat and funnels it to a receptacle. Nunez can grill anything from chorizo to a pig, thanks to metalsmith Brad Robertson of IronArt, who designed and crafted the pulley system that raises and lowers the grate while it cradles the meat. “I didn’t tell him anything about how to engineer it. He’s very creative and came up with the design on his own,” Nunez said. Brad Robertson and his partner Kate Sprague had built several other functional, beautiful pieces for the Nunez family. One is a lunch table with a large copper dragonfly embedded in a concrete tabletop. Kate created the dragonfly by tapping dents into the copper. Brad designed and forged the base that supports the tabletop. Downstairs in the entertainment room, Nunez wanted to hang cocktail glasses over the bar. Brad measured his stemware collection and forged a wrought-iron rack, designed so the glasses never touch each other. He also forged hardware for interior sliding barn doors, drawer pulls, and cupboard hinges, all of which contribute to the room’s speakeasy atmosphere. “We like to keep it local and were happy to find Brad and Kate. They both do beautiful, creative work,” Nunez said.
Brad Robertson and Kate Sprague co-own IronArt in Stowe’s Lower Village. Brad grew up in Richmond, Vt., working on cars and trucks. “I liked to fix things and I realized early on that metal work is a good way to do that. Steel is malleable. It has strength and permanence and can be soft and beautiful.” Brad took welding classes and then sculpture classes at Johnson State College. He apprenticed with Richard Spreda of Village Blacksmith in Stowe village and spent time with metalsmith Lucian Avery of Hardwick. He also attended New England School of Metalwork in Maine.
IronArt origins
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BENDING STEEL Clockwise from left: Robertson uses a custom-made tool to torque a flaming hot steel bar. More torquing tools. Pounding hot metal with an anvil. Getting close to the final shape—a bell hanger. (See p.134 for the final result.)
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In 2006, he branched out and opened IronArt in the Collins Brothers Stowe Quick-Mart building. It’s where the Pizza Joint (owned by Jim King) used to be. “It was a good situation back then,” Brad said. “I was Jim’s handyman and he kept me fed.” Having once been an apprentice, Brad willingly took on students interested in learning the trade. One was Kate Sprague, who grew up in Elmore. She was a painter and obtained pieces of steel from Brad to make frames for her paintings. Soon she was doing her own welding in Brad’s studio. One thing led to another, and in 2014 she became Brad’s apprentice. Then she became his business and life partner. Her skills complement Brad’s in a way that sounds like a cliché, but here it is: She lends femininity to a project. “Kate brings the creativity, patience, and vision necessary to make beautiful things,” Brad explained. “Metals take time to get to know and to become competent in manipulating. Kate takes the time to learn, practice, make samples, and then create. She also has the ability to work with her hands
and brain. She is a good mix of skill and artistry, which greatly expands the shop’s abilities to do diverse projects.” The couple primarily takes work within 20 miles of the shop. Local architects, designers, builders, woodworkers, and masons bring them a great deal of business. They recently teamed with Milford Cushman of Cushman Design Group on several endeavors—chandeliers, decorative fireplace screens, sliding barn doors—for a single client. The work took a year and was their largest and most complex project to date. “I’ve been working with Brad for 15 years. He’s a brilliant man, true to the archetypal blacksmith,” Cushman said. “Even the details of attachments, in his hands, become objects of beauty and strength. People who work
Keeping it local
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in metal often say metal is easier than wood, but there’s a certain grit and chutzpah in shaping objects of beauty out of metal.” Another IronArt-Cushman project is a fireplace screen that can pass code for deep energy retrofits, where you can’t have airtight doors. “We figured out a way to create gaskets for removable airtight panels that sit behind the screen. They work beautifully,” Cushman said. Kate spent weeks personalizing the screens with artistic embellishments, such as pine cones and leaves. No two screens are alike. Some design work takes place on-site with the owner and interior designer. A draftsman does drawings, gets approval from the client, and sends the drawings to Brad. Sometimes there are no drawings; Brad and Kate are the designers. “It really helps that Brad is an extraordinary listener, translator, and collaborator,” Cushman said. “Brad and Kate make a great team. They constantly bounce ideas off each other.” “Brad has technical and mechanical skills
IRON ART
PERFECT FIT Mission accomplished. A bell is suspended from the curved steel bar. Inset: leafy detail on a scale model of a fireplace screen.
that far exceed my own,” Kate said. “He has the ability to design and build things that are simple, beautiful, and above all intuitively functional. The same goes for his understanding of the tools and process of building.” When it comes to securing work, Brad takes the lead. He is the team’s people person, going to the site, taking measurements, making recommendations, and working with both client and designer. “We try to keep with their designs and ideas, but still make it our own,” Brad said. “We usually have some creative license on most projects.” Kate prefers to stay in the workshop, where she crafts the more elaborate aspects of a project. “Many of the past copper, sculptural, and organic projects we have taken on I could not have done, so I hand them over to Kate,” Brad said. “A while back, Kate decided to learn to repoussé, a form of sheet-metal work often done with copper. The technique requires hammering from the reverse side to create a design in low relief,” Brad said. “Another time Kate reproduced a deteriorating wooden weathervane out of copper for a local house. I would have had to pass on the job.”
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IN THE CLASSROOM Tools of the trade: a Japanese saw and router bits. Students at work in their classroom. Stickered wood allows for more even drying.
IronArt is a chaotic workshop of loud banging, faintly pungent metallic odors, and an array of projects scattered about. Metal strips of various lengths are stacked against one wall. Stock itemsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;hooks, hangers, ornaments, fireplace accoutrements, bottle openers, knife blades, knobs, and handlesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;are on display near the front door. A beautiful chandelier hangs from the ceiling, waiting for the wiring to be installed. Two workbenches are covered with hammers and other tools, vises, anvils, and pieces of metal in different stages of production. A dragon-like furnace blazes hot orange in a corner. UPS regularly delivers steel in all shapes and sizes. It comes from steelyards. While lumberyards are fairly common, steelyards rarely cater to the public, mostly because thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not a big market for a 20-foot piece of hot-rolled five-eighth-inchdiameter A36 steel rod.
Heat, hold, hit
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Good Jeans ECCO...Vermont's Original Designer Boutique Premium Denim for Women and Men
clothes for women and men 81 Church Street Burlington VT 802.860.2220 eccoclothesboutique.com
For more than 30 years, we have been proudly providing residents with reliable:
Cable Television • Internet • Telephone • Commercial Fiber
Stowe Cable Systems Stowe Communications (802) 253-9282 • stowecable.com
COLLABORATORS Sprague measures the spacing on a lighting fixture, while Robertson shapes the end of a railing. Protective gear is a must for metal workers.
FABRICS · YARNS · QUILTS KNITTING & QUILTING NOTIONS VERMONT MADE GIFTS
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T Brad grabs an 8-foot-long metal bar and feeds one end into the mouth of the dragon, until it, too, blazes orange. He pulls it out, lays the hot end on a cast-iron anvil, and bangs the heck out of it with a custom-made hammer. Back into the dragon’s mouth it goes to keep the iron hot and malleable. He repeats this process several times until the shape becomes apparent. It’s the curved end of a railing that will eventually be installed in someone’s home. He pounds the end until it curves around a mold, another custom tool he created so that both ends of the railing can be identically shaped. “Half the fun is making the tools to create the end result,” he said. Meanwhile, Kate is bent over a workbench, carefully measuring and soldering a lacy-looking chandelier. Her movements are light and delicate, a sharp contrast to Brad’s violent banging. Both wear eye, ear, and body protection. There’s little conversation. Why bother when you can’t hear each other? Both work on their individual projects and occasionally look up to observe the other’s progress. In custom work, many projects are like puzzles. You have to figure out how to build something that you have never built before, in the fewest steps with the least amount of materials and waste. “Brad’s experience with the tools, many of which he built himself for specific projects that he may never use again, and his ability to envision the entire process from start to finish, allow him a fluidity that makes it look easy,” Kate said. “He can also fix just about anything, which is great, because things break all the time.” SHAPE SHIFT Robertson pounds, measures, and torques the ends of a steel bar that will become a railing in someone’s home. The fiery furnace rages in the background.
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Visit beautiful Greensboro on Caspian Lake SCENIC 30-MILE DRIVE FROM STOWE Shopping • Swimming • Hiking • Sightseeing • Arts • Events
Sailing on Caspian Lake Painting by Deborah Holmes “If we don’t have it, then you probably don’t need it.”
THE WILLEY’S STORE one of vermont’s oldest and largest general stores Since 1900
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BEAUTY AND STRENGTH A collection of small functional home decor items and tools, such as bottle openers (right) is available for sale at the workshop.
Brad, Kate, and their recently rescued pup live off the grid in Elmore, close to the homestead where Kate grew up. Compared to their metalsmithing shop, home is a peaceful oasis, where the only banging is the sound of splitting wood in the fall. Kate is an avid gardener, supplying them with produce year-round. Brad is into homebrewing. He learned to weld sanitary-grade stainless and helps Idletyme, the Stowe brewpub, one day a week brewing beer and doing maintenance on its equipment.
After hours
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He has also built a two-barrel homebrew system, so thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always hand-crafted beer on hand when friends drop by. And after a day of heating, holding, and hammering steel, what could possibly be better than a stein filled with cold beer? n (Many thanks to Cushman Design Group of Stowe, and Milford Cushman and Terri Gregory, for helping us to illustrate this piece.)
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ESSENTIALS: 745 S Main St., Stowe.
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Johnson Woolen Mills Factory Store Quality Woolen Garments for the Entire Family SINCE 1842
Quality Woolens Fabrics by the Yard Hudson Bay Point Blankets
Main Street, Johnson, Vermont (15 minutes from Stowe, 40 minutes from Jay) Open Mon-Sat 9-5 & Sun 10-4 • 802-635-2271 • 877-635-WOOL (9665)
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FOUND IN VERMONT
BY KATE CARTER
PROTEIN ON A STICK Vermont Smoke & Cure has made delicious smoked meats and meat snacks for 55 years, sans any antibiotics or sodium nitrites. And let’s be clear: all products are free from wheat/gluten, dairy, peanuts, tree nuts, egg, soy, fish, and shellfish. What’s left? Meat! Oh, and some seasonings. The summer sausage and smoked pepperoni are a great addition to a cheese tray, and the eight flavors of snack sticks are perfect for on the go. Consciously crafted, deliberately delicious, and made locally in a former cheese-making-facility-turned-world-class smokehouse in Hinesburg, Vt. INFO: Available in Stowe at Harvest Market, Commodities Natural Market, and local groceries. vermontsmokeandcure.com
OUTSTANDING IN THE FIELD WAG THE DOG You are what you eat and so is your dog. Our best buddies deserve the best treats, and that’s what they’ll get with Wagatha’s. The USDA-certified organic biscuits are made using human-grade ingredients in a fully licensed human-grade bakery. Most contain no wheat; all contain no corn or soy products. The latest flavors are Hunter’s Stew, Turkey Berry, Steak & Eggs, and Maple Bacon. Your dog will sit, roll over, and beg for these yummy treats. Made with a nod and a wag in Manchester Center, Vt. Woof!
When you think of Vermont artists, the one that usually comes to mind is the aptly named Sabra Field. She is one of America’s most accomplished printmakers, capturing the pastoral scenes of Vermont’s mountains, lakes, and fields in her woodblock and giclée prints. Her work has been featured in over 50 one-person shows and on several magazine covers. Stowe Craft Gallery began carrying her prints in 1980, and is the most comprehensive dealer of Sabra Field prints in Stowe. The gallery features her newest work, plus an ongoing display of selected framed giclée and woodblock prints, available unframed or custom framed.
INFO: wagathas.com
INFO: stowecraft.com.
ON A ROLL Culinary artists who love to bake will swoon over Vermont Rolling Pins. If your goal is cookies of the exact thickness, look no further than the cookie pin, with its built-in handle guides to roll out the perfect cookie every time. The French pin features tapered ends for easy circular rotation. (Think pie crust.) The Lefse roller is used in making Scandinavian potato lefse (thin pancakes), and turns out dough with a corrugated texture. The adult pin comes in a smaller, child-size version, and then there’s the monster pin for those who like to Go Big or Go Home. Handmade in South Burlington from solid cherry, maple, or walnut, these exquisite pins are not only functional, but beautiful works of art that belong in everyone’s kitchen. $35 to $105, depending on wood and detail. INFO: vermontrollingpins.com.
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Have a product you’d like us to feature? Send us, not your sales rep, a two-sentence description of why our readers need to know to kate_carter@comcast.net. No phone calls please, and no tweets, por favor, Mr. Trump.
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VISIONS OF VERMONT GALLERY Main Street, Jeffersonville. visionsofvermont.com. (802) 644-8183. 20 master painters from the Jeffersonville area, displayed in three historic buildings. Ongoing Karen and Jack Winslow, Stapleton Kearns, TM Nicholas, Eric Tobin, and others. June 3 – July 1 Northern Vermont Artists 87th June Juried Show Over 50 artists. Reception June 3, 3 - 5 p.m.
Emerging, Stephanie Bush.
WEST BRANCH GALLERY & SCULPTURE PARK One mile from the village on the Mountain Road, Stowe. (802) 253-8943. westbranchgallery.com. Outdoor sculpture park, event space, and interior gallery promoting contemporary art in varied media by regional, national, and international artists. Ongoing Sculpture park: Works in stone, steel, and bronze by Christopher Curtis, Richard Erdman, David Stromeyer, Walter Horak, John Matusz, Bruce White, Karen Petersen, Jeffrey Laudenslager. Through June 2018 Recent works by gallery artists in four indoor gallery spaces. July 7 – August 18 FRAGILE Artists respond in varied media both subtly and explicitly to the concept of fragility in an era of political uncertainty. Gowri Savoor, Lia Rothstein, Margaret Jacobs, Jim Westphalen, Helen Shulman, Kim Radochia, Dianne Shullenberger. August 25 – October 28 Craig Mooney and Stephanie Bush Two solo exhibitions of new works in oil by Vermont-based painters. n
Featuring exclusively Vermont Artisans! Workshops - Demonstrations - Custom Woodwork
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GLENN CALLAHAN
DINING & LODGING
The Stowe area boasts a variety of cuisines and dining atmospheres, from swanky bistros that embrace the local food movement to fine-dining establishments featuring award-winning chefs and busy pubs with the latest microbrews—and everything in between! Check out the area’s great places to stay, as well, from full-service resorts to quaint country inns. Our guide to dining and lodging outlines the myriad choices from which to choose, and perfectly complements the Stowe Area Association’s menu and dining book.
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M I C H A E L'S ON THE HILL Farm to Table Cuisine #1 Most Romantic Restaurant in Vermont - TripAdvisor, MSN.com & Delish.com Best Restaurant, Best Steak & Best Wine List in Stowe - Forbes Traveler Vermontâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s First Certified Green Restaurant Wine Spectator Award of Excellence Best Chefs America Rehearsal Dinners | Weddings Special Events | Catering 4182 Waterbury-Stowe Road Route 100 North, Waterbury Center, Vermont 5 Minutes from Stowe & I-89
802.244.7476 | michaelsonthehill.com
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THE MEATLOAF, PLEASE! Jeff Clarke and his wife, Kris Ryan-Clarke, are the new owners of Edelweiss Mountain Deli.
EDELWEISS MOUNTAIN DELI A favorite sandwich board changes hands
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Making a change at 50 can be daunting, but Edelweiss Mountain Deli’s new owners, husband and wife Jeff Clarke and Kris Ryan-Clarke, are ready to take on the deli’s half-century legacy. The deli opened in 1968, according to previous owner Alex Stein. Clarke and Ryan-Clarke officially took over Edelweiss April 2, but they’ve been intimately familiar with it as customers for decades. “I found the Edelweiss a long time ago as a customer in the late ’70s and early ’80s,” said Clarke, who’s a Vermont native. He and Ryan-Clarke are loyal Stowe skiers, and always made a point to stop at the deli on their way out of town. That’s how most people find Edelweiss, Stein said. “When you go up to the mountain, everybody comes in here and gets a deli sandwich or a breakfast sandwich or a cup of coffee and they’re in and out of here in five seconds so they can get first chair in a hurry,” Stein said with a chuckle.
STORY / Caleigh Cross PHOTOGRAPH / Gordon Miller
Clarke and Ryan-Clarke have been looking to move back to Vermont for a while, and when a broker presented them with the opportunity to buy Edelweiss, they snapped it up almost as fast as they’ve devoured the deli’s sandwiches. “We immediately refocused on Stowe and on the Edelweiss,” Clarke said.
awesome food. over 100 beers. 1,000 records. lots of fish stories.
serving dinner every night and lunch friday - monday
802 760 6066 docponds.com @docponds
EDIBLES
California inspired Vermont made Former owner Alex Stein.
91 Main Street, Stowe, Vermont 802.253.2691 platestowe.com
The couple have never owned a deli. Clarke has a background in wealth growth for Fortune 500 companies and establishing philanthropic foundations; Ryan-Clarke is a designer and art director, working with clients in Vermont and Alaska. “We’re just customers. We’ve just been consumers. We really know pretty much nothing. What we know, we know from a consumers’ perspective,” Clarke said. “We don’t really know what we’re doing, at some level,” but the pair see Edelweiss as poised to take the forefront on small businesses and the food industry in Stowe. “We’re foodies, and we’re really big advocates and supporters of micro-brewing and micro-distilling. The creativity and innovation that is flowing through those industries is remarkable, and Vermont’s at the forefront of it,” Clarke said. He’s not planning any major changes to the menu, at least not right now. Edelweiss has up to 20 sandwiches on its menu at any time, named after Vermont places such as Notchbrook or Waitsfield. “We’re hearing ‘don’t change very much’ from a lot from people that we’re meeting,” Clarke said. “We’re going to tinker around the edges, but we certainly want to preserve the core character of the Edelweiss. It is the 50th year of the Edelweiss serving the Stowe community. Obviously something’s worked well for 50 years.” n ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ESSENTIALS: 2251 Mountain Rd, Stowe. Find Edelweiss on Facebook.
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GOT MURAL? En Masse, an artists’ collective, paints a funky, street-styled art of hops, cans, trippy roads, and phrases on the ceiling at The Alchemist brewery.
‘ILLUSTRATING’ THE BEER CATHEDRAL Montreal collective En Masse paints Alchemist ceiling Watch Jason Botkin and the three other artists that make up En Masse paint the 24-foot ceiling panels of The Alchemist, and you might catch a hint of Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. After all, “this is our kind of church here,” said John Kimmich. He and his wife, Jen, own The Alchemist on Cottage Club Road in Stowe. Aloft, the brewery’s ceiling was swirling with black-and-white patterns of hops, beer cans, grinning faces, trippy roads, and phrases such as “You know how I feel” and “Got IPA?” Botkin is co-founder of En Masse, a Montreal artists’ colSTORY / Caleigh Cross lective hired by the Kimmichs to cover the ceiling with PHOTOGRAPHS / Gordon Miller funky, street-styled art, using acrylic paint. John Kimmich discovered En Masse’s work last January during a family trip to Montreal. “I came across this garage that was unbelievable, with a mural on it. … The surreal quality to it, the black and white, it’s very tattoo-inspired, and it just was amazing, the way it went from surface to surface, continually, from the walls to the ceiling, everything,” John said. “When I got home, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.” John emailed back and forth with En Masse for a year about designs and scheduling. The black-and-white approach “really complements the bones of this building,” John said. “These surfaces are palettes. These are just blank canvases that are going to be filled with art, eventually. This is the first of many.”
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Back when the Kimmichs operated a pub in Waterbury, “we had on our menu a commitment to art,” Jen said. At that point, they couldn’t afford to support local artists the way they wanted to, but they made a promise to the community to support the creators who call it home.
Cool art, great beer
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Art isn’t a branding decision as much as it is a passion for the Kimmichs. “It’s more about what Jen and I want to accomplish,” he said. “It becomes branding, I guess, like our labels and stuff like that, but I don’t think we ever looked at it from that point of view. It was just cool art that went along with great beer.” The Kimmichs loved watching En Masse paint the ceiling. “It’s all freehand and improv,” said Jess Graham, The Alchemist’s artistic director. “I’m sure they have a rough idea of what they’re putting up there, but when they’re doing it, it’s original and at-the-moment. It’s cool,” John said. That spontaneity is at the core of En Masse’s “magic,” said Botkin. The Denver native founded En Masse in 2009, and said the art doesn’t come from designing it ahead of time; instead, it lies in the way the group’s four members work together. “As one person creates a new element,” others build on it, Botkin said. On the left side of the building’s ceiling lies a grinning hop bud that Botkin said took four or five hours to craft. Then he worked on a series of swirls and spirals. “There’s a lot of editing” as a project goes along. “You can’t design this.” He compares the group’s work to free-form jazz or improvised poetry. John remembers looking at photos of their pub’s early days and being struck at how little there was on the walls. “I kind of feel like this place is like that now. In 10 years, it’s really going to just blow your mind.” n
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////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ESSENTIALS: Daily, Tuesdays – Saturdays, 11 a.m. - 7 p.m. 100 Cottage Club Rd., alchemistbeer.com.
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CALEIGH CROSS; OTHER PHOTOS COURTESY OF BEN & JERRY’S
QUALITY QUEEN Althea Sherwood stands in front of a mural at Ben & Jerry’s in Waterbury, inspecting a pint of her favorite flavor, New York Super Fudge Chunk, for quality.
IN THE HOUSE ICE CREAM BUILT After 33 years, Althea Sherwood’s done it all
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Althea Sherwood says she never quite got used to the feeling of being watched as she worked. Those eyeballs watching her belong to the hordes that gather at the Waterbury Ben & Jerry’s factory to see ice cream being made. Sherwood can’t blame them for watching—she gets her hands on 200 pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream per minute. That’s 96,600 pints per day with Sherwood’s stamp of quality. Sherwood, now a line leader at the company’s St. Albans plant, STORY / Caleigh Cross started working at the Waterbury factory when it opened in 1986, but her actual career with the company began three years earlier, when she started scooping the famous ice cream out of a now-iconic gas station in Burlington. Sherwood, 57, of Milton, dropped out of Champlain College four classes shy of graduation. For Sherwood, learning on the job was much more her speed, and working at Ben & Jerry’s empowered her to learn more than she ever thought possible. After taking a two-week course in Wisconsin, she became Vermont’s first licensed pasteurizer, giving her the opportunity to work with the state to help regulate dairy products. “It was fun,” she said. “We went all over the state to learn how to incorporate machines into the process and keep them running smoothly.”
EDIBLES
Sherwood now just says “No” to peaches, after making this flavor for several years.
She’s worked in every department of the company, making the famous ice cream from milk to finished product, and scooping it to eager customers during her college days. Working in the mix department was challenging, but exciting, since that’s where each cow-spotted pint begins, and it’s crucial that the mixtures be exactly right. Working in the flavor department is a lifestyle choice, to hear Sherwood tell it. It’s hard work, but to her, it’s everyday life. Most people think solid, no-chunks flavors like vanilla are the easiest to make, but actually, they’re the biggest challenge, she said. But chunky flavors can present challenges too. Sherwood still remembers when the company was making its Fresh Georgia Peach flavor. Sherwood and her crew would take the peaches apart by hand, strain the juice and put it in the flavor vats. “We’d get truckloads of Georgia peaches, and you’d have to run it constantly until the peaches were gone,” Sherwood said. “So, we ended up running like two weeks straight. The office staff came in, fed us, brought us all kinds of food, came in and actually worked on the line with us.” A pause, then: “To this day, I can’t eat a peach,” Sherwood said with a deep laugh. “You wore it, you smelled like it, you lived it for weeks on end.” For Sherwood, the camaraderie of those early days in the house that ice cream built kept her coming back. “Ben and Jerry, they were always there. When we shut down on Friday afternoon, they would bring us some drinks and stuff and we would all hang out. For like an hour, we would hang out in the office with Ben and Jerry,” she said. n
Peachy keen
COMPANY STORE | RT 100, WATERBURY CENTER ( 10 minutes from Stowe Village)
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LakeChamplainChocolates .com
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ESSENTIALS: Factory tours daily 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. 1281 Waterbury-Stowe Rd., Route 100, Waterbury. benandjerrys.com.
COURTESY PHOTOS
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OPRAH’S LIST BOOSTS RUNAMOK Producer corners flavored syrup market
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If you’re a follower of lifestyle luminary Oprah Winfrey, when gift-giving season rolls around—any time of the year, really—you might want to pick a few favors from her annual list of favorite things. Last year, Cambridge sugarmaker Runamok Maple got a boost for its brand-new business when a gift set of specialty maple syrups was included on Winfrey’s list, which was a fixture on her eponymous show, and now in her magazine and online. “It’s definitely been a roller coaster; it’s been fantastic, actually,” said Eric Sorkin, who runs Runamok with his wife, Laura. The duo moved to Vermont in 2000 from Washington, D.C., to pursue STORY / Hannah Marshall organic farming, and started the maple operation a few years back. “We really launched in the summer of 2016 when we went to a fancy food show,” he said, and it was very much a new business. Before Winfrey’s list dropped, one person could serve as Runamok’s entire fulfillment team, but after there were as many as 25 people getting orders out the door. “It was the right kind of challenge to have, but certainly challenging,” Eric said. Runamok was a hit at tables across the country in 2016, and Eric said the syrup was featured in 25 national publications, including Food & Wine and Real Simple magazines. “Maple is a unique product, maybe one of the last significant products that’s harvested from the wild,” like fish, truffles, or nuts—hence the name Runamok. The company expanded in its second year, acquiring the maple candy and cream operation of Brattleboro-based Bascom Maple Farms and buying the old Milton Bradley plant in Fairfax that used to churn out Scrabble tiles. With just under 100,000 taps and more woods being set up for sugaring, plus private-label projects and Runamok’s barrel-aging and infusing setup, the Sorkins plan to move their base of oper-
ations to Fairfax. “We’ve turned from a syrup supplier to a syrup buyer,” Eric said. Laura honed her culinary skills at the former French Culinary Institute in New York, and worked in a number of restaurants. For Runamok’s varied flavors— infusions of elderberry, ginger root, cardamom, or Makrut lime leaf, hints of pecan wood smoke, or the essence of local liquor barrels from Caledonia Spirits and Mad River Distillers—she draws inspiration from “all over the place,” including from customers and their own employees. Right now, her favorite infusion contains Merquén, a smoky Chilean blend of peppers. Laura said Runamok is never afraid to try new combinations and unexpected flavors, but one ingredient she’ll never put in maple syrup again is wasabi. “It tasted like swamp. It was just awful.” n /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ESSENTIALS: runamokmaple.com.
COURTESY PHOTO
EDIBLES
31 Lower Main Street in Johnson, VT (802) 635-7483 | (800) 899-6349 marvinscountrystore.com
DUNKEL, DANKE Trapp brew wins big Von Trapp Brewing won a silver medal at the 2017 Great International Beer, Cider, Mead & Sake Competition in the category amber and dark lager for its dunkel lager. Dunkel is the German word for dark, and dunkel beers typically range in color from amber to dark reddish brown. They are characterized by their smooth malty flavor. Creamy, toffee aromas balance the bitterness of Munich malts in this roasted brown lager. Although dark in color, dunkel is medium in body and finishes dry and clean, resulting in a rich lager that can be enjoyed throughout the year. This is the 21st year of the competition. There were 835 entries, 120 judges, and 20 stewards. Von Trapp Austrian-style beers are brewed with pure Vermont spring water sourced from the von Trapp family’s property in Stowe. Following family heritage, the von Trapps follow the German beer purity law Reinheitsgebot, meaning the brewery uses only hops, barley, water, and yeast in its lagers. “We were honored to see our Dunkel recognized at this year’s competition,” said Sam von Trapp. “It’s long been one of brewmaster JP Williams’ favorites, and we love to see people’s reaction to how smoothly this dark beer drinks.” This is the second medal earned by the company at this competition; its Bohemianstyle pilsner won a silver medal in 2015. n
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//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ESSENTIALS: 1333 Luce Hill Rd., Stowe. vontrappbrewery.com
Black Cap Coffee & Beer of Vermont Breakfast/Lunch Coffee Espresso Pastries Craft Beer Store Wine Selection Tasting Events 63 Lower Main Street, MORRISVILLE 144 Main Street, STOWE Across from Stowe Community Church Open every day at 7 a.m. â&#x20AC;¢ See us on Facebook
a roving culinary adventure
O U T S TA N D I N G IN THE FIELD STORY
: hannah marshall |
PHOTOGRAPHS
: gordon miller
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THE MAN / THE BUS
S
ome meals are just once-in-a-lifetime experiences—even if you do them more than once. A dinner at sunset, outside, on a beautiful summer day. A dinner on a farm, on a hill with a panoramic view of the Green Mountains—Lincoln Peak, Mt. Ellen and Stark Mountain, perhaps better known as Sugarbush and Mad River Glen—at sunset, outside, on a beautiful summer day, takes the experience to the next level. Add in a long, serpentine dinner table set for 150 diners, a postcard-perfect vintage bus in a lush field, some of the best food and drinks in the state, and a total eclipse of the sun, and you may be convinced you’re in heaven. Welcome to Outstanding in the Field, where all but the eclipse is guaranteed. The al fresco dining events feature stunningly beautiful scenery, superlative cuisine and esprit de corps in phenomenal locations across America and beyond. In 2017, the tour hit more than 100 venues in 50 states and 14 countries, including vineyards in Chile and France, secret sea coves and beaches in California, flower and garlic farms and midwest cattle ranches, sunny olive groves and salt-licked Massachusetts oyster farms. The sole Vermont event for the past three years has been held at Ploughgate Creamery, a boutique butter operation run by Marisa Mauro on the historic Bragg Farm in the Mad River Valley. nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
Jim Denevan, the mastermind behind Outstanding in the Field, chats with a group of the 150 diners seated for dinner at the Ploughgate Creamery on the Bragg Farm in the Mad River Valley last August. The red, white, and chrome 1953 Flxible bus travels the country from one Outstanding in the Field event to the next.
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Like many desirable Vermont destinations, the Bragg Farm is reached by driving for several miles with terrible cell service up a hill on twisty, bumpy dirt roads. Last August this journey was particularly lovely—and dusty, and thankfully rainless. At the farm, a polite group milled about, peering skyward. Most people were dressed in casually chic summer wear— linen pants, long skirts, flowy tops—and several sported large plastic or cardboard eyeglasses. One wore a welding helmet. The time was 2:30 p.m., and everyone was waiting for the eclipse. Vermont wasn’t in the path of totality of 2017’s “Great American Eclipse,” but the partial cover as the moon passed in the path of the sun was still thrilling, and the farm crowd cheered. The rolling crescent made me think of a partially eaten lemon cookie; it was clearly time for some food. >>
Experience mountainside dining at Stowe Mountain Lodge. Visit The Hourglass Lounge for signature cocktails and craft brews, and enjoy seasonal tasting menus showcasing the flavors of Vermont in Solstice Restaurant.
www.stowemountainlodge.com | 7412 Mountain Rd. Stowe, VT 05672 | 844.210.5933
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THE TABLE
As more guests arrived, squinting in the now-bright afternoon light, wine and beer and bits of food began to circulate. Beverages were chosen by William McNeil, who co-owns Hen of the Wood in Waterbury and Burlington and Doc Ponds in Stowe with Eric Warnstedt, who was down the hill preparing the feast. A clean, funky pétillant-naturel white wine—natural yeast, naturally sparkling—from La Garagista winery in Barnard paired perfectly with spoons full of summer-fresh corn, Wood Mountain Fish striped bass ceviche, and smoked bluefish dressed with dill and buttermilk on cucumbers. The hors d’oeuvre highlight, however, was Hen of the Wood’s Parker House rolls slathered with almost indecent amounts of the house specialty—tangy, creamy butter flecked with radishes and sea salt. People gasped audibly as the sweet, salty morsels melted in their mouths. A woman in a long floral dress and cowboy boots amicably gathered guests around, glasses in hand, for a proper introduction to the festivities. “Can you just shift over?” Eden Reilly gestured. “Sorry to treat you like cattle … but, this is a farm.”
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eilly, general manager of Outstanding in the Field, spent 10 years in Vermont in the food industry, including several years at Hen of the Wood. Now, she travels with the team that ebbs and flows from seven to about a dozen employees, a caravan of trucks and trailers following the red, white, and chrome 1953 Flxible bus that is now a hallmark of the company. The bus—and the company itself—is the brainchild of Jim Denevan, a former chef and artist whose mind constantly works on a scale so large it makes a 150-person dinner seem downright intimate. His artwork won’t hang in a gallery any time soon, but you may be able to see some of it from space. >>
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The family style dinner at Ploughgate Creamery, the Vermont stop on the Outstanding in the Field tour, is served under perfect conditions: a warm summer evening, dappled sunlight, and no rain. At left: The table is set.
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TOP LEFT, TOP RIGHT PHOTOS: HANNAH MARSHALL
THE FOOD
Denevan is a land artist, setting up lights or marking sand and ice with massive, hand-drawn circles, ranging in diameter from inches to several miles. He’s larger than life himself, well over 6 feet tall, tan, and ruggedly good-looking, with a cowboy hat and dusty boots and piercing eyes that are constantly scanning his surroundings. He first launched the large-scale dinners in 1999 with three events in the San Francisco Bay Area, including one at his brother’s organic farm. “I wanted to get out of that hot kitchen of a typical conventional, busy restaurant,” Denevan said, “and I thought that the time was coming—a moment was coming culturally where people would really want to come to places where the food is, to hear the stories of farmers.” For a few years, the events were sparsely attended, and many of the guests were just friends and family. Then came the bus. “I bought that old bus with the idea to popularize it, maybe a publicity stunt, the idea we were going to do something so extraordinary as to take this ridiculous bus across the country, and nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn nnnnnnnnnnnnn
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Clockwise from top left: Ploughgate Creamery butter soup with Wood Mountain Fish roe, clams, and corn. Jasper Hill Farm’s spruce bark-wrapped Harbison cheese with VT99 salami, housemade crackers, and berry mustard. Summer-fresh corn and striped bass ceviche, paired with a sparkly, funky pétillant-naturel white wine from La Garagista winery in Barnard. Half Pint Farm tomato, cucumber, and radish salad with von Trapp Farmstead’s Mad River Blue cheese. Hen of the Wood’s Parker House rolls wait to be slathered with sea-salted Ploughgate butter. LaPlatte River Angus brisket with fire-licked Jericho Farm peppers, chiles, currants, and kale.
involve all these great chefs,” Denevan said. “The bus always terrified me, because when you buy a bus from 1953 for $9,000, it could kill you,” Denevan said. It didn’t kill him, but it did break down in the Yukon, and Denevan was grounded, not having the $39,000 required to bring it back to life. He was ready to give away all the tables and chairs when at “the last possible second,” he got a call from Range Rover, who wanted to do a TV commercial based on his artwork. “That was my first paycheck as an artist. I got that bus out of the wilds of the Yukon,” Denevan said, the events started back up, then “CBS Sunday Morning” did a piece. About 10 million people saw it, and soon the events started selling out. It took me about five years to relax.” “I find it so inspirational being able to travel the country and meet artisans who are so passionate about what they’re doing, whether it’s making butter or brewing beer, and >>
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THE CREW
all of our guests who come sit down at the table together and are really interested in what they’re eating,” Reilly said. To date, Outstanding in the Field has presented more than 1,000 events, but Reilly said she feels a special connection to Ploughgate Creamery and Mauro. “Not every farmer invites all of you and your friends and boyfriends into their house to make pizza, run through all their hot water, drink all their coffee.”
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auro, 33, became the proprietor of the Bragg Farm in December 2012 when she was selected from a pool of a dozen farmers to purchase the Fayston farmstead, originally owned by the Bragg family and conserved by the Vermont Land Trust. “We’ve been slowly bringing it back to life,” Mauro said. The farmland was once 500 acres, then 200, and Mauro now has about 50. Neighbors sugar from maples in the hills. The barn on the property was built in 1909 after a year spent milling wood from the surrounding forests. Mauro led a group on a tour through the large, graying structure, up the high drive ramp into the dimly lit hayloft, where she hung large chandeliers crafted from wire sheep fencing laced with twinkling string lights. With no animals or hay, the cavernous, hazy chamber seemed like an ancient cathedral, and everyone spoke in hushed tones as they marveled at the strong, wide beams. Below, the tour wound through the tie stalls that once held heifers >>
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Hen of the Wood co-owner/chef Eric Warnstedt addresses guests with Eden Reilly, general manager of Outstanding in the Field, Denevan, Antonio Rentas, HOW chef de cuisine, and William McNeil, HOW co-owner (far right). Host Marisa Mauro runs Ploughgate Creamery at Bragg Farm, site of event.
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THE BARN
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Above: Ploughgate Creamery owner Marisa Mauro leads a group up the ramp on a tour of the Bragg Farm’s bank-style barn, built in 1909. Mauro crafts chandeliers out of wire sheep fencing laced with twinkling lights; visitors speak in hushed tones, as if in a cathedral, as they marvel at the structure’s strong, wide beams.
to be milked, and Mauro explains the history with reverence as she remarks on the beautiful boards, worn and marked by thousands of hoof tracks. Cows were milked there until 1950, when regulations changed and dairy operations moved away from porous wood floors to concrete, and parlor-style milking took hold. A Bragg relative gave Mauro some old journals kept by original farm wife Anna, and Mauro discovered that they had made butter on the farm—a fact she didn’t know until after she started her own butter operation. “This structure is a great example of the evolution of dairy farming,” Mauro said. Some of the journal entries were selected by art student Elsie Campbell, framed and hung in the tie stalls, which they hope to reclaim as an artists’ space. Mauro, a Dorset, Vt., native, has worked in the dairy industry since she was 15. Her first solo endeavor, also called Ploughgate, was an award-winning cheesemaking business in the Northeast Kingdom, which she ran from 2008 until fire destroyed her operation in 2011. One of her creations, a buttery, washed-rind cow’s milk cheese called Willoughby, lives on, produced by Jasper Hill Cellars. “It’s interesting how much you have to adapt when farming,” Mauro said. “I always say, the land decides what it’s going to do with you.” At Bragg Farm, Mauro also boards heifers for von Trapp Farmstead in Waitsfield, a cheesemaker about 3 miles away as the crow flies. >>
This marks the beginning of our 6th Summer and we remain ever grateful for your continued business and friendship. We’re looking forward to serving meals and drinks on our patio with all its magnificent views and meeting guests new from all around the world.
Best Dining in Stowe Yankee Magazine - 2015
Locals Love Bistro at Ten Acres SKI Magazine - 2013
Diners’ Choice
OpenTable - 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017
Linda and I are excited to introduce a new summer treatment to the Pork Shank. We’ve lightened up the Roast Duck entre for summer and kept our house made Fettuccini with a delicious Carbonara sauce based on its popularity this past winter. Always requested staples like our Pan Seared Lobster, Bistro Steak and Seafood Epiphany are again available. Chef Dustin and his crew are introducing an incredibly flavorful vegan dish -- Red Thai Curry with Green Tea Soba noodles -- that will delight non vegans as well. Additionally we’re introducing Shrimp Soft Tacos and a slow roasted Brisket Sandwich I’m especially excited about. Last Summer’s hit appetizer -- Hawaiian Tuna Poke – returns to the delight of many. Linda will continue to create wonderful , seasonal desserts while retaining favorites like her Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie.
Summer in Stowe is always exciting, eventful and fast moving. We’re delighted it’s here again. Please join us Wednesday through Sunday starting at 5:00. Best as always ~ Mark & Linda
Flavorfully Created Entrees | Handmade Soups, Breads, Salads and Desserts Specialty Cocktails/Craft Beers and Delicious Wines | Outdoor Dining | Beautiful Views
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THE FARM
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After the thrill of a solar eclipse, the assembled crowd snacks on tender Parker House rolls filled with Ploughgate Creamery butter and radishes, plus pre-dinner drinks, including Vermont wine from La Garagista and beers from Zero Gravity and Lost Nation.
“The mamas have maternity leave here,” Mauro said, and when their calves are born they go back to von Trapp to be milked, and a new group of pregnant cows comes to graze and live on the hill. She also raises pigs, feeding them grain and her own buttermilk, and they graze in an old orchard—and “they turn out to be very delicious pork,” Mauro said. She raised 10 Large Black hogs last year; the piglets came to her from Cavendish farmer Bill Thompson. The meat goes to a few local outlets, Hotel Vermont in Burlington receiving the largest share. For her butter, Mauro doesn’t milk her own cows now; she sources cream from the St. Albans Cooperative, which includes more than 360 farms around Vermont. “There aren’t a lot of Vermont cooperatives like it left,” Mauro said. “It’s a great group of hardworking Vermonters that support Vermont farmers.” Some guys have been working there for 40 years, Mauro said, and she appreciates the institutional knowledge and fellowship of the group. “When things break I usually bring them up there, and the guys in the shop help me tear them apart and we try to figure out the problem,” Mauro said, “so that’s pretty awesome to have them as a resource.” >>
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“Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper.” Come join us for the ROYAL treatment! Acai Bowls | Biscuits and Gravy | Mimosas | Bloody Marys
Daily Specials | Open everyday! Monday-Friday: 8AM-12PM | Sat & Sun: 8AM-1PM
128 Main Street | Stowe, VT 05672 | (802) 253-2955 ButlerHouseStowe.com
Est. 1992
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She built her creamery—a clean, modern, open space with a concrete floor in a simple wood building—with room to grow, and is now making five times as much butter as when she started. She’s the main cog in the operation, with a small, rotating staff to assist in production. The cream is cultured for 48 hours, then spun apart and drained by machine. Each 8-ounce or pound package of butter is hand-portioned, shaped, wrapped in brown paper and stuck with the stark red-andwhite Ploughgate Creamery label. Mauro works with four distributors—two who she’s known since she was 15 (“They’ve seen me grow up in the industry, so when I mess up orders I bake lots of cookies and send them to the warehouse, and I’m like ‘I promise I’m going to grow up one day’ ”)—to sell her butter in a handful of restaurants and specialty shops throughout the Northeast. What makes her butter so epic? “Salt!” peppers the air as tour group members nod together. Ploughgate butter is indeed perfectly sea-salted, but “I’m really psyched with the culture cocktail we’ve come up with, and the fermentation really adds to the flavor,” Mauro said.
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ors d’oeuvres and education out of the way, guests made their way down to the vast expanse of whitedraped tables set up in one large, long curve on a relatively flat stretch of grass. Denevan drove the bus a few hundred feet further down the hill, parking it in just the right spot to create a surreal vista of field, forest, and automobile. “It’s inspiring in times that seem very divisive to be at our events and see strangers sit down together, and realize they have a lot more in common than maybe they would have realized beforehand, and walk away as friends,” Reilly said. My table neighbors were strangers but not unfamiliar—Charlie Menard, chef owner of Canteen Creemee Co. in Waitsfield (and former chef of the Inn at Round Barn Farm), and a cheesemaker from von Trapp Farmstead, whose Mad River blue cheese dotted a salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, and radishes. In a small transparent cup, delicate black roe glistened atop a tiny pile of clams and corn drenched in shimmering broth— “Ploughgate Creamery butter soup,” read the menu, to my great delight. Others in dining range—all courses were served family-style on platters, and many diners brought their own plates—hailed from New Jersey and New York, and some had been to Outstanding events before. The conversation was mostly food-driven as we tucked into salami from VT99 (a collaboration of Pete’s Greens and Jasper Hill Farm) and Jasper Hill’s spruce-wrapped Harbison cheese slathered on homemade crackers, served with a single-hopped IPA from Lawson’s Finest Liquids, brewed just down the road in Waitsfield.
Each course and beer seemed to be competing for the title of Vermont’s finest, with a VIP list of ingredients from producers and brewers of rock-star status in the state—fresh fish from Ethan Wood, a rare beer from Shaun Hill (Brother Soigné, a citrusy, flowery saison ale brewed by Greensboro’s Hill Farmstead in collaboration with Dieu du Ciel! in Montreal), and Sean Lawson’s choicest maple imperial stout. The list of Vermont luminaries wouldn’t be complete without Jen and John Kimmich of the Alchemist, who, when asked by McNeil, delivered two kegs of barleywine that had been languishing in a corner of the brewery—a double IPA called Crusher, aged (accidentally, perhaps, or just waiting for the right occasion) four years and finished with Heady Topper. It was decadent and utterly over-the-top, the perfect strong companion for hearty LaPlatte River Angus brisket with fire-licked Jericho Farm peppers, chiles, currants, and kale. By the time the maple stout came around it was almost too much, but somehow many managed to clean their dessert plates of honey cake garnished with clouds of cream and hunks of honeycomb. By then, eclipse long over, the sun had nearly set, and guests began the slow, satisfied walk back up the hill, up and out of paradise. The 1953 bus had comfortably settled into the field, and after making some valiant attempts a tractor was sent to pull it back to higher ground. “It’s gotten stuck before,” one crew member told me, unconcerned. “Jim takes it everywhere he wants to. Well, probably not everywhere he wants to. … He has a gigantic imagination about where the bus should go.” n nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
ESSENTIALS: Outstanding In the Field,
Ploughgate Creamery, Sunday, Aug. 26 at 3 p.m. Tickets are $235. Guest chefs are Nate Wade and Aaron Josinsky of Misery Loves Co. in Winooski. oustandinginthefield.com.
STOWE BEVERAGE & LIQUOR STORE
LIQUOR • BEER •WINE Tel. 253-4525 1880 Mountain Road, Stowe. Open 9-9 M-S • 11-6 Sunday
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GLENN CALLAHAN; INSET: GORDON MILLER
EDIBLES
END OF AN ERA! A portrait of the Marron family from a profile in Stowe Magazine in 2016. Kathi Kiernan, Trine Brink, and Kitty Coppock at the Town & Country’s last party.
MARRONS GIVE UP THE INN Family calls it quits after 43 years
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There was still some booze left in the Town & Country Resort’s inventory, and the inn’s liquor license was about to lapse. Sounds like a good opportunity to throw one final party. That’s what happened the last Saturday in April, one last shindig at a Mountain Road mainstay that has hosted countless numbers of them over the past four-plus decades, signaling the denouement of the Marron era. The Marrons—parents Dick and Millie, children Carol, Rich, and Greg, and the grandkids—have all, at one point or another, called Town & Country their home, their workplace, their place for people, locals and out-of-towners alike. Even the grandchildren lent a hand. “My grandkids have been greeting buses since they were 3 and my 14-year-old can handle the whole process himself,” Dick Marron said. Now, the family is selling the place, after 43 years running it. Marron wouldn’t reveal the buyer since the deal hasn’t been finalized, but said the business has had a good run, in a very good town. “It’s just a great community, and so easy to get involved in things,” he said. “It couldn’t be a better place to live and to work.” Marron spoke this week from Vero Beach, Fla.,
where he and Millie now spend their winters, and where he just rang in his 80th birthday. Among the well-wishers were some of his and Millie’s old friends from Stowe, who the couple seems to
bump into all the time in the Sunshine State. There were Chip and Diane Percy, at another social gathering with the Marrons four decades after the first one—one of the first events the Town & Country held under the early Marron ownership was the Percys’ wedding reception. The Marrons came up in the family station wagon and settled into their newly purchased inn on Christmas Eve 1975. They’d been living in Albany, N.Y., where Dick worked in state government. On Christmas Day that year, Stowe got hit with 2 feet of snow. Welcome to town. >>
Coffee, espresso, tea, lattes, fresh baked goods, and the best grilled cheese in town. Join us for the treats; stay for the conversation.
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18 Edson Hill Road, Stowe VT www.juniorsatstowe.com â&#x20AC;¢ (802) 253 5677 OWNER - CHEF CATERING 179
EDIBLES
LAUGHING
MO N CHOCOLATES open 9-6 daily free 2pm demonstration fudge | coffee | workshops 78 South Main Street Stowe Village 802.253.9591 laughingmoonchocolates.com
FAMILY RESTAURANT & SPORTS BAR
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“You can’t beat that flavor!” Open daily 140 Cottage Club Road, Stowe
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Patio Dining & Tiki Bar Backyard Open for Horseshoes & Volleyball
According to Marron, the Town & Country was built in 1963 by Stu Ireland, better known these days by the company he founded, S.D. Ireland, whose shamrock-branded concrete trucks strung with white lights are a northern Vermont fixture during the holiday season. Before the Marrons bought the place, Town & Country already had a rocking past. Ireland, who owned it until 1970, featured what was claimed to be the only Playboy Bunny Club in Vermont—although those in the know just called it the Bunny Club—and he had money to throw some good parties. Hotel owners these days get most of their business on the weekends and holidays, but Marron said people used to take whole ski weeks, and spend the whole week at the Town and Country. “You could ski for six days, with lessons, for $66,” he said. In the summer, the stays would lengthen, with some families spending two or three weeks at the place. The pool certainly will occupy a fond place in many people’s memories. The Town and Country pool was arguably the most famous in Stowe, and certainly the most accessible. Marron recalls more than a few summer nights being awakened at two in the morning by the sounds of splashing. Sure, they could have been guests, but most likely it was some-
one poaching the pool after a night on the town. The small fence wasn’t much of an obstacle. The pool also, up through the 1990s, maybe even through the early 2000s, had a diving board. Not the step-up and walk-out kind, but a big 10-footer with a ladder. Plenty of local kids got their first terrifying taste of a head-first high dive in that pool. “Our insurance bill went down by half when we took out the diving board,” he said. Marron served as a state representative for a decade, from 1997 to 2007, during which he handed over the reins to Millie and Rich. Millie had already run the restaurant, a hopping place open to the public, home of the Stowe Rotary Club, serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner on white tablecloths. Stowe is a community-based town, and while it’s still a popular place to hang out, it’s not quite as wild as in the 1970s and ’80s, when there were nightclubs like Sister Kate’s, the Baggy Knees, and a full-sized Rusty Nail. “People were just out seven nights a week, and the whole community was there, ski bums in the winter, some who did carpentry and some who didn’t have to work,” Dick said. “You knew just about everyone in town. Certainly, there was no social structure, just everyone hanging out with everyone else.” —Tommy Gardner
For BREAKFAST, LUNCH and CATERING! Open daily from 6:30 a.m. www.mccarthysrestaurantstowe.com
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SENSE OF PLACE
Rosina Wallace in the barnyard with her girls.
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VICIOUS KILLING FARM FIRE Blaze destroys Wallace homestead, but not its spirit
year and a half I spent, in a fury of concentration, creating my book Vanishing Vermonters. Some say it is my best, more journalistic then documentary. I don’t care; I’m relieved that it is a postpartum factoid. It pales about what I have to say. What matters, in this harsh year, what stabbed my heart and psyche, was the death of Rosina Wallace’s farm by a violent, wind-blasted fire. She is my neighbor and friend; her farm is a couple of miles up the hill along a dirt road from which the town of Waterbury inelegantly removed some elegant maples. The fire was a killer. Rosina lost 23 cows and heifers—I don’t want to think about that—her tractors and mowers, shitkicker and hay wagons, all milking equipment, various tools. Not only was the farm immolated, but also two adjacent homes, Rosina’s and the farmhouse where her brother Wally lived. Bills, letters and postcards, snapshots of visiting children, tintypes and large framed black-and-white photographs, antique furniture, an organ, clothes, family jewelry, records of life on the farm—all turned to ash. The old farmhouse, decorated in a Victorian style, where her brother lived is a wisp of smoke, an evanescent memory of an old cookstove and teapot on the north wall of the kitchen, hand-planed cupboards, large framed prints of Wallace ancestors, beginning with Lavina and Sidney, who bought the farm in 1866. Scrapbooks reflected the century and a half the Wallaces worked this hillside farm as they scythed, collected hay by horsepulled wagons. Who pruned the fruit trees? Were the peaches large and juicy? Did someone make strawberry and rhubarb pie? Did they wear the same clothes for weddings and funerals? What was the recipe for the jugs of switchel that were brought out by wagon on hot summer days, to the wolf tree in the center of a mowing that shaded man and horses during lunch? Who? Who called the cows in before Rosina during those 152 years before the fire lit up their farm and was seen by those living across the valley, 10 miles by car? Did Lavina help with the milking when the first cows were being milked? Bet she did. I saw and heard nothing the night of the fire but in the morning we all knew.
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P H O T O G R A P H S : Peter Miller
SENSE OF PLACE
Wally and Rosina Wallace after the fire. Inset: Farmhouse living room.
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I drove up the steep hill and headed north on Blush Hill where a road sign warned of crossing cattle. I turned into driveway where the farm is—used to be. Now, devastation. A Cat excavator was compacting scorched and twisted metal into piles topped by a tractor upside down, its belly exposed, waiting for evisceration during this cruel month. Another tractor, a soot-black skeleton, was perched above another tangle of metal, holding its shape and dignity. My eyes swept over the detritus of this farm, nothing but ash and mud, warped metal and charcoal-skin barn beams. Tears ran down my cheeks. I photographed lightly, mostly the tractors, a large manure pile with the trestle leaning over it like a preying mantis, behind the devastation a birch tree winter-naked but standing tall, as if pinned to the summit of snow-covered Mount Mansfield prominent in the skyline 12 miles distant. The side of the tree facing the fire was scorched black and the bark was skinned at the base. In 2000 I wrote and published Vermont Farm Women. Rosina’s story filled the first four pages with a profile and five photographs. That night I reread the text. You know, revisiting that story sloughed away the tension and sorrow the fire built within me. Here was this farm woman in love with her heritage—her farm and its cows, cats, birds, wild predators, and memories of her life, her family, and her ancestors. I smiled when I read it. Here it is:
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osina Wallace cups her hands over her mouth, lifts her face toward the pasture and hayfields that slope up to the afternoon sun and lets out with a string of “Here, Boss.” Her call reverberates over the 225 acres of her farm and “my critters,” as she calls her Jersey herd, line up and head down the cow path to the barn. It’s time for milking. Sometimes, in early summer, she searches the upper pasture, looking for a calf she suspected one of her cows dropped in the woods. She walks the hedgerow of birch and cherry trees that shade a stone wall and then follows a cow path that twists into the woods. She found the afterbirth, but no calf. “Once a calf was born and didn’t come out for two days. It was feeding on its own. One smart calf, to avoid the coyotes.” She spotted one of her barn cats prowling the stone wall, hunting chipmunks. “You stay up here,” she addressed the cat, “and the coyotes will get you.” Overhead the repetitive wing whistle of the snipe echoed down. They were barely visible in their dives and dips. “Mr. Snipe, you are having a lot of fun up there.” The snipe appear in the evening. The red-tailed hawk circles the fields during the day and in the early spring twilight the woodcock yo-yos up and down in a mating flight.
SENSE OF PLACE
Rosina Wallace calls her cows. Inset: Spreading manure.
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osina passes the outcropping of rock in the hayfield that has always been there, and where she played as a child as her father hayed, and follows the tractor trail down to the barn. From her rubber boots up to her denim jacket, Rosina appears sturdy but trim. On hot days, a straw hat filters through the weave and flecks her face with sunlight. Her eyes are as dark as her curly hair and a smile is on her face more often than not. There is a healthy sensuality and energy within this farmer. She sure looks a lot happier than her great-grandmother Lavina Wallace. In fact, ever since 1850, it was the Wallace women who kept the farm going, says Rosina, who has a copious scrapbook of photographs. “Sidney and Lavina Wallace bought the farm in 1866 but Sidney was such a poor money manager, they probably would have lost the farm. Lavina had a tight hold on the purse strings. “My grandfather James ran a good farm with fruit crops, maple sugaring and cows, chicken and pigs, but he died in the flu epidemic of 1917. Grandmother Florence used the insurance money to pay off the mortgage. She was a little woman but she kept it going and all seven of her children graduated from college. “Only my father Keith came back to the farm after college. I was a schoolteacher and Dad asked me if I wanted to farm, as he was going to run for the Legislature. I quit and came back to the farm in 1980.” Rosina has been a single farmer ever since. She has seen Waterbury turn from an agricultural community to a bedroom town; when she was a child, there were seven
farms etched on the opposite hillside and she knew the families who lived there. Now there are two farms left and more houses than you can count. “I’m just hanging on,” she said. The barn is old, bent with generations of frost heaving the foundation. The paint is faded red. An ancient Ferguson tractor, as worn as the barn, is parked in back facing uphill. This is old-fashioned farming, where the milkers go out every day to pasture during the summer, instead of being kept in a free-stall barn. “Farming is tiring and hard work but I grew
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SENSE OF PLACE
GORDON MILLER
HEROES ALL! Fire consumed two houses and the barn at the Wallace Farm on Blush Hill Road in Waterbury, owned by Rosina Wallace and her brother, Kay Allen “Wally” Wallace.
UP IN FLAMES Loss of legendary Waterbury farm leaves void Friends of Rosina Wallace were grateful she wasn’t home when her barn caught fire on Easter Sunday. “We know she would have been in there trying to save her cows,” said Anne Tisbert of the Vermont Farm Bureau. “That’s just who she is.” Wallace, 71, was at a friend’s house when the fire broke out that destroyed her and her brother’s home, their barn, and cows. Neither Rosina nor her brother, Wally, has children; instead, they had 23 Jersey cows and a family legacy. As much as Rosina loves farming, what she loves best is passing on what she knows to the next generation. Lots of STORY / CALEIGH CROSS Waterbury kids have fond memories of meeting calves at PHOTOGRAPH / GORDON MILLER Wallace Farm or listening to Rosina talk about life as a farmer. Zoe Buffum, a junior at Harwood Union High School, said she’s been going to the Wallace Farm to help Rosina since she was in the seventh grade. “I kept coming back because it was such an amazing place to be,” Zoe said, the burning barn flickering in her eyes. “I’m still shocked. It’s kind of weird how something so important with so much history can just disappear.”
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Kindergartners and first- and second-graders from Thatcher Brook Primary School went to the Wallace Farm for years. Waterbury Fire Chief Gary Dillon headed the firefighting effort; his children are among the hundreds who visited the Wallace Farm. Dillon said firefighters had to shuttle water from the Waterbury Reservoir, 3,200 feet from the farm. Fire crews made about 30 trips to the reservoir, hauling back about 2,000 gallons each time, pouring about 60,000 gallons of water on the flames.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime fire, not in a good way,” Dillon said. “You just hope you never have one, and then you do.” Dillon called the Wallace Farm a landmark. “It’s something that will not be here that people will only be able to reminisce about,” he said. Wallaces had farmed the land for more than 150 years. “So much of our family history was lost in the fire,” Rosina said, as she clutched a doll to her chest. The doll, which had been her grandmother’s only childhood toy, was unscathed; it was inside a cedar chest that firefighters managed to save. State fire investigators say the fire began in the electrical systems in the milking house. The community has rallied around the Wallace siblings. A fundraiser at youcaring.com had raised more than $75,000 as of press time, and Wesley United Methodist Church in Waterbury is collecting donations for Rosina and Wally. n —Caleigh Cross
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QUESTION & ANSWER
BUILDING TRADES
Chasing the wind blew Steve Sisler in the right direction 192
SALES, INSTALLATION & SERVICE OF MOST MAJOR BRANDS Locally Owned & Operated Since 1985.
Steve Sisler owns Sisler Builders, a construction company he started in 1983 that focuses on new homes, home renovations, and energy efficiency. He earned a degree in industrial economics, a combination of engineering and economics courses, from Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. He lives in Stowe STORY / KATE CARTER with his wife, PORTRAIT / GORDON MILLER Sharon, and their Jack Russell terrier. Their two grown sons are also in the construction business. Nick is a founder and lead engineer at Ekotrope, a software firm that offers solutions for designing energy-efficient buildings. Luke is a site supervisor for Sisler, currently working on the Lift Line project at Spruce Peak.
I was in the Virgin Islands training to be on the U.S. Olympic windsurfing team when a friend asked me to help him build a spec house in Stowe Hollow. I didn’t like the Virgin Islands, so I left and came to Stowe to be onsite foreman. I lived in a tent on the job site and then moved into the building. Fortunately you didn’t need a certificate of occupancy back then. After we did a second house in Robinson Springs, I decided to stay in Stowe.
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I knew I wanted to do construction when I was 14. My dad was a professor of agricultural economics and a hobby woodworker. His father was a master carpenter and I still have his apprentice project tool chest in our living room. We built boats and did Adirondack guide boat repairs and made furniture. My mother was involved in historic preservation. She was working with an organization called Historic Ithaca and they took on a project called the Clinton House, an upscale hotel built in 1829 in Ithaca, N.Y., where I grew up. She needed cheap labor so I started working there during high school.
What started you in the construction biz?
Primarily residential and maybe some light commercial, but it depends on the project. I don’t like a lot of windshield time, so I decided that Sisler Builders would do a wide range of residential projects in a small geographic range. The wide range of projects can be anything from a $7,000 timber-frame woodshed to a house we are currently working on at Spruce Peak that is approaching $20 million.
What is Sisler Builders’ project scope?
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What is the most challenging house you’ve built?
Challenging can be defined in a couple of ways. It can mean meeting the budget, logistics, site conditions, material choices, implementation of architect’s direction. The project we are working on at Spruce Peak is probably the most challenging on many levels. Logistics are difficult because it’s a steep and small site, the engineering is complex, and there are subcontractors the architect brought in we hadn’t worked with before and we’ve had to foster working relationships with them. Because of site restrictions a lot of the main floor is essentially outdoors, above ground, which requires creativity for heating systems not freezing from below. It is most challenging from technical and timing perspectives. We built a house off Ring Road in Waterbury Center. The owner and I are friends and our friendship has gotten stronger since building the house. He’s a software dude and appointed himself architect. He was enthusiastic, engaged, creative, and we built an awesome house together. He and his artist wife had a strong vision and a creative eye. They were trying to mimic the skyline with the roof elements, and they achieved that. One interesting challenge was integrating an indoor, inground pool into a ledge. What was fascinating is that we blasted ledge and the pool is within 18 inches of it. It’s a favorite because we had a good client, the relationship was enhanced, and it was challenging. It was done in phases over two years and it is spectacular, with 200-degree views.
What is your favorite house you’ve built?
I like someone who’s engaged, enthusiastic, intelligent. We are doing homes for financially successful people, so they are able to build high-quality projects. I like people who push our envelope to come up with creative solutions. I enjoy problem solving unique challenges.
What is your favorite type of client?
What important changes have you seen in the construction industry?
Most important are the changes in communication technology. Now if you have a question you can take a picture, send it to the customer, and get an answer in 20 minutes. It has accelerated the building process and diminished costs because you’re not waiting around for decisions. Another improvement is in insulation. We can now create very tight thermal envelopes without a huge change in price. Also, globalization provides access to more materials from different parts of the world that are more durable. For example, ipe decking, a product that comes from the Brazilian rainforest, has a 50- to 55-year lifespan if you do nothing to it. It was barely known when I started. Now it’s readily available.
Does making a home energy efficient make it unaffordable? 194
If you don’t make it energy efficient it’s going to cost you more over the long term. It’s a
value assessment choice. Do you want to spend money up front, or do you want to pay more money over the course of the life of the house? You can also make cost-effective choices with new products that are super efficient. The passive house movement is good, but the standard is so high you are spending too much at the front end to save over the course of the ownership of the house. We try to optimize the choices. What are the best insulation values to achieve the lowest cost? It’s an untenable choice to make an inefficient house, so we value assess and put money in certain areas.
SISLER
One of the main tenets is to treat others the way you would like to be treated. I like people who show some interest in who I am and what I do. We have approximately 30 employees and I try to reflect that tenet and do the same with them. I treat them respectfully and I try to let them know I care about their personal situations and concerns. I’m not a micro manager. I delegate, expect people to make decisions and do things, and if they do something different, as long as they have good reasons, I will support them. I don’t want people standing around waiting for me to make a decision. The crew likes each other. I’ve fostered a multigenerational staff. You need to have new people coming in to achieve a long-term vision.
What is the company culture?
Both. I can take the big picture and drill it down and hone in on the details. I lean more toward big picture, but have the ability to get highly detailed.
Big picture person or detail person?
After 35 years, to what do you attribute your success?
It’s a balance. I’ve worked hard and continue to work hard. I derive satisfaction in building relationships and I do the work to maintain them. A number of my former clients have remained friends, and I consider that to be an indicator of success. My wife, Sharon, has been a good sounding board for me. As a former IBM employee, she has the big company picture and I have the small company picture and she’s been good for me in that regard. I believe in fulfilling commitments and promises. I’m definitive, say what I’m going to do, and deliver.
I’ve always played outdoor recreation sports, primarily hockey, and I’m a driving instructor for the Porsche Club of America. I teach about 30 days a year at various race tracks around the Northeast. I’m kind of a car nut. The car hobby is something I’ve always enjoyed. I’ve put a lot of energy into it and it’s fun. The adrenaline of driving a car on a race track is similar to cultivating a new client. Be focused, be aware, and look out ahead. n
What do you do in your spare time?
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from so-so to gee-whiz Redesign capitalizes on homeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s drop-dead gorgeous views
STORY
: robert kiener |
EXTERIORS
: barrett photography |
INTERIORS
: glenn callahan
When it comes to homes
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with magnificent views, Stowe has more than its share. Close-up and distant views of the Green Mountains, knockout panoramas of Mount Mansfield, dramatic scenes of Stowe Mountain Resort with its classic spiderweb of ski trails, and countless others with picture-postcard vistas to fill an album. As local Realtors often exult, when it comes to views, Stowe has “an embarrassment of riches.” Some of the best homes with views in Stowe dwell in the 650-acre development of Robinson Springs, most of which overlook Mount Mansfield and its ski runs. But there is one home in the neighborhood that boasts views that are literally out of this world. “That’s the Horsehead Nebula, also known as Barnard 33,” says a Robinson Springs homeowner as he points out a dramatic picture from outer space appearing on an oversize flat panel television screen in his living room.
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The star-filled image is being downloaded from the owner’s professionalgrade, 20-inch PlaneWave Instruments mirror telescope encased in a purposebuilt, two-story, silo-like, dome-topped observatory attached to the home. He presses a few buttons on his laptop and his nearby telescope automatically zooms in on the distant scene, eliciting appreciative “oohs” and “ahhs” from his guests. “The scene you’re looking at is approximately 1,500 light years from Earth,” he tells them. While these images from outer space are spectacular, the home’s views of Mount Mansfield—Vermont’s highest peak, but admittedly more down to earth—do not lack for drama. In the airy, spacious living room, massive twostory windows frame the slopeside views and give the home an “outside-in” feeling. Nearly every room boasts inviting outlooks. But the home did not always have such jaw-dropping views.
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have to confess that the first time we saw this house we didn’t fall in love with it,” said the owner’s wife. (The couple preferred not to be identified for this article.) “It didn’t take full advantage of the lot’s spectacular views and was a bit dated. But it had so much potential.” Her husband agreed: “We loved the site, but it looked more like a home you’d find on Cape Cod than in the mountains of Vermont. However, we bought it as a vacation home in 2010, thinking we would live in it awhile before making any changes.” Soon after they moved in to their 4,000-square-foot holiday home, the couple, who live fulltime in Cambridge, Mass., decided to modernize the kitchen. After a few years they realized the entire home needed a major renovation. “Because the house was often battered by 75- to 80-mph winds that roared down on us from Mount Mansfield and literally shook the house, we knew it was time to upgrade some of its structural elements and weatherproof it by reinsulating it and replacing the windows,” he said.
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They also wanted to change the look of the house. “We hoped for a more Western, modern, mountain-style design,” she said. And her husband had a unique feature on his “must-have” list. An amateur—but enthusiastic—astronomer, he had grown tired of lugging his 60pound portable telescope out onto the front lawn for star-gazing. He wanted to incorporate an observatory with a state-of-the-art telescope into the home’s redesign. To help carry out this transformation they enlisted the aid of Stowe-based architectural designer Milford Cushman. “Once we talked and they told me what they envisioned, I realized they were very open to our ideas. The redesign became a fun, collaborative effort,” he said. Because Stowe has so little light pollution, and because the husband was becoming increasingly interested in astrophotography, the observatory was one of the couple’s first considerations in the project. “We didn’t want it to block the view or dominate the house and agreed with Milford that it should be attached to the house in some way,” said the husband. More ideas followed. Among the changes were a new master bedroom suite, the removal of a detached studio, new windows, a new roof and deck, and structural improvements. Before long they decided on a complete redesign and remodeling package that included everything from structural changes to a deep energy retrofit to landscape and lighting design, all of which Cushman’s team supplied. The couple moved out of the home for a year in 2013 for the year-long renovation. “The project was a major renovation job,” said Travis Cutler, vice president at the Morrisville-based contracting firm Donald P. Blake Jr. Inc. “Not one wall was left untouched. We took the inside of the house down to the studs and even removed part of the second floor to give the owners a living and dining area with high ceilings.” To protect the kitchen, which had been renovated shortly after the couple moved in, Cutler’s crew disassembled it, including cabinets and appliances, and stored the items during the renovation. Because of the site’s high winds and Stowe’s often-severe winter temperatures, Cushman specified triple-pane glass for windows and doors and chose closed-cell foam and cellulose insulation for walls and ceilings, with a thermal-resistance value of almost double the existing code. “We deliberately overdesigned the house for the long run,” he said. To take full advantage of the site’s dramatic views and to help “bring the outside in,” Cushman chose floor-to-ceiling windows in the great room and used western fir for all the casing material. In keeping with the redesign’s “modern mountain” theme, the wife, who has a background in interior design, partnered with Cushman’s team for a minimal design scheme, with a palette domi-
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nated by off-whites and grays. Floors are white oak stained gray. Casing material is western fir and the ceiling is basswood, chosen because it has no grain and won’t compete with the floors. Natural materials, such as metal, steel, iron, and glass are used throughout the house. “We didn’t want to fight with the exterior but bring it in,” explained Cushman. The house is now more open than the earlier version and filled with morning and afternoon light. None of the windows, except those in the four bedrooms, has shades or blinds. To help with the home’s signature piece, the two-and-a half story observatory, the homeowners and Cushman turned to private observatory expert David Miller in Durango, Colo. Because telescopes have to be rock steady, Cushman designed a vibration-free foundation for the structure, a concrete cinderblock pier isolated from the home and anchored to the bedrock. A circular staircase, not anchored to the pier to prevent vibration, leads up to the observatory. “On a clear night, and because we are high above the tree line, the views from the telescope are extraordinary,” said the owner.
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lthough the redesigned four-bedroom home stands on the same footprint as the previous home, it seems larger, more open, and more expansive. And best of all, said the owners, are those drop-dead gorgeous views from almost every room. “One of the house’s most stunning views is Mount Mansfield, which is the first thing we see when we walk into the house over the new entryway. It never fails to take our—and our guests’—breath away. We got exactly the house we had long been dreaming about. It is out of this world.” n
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up on this farm. I love the view but that is not as much fun as scratching a cow behind the ears. I wouldn’t farm if I had to farm anywhere else. This place is free and clean with no mortgages. Developers would offer more money than I can imagine for my property but I wouldn’t do it. This is roots, it’s family, and I think it is an OK thing to do, to feed people, in spite of the fact they don’t appreciate it because they think food comes from a grocery store. “I am a Yankee Vermonter. I am high-blooded. I have the right to be. I was born to be. So I prefer to hold on to this farm as long as I can.” Rosina has city kids come up and live with her during the summer and often schoolchildren come to visit. “A busload of kindergarten kids came to the farm from Montpelier and one watched me take the cows to pasture and later I asked all the kids if they have any questions and this kid asked, ‘Where’s the farmer?’ I had to explain that women can be farmers too.” The old farmhouse doesn’t look like it has ever been remodeled. The kitchen is simple with a large table in the center. On one end is the wood cookstove, a large pantry. In the living room is an organ and photos on the wall of five generations of Wallaces who have lived on this farm. Keith, Rosina’s father, was famous as a farmer, legislator, and storyteller. He taught his daughter how to raise calves, care for a sick cow, and make the soil more productive. He also taught her to survive on very little, but most important to keep her cows healthy. In 1964, her father had arthritis in the back and was on 12 aspirins a day. In 1995, he was diagnosed with a bleeding ulcer. “It was probably the darned aspirin and coffee he drank,” Rosina said. “He used to scoop cream out of the milk cooler for his coffee. He had angina and when he was 86 his body just totally wore out. He had cataracts in his eyes and couldn’t hear much anymore and he developed asthma and had an awful cough. His kidneys were failing and his lungs lost his breathing capacity. “The last 24 hours, he wasn’t sure where he was anymore, for I had gotten a hospital bed and since he wasn’t in his own bed he didn’t know where he was. Finally that morning I said to him, ‘Dad, do you want to sit in your chair by the kitchen stove?’ “Can I?” he answered. “He died sitting in his chair because he felt he was home. That was the second of June, 1995.” n
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///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// REBUILDING FUND: Help Rosina and Wally rebuild their life at youcaring.com; search Rosina Wallace. As of May 1, the site had raised over $76,000.
One of Rosina’s girls, photographed by Peter Miller for his book, Vermont Farm Women. Rosina always named her cows. Here are the 23 that died in the fire, oldest to youngest: Wisteria, Xera, Zoey, Aja, Bo, Brittany, Chloe, Charli, Dexter, Dweezil, Duku, Elsa, Frosty, Folly Flox, Gehrig, Geordie, Georgie, Gee, Haw, Houdini, Henri, Etta, and Ingenue.
AUTHOR BIO: Miller self-published his first coffee-table book, Vermont People, in 1990 after 13 publishers in New England turned it down and Vermont Life magazine bigwigs told him he wouldn’t sell over 2,000 books in 10 years. But Miller was determined. He borrowed against his home to cover publishing costs and sold out the first print run of 3,000 in just six weeks. He went on to sell 15,000 copies.
Miller was born in New York City and began his career in 1959 as a reporter for LIFE magazine. For 20 years he was a contributing editor to SKI Magazine and a freelance writer for The New York Times, Smithsonian, and many travel magazines. He has won numerous awards for his books and his photography, was named Vermonter of the Year, and was honored by the Vermont Legislature for his work in documenting the culture of Vermont. His work has been exhibited in New York, Paris, and Tokyo.
WHERE TO BUY: Copies of Vermont Farm Women, with the story of Rosina, and all of Miller’s books and photographic prints are available by contacting Miller at peter@petermillerphotography.com, or buy directly at petermillerphotography.com.
Susan Teare Photography
Since then, Miller has used that same determination to publish five other books, selling nearly 50,000.
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‘when pigs fly...’
Weathervanes as art, culture STORY
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Look up:
Weathervanes sit atop cupolas and roofs of houses,
barns, and commercial buildings, and many people pass by without realizing they are there. But weathervanes are one of New England’s oldest art forms, and they’re regaining popularity. Clockwise from top left: A heron, so common in Vermont waters, is also a commonly installed weathervane. This one sits atop a Stowe village home. The Troy, Vt., post office boasts a turkey on its roof. A moose graces the roof of a house in Troy. A deer guards the top of the Jay Country Store in Jay, Vt. An elephant weathervane. “When pigs fly” is the sentiment expressed in this work of art. Previous page: Labrador retrievers, the favorite dog breed of one Stowe family, are represented at their home in Stowe.
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Weathervanes
developed thousands of years ago from man’s
need to know about wind and weather. They began as simple banners and flag designs, or as angels and other forms of religious significance. As societies developed and people gained ownership of land—and at least some degree of financial comfort—weathervanes progressed to a more factual representation.
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RISE & SHINE Residents of a Morrisville home wake up each morning to the sight, if not the sound, of a rooster, a common style of weathervane, especially in rural communities.
After the American Revolution, weathervanes often took the form of important occupations or possessions, or represented citizensâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; new sense of freedom and patriotism. For example, in seacoast towns, weathervanes often resembled sailing ships, whales, or fish. In farming communities, weathervanes resembled cows, horses, birds, and barns. People in villages started creating weathervanes that represented their occupations, while people everywhere added vanes that represented patriotism, such as an eagle or George Washington on horseback. In the early 1900s, weathervanes became appreciated as works of art; they often represented personal interestsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;pets, wild animals, lighthouses, vehicles, sailboats, people, and hobbies. Early weathervanes were made mostly from wood, but since wood weathered poorly, tougher materials were substituted, primarily metal. Many vane makers now rely on copper, as it combines a relatively light weight with a reasonable degree of pliability and long-term stability. So popular and appreciated are weathervanes that Vermontâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Shelburne Museum has a collection of antique vanes on display. Around the county, many antique and >>
Vanes on display
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ALL ABOARD At the Antique Mall in Quechee, Vt., this intricately designed train vane serves as a magnet for shoppers and visitors.
gift shops sell vanes that cater to all sorts of interests. Stowe blacksmith Richard Spreda occasionally makes weathervanes for customers who want something special. These hand-crafted metal art forms take many hours to complete, and often sell for $1,000 or more, depending on size and degree of difficulty. Metal artist Jack Chase of Jericho also sculpts copper into vanes; like Spreda, he takes pride in his craft. Chase says that the engineering aspects of creating heavy metal weathervanes can be challenging, since they must be properly balanced so they move freely in the wind and always end up pointing in the right wind direction. Some Vermonters who want a unique weathervane go far out of town for a metal sculptor, such as Anthony Holland of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. “My work begins with a flat sheet of copper and ends as an heirloom,” Holland says. “It’s a quality piece of art built to last for centuries.” Holland says his weathervane customers want a special touch atop their homes or barns, something that will evoke a feeling or represent an idea, while “putting a smile on somebody’s face at the end of the day.” In Lamoille County, people have used weathervanes to represent all sorts of feelings or ideas. In Stowe, for example, Patricia and David Jaqua have two weathervanes they bought in the mid-1990s. Atop their home is a large representation of a Labrador retriever. The Jaquas breed Labs, but the vane also memorializes their late friend and dog artist Stephen Huneck. David Jaqua says the weathervane is particularly popular with local dog walkers. Some folks go straight for the whimsical. One homeowner in Cambridge has a flying pig weathervane. One can’t help but wonder what will happen when pigs finally do fly. So look up and appreciate a form of old New England folk art. Who knows, you might just come up with an idea or two of your own. n
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home again in Stowe
S TOWE-SMUGGLERS AIRPORT & AVIATION STOWE AVIATION Stowe Aviation at the Morrisville-Stowe State Airport (KMVL) enables effortless access to Stowe from cities such as Boston and New York, with scheduled flights from Westchester Airport and non-stop flights on demand, 24 hours a day. (802) 253-2332. (855) FLY STOWE. stoweaviation.com.
APPLIANCES COCOPLUM APPLIANCES Fastest growing kitchen appliance dealer in the area. Carrying most major brands and providing sales, installation, and service for everything we sell. Jenn-Air, True, Dacor, Miele, more. Locally owned and operated since 1985. (888) 412-1222, appliancedistributors.com.
ARCHITECTS ECK MACNEELY ARCHITECTS Home is a place where comfort is found and given. Since 1976, we have considered every design detail an opportunity to create the spirit of home. 560 Harrison Ave., Suite 403, Boston 02118. (617) 367-9696. eckmacneely.com.
HARRY HUNT ARCHITECTS Award-winning homes—true to the spirit of Vermont. Member American Institute of Architects. Certified passive house designer. (802) 253-2374, harryhuntarchitects.com.
J. GRAHAM GOLDSMITH, ARCHITECTS
Award Winning Interior Design Studio
Quality design and professional architectural services specializing in residential, hotel, restaurant, retail, and resort development. Member Stowe Area. (800) 862-4053. jggarchitects.com. Email: VT@jggarchitects.com.
KANE ARCHITECTURE
Stowe VT / Boston MA
617 360 1008
home-life.com
Residential, commercial, and institutional architectural design services, including landscape and site design. Low carbon local. Member of Protect Our Winters. Patrick Kane, pdkane@comcast.net, (802) 535-9894. kanearchitecture.com.
LEE HUNTER ARCHITECT, AIA Stowe-based architectural firm offering a personal approach to creative, elegant design. Residential, commercial, and renovations. (802) 253-9928. leehunterarchitect.com.
PAUL ROBERT ROUSSELLE, ARCHITECT AIA Architectural services offering creative design approach for environmentally responsible homes true to their surroundings. We create spaces that move clients functionally, aesthetically, and emotionally with exquisitely detailed, beautifully built, inspiring designs. (802) 253-2110.
SAM SCOFIELD, ARCHITECT, AIA Professional architectural services for all phases of design and construction. Residential and commercial. Carlson Building, Main Street, Stowe. samscofieldarchitect.com. (802) 253-9948.
TEKTONIKA STUDIO ARCHITECTS Dedicated to the craft and composition of sustainable, siteinspired design. Emphasis on a collaborative design process to meet our client’s vision and budget. Located in Lower Stowe Village. (802) 253-2020. tektonikavt.com.
VOLANSKY STUDIO ARCHITECTURE & PLANNING Andrew Volansky, AIA. The term studio in the firm name refers to a process of collaborating with individuals and goes well beyond the walls of the studio. volanskystudio.com.
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN CUSHMAN DESIGN GROUP Architectural, interior, and landscape design featuring beauty, craftsmanship, and excellent energy efficiency. Creative, intuitive, functional, efficient. (802) 253-2169. cushmandesign.com.
ART GALLERIES BRYAN MEMORIAL GALLERY
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Vermont’s premier gallery for landscape painting features over 200 artists in a year-round exhibition schedule. Open Thurs. – Sun. 11-4 through June 25. Daily 11-5 June 27 – Oct 8, and by appointment. Closed January. 180 Main St., Jeffersonville. (802) 644-5100. bryangallery.org.
BUSINESS DIRECTORY BUNDY MODERN Architecturally spectacular in true Bauhaus style: walls of glass, brick parapets, massive wooden beams, Vermont slate floors. Gallery and sculpture park. Weddings and events. 361 Bundy Road, Waitsfield, Vt. (802) 583-5832. bundymodern.com.
EDGEWATER GALLERY Contemporary and traditional fine art from emerging and established U.S. and Canadian artists. Located at 151 Main St., Stowe. (802) 760-6785. Two additional locations in Middlebury, with a home design boutique and event space. edgewatergallery.co.
KITCHEN DESIGN by BRYAN HILL and the Country Home Center Kitchen and Bath Design Team
GREEN MOUNTAIN FINE ART GALLERY In the heart of the village. Displaying Stowe’s most diverse collection of traditional and contemporary works by regional artists. Open daily 11-6, closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays. 64 South Main. (802) 253-1818. greenmountainfineart.com.
HELEN DAY ART CENTER Center for contemporary art and art education, established in 1981. Local, national, and international exhibitors. Art classes. Cultural events. Schedule: Tuesday-Saturday 10-5. 90 Pond St., Stowe. (802) 253-8358, helenday.com.
INSIDE OUT GALLERY Original fine art and crafts by Vermont and American artists in a spectrum of mediums, styles, and price points, from small gifts to major showpieces. 299 Mountain Rd., Stowe. (802) 253-6945, insideoutgalleryvt.com.
NORTHWOOD GALLERY Gallery featuring exclusively Vermont artisans. Come explore the talent that Vermont has to offer. We host artist workshops, live demonstrations, and provide custom woodwork. 151 Main St., Stowe. (802) 760-6513. northwoodgallery.com.
ROBERT PAUL GALLERIES An outstanding selection of original paintings, sculpture, and fine art glass by locally, nationally, and internationally acclaimed artists. Celebrating 28 years. Open daily. 394 Mountain Road, Baggy Knees Shopping Center, Stowe. robertpaulgalleries.com. (802) 253-7282.
The Area’s Largest, Most Extensive Custom Kitchen & Bath Showroom
VISIONS OF VERMONT We feature Eric Tobin, the Winslows, Thomas Curtin, Emile Gruppe, and many more. A century of painting history is made on the Jeffersonville side of Smugglers’ Notch. (802) 644-8183. visionsofvermont.org.
WEST BRANCH GALLERY & SCULPTURE PARK Central Vermont’s premiere contemporary fine art, sculpture, and private event space exhibiting work by over 50 nationally and internationally recognized artists. Visit westbranchgallery.com. for more information.
Stop in or call for an appointment for a consultation about your ideas. Mon.-Fri. 6 a.m. - 5 p.m. Sat. 6:30 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Junction of Routes 15 & 100, Morrisville 802-888-3177 • 800-870-3177 • countryhomecenter.net
BAKERIES HARVEST MARKET Homemade muffins, cookies, tarts, pies, cakes, and other luscious treats. Incredible breads, including our own French country bread baked in traditional wood-fired ovens. Fine coffees and espresso. Daily 7-7 (in season). (802) 253-3800. harvestatstowe.com.
TRAPP FAMILY LODGE Offering a variety of baked goods, soups, salads, sandwiches, daily specials, and our Trapp lagers. Open daily 8 a.m.2:30 p.m. Hours vary seasonally. (802) 253-5705. trappfamily.com.
BIKES & BIKE INSTRUCTION 4POINTS MOUNTAIN BIKE SCHOOL & GUIDES Trained instructors will introduce you to mountain biking in a step by step process or help you further your skills for more advanced riding. Call Rick at (802) 793-9246, 4pointsvt.com.
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S TOWE-SMUGGLERS BUSINESS DIRECTORY BIKE RENTALS & SALES AJ’S SKI & SPORTS Outdoor clothing and footwear. High-quality bike repairs, on the spot repairs. Bike clothing, helmets, tools, parts and accessories. Mountain, road, hybrid, and kid’s bike rentals, and canoe and kayak rentals. Specialized, Kona, and Felt. 350 Mountain Rd., Stowe. 253-4593. stowesports.com.
MOUNTAINOPS/MANSFIELD CYCLES High-quality bikes and best location guarantee—exclusive access to the Stowe Recreation Path across from Topnotch Resort. Hiking information, trail maps and accessories, extensive line of camping gear. Daily at 9 a.m. (802) 253-4531. mountainops.com.
BOOKSTORES BEAR POND BOOKS Complete family bookstore. NY Times bestsellers and new releases. Children and adult hardcovers, paperbacks, Vermont authors, daily papers, puzzles, greeting cards. Open daily. Depot Building, Main Street, Stowe. (802) 253-8236.
BREWERIES THE ALCHEMIST A family owned and operated craft brewery specializing in fresh, unfiltered IPA. You can visit our tasting room and retail shop Tuesday-Saturday from 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. 100 Cottage Club Rd., Stowe. alchemistbeer.com.
ROCK ART BREWERY Brewing beers we love for you to enjoy. Visit our tasting room and gift shop Mon.-Sat. 10-6. Grab bombers, cans, and growlers, as well as local art and food. (802) 888-9400. rockartbrewery.com.
VON TRAPP BREWING & BIERHALL Von Trapp Brewing offers a selection of authentic Austrian lagers. Stop by for a pint and enjoy our mountaintop views in our new Bierhall, lounge, or dining room. (802) 253-5705. trappfamily.com.
BUILDERS & CONTRACTORS AARON FLINT BUILDERS Creating inspiring spaces in Central Vermont for over 20 years. (802) 882-7060, aaronflintbuilders.com.
COMPASS CONSTRUCTION Commercial design build services. Construction management, custom steel building solutions, Centria architectural siding dealer. We innovate it. We simplify it. We build it. What can we build for you? (802) 497-2827. compassvt.com.
MOUNTAIN LOGWORKS, LLC Handcrafted log homes. Specializing in Scandinavian Full Scribe and Adirondack-style log structures with log diameters up to 30 inches. In-house design service available. (802) 748-5929. mountainlogworks.com
PATTERSON & SMITH CONSTRUCTION, INC. Custom builder, remodeling firm, and general contractor in Stowe. Our mission is to provide each customer and their designer/architect with the highest degree of customer service, management, and craftsmanship. pattersonandsmith.com. (802) 253-3757.
PEREGRINE DESIGN BUILD Peregrine Design Build specializes in remodeling and building custom homes and teams with Vermont architects and designers as their builder of choice. Visit peregrinedesignbuild.com to see our range of work.
RED HOUSE BUILDING Full-service, employee-owned building company. Emphasis on timeless craftsmanship. Meeting the challenges of unique and demanding building projects, from contemporary mountain retreats, meticulously restored historic buildings to high-efficiency homes. (802) 655-0043. redhousebuilding.com.
SISLER BUILDERS INC. Custom home building, remodeling, woodworking, home energy audits and retrofits, quality craftsmanship, resource efficient construction, modest additions to multi-million dollar estates. 30 years in Stowe. References available. sislerbuilders.com. (802) 253-5672.
STEEL CONSTRUCTION, INC. Steel Construction, Inc., has consistently proven to be one of Vermont’s finest custom homebuilders. We have three decades of proven experience and a long list of satisfied homeowners. (802) 253-4572. steelconstructionvt.com.
TIM MEEHAN BUILDERS Building excellence, exceptional homes, professional project management creative remodeling. 30 years plus in Stowe. Tim Meehan, (802) 777-0283. timmeehanbuilders.com.
YANKEE BARN HOMES For more than 45 years, Yankee Barn Homes has been designing and prefabricating custom post-and-beam homes built with the finest materials for durability, weather protection, and energy conservation. yankeebarnhomes.com, (800) 258-9786.
BUILDERS-TIMBERFRAME WINTERWOOD TIMBER FRAMES, LLC Hand-crafted, custom-designed timber-frame structures and woodwork, SIPs insulation, sourcing local timber and fine hardwoods, building in the Vermont vernacular. Cabinetry, flooring, butcher-block tops, and staircases. (802) 229-7770. winterwoodtimberframes.com.
DONALD P. BLAKE JR INC. Handcrafted quality in building, offering experienced and reliable contracting services since 1985. Specializing in custom home new construction, renovations, commercial construction, construction management, and property management services. (802) 888-3629, stowebuilder.com.
GEOBARNS Geobarns is an environmentally conscious, minimal waste builder, specializing in artistic barns using modified post-andbeam structures with diagonal framing to achieve a combination of strength, versatility, and beauty at reasonable prices. (802) 295-9687. geobarns.com.
BUILDING MATERIALS CAMARA SLATE National supplier of roofing slate, slate flooring, flagstone, countertops, and other structural components. Committed to delivering a standard beyond our competitors’ abilities with excellent service and quality-valued products. Fair Haven, Vt. (802) 265-3200, camaraslate.com, info@camaraslate.com.
LOEWEN WINDOW CENTER OF VT & NH Beautifully crafted Douglas fir windows and doors for the discerning homeowner. Double- and triple-glazed options available in aluminum, copper, and bronze clad. Style Inspired By You. loewenvtnh.com, (802) 295-6555, info@loewenvtnh.com.
GORDON DIXON CONSTRUCTION, INC. Fine craftsmanship, attention to detail, integrity, and dependable workmanship. Over 25 years of award-winning experience. Custom homes, additions, renovations, design/build, project management. Stop in at 626 Mountain Rd., Stowe. (802) 253-9367 or visit gordondixonconstruction.com.
KAISER HOMES
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Design/build contractor in Stowe. Custom homes and additions. We remodel and renovate homes, condominiums, offices, and businesses. Historical restoration work with salvaged and reclaimed materials. We can make your home uniquely reflect your character and lifestyle. (802) 355-0992, kaiserhomesvt.com.
RK MILES Founded in 1940, rk Miles is a family-owned leader in providing services and materials for all types of building and design. Six locations serving Vermont and western Massachusetts, including Stowe and Morrisville. rkmiles.com.
CANOES, KAYAKS & SUP TOURS BERT’S BOATS & TRANSPORTATION Daily tours, self-guided or guided, customized to your schedule and wishes. Lessons, leases, and repairs. Transportation service for weddings, business groups, or airport shuttles. 24/7. (802) 644-8189. bertsboats.com.
VERMONT CANOE AND KAYAK Kayaks, canoes, and SUPs. Guided tours, rentals on the Lamoille River. Daily shuttle service available. Open daily, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Located in Jeffersonville, Vt. (802) 644-8336, vtcanoes@gmail.com, vermontcanoeandkayak.com.
CHURCHES & SYNAGOGUES BLESSED SACRAMENT CATHOLIC CHURCH Mass schedule: Saturday, 4:30 p.m., Sunday, 8 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. See bulletin for daily masses. Confession Saturday 3:45-4:15 p.m. Monsignor Peter A. Routhier, Pastor. 728 Mountain Rd., Stowe. (802) 253-7536.
HUNGER MOUNTAIN CHRISTIAN ASSEMBLY Route 100, Waterbury Center. Sunday worship service at 10 a.m. (802) 244-5921.
JEWISH COMMUNITY OF GREATER STOWE For information regarding services, holiday gatherings, classes, and workshops: JCOGS, P.O. Box 253, Stowe, Vt. 05672. 1189 Cape Cod Rd., Stowe. (802) 253-1800 or jcogs.org.
THE MOUNTAIN CHAPEL At the halfway point on the Mt. Mansfield Toll Road. A place for meditation, prayer and praise for skiers, hikers, and tourists. Seasonal Sunday service 2 p.m. The Rev. Dr. David P. Ransom. (802) 644-8144.
ST. JOHN’S IN THE MOUNTAINS EPISCOPAL At the crossroads of Mountain Road and Luce Hill Road in Stowe. Holy Eucharist celebrated every Sunday at 10 a.m. and 8 a.m. in July and August. The Rev. Rick Swanson officiating. St. John’s is wheelchair friendly; visitors and children welcome. Office open Tuesday, Thursday. (802) 253-7578. stjohnsinthemountains.org.
SECOND CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH Located in Hyde Park. Sunday worship services begin at 10:15 a.m. Sunday school is held at the same time September through June. Handicapped accessible. All are welcome. (802) 888-3636 or check us out on Facebook.
STOWE COMMUNITY CHURCH Adult bible study: Sundays at 8:30 a.m. Traditional service with children’s program: Sundays at 9:30 a.m. Contemporary service: Sundays at 4:30 p.m. The Rev. Will Vaus. (802) 253-7257.
WATERBURY CENTER COMMUNITY Route 100 next to the Cider Mill. We warmly welcome visitors. (802) 244-6286. Sunday worship 10:45 a.m. Handicapped accessible. Church is a National Historic Place. Pastor John Lucy.
CLOTHING & ACCESSORIES BOUTIQUE AT STOWE MERCANTILE Fabulous contemporary fashion for women. From casual to professional, Boutique can make you feel beautiful any time. Lingerie, dresses, skirts, tops, jeans, sweaters, more. We’ll dress you for any occasion. Depot Building, Main Street, Stowe. (802) 253-3712.
BUNYABUNYA An on-trend boutique curated with apparel, jewelry, shoes, and gifts inspired by the West Coast. Think California bungalow, boho-comfort lifestyle. 1799 Mountain Rd., Red Barn Shops, Stowe. (802) 585-3699.
ECCO Burlington’s original designer boutique has been dressing Vermonters in top brands for over 20 years. From denim to dresses, boots to stilettos, ECCO has it all. On Church Street Marketplace. 81 Church St. (802) 860-2220. eccoclothesboutique.com.
FORGET-ME-NOT-SHOP Treasure hunt through our huge selection of famous label off price clothing for men, women, and teens at 60%-80% off. Route 15 Johnson, just 1.5 miles west of Johnson Village. Open 10-7.
GREEN ENVY Award-winning boutique with an eye for contemporary style. Vince, Rag&Bone, Paige, Tata Harper, Longchamp. Showcasing unique fashions, jewelry, shoes, and accessories from over 300 designers. Best source for premium denim in New England. Open daily. 1800 Mountain Rd. (802) 253-2661, vermontenvy.com.
IN COMPANY Come see whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in. Specializing in personalized customer service and top designer labels: 360 Sweater, Johnny Was, Lilla P, Orla Kiely, and more. 10-5:30 p.m. daily, 10-5 p.m. Sunday. 344 Mountain Rd., Stowe. (802) 253-4595, incompanyclothing.com.
JOHNSON FARM, GARDEN, HARDWARE & RENTAL Quality brands for the whole family. Casual, workwear, rainwear. Patagonia, Carhartt, Prana, Toad & Co, Columbia. Huge selection of footwear, hiking and camping, gardening. You name it, we got it. Route 15, Johnson. (802) 635-7282, jhrvt.com.
JOHNSON WOOLEN MILLS Home of famous Johnson Woolen Outerwear and headquarters for Carhartt, Filson, Pendleton, Woolrich, woolen blankets, fine menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and ladies sportswear, sweaters, hats, gloves, scarves, socks. Since 1842. Johnson, VT. (802) 635-2271. johnsonwoolenmills.com.
PINK COLONY Vermontâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest selection of Lilly Pulitzer. Premiere high-end boutique featuring womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s clothing, accessories, and shoes. 1940 Mountain Rd., Stowe. (802) 253-PREP. Visit us on IG. pinkcolony.com.
VERMONT TRAILWEAR Locally owned by Skirack. Specializing in wears for the trail by Patagonia, Darn Tough, Skida, and more. Let us know what our family can do for yours. Waterbury Annex, 2653 Waterbury-Stowe Rd.
WELL HEELED Sophisticated collection of shoes, boots, clothing, and accessories for an effortlessly chic lifestyle. Stylish interior combined with personalized service and by appointment shopping availableâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a #mustdoinstowe. Daily 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. (802) 253-6077. wellheeledstowe.com.
YELLOW TURTLE Exceptional selection of clothing and outerwear for babies, kids, and teens. Patagonia, Pink Chicken, Tea, KicKee pants, Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Neill, Roxy, Appaman, Natives, BOGS, Hatley, JohnnieO, Hudson. M-S 10-5:30, Sun. 10-5. 1799 Mountain Rd., (802) 253-2661, yellow-turtle.com.
COFFEE HOUSES BLACK CAP COFFEE & BEER Fresh coffee and authentic espresso in a warm inviting atmosphere. House-baked pastries and tasty treats, light breakfast and lunch options. Open daily at 7 a.m. 144 Main St., Stowe. 63 Lower Main St., Morrisville. See us on Facebook.
HARVEST MARKET Homemade muffins, cookies, tarts, pies, cakes, and other luscious treats. Incredible breads, including our French country bread baked in traditional wood-fired ovens. Fine coffees and espresso. Daily 7-7 (in season). (802) 253-3800. harvestatstowe.com.
PK COFFEE Coffee, espresso, tea, lattes, fresh baked goods, and the bestgrilled cheese in town. Join us for the treats; stay for the conversation. 1880 Mountain Road, Stowe. (802) 760-6151, pkcoffee.com.
VERMONT ARTISAN COFFEE Come visit our state-of-the-art coffee roaster and coffee bar. Delicious coffee espresso drinks and whole bean coffees. 11 Cabin Lane, Waterbury Center, vtartisan.com.
COMPUTER REPAIR MAC NURSE Mac tech support for Vermont. Mac Nurse is here to help repair and service your Apple Macintosh computers and Apple devices. We even sell warrantied and refurbished Macs. (802) 472-1727. vtmacnurse.com.
The Recovery Room 439 Big Basin Rd. M - F 8 - 5 or by appointment | therecoveryroom@madriver.com 802-496-4644 | www.therecoveryroomvt.com ©2018 HUNTER DOUGLAS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ALL TRADEMARKS USED HEREIN ARE THE PROPERTY OF HUNTER DOUGLAS OR THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS. 7652330
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S TOWE-SMUGGLERS BUSINESS DIRECTORY CONCIERGE
EXCAVATING
FURNITURE
KELLYCAN LAUNCH 802
DALE E. PERCY, INC.
ALL DECKED OUT
KCL802 takes care of your projects, needs, and life. From power tools to tea parties, we help you maintain a work/life balance. We are your “Go To Girls of VT.” Contact us at info@kcl802.com or check out our website at kcl802.com. (802) 522-3822.
DELICATESSEN THE BAGEL Bagels boiled and baked daily. Breakfast and lunch sandwiches, baked goods. Gluten-free options available. Seasonal specialties. 394 Mountain Rd, Stowe. (802) 253-9943. 6:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. daily
EDELWEISS New York-style deli sandwiches. Brisket, corned beef, pastrami, bakery products, fresh pies. Beer, wine, soda, groceries, Vermont products. Stowe’s #1 deli/convenience store. Daily 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. 2251 Mountain Rd. (802) 253-4034.
FABRIC & YARN STOWE FABRIC & YARN Stop in and browse our beautiful yarns, fine fabric, quilts, and Vermont-made gifts. 37 Depot St. Stowe. (802) 253-6740. stowefabricandyarn@gmail.com.
FARMSTEADS FOOTE BROOK FARM Certified organic with 145 produce varieties and 25 acres of sod grass. CSAs available. Visit The Farm Stand or Morrisville Farmers’ Market July-October. 641 VT Route 15 W, Johnson. (802) 730-3587. footebrookfarm.com.
DENTISTRY
FIREPLACES & WOODSTOVES
CONTEMPORARY DENTAL ARTS PC
GREEN MOUNTAIN FIREPLACES
Contemporary Dental Arts is a unique practice offering high quality, state-of-the-art, esthetic, restorative and implant dentistry… where the smile of your dreams becomes a realty. New patients invited. (802) 878-9888. contemporarydentalartsvt.com.
JEFFREY R. MCKECHNIE, DMD, & CHRISTOPHER P. ALTADONNA, DDS (802) 253-7932. stowedentalassociates.com.
STOWE FAMILY DENTISTRY Creating beautiful smiles for over 40 years. Always welcoming new patients. 1593 Pucker St., Stowe. (802) 253-4157.
DISTILLERIES GREEN MOUNTAIN DISTILLERY Vermont’s No. 1 organic distillery. Vodkas, gin, maple liqueur, and small-batch whiskey. 171 Whiskey Run, (Route 100 between Stowe and Morrisville; turn on Goeltz Road). (802) 253-0064, greendistillers.com.
SMUGGLERS’ NOTCH DISTILLERY Come taste our award-winning vodkas, gins, rum, bourbon, maple bourbon, and wheat whiskey. Tasting rooms in Jeffersonville, Waterbury Center, and Burlington for samples, sales and more. Daily. (802) 309-3077, smugglersnotchdistillery.com.
EDUCATION & COLLEGES NORTHERN VERMONT UNIVERSITY One university, two unique campuses. With our Lyndon and Johnson campuses, NVU combines the best of our nationally recognized liberal arts and professional programs. northernvermont.edu.
ST. JOHNSBURY ACADEMY Unique among American independent schools, we offer students a truly comprehensive curriculum, first-rate facilities, and outstanding faculty. Nationally recognized, we attract over 255 boarding students from the U.S. and around the world each year. stjacademy.org.
STERLING COLLEGE Sterling College combines structured academic study with experiential challenges and plain hard work to build responsible problem solvers who become stewards of the environment. Bachelor’s degrees and continuing education. Craftsbury Common, Vt. sterlingcollege.edu
ENGINEERS VERMONT TESTING Engineering, structural, geotechnical. Laboratory and fieldtesting and inspection, consulting. vermonttesting.com. (802) 244-6131.
EQUIPMENT RENTALS JOHNSON FARM, GARDEN, HARDWARE & RENTAL
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Excavating contractors, commercial and residential. Earthmoving equipment. Site work. trucking, sand, gravel, soil, sewer, water, drainage systems, and supplies. Snow removal, salting, sanding. Weeks Hill Road. (802) 253-8503.
Equipment rentals for every job, residential and commercial. Excavators, bobcats, lifts of all sizes, tractors, rototillers, chippers, log splitters, road fabric, culverts, pipe. Best service in the business, always expanding our rental fleet. Delivery available. Route 15, Johnson. (802) 635-7282, jhrvt.com.
Offering the finest in heart products for home or business. We will take your project from concept to design to installation. 800 Marshall Ave., Williston, (802) 862-8311. greenmountainfireplaces.com
One of the largest selections of casual furniture in Northern New England. Teak, wicker, aluminum, wrought iron, and envirowood. Best selection for dining, entertaining, and lazing. Delivery. (802) 296-6714. alldeckedoutcasual.com.
BURLINGTON FURNITURE We are Vermont’s destination for furniture, interior design services, and lighting. Come see why we were voted Best Furniture Store eight years in a row. Locally owned, connected to the community, and to sustaining the environment. 747 Pine St. (802) 862-5056, burlingtongfurniture.us.
INSIDE OUT GALLERY Be inspired and refresh your sense of home, inside and out, through vignettes of transcontinental seating, tables, lamps, and mirrors. Our samples are just the beginning; we’ll special order too. 299 Mountain Rd., Stowe. (802) 253-6945, insideoutgalleryvt.com.
MATTRESS & SOFA WAREHOUSE Dining room, living room, and bedroom furniture by Ashley, Lazy Boy, Coaster. Mattresses by Simmons, Beauty Rest, Tempurpedic. Fine home furnishings at affordable prices. Delivery available. (802) 888-3979.
FISHING & HUNTING
GIFT & SPECIALTY SHOPS
CATAMOUNT FISHING ADVENTURES
BUTTERNUT MOUNTAIN FARM & MARVIN’S COUNTRY STORE
Guided fly-fishing, spin-fishing, ice-fishing adventures. River wading, canoe, drift boat, motorboat fishing. Guiding Vermont since 1994. Equipment provided. All abilities. Willy, owner/guide, (802) 253-8500. Federation of Fly Fishers certified. Licensed, insured. catamountfishing.com.
Country store focused on all things maple—a carefully curated selection of our favorite products. Specialty cheeses, honey, jams, Vermont-made products, crafts, and gifts. (800) 899-6349, marvinscountrystore.com.
FLY ROD SHOP Vermont’s most experienced guide service. Live bait, ice fishing supplies. Drift-boat trips or river wading for fly fishing, spinning. Family fishing trips. Simms clothing, waders. 10,000 flies. Hunting department. Craft beer and Made in Vermont tours. Route 100 South, Stowe. (802) 253-7346. flyrodshop.com.
FITNESS EQUIPMENT PERSONAL FITNESS INTERIORS Carrying a wide range of fitness products and equipment from leaders in the industry. Precor, True, Inspire, Octane, Tuff Stuff, and more. Quality, selection, service. Locally owned for over 25 years. (802) 860-1030, personalfitnessvt.com.
FLOORING FLOOR COVERINGS INTERNATIONAL The largest inventory of ceramic tile, hardwood floors, and carpets in Vermont. Seven in-house crews that do expert service and installation. Visit our showroom and speak with our in-house designers. 31 Adams Dr., Williston. (802) 891-9264, vermontfci.com.
FLOORING AMERICA Customize your home with flooring that compliments your space while honoring your style. Choose from our leading collection of hardwood, carpet, tile, laminate, vinyl, and rug selections. Williston, (802) 862-5757, flooringamerica-vt.com.
THE COUNTRY STORE ON MAIN Luxury bedding, dreamy candles, kitchen gadgets, children’s items, pet goods, rugs, frames, clocks, greeting cards, and more. Located in the former Lackey Building next to Stowe Community Church. 109 Main Street, (802) 253-7653, countrystorevt.com.
INSIDE OUT GALLERY Find a full range of gifts and wedding presents, Vermont fine art and crafts, photographs, jewelry, table furnishings, candleholders, picture frames, and outdoor décor. A short walk up from Main Street. 299 Mountain Rd., Stowe. (802) 253-6945, insideoutgalleryvt.com.
RED BARN SHOPS Stowe’s most exciting stores: Yellow Turtle (children’s clothing/outdoor apparel); The Body Lounge (luxury bath and body); Stowe Wine & Cheese; The Toy Store/Once Upon a Time Toys; BunyaBunya (clothing and accessories). 1799 Mountain Rd., 2 miles north of downtown Stowe.
STOWE CRAFT GALLERY Fascinating jewelry, beautiful functional crafts, local art, prints, and sculpture. For over 30 years we featured American-made pieces that align with your lifestyle. The go-to specialty gift shop. 55 Mountain Rd. (802) 253-4693, stowecraft.com.
PLANET HARDWOOD Vermont business specializing in green materials, with an emphasis on wood flooring. Our 6,000-square-foot showroom is the best place to really see wood as well as fabulous green products. (802) 482-4404, planethardwood.com.
FLORISTS & FLOWERS FROM MARIA’S GARDEN A fresh floral design studio specialized in natural garden style designs. For weddings and events simply beautiful flowers unique to your personal style. By appointment. (802) 345-3698. maria@frommariasgarden.com.
FUEL BOURNES ENERGY Propane, wood pellets, bioheat, biodiesel, heating, cooling, plumbing, auto-delivery, remote heat monitoring, expert service. Bourne’s Energy—Fueling the Future. (800) 326-8763. bournesenergy.com.
STOWE KITCHEN BATH & LINENS More than just a kitchen store. Two floors of accessories, gifts, and food for the entire home. Gourmet kitchenware, bedding, shower curtains, lotions, gels. Tons of unique clothing and gifts. 1813 Mountain Rd. (802) 253-8050. stowekitchen.net.
STOWE MERCANTILE Fabulous old country store, Vermont specialty foods, penny candy, clothing, bath and body, wine, craft beer and cider, gift baskets, and toys. Play a game of checkers or a tune on our piano. Depot Building, Main Street. (802) 253-4554. stowemercantile.com.
TRAPP FAMILY LODGE SPORT & GIFTS Trapp Family Lodge books, music, clothing, and food. Austrian specialty gifts and gourmet products. Vermont-made products and maple syrup. Visit our two locations. Shop online: trappfamily.com. (802) 253-8511.
Detailed Remodeling, Design & Construction Kitchens ¦ Bathrooms ¦ Flooring ¦ Drywall ¦ Painting
Protect Your Investment by Hiring Allaire Construction: 34 Years of Professional, Reliable Workmanship RRP Certified, Licensed, Insured & Locally Owned/Operated
ALLAIRE CONSTRUCTION Brent Allaire ¦ 802-793-2675 ¦ bda77@comcast.net
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S TOWE-SMUGGLERS BUSINESS DIRECTORY GOLF STOWE COUNTRY CLUB Featuring 18 holes of golf, full-service golf shop, expansive practice and training facilities with award-winning golf instructors and dining. One of Vermont’s finest golf facilities. Seasonal and daily memberships available. (802) 760-4653, stowevtgolf.com.
VERMONT ELECTRONICS Providing local support for custom design and installation of home theater, whole house audio, lighting control, shade control, thermostat control, home automation, and your security needs.(802) 253-6509. info@vermontelectronics.biz.
HORSEBACK RIDING VERMONT ICELANDIC HORSE FARM
STOWE MOUNTAIN CLUB 18 holes of golf on the scenic slopes of Spruce Peak await guests who venture into this mountain masterpiece. Bob Cuppdesigned Stowe Mountain Club golf course features stunning panoramic views. Access to Stowe Mountain Club is limited; call (802) 760-4653 for an introduction. stowemoutainlodge.com.
HAIR SALONS SALON SALON World-class Aveda concept salon for men and women. Haircuts, highlighting, coloring, straightening, manicures, pedicures, facials, waxing, body treatments, massage, shellac, lash extensions, complete wedding services. Downer Farm Shops, 232 Mountain Rd. By appt. (802) 253-7378, salonsalonvt.com.
HARDWARE JOHNSON HARDWARE & RENTAL, FARM & GARDEN We have everything you need and more. Equipment rentals, Cabot stain, Valspar paint, electrical and plumbing, largest Milwaukee dealer and authorized repair shop. Nuts and bolts too. Gardening, grain and pet supplies. Route 15, Johnson. (802) 635-7282, jhrvt.com.
STOWE HARDWARE & DRY GOODS Unique hardware store providing North Country necessities and quality products. Craftsman tools, Cabot Stain, complete selection of fasteners, housewares, home-care products. Open 8-5:30 Mon.-Sat., Sundays 9-3:30. 430 Mountain Rd. Established since 1829. (802) 253-7205.
Offering trail rides year round. 1-hour rides, half-day rides, full-day rides and multiple day packages, including meals and lodging. (802) 496-7141. icelandichorses.com; horses@icelandichorses.com.
ICE CREAM STOWE ICE CREAM SCOOP SHOP We serve homemade ice cream, maple creamees, milkshakes, sundaes. Gluten free cones. 112 Main Street, Stowe. (802) 253-0995. stoweicecream.com.
INNS & RESORTS COMMODORES INN Spacious rooms, 3-1/2 acre lake, kayaks, row boats, fireside living room, indoor and outdoor pool, Jacuzzis, and saunas, restaurant, popular sports bar, kids free, pets welcome. Route 100, Lower Village. commodoresinn.com. (802) 253-7131.
FIELD GUIDE HOTEL The newest Stowe hotel offering 30 bright, modern accommodations, an onsite restaurant, and event space in the heart of Stowe village. 433 Mountain Rd. (802) 253-8088, stay@fieldguidestowe.com, fieldguidestowe.com.
GREEN MOUNTAIN INN Classic 1833 resort in Stowe Village. Over 100 rooms, luxury and family suites, apartments/townhouses, many with fireside Jacuzzis. Two restaurants, outdoor year-round heated pool and in-ground spa, health club, Jacuzzi, sauna, massage, game room. (802) 253-7301. greenmountaininn.com.
JAY PEAK RESORT
HEALTH CARE COPLEY HOSPITAL Exceptional care. Community focused. 24-hour emergency services. The Women’s Center, Mansfield Orthopedics, general surgery, cardiology, diagnostic imaging, oncology, and rehabilitation. Morrisville, (802) 888-8888, copleyvt.org.
STOWE FAMILY PRACTICE Stowe Family Practice provides routine medical care and treats winter related and sports injuries. (802) 253-4853. chslv.org.
HEALTH CLUBS & FITNESS RIDE Indoor cycling in state-of-the-art studio. Smoothest bikes in town and incredible instructors. Cutting-edge technology lets clients access real time data, progress. Every ride leaves you feeling empowered and exhilarated. Memberships, packages, drop-in rates. rideindoorcycling.com. (802) 279-0845.
THE SPORTS & WELLNESS CENTER AT STOWEFLAKE MOUNTAIN RESORT Fully equipped Cybex fitness center, dedicated Spinning™ studio, women’s-only workout center, classes from yoga to STOTT Pilates. Certified fitness professionals. Pools, Jacuzzi, steamroom, sauna. Golf, tennis, and racquetball/squash. (802) 760-1083. spaatstoweflake.com.
SWIMMING HOLE Stowe’s premier family fitness and recreation center. 25-meter lap pool, children’s pool, waterslide, group exercise classes, personal training, masters swimming, swim lessons,. State-ofthe-art facility. Day passes, memberships available. (802) 253-9229. theswimmingholestowe.com.
HOME ENTERTAINMENT & SMART HOMES SYSTEM INTEGRATORS
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Since 2003, System Integrators has delivered for clients throughout Vermont. Success rooted in mastering key deliverables: system design focusing on ease of use, reliability, and performance; rapid response— 24/7; timely, accurate execution; professional staff. (802) 735-1400, info@sivermont.com.
Jay Peak offers skiing and riding on the most snow in Eastern North America, Vermont’s only aerial tramway, championship golf, an indoor ice arena, and the Pump House—Vermont’s only indoor waterpark. (800) 451-4449. jaypeakresort.com.
SMUGGLERS’ NOTCH RESORT, VERMONT America’s Family Resort. Mountainside lodging. Award-winning kids’ programs. Zipline canopy tours. Summer: 8 pools, 4 waterslides, disc golf, mountain bike park. Winter: Three interconnected mountains, 2,610 vertical. FunZone 2.0 entertainment complex. (888) 256-7623, smuggs.com/sg.
VILLAGE GREEN AT STOWE Fully furnished condominiums at the center of all Stowe has to offer. Fireplaces, indoor pool, sauna, Jacuzzi. Affordable. (802) 253-9705 or (800) 451-3297. vgasstowe.com.
INSURANCE HICKOK & BOARDMAN, INC. Providing superior service and innovative solutions for all your insurance needs. Home, auto, and business insurance since 1821. “Here when you need us.” 618 S. Main St., Stowe. (802) 253-9707.
STOWE INSURANCE AGENCY, INC. Stowe’s premier multi-line insurance agency since 1955. Our pricing and service is second to none. Glenn Mink, Teela Leach, Robert Mink, and Renee Davis. (802) 253-4855.
INTERIOR DESIGN AMBER HODGINS DESIGN Full-service interior architecture and design. Specializing in décor, renovations, and new construction for residential or commercial projects. (802) 585-5544. amberhodgins.com.
ANICHINI COMPANY STORE & DESIGN CENTER One and only outlet store and design center for Anichini’s luxury textiles and home furnishings. Open daily 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. 6931 Woodstock Rd., Quechee, Vt. (802) 698-8813. anichinicompanystore.com.
BRENNA B INTERIORS Our mission is to help transform your space into one you can’t wait to get home to. Bringing client inspirations into functional, comfortable, and beautiful interior design. 109 Main Street, Stowe. brennabinteriors.com, (802) 760-6499.
CUSTOM COVERS Custom Covers at the Grist Mill is a full-service shop. Designer fabrics, trims, wallpaper, custom-made slipcovers, upholstery, window treatments. By appointment. (802) 324-2123. 92 Stowe Street, Waterbury.
DESIGN STUDIO OF STOWE Creating beautiful interiors from classic to modern with respect to client’s taste, property, budget, deadline. New construction, renovations, and updates to existing spaces. Residential to light commercial projects. Allied Member ASID. 626 Mountain Road, Stowe. (802) 253-9600. designstudiovt.com.
HOME LIFE BY RA HUMPHREY Home Life by RA Humphrey is a full-service interior-design firm with offices in Stowe and Boston, bringing quality and value to her clientele. Rose Ann strives for her clients to “live in their own dreams.” home-life.com.
STERLING RIDGE LOG CABINS Secluded cabins surrounded by woods and meadows with stunning views of Mt. Mansfield. Seasonal outdoor pool, hot tub, 10-acre pond for paddling and fishing, hiking trails. Dog friendly options. (802) 644-8265. sterlingridgeresort.com.
THE RECOVERY ROOM INTERIORS We delight in the detail of making your window treatments, upholstery, slipcovers, and bedding in our professional workroom. Your local Hunter Douglas provider too. (802) 496-4644. therecoveryroomvt.com.
STOWE MOUNTAIN LODGE Luxury accommodations featuring stone-framed fireplaces, skiin/ski-out access to Stowe Mountain Resort, spa, outdoor heated pool, 36 holes of golf, Solstice and Hourglass restaurants. (802) 282-4625. (888) 478-6938. stowemountainlodge.com.
STOWEFLAKE MOUNTAIN RESORT & SPA Nestled in the heart of Stowe. Upscale guestrooms and townhouses, on-property activities, Charlie B’s Pub & Restaurant for fireside or deck dining, live entertainment and the rejuvenating Spa at Stoweflake treatments and services. (802) 253-7355, stoweflake.com.
TOPNOTCH RESORT & SPA Stowe’s only luxury boutique resort wows with contemporary rooms, suites, and 2-3 bedroom resort homes, airy lobby bar and restaurant, top-ranked bistro, world-class spa and tennis center, indoor/outdoor pools. (802) 253-8585. topnotchresort.com.
TRAPP FAMILY LODGE Mountain resort in the European tradition. 96-rooms and suites with spectacular mountain views. European-style cuisine, music, fitness center, indoor pool, climbing wall, yoga, crosscountry and backcountry skiing, snowshoeing, von Trapp history tours. (802) 253-8511. trappfamily.com.
SELDOM SCENE INTERIORS INC. All aspects of interior design. Stowe and Boston. Full architectural services, design build, and project management. Large comprehensive portfolio. By appointment only. 2038 Mountain Rd.. (802) 253-3770. seldomsceneinteriors.com.
STOWE CRAFT GALLERY Browse our 1,800-square foot showroom. Discover luxurious, handsome artisan furniture, unique lighting, wall art, sculpture, and personal interior design services aligned with your interests and style. Portfolio at stowecraft.com. 34 S. Main St. (802) 253-7677.
STOWE KITCHEN BATH AND LINENS Interior design and stylist always available. We have an enormous furniture selection at every price point. Specializing in bedding, rugs, furniture, lighting, right down to all your kitchen needs. Free consultations. (802) 253-8050. 1813 Mountain Rd., Stowe. kate@stowekitchen.net.
INTERNET SERVICES STOWE CABLE Providing reliable high-speed internet, cable television, and phone service throughout Stowe and Jeffersonville for over 30 years. Located at 172 Thomas Lane, Stowe. (802) 253-9282, stowecable.com.
Anderson& Associates Peter G. Anderson, Esquire
A General Practice Law Firm Serving businesses and individuals throughout Vermont for more than 20 years. Civil Litigation • Commercial Law Family Law • Business Transactions Probate Proceedings Anderson & Associates prides itself on providing quality legal services responsive to the individual needs of each client.
954 South Main Street | P.O. Box 566 Stowe, Vermont 05672 802-253-4011 | andersonlawvt.com
PERENNIAL PLEASURES
• • • • •
Housewares Cabot stains Painting supplies Electrical supplies Ice and snow removal • Cleaning supplies • Minwax stains • Best selection of fasteners
NURSERY & TEA GARDEN
“Come spend a pleasant day!”
Since 1980, specializing in heirloom and unusual flowers and herbs. Enjoy a stroll through our extensive display gardens.
ENGLISH CREAM TEAS
Served in a beautiful garden setting or greenhouse. Tea served 12-4 daily except Mondays, from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Reservations for tea recommended.
IN OUR GIFT SHOP: A well-chosen collection of useful, unusual and just plain gorgeous items, including scarves, jewelry, teapots and gardening goods. Summer and garden hats are a specialty!
Daily 10-5 except Mondays, May 5 to Sept 22 • Free Garden Tours, Sundays at noon.
Join us for our 16th Annual Phlox Fest, July 29 to August 12
www.perennialpleasures.net 63 BRICK HOUSE ROAD, EAST HARDWICK, VT • 1-802-472-5104 A scenic 40 minute drive from Stowe
430 Mountain Road, Stowe
Mon-Sat 8-5:30 • Sun 9-3:30
253-7205
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S TOWE-SMUGGLERS BUSINESS DIRECTORY JEWELRY FERRO ESTATE & CUSTOM JEWELERS Stowe’s premier full-service jeweler since 2006. We specialize in estate jewelry, fine diamonds, custom design, jewelry repair, and appraisals. In-house repair studio. American Gem Society. 91 Main St. (802) 253-3033. ferrojewelers.com/stowe.
INSIDE OUT GALLERY Discover new colorful and creative designs made by American artists. Add inspiration and fun to every day. Easy prices. Enjoyable shopping. Short walk up from Main Street. 299 Mountain Rd., Stowe. (802) 253-6945, insideoutgalleryvt.com.
VON BARGEN’S JEWELRY A Vermont family business with five locations. We specialize in distinctive artisan jewelry, fine, ideal cut diamonds, and custom jewelry. Stowe Village. Monday-Friday 10-5, Saturday 10-5, Sunday noon-5. (802) 253-2942. vonbargens.com.
KITCHENS & BATHS ALLAIRE CONSTRUCTION Providing professional, personalized quality renovation/remodeling services for 34 years. Our trustworthy team has extensive knowledge in planning, design, and construction for all your individualized kitchen and bath needs. Brent: (802) 793-2675, bda77@comcast.net.
BARRE TILE Rediscovering elegance in the home-place. Our Stone Shop is Vermont’s source for kitchen countertops, bathroom vanities, thresholds, fireplace hearths, more. Make an appointment to view our extensive stone slab inventory. Over 25 colors. (802) 476-0912. barretile.com.
WAGNER HODGSON LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE The process of uniting program, context, form and materials provides the basis for our work, crafting modern sculptural landscapes expressing the essential inherent beauty of natural materials. (802) 864-0010. wagnerhodgson.com.
LAWYERS ANDERSON & ASSOCIATES A general practice of law: civil, family, and criminal litigation, probate and estate planning, business law, and transactions. 954 South Main St., Stowe. (802) 253-4011. andersonlawvt.com.
BARR LAW GROUP General litigation and commercial transactional representation: civil litigation, class actions, arbitration, court trials, criminal defense, business/real estate, aviation, estates, more. Vermont, New York, and Massachusetts bars. 125 Mountain Rd., Stowe; 100 Park Ave, N.Y. (802) 253-6272; (212) 486-3910.
DARBY KOLTER & NORDLE, LLP General civil practice: commercial and residential, real estate, environmental, estate planning/administration, personal injury & worker’s comp, mediation services, business formation, family law. Stowe: 996 Main St., Unit 1A, (802) 253-7165; Waterbury: 89 S. Main St., (802) 244-7352.
HORSLEY LAJOIE GOLDFINE, LLC General practice including civil litigation, personal injury, real estate, corporate, estate planning/administration. Located in Stowe village at 166 S. Main St. Member Vermont and Massachusetts bars.(802) 760-6480. hlgattorneys.com.
BURLINGTON MARBLE & GRANITE We manufacture and install the finest handcrafted stone countertops for Vermont’s premier builders, fine kitchens and bath designers and discriminating homeowners. Warehouse stocked with over 100 full slabs to view. (802) 860-1221. burlingtonmarbleandgranite.com.
CLOSE TO HOME Locally owned and operated since 1999, we have the finest selection of bath fixtures and vanities, kitchen sinks and faucets, door/cabinet hardware, and more. A culture of customer service. 10 Farrell St., S. Burlington. (802) 861-3200. closetohomevt.com.
COUNTRY HOME CENTER Our kitchen and bath department offers many types of custom cabinets, solid surface countertops, custom tile showers, energy efficient fixtures, and green products for today’s Vermont lifestyle. 85 Center Rd., Morrisville. (802) 888-3177. countryhomecenter.net.
WOODSTOCK KITCHENS & BATHS For over 30 years, Woodstock Kitchens has improved people’s lives through their living environments. Innovative, inspiring, and functional spaces with a high degree of personalization and design. Essex Junction, Vt. (802) 878-5333. woodstockkitchens.com.
LANDSCAPE DESIGN AMBLER DESIGN Full-service landscape architecture and construction company in Stowe. Working with plants, water, stone, and earth, we create unique, exceptional, and beautiful outdoor spaces. Recent projects: Piecasso Restaurant entrance and the 2011 HGTV Dream Home. (802) 253-4536. amblerdesign.com.
KNAUF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE We transform landscapes into beautiful outdoor living spaces that ignite the senses and seamlessly connect inside and out, with balance and harmony. Member ASLA. (802) 655-0552. cynthiaknauf.com.
LANDSHAPES
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Serving Vermont’s residential and commercial landscapes with design, installations, and property maintenance. Projects include unlimited varieties of stonework, gardens, water features, and installation of San Juan pools and spas. (802) 434-3500. landshapes.net.
OLSON & ASSOCIATES, PLC General law practice: commercial and residential real estate, estate planning and probate administration, business formation and maintenance, general litigation, family law, mediation services. 188 S. Main St., Stowe. (802) 253-7810.
STACKPOLE AND FRENCH Litigation, real estate, corporate, utility, wills, and estate administration. 255 Maple St., Stowe. (802) 253-7339. stackpolefrench.com.
STEVENS LAW OFFICE Residential and commercial real estate, criminal and family law, civil litigation, personal injury, estate planning, and business formation. 30+ years experience. Stowe, Derby offices. (802) 253-8547 or (866) 786-9530. stowelawyers.com.
LIGHTING MAD RIVER ANTLER Handcrafted one-of-a-kind antler creations in the form of chandeliers, sconces, table lamps, floor lamps, and custom creations using naturally shed antler from moose, deer, and elk. (802) 496-9290, madriverantler.com.
MASSAGE & BODYWORK KATE GRAVES, CMT, BHS Relaxation, deep tissue, moist heat, energy work (Brennan graduate), maternity, Thai. Practicing integrative medicine over 30 years. Competitive rates. Stowe Yoga Center, 515 Moscow Rd. kgravesmt@gmail.com, (802) 253-8427, stoweyoga.com.
STOWE VILLAGE MASSAGE Exceptional bodywork services from relaxation to injury recovery. Certified practitioners in a casual atmosphere. 60minute massages starting from $85. Daily 9 a.m. - 7 p.m. 49 Depot St.. Book online: stowevillagemassage.com. (802) 253-6555. info@stowevillagemassage.com.
TRAPP FAMILY LODGE FITNESS CENTER Massage therapists use a blend of techniques to address needs including Swedish, deep tissue, acupressure, and Shiatsu. Other treatments include reflexology, salt glows, and hot stone therapy. Appointments available daily. (802) 253-5722.
MATTRESSES BURLINGTON MATTRESS We’re here to help you get a better night’s sleep. Mattresses, bedroom furniture, lifestyle bases, and futons. Trusted brands covering the bases from bed in a box to luxury mattresses. 747 Pine St. (802) 862-7167, burlingtongmattress.us.
MATTRESSES—ORGANIC NATURAL MATTRESS OF VT We have a unique selection of natural chemical-free mattresses. FSC-certified furniture, organic bedding, and home décor. Everything for a healthy night’s sleep. 3198 Shelburne Rd., Shelburne. (802) 985-2650. naturalmattressvt.com
MOUNTAIN BIKING TRAPP FAMILY LODGE OUTDOOR CENTER Over 25 miles of mountain biking trails in woodlands and meadows with spectacular mountain views. Trails to von Trapp Bierhall. Private, group instruction, rentals, retail shop. (802) 253-8511.
NEEDLEWORK THE WOODEN NEEDLE Charming needle arts shop in heart of Stowe Village. Counted cross-stitch and needlepoint featured. Specializing in linens, hand-painted canvases, Paternayan wool, Weeks Dye Works, Gentle Art cottons, fun fibers. Park and Pond Streets. (802) 253-3086, wooden-needle.com.
NURSERIES PERENNIAL PLEASURES NURSERY & TEA GARDEN Stroll through beautiful display gardens, shop for flowers and herbs. Enjoy tea or light lunches in the tea room, browse for hats in the gift shop. Free Sunday garden tours at noon. East Hardwick. (802) 472-5104. perennialpleasures.net.
MARKETS
OPTOMETRY
THE BUTCHERY
STOWE EYE CARE
Butcher shop, fish monger, fromagerie, sourcing prime beef, all-natural pork, free-range chicken and game, domestic and international sauces, spices, specialties. Success in your kitchen starts here. 504 Mountain Road, Stowe. (802) 253-1444. butcheryvt.com.
COMMODITIES NATURAL MARKET Voted Best Market 2015, 2016, and 2017. One-stop grocery shopping featuring organic produce, groceries, artisanal cheeses, fresh bread, local meats, beer and wine, bulk section, gluten-free, wellness products. Open daily. (802) 253-4464. commoditiesnaturalmarket.com.
HARVEST MARKET Stowe’s one-stop gourmet store. Grab and go section, premade sandwiches and salads prepared by our own chefs and bakers. Vermont cheeses and charcuterie. Farm fresh produce. Vermont microbrews and wines. Daily 7-7 (in season) (802) 253-3800. harvestatstowe.com.
At Stowe Eye Care, we provide personalized vision services. We use advanced technology for the most accurate diagnosis, as well as having a frame selection as unique as we are. stowe-eyecare.com. (802) 253-7201.
PAINTERS—INTERIOR & EXTERIOR LAMOILLE VALLEY PAINTERS, LLC Custom painting company in Stowe, specializing in high-end interior and exterior painting, staining and wall-coverings for homes, decks, barns, commercial businesses in the Lamoille Valley. dan@lamoillevalleypainters.com. (802) 730-2776.
PHOTOGRAPHY PAUL ROGERS PHOTOGRAPHY Since 1982, offering quality photographic services to Vermont businesses. Creative images of people, products, and locations. Photography of artwork. Private photographic instruction. RIT photo graduate. paulrogersphotography.com.
PHYSICAL THERAPY COPLEY REHABILITATION SERVICES Therapies include physical, occupational, hand, speech, aquatic, pediatric, cardiac and pulmonary, work conditioning, and other comprehensive rehab services. Clinics in Stowe, Hardwick, and Morrisville (Mansfield Orthopaedics and Copley Hospital). (802) 888-8303, copleyvt.org.
PINNACLE PHYSICAL THERAPY Skilled physical therapy for orthopedic and neuromuscular conditions, sports, family wellness, pre- and post-surgery. Personal, professional care: 1878 Mountain Rd., Stowe. Appointment within 24 hours, M-F. (802) 253-2273. info@pinnacleptvermont.com or pinnacleptvermont.com.
UVMHN CVMC REHABILITATION SERVICES Physical, occupational, and speech therapies. Specialized service: Parkinson’s disease, urinary incontinence, vertigo, concussions, and more. Clinic in Waterbury. Get evaluated within 48 hours at Rehab Express in Berlin. cvmc.org/rehab. (802) 371-4242.
PHYSICIANS ADAM KUNIN, MD, CARDIOLOGIST Personalized cardiac care. Board-certified in cardiology, nuclear cardiology and internal medicine. Providing general cardiology, advanced cardiac tests, and imaging. Morrisville. (802) 888-8372, copleyvt.org.
DAVID BISBEE, MD—PRIMARY CARE Access to your personal physician 24/7, longer appointments, house calls, and personalized medical care. Annual membership fee. Limited enrollment. Board certified in family medicine. (802) 253-5020. davidbisbeemd.com.
DONALD DUPUIS, MD, GENERAL SURGEON Board-certified general surgeon. Specializing in advanced laparoscopic procedures. Providing a wide spectrum of inpatient and outpatient surgical care. Morrisville. (802) 888-8372, copleyvt.org.
MANSFIELD ORTHOPAEDICS Comprehensive orthopedic care. Nicholas Antell, MD; Brian Aros, MD; Bryan Huber, MD; John Macy, MD; Joseph McLaughlin, MD; Bryan Monier, MD; and Saul Trevino, MD. On-site radiology and rehabilitation facility. Morrisville and Waterbury. (802) 888-8405, mansfieldorthopaedics.com.
THE WOMEN’S CENTER Board-certified specialist William Ellis, MD, and certified nurse midwives Kipp Bovey, Jackie Bromley, Marge Kelso, and April Vanderveer. Comprehensive gynecological care. The Women’s Center, (802) 888-8100, copleyvt.org.
STOWE RESORT HOMES Personalized management for Stowe’s vacation homes. Home checks, personal shopping, remodeling project management, maintenance coordination, more. We also offer marketing and rental agent services for select vacation homes. (802) 760-1157. stoweresorthomes.com.
REAL ESTATE & RENTALS COLDWELL BANKER CARLSON REAL ESTATE Real estate sales and rentals, representing Stowe and surrounding communities. Our talented team leads the industry in technology, innovation, and passion. 25 Main Street, Stowe. (802) 253-7358. stowevermontrealestate.com.
FOUNTAINS LAND Specializing in the sale and forestland and rural estates. Please visit fountainsland.com or call (802) 223-8644 for more information about our listings and services.
FOUR SEASONS SOTHEBY’S INT’L REALTY Four Seasons Sotheby’s International Realty strives everyday to exceed our clients’ expectations. To learn how we can put the power of our brand to work for you, visit us at fourseasonssir.com or (802) 253-7267.
GREEN RIVER RESERVOIR LAKEFRONT ESTATE Impeccably built on 16 acres with 1,000 feet of frontage. Four residences each with own kitchen. Total of 17 bedrooms. Boathouse, beach, barns, pond and rifle range. Fully furnished for $4,250,000. ondinevt.com. (561) 835-8980.
LITTLE RIVER REALTY Your trusted real estate advisors representing buyers, sellers ad rentals. Your goals are our priority. We are full-time realtors who appreciate the importance of your real estate decisions. (802) 253-1553, info@lrrvermont.com and lrrvermont.com.
MOUNTAIN ASSOCIATES REALTORS Bigger is not always better. We have chosen to remain small, allowing us to offer experienced representation, personalized service, and a team approach to residential and commercial sales. (802) 253-8518. mountainassociates.com.
NEW ENGLAND LANDMARK REALTY Stowe, Vermont real estate. Professional real estate sales. Beautiful Stowe homes and land. You’re going to love our Stowe, Vermont lifestyle. Call today. (866) 324-2427. (802) 253-4711. nelandmark.com.
PALL SPERA COMPANY REALTORS Stowe and Lamoille County’s leading real-estate company serving Central and Northern Vermont from 3 offices and 24 hours a day at pallspera.com. Exclusive affiliate of Christie’s International Real Estate. (802) 253-9771, (802) 253-1806, (802) 888-1102. pallspera.com.
RED BARN REALTY OF VERMONT
PRINTING THE UPS STORE From blueprints and banners to business cards and brochures, we print it. Shipping, scanning, and every other business service you can think of, we are your locally owned business partner. 112 S. Main St., Stowe. (802) 253-2233. store2614@theupsstore.com.
THE X PRESS Custom business and personal print, copy, and design services. Brochures, letterhead, business cards, forms, labels, invitations, banners, specialty products for over 30 years. Office supplies, shipping, scanning/fax. (802) 253-7883 (fax). Stowe Village, M-F, 8-4:30. (802) 253-9788. thexpressink.com.
PROPERTY MANAGEMENT ALLAIRE CONSTRUCTION Providing personalized care for your home and business needs for 34+ years. Professional, reliable, trustworthy, quality workmanship. Eliminate hiring multiple contractors. Security and home checks available. Brent: (802) 793-2675, bda77@comcast.net.
STOWE COUNTRY HOMES Property management, maintenance, repair, and renovations specialists. Lawn and garden care, landscaping, trash removal, etc. Renovations large and small. Quality work guaranteed— on budget and schedule. (802) 253-8132, ext. 102, or jeanette@stowecountryhomes.com. stowecountryhomes.com.
An office of dynamic professionals, each with a unique love of Vermont. We look forward to helping you fulfill your real estate sales and rental needs. 1878 Mountain Rd., Stowe. (802) 253-4994. redbarnvt.com.
STOWE AREA REALTY LLC Our name says it all. Partnering with Stowe Area Realty to manage your commercial, residential, or investment real estate interests will give you a distinct advantage. 1056 Mountain Rd., Suite 1, Stowe. (802) 760-3100. stowearearealty.com.
STOWE COUNTRY HOMES Vacation homes and condos for short- or long-term rental. Professionally and locally managed. Luxury slopeside properties, secluded private homes, affordable condos—we have what you want, meeting all budgets. 253-8132. stowecountryhomes.com.
STOWE RESORT HOMES Luxury vacation homes for the savvy traveler. Book some of Stowe’s best resort homes—online. Well-appointed, tastefully decorated homes at Topnotch, Spruce Peak, and throughout Stowe. (802) 760-1157. stoweresorthomes.com.
RESTAURANTS BENCH Unique to Stowe, wood-fired comfort food including pizza. Local ingredients in a relaxed, rustic modern Vermont atmosphere. Enjoy après ski or dinner with family and friends. 28 taps, craft beer, cocktails, and extensive wine list. Daily. 492 Mountain Rd., Stowe. benchvt.com or (802) 253-5100.
THE BISTRO AT TEN ACRES Simply great, handmade, flavorful food. Craft beers, delicious wines, fresh-pressed cocktails. 1820s Vermont Farmhouse with bar seating, elegant dining rooms, fireside lounge, outside dining and beautiful views. Barrows and Luce Hill Roads, Stowe. tenacreslodge.com. (802) 253-6838.
BLACK DIAMOND BARBEQUE We only use quality meats prepared with homemade rubs and marinades, then slowly smoke using native hardwoods. Our bar features craft beer and cocktails. blackdiamondbbq.com.
BUTLERS PANTRY “A Breakfast Treat”. Enjoy a homemade meal on our outdoor deck in the heart of Stowe Village. Acai bowls, biscuits and gravy, Mimosas, Bloody Marys, daily specials. Open 8 a.m.
CHARLIE B’S PUB & RESTAURANT Charlie B’s is a Stowe tradition featuring upscale pub fare and an award-winning wine list with Vermont craft brews on tap. Enjoy fireside or deck dining and live entertainment in season. (802) 760-1096, charliebspub.com.
CLIFF HOUSE RESTAURANT Enjoy panoramic views at 3,625’ near the top of Mt. Mansfield. Award-winning American cuisine with rustic Vermont flair, seasonal, artisanal ingredients. Hand-selected wine list, tantalizing cocktails. Lunch daily, 11 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. Reservations: cliffhouse@stowe.com. (802) 253-3665. stowe.com.
DEPOT ST. MALT SHOP Lunch and dinner, kids’ menu. 1950s soda fountain atmosphere. Thick and creamy malts, frappes, sundaes, ice cream sodas, Vermont beef burgers, sandwiches, homemade soups, fabulous maple walnut salad dressing. Take-out. Stowe Village. (802) 253-4269.
DOC PONDS Eat and drink. Many beers from 24 rotating taps to 50 different bottles and cans, craft cocktails, natural wine, updated bar food. Two turntables with 1,000 records. Bar, lounge, dining room. 294 Mountain Rd., Stowe. (802) 760-6066. No reservations. docponds.com.
HARRISON’S RESTAURANT & BAR Located in historic Stowe Village serving elevated takes on American dishes with wine, craft beers and cocktails in a unique, parlorlike space. Reservations accepted. (802) 253-7773, harrisonsstowe.com.
HOB KNOB BAR & LOUNGE Enjoy a drink in or lounge and some comfort food from our kitchen Thursday-Sunday, put your feet up sit by the fire. Bring the family, play some games and enjoy. hobknobinn.com. (802) 253-8549.
IDLETYME BREWING COMPANY Small-batch craft lagers and ales. Lunch/dinner daily from 11:30 a. m. Innovative cocktails, extensive wine list, family friendly, fireplace dining. Outdoor patio. Perfect for special events. Beer to go. 1859 Mountain Rd., Stowe. (802) 253-4765, idletymebrewing.com.
JUNIOR’S STOWE Chef owned and operated. An expansive menu including authentic southern Italian cuisine, homemade pasta, fresh seafood, classics like lasagna and veal parmigiana, and fresh baked bread and desserts. 18 Edson Hill Rd, Stowe. (802) 253-5677, juniorsatstowe.com.
KIRKWOOD’S RESTAURANT AT STOWE COUNTRY CLUB Outdoor and indoor dining with mountain views and Stowe’s renowned golf course. Traditional American fare and a great place to relax, even if you’re not playing golf. Lunch daily, cocktails, and pub fare until dusk. (802) 253-3000, stowevtgolf.com.
MCCARTHY’S RESTAURANT / CATERING Delicious breakfasts and lunches. Soups, daily specials. Kids’ menu, low-calorie, low-carb offerings. Homemade muffins, pies etc. Gluten free bread, gluten free muffins, cappuccino, milkshakes, smoothies. 6:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Mountain Road, Stowe. (802) 253-8626.
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S TOWE-SMUGGLERS BUSINESS DIRECTORY MICHAEL’S ON THE HILL Farm-to-table cuisine. Swiss chef owned. Restaurateur & Chef of the Year, Wine Spectator Award of Excellence, Best Chefs America, certified green restaurant. Bar, lounge, groups. 5:30-9, closed Tuesdays. 5 minutes from Stowe. Route 100, Waterbury Center. (802) 244-7476. michaelsonthehill.com.
PIECASSO PIZZERIA & LOUNGE Traditional, hand-tossed New York style pizza with modern style, eclectic music, and great vibes. A local favorite, voted a “Top 11 Slice in the Country” by travelandleisure.com. Creative entrees, craft beer, gluten-free menu, online ordering, takeout, delivery. (802) 253-4411, piecasso.com.
PIZZA ON MAIN Come taste the difference. Seven Days food editor stated “best pizza in the state.” Slices, salads, subs, pastas, entrees, Gluten-free, wine, local beers. Dine-in, take-out. Delivery, catering. Open daily. pizzaonmainvt.com, (802) 888-4155.
TRES AMIGOS Authentic Mexican fare highlighting fresh produce and local meats and cheeses; tequilas and mezcals, margarita and cocktail menu, 24 drafts focusing on Vermont and Mexicanstyle craft beers. Intimate music space with upper level viewing. 1190 Mountain Rd., (802) 253-6245. tresamigosvt.com.
WHIP BAR & GRILL Friendly, casual newly renovated atmosphere with open grill and fireplace dining. Fresh seafood, hand-cut steaks, vegetarian specialties, children’s menu. Serving lunch/dinner daily, . At the Green Mountain Inn. (802) 253-4400, ext 615, for reservations.
ZENBARN Globally inspired cuisine, craft beer and Vermont spirits. Live music, events, yoga classes, more. Beautiful setting in renovated dairy barn with outdoor seating. Quarter mile from Ben & Jerry’s. 179 Guptil Rd., Waterbury. zenbarnvt.com. (802) 244-8134.
PLATE Winner of the “Best New Restaurant” Daisies award 2014. California flavor meets Vermont style. 50 seats, full bar, open kitchen. Food ranges from serious meat eaters to healthy vegetarians. Everything is homemade, utilizing many local farms. Dinner, Wednesday – Sunday 5-close. 91 Main St. (802) 253-2691. platestowe.com.
THE RESERVOIR RESTAURANT Located in the heart of Waterbury, The Reservoir serves dinner 7 days a week and lunch Saturday and Sunday. We specialize in local Vermont food and some of the best beers available. (802) 244-7827, waterburyreservoir.com.
RIVER HOUSE RESTAURANT Riverfront village location overlooking river and covered bridge in downtown Stowe. Prime rib, seafood, and bistrostyle cuisine. Full bar and craft beer on tap. Wraparound deck and outdoor seating. Book your group or special event. (802) 253-4030, stoweinn.com. hello@stoweinn.com.
SOLSTICE Solstice features artisan-inspired cuisine using farm-to-table ingredients, Vermont cheeses and produce, and a flair for culinary creation. Private wine-tastings and dining room for up to 16 guests are also available. (802) 760-4735, solsticevermont.com. Reservations recommended.
STOWE BOWL Stowe’s coolest hotspot. Come bowl in a swanky setting with a state-of-the-art audio-visual experience, a full bar, great food, and a fireplace lounge. Casual entertainment, parties, and events. stowebowl.com.
SUNSET GRILLE & TAP ROOM Northern-style southern barbecue with a side of sports. Craft beers and cocktails. Patio dining, family friendly. NFL Sunday ticket. 30 TVs. Just off the beaten path. Cottage Club Road, Stowe. (802) 253-9281. sunsetgrillevt.com.
SUSHI YOSHI Experience the best in Chinese and Japanese cuisine. Eclectic menu with something for everyone. Have a great time with the entire family at Sushi Yoshi Chinese Gourmet Hibachi Steakhouse. Open daily. Outdoor seating. Call for free shuttle. 1128 Mountain Rd., Stowe. (802) 253-4135. sushistowe.com.
TRAPP FAMILY LODGE—LOUNGE & DINING ROOM Seasonal menus reflecting both Austrian and Vermont traditions. Open daily. Dining room: breakfast 7:30-10:30 a.m.; dinner 5-9 p.m. Reservations: (802) 253-5733. Lounge: lunch 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m.; tea 3:30-4:30 p.m.; dinner 5-9 p.m.; bar nightly until 11 p.m.; (802) 253-5734.
TRATTORIA LA FESTA
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Old-fashioned full-service family-style Italian restaurant. Serving Stowe for 30 years. Wine Spectator best wine list. Great place to meet locals and celebrities, great music. Dinner 5 to close; closed on Sundays except on long weekends. Plenty of parking. Reservations: (802) 253-8480. trattoriastowe.com. trattorialafesta@stoweaccess.com.
RETIREMENT COMMUNITY COPLEY WOODLANDS Copley home to Stowe, where retirement living is easy. Spacious condos with option to own or lease. Available for adults 55+. Copley Woodlands, 125 Thomas Lane, Stowe. (802) 253-7200. copleywoodlands.com.
MAYO HEALTHCARE Residential care assisted living at Mayo means joining a vibrant, welcoming community—and letting your worries go. Get back to living your life, knowing that supportive nursing care is here 24/7. Northfield, Vt. (802-485-3161), mayohc.org.
WAKE ROBIN A vibrant non-profit life-care community located on 136 acres just south of Burlington in Shelburne, Vt. Residents enjoy independent living in cottages and apartments and comprehensive, on-site health care for life. wakerobin.com, (802) 264-5100.
SHOE STORES JOHNSON FARM, GARDEN, HARDWARE & RENTAL A huge selection of quality footwear for the whole family. Shoes and boots for contractors, outdoor enthusiasts, and all lifestyles. We have clothing too. Keen, Timberland Pro, Chippewa, Muck, Columbia, Dansko, Birkenstock, Salomon, Merrell. Route 15, Johnson. (802) 635-7282, jhrvt.com.
WELL HEELED Unique collection of shoes, boots, handbags, belts, clothing, and jewelry in a chicly updated Vermont farmhouse halfway up Stowe’s Mountain Road. Shoes are our specialty and effortlessly chic our motto. Daily 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. (802) 253-6077. wellheeledstowe.com.
SPA SPA & WELLNESS CENTER AT STOWE MOUNTAIN LODGE Enjoy our relaxing healing lodge, sauna, herbal steam room, Jacuzzi, and cooling rain shower; full-service salon; 18 treatment rooms; full fitness center with heated outdoor pool and classes. (802) 760-4782. stowemountainlodge.com.
SPA & WELLNESS CENTER AT STOWEFLAKE MOUNTAIN RESORT World-class spa integrates natural surroundings, luxurious amenities, over 150 treatments. Bingham Hydrotherapy waterfall, Hungarian soaking mineral pool, men’s and women’s lounges, steam, sauna, hot tub, Jacuzzi, yoga, Pilates, fitness classes. Open to public. (802) 760-1083, spaatstoweflake.com.
SPECIAL ATTRACTIONS ARBORTREK CANOPY ADVENTURES AT SMUGGLERS’ NOTCH Family-friendly, year-round treetop adventures including an award-winning zip line canopy tour, treetop obstacle course, and climbing adventure. Adventures from serene to extreme. Ages 4+; Good to moderate health. Reservations recommended. (802) 644-9300. arbortrek.com.
BRAGG FARM SUGARHOUSE & GIFTS 8th generation sugarhouse, using traditional sugaring methods. Free daily tours, walk through 2,000-acre maple woods. World’s best maple creemees. Farm animals. Route 14N, East Montpelier. Near Cabot Creamery and Grandview Winery. (802) 223-5757.
CABOT CREAMERY VISITORS CENTER Come see where the “Best Cheddar in the World” begins. Nibble Cabot cheddars, Vermont specialty foods, weekly specials. Fun, delicious, and educational. January-May 20: Mon.Sat. 10-4; May 21-October: 9-5 daily; Nov.-Dec.: 10-4 daily. ADA accessible.
CABOT FARMERS’ STORE Sample Cabot’s entire selection of award-winning cheeses and dairy products. Great selection of Vermont specialty foods, cheeses, Vermont wines and microbrews. Danforth Pewter, Lake Champlain Chocolates, Smugglers’ Notch Distillery, more. Waterbury. Daily 9-6 p.m. ADA accessible.
COLD HOLLOW CIDER MILL Watch apple cider being made on an old-fashioned rack-andcloth press. Hours vary, check website. Apple cider and hard cider samples. Live observation beehive. Maple products, bakery, cider donuts made daily. Route 100, Waterbury Center. (800) 327-7537. Daily 8-6 p.m. coldhollow.com.
GREENSBORO, VERMONT Visit beautiful Greensboro on Caspian Lake. Scenic 30-mile drive from Stowe, with shopping, swimming, sightseeing, arts, and events. Willey’s Store, Miller’s Thumb Gallery, Highland Center of the Arts, Greensboro Garage and Highland Lodge.
LAMOILLE VALLEY BIKE TOURS Electric bike tours on the scenic, Lamoille Valley Rail Trail. Vermont Bike & Brew, Pedal Paddle, Teahouse, and Family Adventure tours. E-bikes go farther, faster, easier. Johnson. (802) 730-0161. lamoillevalleybiketours.com.
LAUGHING MOON CHOCOLATES Handmade Laughing Moon Chocolates open 9-6 daily. 78 South Main St., Stowe Village. Chocolate dipping demonstrations and sampling at 2 p.m. daily. (802) 253-9591. laughingmoonchocolates.com.
LITTLE RIVER HOTGLASS STUDIO Walk into the studio and experience the art of glassblowing up close. Adjacent gallery features works of resident artist Michael Trimpol. Thurs. – Mon. 10-5. (802) 253-0889. littleriverhotglass.com.
MONTSHIRE MUSEUM OF SCIENCE Award-winning science center known for its interactive exhibits, outstanding programs, science park and water features, and woodland garden. Daily 10-5. Norwich, Vt. montshire.org
QUECHEE STORE Sample Cabot’s entire selection of award-winning cheeses and dairy products. Great selection of Vermont specialty foods, cheeses, Vermont wines and microbrews. Putney Mountain Winery, Vermont Spot, Vermont Spirits, Antique Mall, Whisper Hill, and more. Daily 9:30-5:30 p.m. ADA accessible.
SPRUCE PEAK FARMERS MARKET Fridays, June 29 through August 31 on the Spruce Peak Village Center green. 11 a.m. - 3 p.m. Farm fresh produce, local artisan food and craft producers, live music, free kids activities. (802) 760-4661 or sprucepeak.com.
SPRUCE PEAK PERFORMING ARTS CENTER Presenting artists from around the world and right next door in an intimate setting with the best in music, dance, comedy, theater, and film, presented each week, year round. (802) 760-4634 or sprucepeakarts.org.
STOWE GOLF PARK Miniaturized golf course that strives to simulate a real golf environment, on Stowe’s Mountain Road along the recreation path. Avoid natural obstacles, fairway hazards, sand traps. May through October, 10 a.m. - 9:30 p.m. (802) 253-9951.
STOWE HISTORICAL SOCIETY & MUSEUM Preserving Stowe’s rich history. Museum at the West Branch and Bloody Brook Schoolhouses, next to Stowe Library. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, noon-3 p.m., and when the flags are out. (802) 253-1518. stowehistoricalsociety.org, info@stowehistoricalsociety.org.
STOWE MOUNTAIN RESORT AUTO TOLL ROAD Drive up Mt. Mansfield’s scenic 4 1/2 mile Toll Road. Park at 3,850-foot elevation and view scenery or hike summit ridge. Stowe Mountain Resort. (802) 253-3000, stowe.com.
STOWE MOUNTAIN RESORT GONDOLA SKYRIDE Take a ride to Vermont’s highest peak—Mt. Mansfield. The eight-passenger Stowe Gondola SkyRide features incredible views plus access to hiking trails and mountaintop dining at the Cliff House Restaurant. (802) 253-3000, stowe.com.
STOWE MOUNTAIN RESORT SUMMER ADVENTURE CAMP Kids ages 3-12 discover the mountains, forests, and streams of Stowe Mountain Resort. Rock climbing, tennis, golf, hiking, arts and crafts, swimming, disc golf, scavenger hunts. MondayFriday, 9 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. (802) 253-3000, stowe.com.
STOWE MOUNTAIN RESORT TREETOP ADVENTURE Explore numerous aerial tree-to-tree connections with various challenge elements intertwined. Guided activity based out of Adventure Center is ideal for most ages and groups. (802) 253-3000, stowe.com.
STOWE MOUNTAIN RESORT ZIP TOUR ADVENTURE Experience the ultimate point-to-point sky adventure. Zip down Vermont’s highest peak via three exhilarating spans, totaling over 10,000 feet in total length. (802) 253-3000, stowe.com.
STOWE PERFORMING ARTS Founded in 1976, Stowe Performing Arts presents great music—classical, jazz, swing, pop, bluegrass, country—in dramatic settings throughout the community. Noon Music in May, Music in the Meadow, and Gazebo Concerts, most of which are free. (802) 253-7792 or stoweperformingarts.com.
STOWE SOARING Imagine an ocean of sky. If you are looking for the ultimate tour of Vermont from the highest vantage point, come fly with us. Glider rides for one or two. Route 100, Morrisville. 888-7845. stowesoaring.com.
STOWE THEATRE GUILD Presenting shows from classic to contemporary Broadway musicals plus a classic comedy. Shows June 13 – Oct. 20. “Gypsy,” “Heathers the Musical,” “The Bridges of Madison County,” and “The Odd Couple” (female version). Tickets at stowetheatre.com or (802) 253-3961.
STOWE VIBRANCY Dedicated to boosting social, recreational, and cultural activities in Stowe Village, and strengthening the town’s economic and physical characteristics, this non-profit produces/co-produces eight events and series annually. stowevibrancy.com.
TUNBRIDGE WORLD’S FAIR Dedicated to family farm traditions and current rends all four days. Livestock shows, Antique Hill Museum, midway, entertainment. Located in the beautiful First Branch of the White River valley. Sept. 13-16. Tunbridge, Vt. tunbridgeworldsfair.com.
VERMONT TEDDY BEAR FACTORY TOURS One of the most popular Vermont activities. Come and experience our store, take a factory tour and make your own bear. 6655 Shelburne Rd., just south of Shelburne Village. (802) 985-3001. vermontteddybear.com.
SPECIALTY FOODS LAKE CHAMPLAIN CHOCOLATES What the New York Times calls “some of the best chocolate in the country.” Made from Belgian chocolate, Vermont cream, other natural ingredients. Caramels, truffles, creamy fudge, hot chocolate, factory seconds. (802) 241-4150. lakechamplainchocolates.com.
SPORTING GOODS OUTDOOR GEAR EXCHANGE & GEARX.COM Locally owned since 1995, offering the area’s best prices, service, and selection of gear and clothing for camping, hiking, climbing, paddling, and a life lived outdoors. Open 7 days. Burlington. (802) 860-0190.
PINNACLE SKI & SPORTS Stowe’ hiking center. Your one-stop shop this summer for customizable hiking boots, packs, accessories, knowledgeable hiking staff. We also rent bikes, canoes, and kayaks. Open daily 9:30-5:30. (802) 253-7222.
POWER PLAY SPORTS Everything to help you live life’s adventures. Full-service bike shop, new and used Trek and Giant bikes, service rentals, accessories. All team sports including lacrosse, baseball, soccer, and more. Open daily. 35 Portland Street. (802) 8886557. powerplaysportsvt.com.
WATERBURY SPORTS Recreation destination conveniently located in the heart of north-central Vermont. Specializing in selling, servicing, and renting bikes of all kinds. Wide selection of team sports equipment, camping gear, footwear, apparel. 46 S. Main St., (802) 882-8595. waterburysportvt.com.
SURVEYORS LITTLE RIVER SURVEY COMPANY Surveying, mapping. Boundary, subdivision and topographic surveys. Site plans, FEMA elevation certificates and LOMA’s. Forestry services available. Large document copying, scanning, reducing. (802) 253-8214, littleriversurveyvt.com.
TOYS & GAMES JOHNSON FARM, GARDEN, HARDWARE & RENTAL Toy extravaganza for the whole family. Educational toys, Legos, arts and crafts, outdoor games, board games, puzzles, trucks and tractors, science and stem kits. Schleich, Melissa & Doug, Ravensburger, Bruder, John Deere, more. Route 15, Johnson. (802) 635-7282, jhrvt.com.
STOWEFLAKE MOUNTAIN RESORT & SPA Leave the planning to us. Perfect wedding location in the heart of Stowe in any season. Indoor and outdoor spaces for weddings, receptions, or rehearsals. Spa bridal services from hair to make-up. (802) 253-7355, stoweflake.com.
TRAPP FAMILY LODGE From intimate ceremonies in our lodge to grand receptions under a tent with spectacular mountain views, we tailor to individual tastes and budgets. European-style cuisine, accommodations. (800) 826-7000, (802) 253-8511. trappfamily.com.
WINDOW TREATMENTS TINA’S HOME DESIGNS Hunter Douglas Blinds, shades, and shutters at discount prices. Draperies, over 1000 area rugs, stair runners, custom cushions, unique home furnishings. Free measuring, installation, and in-home consultation. 21 Church St., Burlington. (802) 862-6701, tinashomedesigns@aol.com.
WINE, BEER, & SPIRITS BLACK CAP COFFEE & BEER Awesome selection of Vermont, American and imported craft beers. Regular tasting events. Fresh coffee, authentic espresso, house-baked pastries, breakfast, sandwiches. Daily at 7 a.m. 144 Main St., Stowe, 63 Lower Main St., Morrisville. See us on Facebook.
BOYDEN VALLEY WINERY & SPIRITS Vermont’s award-winning winery, cidery, and distillery. Tastings, free tours, gourmet cheese plates. Two locations: Cambridge Winery & Tasting Room, (802) 644-8151; and Waterbury Tasting Room Annex at Cold Hollow Cider Mill, (802) 241-3674. boydenvalley.com.
FINE WINE CELLARS Fantastic wine selections from around the world. Great prices. From the rare to the exceptional value. Under $10-$100+ we’re nuts about wine. Please see our ad on page 2. (802) 253-2630. finewinecellars.us.
SHELBURNE VINEYARD ONCE UPON A TIME TOYS Ever launched an Estes rocket? Tested your skills on a ninjaline? Heard a baby DINO roar? Vermont’s most exciting store for 42 years. Lego/Playmobil, science/building toys, party/art supplies. Birthday? Come in for a free balloon. 1799 Mountain Rd. (802) 253-8319. stowetoys.com.
TRANSPORTATION & TAXIS PEG’S PICK UP/STOWE TAXI For all your transportation needs. Airport, bus, train. (Burlington, Boston, Montréal, New York). Errands and deliveries. Daily courier runs to Burlington. Full taxi service. (802) 253-9490, (800) 370-9490, (800) 293-PEGS.
SNOWFLAKE TAXI Local family owned business. New vehicles. Safe, reliable drivers. $2 per person/$3 per mile. 24-hour service. Flat rate to airports: Burlington/Boston/Montreal/New York. Delivery service available. (802) 253-7666. Book: snowflaketaxi.com.
TRAVEL & TOURS 4 POINTS BREWERY TOURS Vermont is home to some great microbreweries and several are close by. We pick up in the local area, make 5 stops and guarantee a good time. Call Rick at (802) 793-9246, 4pointsvt.com.
WEDDING FACILITIES CUSTOM ON-SITE YOGA Help set the tone for your event to be joyful, centered, and loving, with gentle yoga and meditation. Over 30 years experience. Kate Graves, Stowe Yoga Center. stoweyoga.com, kgravesmt@gmail.com. (802) 253-8427.
EDSON HILL Edson Hill offers you an exclusive, quintessential Vermont country estate with picturesque views, 23 luxurious guestrooms, and a talented culinary team to help create the wedding of your dreams. edsonhill.com, (802) 253-7371.
Taste our award-winning wines and enjoy touring our ecofriendly winery to learn about our adventure growing grapes and making wine in Vermont’s northern climate. Open everyday 11-5. (802) 985-8222. shelburnevineyard.com.
STOWE BEVERAGE Full-service wine, beer, liquor, mixers, snacks. Stowe’s best wine and beer selection. Best price in town on Vermont maple syrup. Cigars. Free local paper with wine purchases. 9-9 Monday through Saturday; Sunday 11-6. (802) 253-4525.
STOWE WINE AND CHEESE Choose from hundreds of wines, craft beers, artisanal cheeses, pates, gift baskets, maple syrup and all things Vermont. Taste in the bar, buy in the store. Mountain Road, Stowe. (802) 253-8606, stowewineandcheese.com or Facebook.
WOODSTOVES STOVE AND FLAG WORKS We sell, service and install wood, gas, and pellet stoves and fireplaces from quality manufacturers such as Vermont Castings, Wittus, Harman, Morso, Majestic, and Quadra-Fire. Two locations: Montpelier (802) 229-0150, Williston (802) 878-5526. stoveandflagworks.com.
YOGA & PILATES STOWE YOGA CENTER Gentle multi-level classes include guided meditation. Special series: chakra yoga and art, prenatal, chair yoga. Custom classes for your event on-site or at the studio: retreats, bachelorette, athletic recovery. Online schedule. 515 Moscow Rd. (802) 253-8427, stoweyoga.com.
SPORTS & WELLNESS CENTER AT STOWEFLAKE MOUNTAIN RESORT Fitness classes daily. Yoga (gentle, Kripalu, vinyasa, ashtanga, hatha, more) to Pilates and STOTT Pilates (mat, combination reformer, essential, more). All levels, walk-ins welcome. Class descriptions and schedule available at spaatstoweflake.com. (802) 760-7083.
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INDEX AARON FLINT BUILDERS 227 AJ’S SKI & SPORTS 65 ALCHEMIST 149 ALL DECKED OUT 216 ALLAIRE CONSTRUCTION 233 ANDERSON & ASSOCIATES 235 ANICHINI 135 ARBORTREK CANOPY ADVENTURES 7 BAGEL 180 BARRE TILE 218 BENCH 151 BERT’S BOATS 59 BIERHALL AT TRAPP FAMILY LODGE 11 BIRDS BE SAFE 194 BISTRO AT TEN ACRES 173 BLACK CAP COFFEE 161 BLACK DIAMOND BARBECUE 175 BODY LOUNGE 123 BOURNE’S ENERGY 185 BOUTIQUE 133 BOYDEN VALLEY WINERY & SPIRITS 155 BRAGG FARM SUGARHOUSE 65 BRENNA B INTERIORS 215 BRYAN MEMORIAL GALLERY 120 BUNDY MODERN 108 BUNYABUNYA 123, 127 BURLINGTON FURNITURE CO. 53 BURLINGTON MARBLE & GRANITE 207 BURLINGTON MATTRESS 203 BUTCHERY 25 BUTLER’S PANTRY 176 BUTTERNUT MOUNTAIN FARM 160 CABOT CHEESE OUTLET STORES 133 CAMARA SLATE PRODUCTS 226 CATAMOUNT FISHING ADVENTURES 65 CLOSE TO HOME 195 COCOPLUM APPLIANCES 193, 201, 213, 231 COLD HOLLOW CIDER MILL 157 COLDWELL BANKER CARLSON RE INSIDE FRONT COMMODITIES NATURAL MARKET 178 COMMODORES INN 173 COMPASS CONSTRUCTION 218 CONTEMPORARY DENTAL ARTS 141 COPLEY WOODLANDS 16 COUNTRY HOME CENTER 229 COUNTRY STORE ON MAIN 140 CUSHMAN DESIGN GROUP 217 DEPOT STREET MALT SHOPPE 176 DESIGN STUDIO OF STOWE 191 DOC PONDS 147 DONALD P BLAKE JR BUILDER 219 ECCO 137 ECK MACNEELY ARCHITECTS 207 EDELWEISS DELI 169 EDGEWATER GALLERY 107 EDSON HILL MANOR 171 EXPRESS CARE 10 FERRO ESTATE & CUSTOM JEWELERS 2 FIELD GUIDE 153 FINE WINE CELLARS 2 FLOOR COVERINGS INTERNATIONAL 215 FLOORING AMERICA 209 FLY ROD SHOP 67 FORGET-ME-NOT-SHOP 120 FOUNTAINS LAND 221 FOUR SEASONS SOTHEBY’S RE 45 GEOBARNS 225 GORDON DIXON CONSTRUCTION 217 GREEN ENVY BOUTIQUE 119 GREEN MOUNTAIN DISTILLERS 160 GREEN MOUNTAIN FINE ART GALLERY 111 GREEN MOUNTAIN FIREPLACES 215
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GREEN MOUNTAIN INN 169 GREEN RIVER RESERVOIR ESTATE 47 GREENSBORO GARAGE 139 HARRISON’S RESTAURANT 175 HARRY HUNT ARCHITECTS 213 HARVEST MARKET 148 HIGHLAND CENTER FOR THE ARTS 139 HIGHLAND LODGE 139 HOB KNOB INN BAR & LOUNGE 152 HOME LIFE INTERIOR DESIGN 228 IDLETYME BREWING CO. 167 IN COMPANY CLOTHING 125 INSIDE OUT GALLERY 127 J. GRAHAM GOLDSMITH ARCHITECTS 191 JAY PEAK VERMONT 49 JOHNSON HARDWARE RENTAL, FARM & GARDEN 33 JOHNSON WOOLEN MILLS 141 JUNIOR’S STOWE 179 KAISER HOMES 228 KANE ARCHITECTURE 195 KATHERINE GRAVES MASSAGE 63 KELLYCAN LAUNCH 802 31 KNAUF LANDSCAPE DESIGN 223 LAKE CHAMPLAIN CHOCOLATES 156 LAMOILLE VALLEY BIKE TOURS 54 LANDSHAPES 225 LAUGHING MOON CHOCOLATES 71, 180 LITTLE RIVER HOTGLASS STUDIO & GALLERY 113 LITTLE RIVER REALTY 205 LOEWEN WINDOW CENTER OF VT & NH 225 MAC NURSE 69 MAD RIVER ANTLER 108 MARTIN WERTH LANDSCAPING & EXCAVATING 233 MATTRESS & SOFA WAREHOUSE 233 MAYO RESIDENTIAL CARE 227 MCCARTHY’S RESTAURANT & CATERING 181 MCKENZIE MEATS 159 MICHAEL’S ON THE HILL 145 MILLER’S THUMB GALLERY 139 MONTSHIRE MUSEUM 135 MOUNTAIN LOGWORKS 209 MOUNTAINOPS OUTDOOR GEAR 35 NATURAL MATTRESS CO 223 NORTHERN VERMONT UNIVERSITY 39 NORTHWOOD GALLERY 143 ONCE UPON A TIME TOYS 123 OUTDOOR GEAR EXCHANGE & GEARX.COM 71 PAUL ROBERT ROUSSELLE ARCHITECT 221 PAUL ROGERS PHOTOGRAPHY 74 PEREGRINE DESIGN/BUILD 224 PERENNIAL PLEASURES NURSERY 235 PERSONAL FITNESS INTERIORS 67 PICNIC SOCIAL 153 PIECASSO PIZZERIA & LOUNGE 167 PINK COLONY 13 PINNACLE PHYSICAL THERAPY 54 PINNACLE HIKING CENTER 9 PIZZA ON MAIN 181 PK COFFEE 179 PLANET HARDWOOD 143 PLATE 148 RECOVERY ROOM INTERIORS 231 RED BARN REALTY OF VERMONT 221 RED BARN SHOPS 123 RED HOUSE FINE HOMEBUILDING 211 RESERVOIR RESTAURANT & TAPROOM 151 RIDE 74 RK MILES 224 ROBERT PAUL GALLERIES 109 ROCK ART BREWERY 175 SALON SALON 31 ST. JOHNSBURY ACADEMY 73
SELDOM SCENE INTERIORS 3 SHELBURNE VINEYARD 179 SISLER BUILDERS 193 SMUGGLERS’ NOTCH DISTILLERY 156 SMUGGLERS’ NOTCH RESORT 57 SPRUCE PEAK ARTS 23 STEEL CONSTRUCTION 182 STERLING COLLEGE 75 STERLING RIDGE RESORT 5 STOVE & FLAG WORKS 187 STOWE BEVERAGE & LIQUOR STORE 177 STOWE CABLE SYSTEMS 137 STOWE COUNTRY HOMES 221 STOWE CRAFT & DESIGN 121 STOWE FABRIC & YARN 137 STOWE FAMILY DENTISTRY 51 STOWE FAMILY PRACTICE 73 STOWE GOLF PARK 43 STOWE HARDWARE & DRY GOODS 235 STOWE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 69 STOWE ICE CREAM 152 STOWE KITCHEN BATH & LINENS 54, 131 STOWE MERCANTILE 117 STOWE MOUNTAIN LODGE GOLF 61 STOWE MOUNTAIN LODGE DINING 165 STOWE MOUNTAIN RESORT 1 STOWE PERFORMING ARTS 19 STOWE RESORT HOMES 15 STOWE SOARING 63 STOWE SUMMER EVENTS 21 STOWE THEATRE GUILD 22 STOWE VILLAGE MASSAGE 51 STOWE WINE & CHEESE 123 STOWE YOGA CENTER 63 STOWEBOWL 43 STOWEFLAKE RESORT INSIDE BACK SUNSET GRILLE & TAP ROOM 180 SUSHI YOSHI 144 SWIMMING HOLE 61 SYSTEM INTEGRATORS 37, 183 TEKTONIKA STUDIO ARCHITECTS 219 TIM MEEHAN BUILDERS 216 TINA’S HOME DESIGNS 227 TOPNOTCH RESORT & SPA 17 TRAPP FAMILY LODGE 11 TRES AMIGOS MEXICAN 151 TUNBRIDGE FAIR 22 VERMONT ARTISAN COFFEE & TEA 181 VERMONT CANOE & KAYAK 5 VERMONT ELECTRONICS 229 VERMONT ICELANDIC ADVENTURES 54 VERMONT TEDDY FACTORY 71 VERMONT TRAILWEAR 143 VILLAGE GREEN AT STOWE BACK COVER VISIONS OF VERMONT 115 VOLANSKY STUDIO 201 VON BARGEN’S JEWELRY 29 WAGNER HODGSON LANDSCAPE ARCH 189 WAKE ROBIN 211 WELL HEELED 27 WEST BRANCH GALLERY & SCULPTURE PARK 105 WHIP BAR & GRILL 177 WHISTLEPIG WHISKEY 171 WILLEY’S STORE 139 WINTERWOOD TIMBER FRAMES 227 WOODEN NEEDLE 140 WOODSTOCK KITCHENS & BATHS 226 YANKEE BARN HOMES 189 YELLOW TURTLE 123, 131 YOGA BARN 27 ZENBARN 165
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32nd Annual Hot Air Balloon Festival July 6-8, 2018
THE VILLAGE GREEN AT STOWE A Condominium Resort For All Seasons Offering affordable rentals for 2 nights or more
Our Town Homes Provide • Spacious 2 & 3 bedroom accommodations • Fully equipped kitchens • Fireplace • Cable TV • Majestic views from 40 acres of beautiful land, surrounded by the Stowe Country Club and Golf Course and Stowe’s award winning recreation path.
Amenities • 2 Pools (1 indoor) • Whirlpool Spa • Sauna • 2 Outdoor Tennis Courts • Recreation Center • Video Games • Ping Pong, Air Hockey and Pool Tables
1003 CAPE COD ROAD, STOWE, VERMONT 05672
802-253-9705 • 800-451-3297 Visit our website at www.vgasstowe.com for more info and rates