FIELDTEST Vermont farmers have an advocate and friend in Professor Heather Darby
Story and photographs by JOSHUA BROWN AUGUST 30, 2019 I’m driving north on Route 2 to look for Heather Darby. “Not going to be on campus,” she told me very early this morning. “I’ll be at Borderview all afternoon. You can find me in the field or I might be in the barn.” After crossing the bridge off North Hero Island, I pass the tiny public library and St. Amadeus Church in Alburgh, out through the open pastures beyond the village, and pull over for a moment at a farm stand stacked with tomatoes and squash—the 130-acre Darby Farm. Here, Heather Darby and her husband raise dairy heifers, tend bees, and sell fruits and vegetables by the side of the road. Her great-great-greatgreat-grandfather, Jonathan Darby, started farming on this shore of Lake Champlain in 1800. The farm passed down to George Darby, then Ransom Darby, Aubrey Darby, Arthur Darby, and Alan Darby, Heather’s dad. In 2003, she took over the farm—father to daughter. But professor Heather Darby is not tending her own farm today. She’s busy tending all the farms across Vermont—which is why she’s driven her truck two miles north to Borderview Research Farm. A sharp left, within feet of the Canadian border, then a rough ride along Line Road leads to a neat white barn and hundreds of green rows and rectangles— corn, oats, rye, and dozens of other plants: research plots marked with pink and orange surveyor’s flags. Heather Darby comes bustling out of a shed, carrying a yellow box. “You found us,” she says with a big
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