Family

by Bethany M. Dunbar, July 24, 2010

I apologize for the gap in posts here, but I have a good excuse.  I’ve been spending time with family.  Jim and I traveled to Colorado to a family reunion.  He comes from a huge, welcoming, boisterous family of athletes — skiers, hikers, mountain bikers and people with horses and even yaks and peacocks.  So when I got back I was tired but happy.

I got to hike up to 9,000 feet one day, and we started at 6,700 feet which is 4,700 feet higher than where I live.  I had to go slowly, but I did it.  We got a free gondola ride back down and felt like we had earned it.  We did some mountain biking and soaked in the hot springs in Steamboat Springs where Jim grew up.

Jim’s father, Bill Bowes, reminds me in many ways of my father.  He was in the Tenth Mountain Division ski troops in World War II.  My dad was a radio man in a bomber airplane in the South Pacific.  These men are in their eighties and so incredibly tough, confident, and charismatic.  They saved the world.

We got back from this vacation in time to celebrate my mother’s 90th birthday with family and friends.  It was a beautiful day.  We had a picnic outside at my parents’ home, the stone house they built some 40 years ago.  My son cooked hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill while my niece and the neighbors’ kids swam in the pond.

So it seems a good time to post a couple of book reviews that show my roots.  These two are reviews I wrote for the Chronicle of books written by my uncle, Elliott Merrick.  He was my father’s brother and died in 1997.  One of his books, Green Mountain Farm, was written about his time in Craftsbury, Vermont.  Others are about his time in Labrador.  My father is a retired English professor and a poet.  The writing gene runs like a raging river through the Merrick side of the family.

On the way back from Colorado, traveling with Jim’s cousin’s son, Nick, who lives in Brooklyn, I mentioned my uncle and one of his books that has just been reprinted by North Atlantic Books in Berkeley, California.  True North.  I know that book, said Nick, who is in his twenties.  Somehow I wasn’t surprised as these stories seem to have a following that continues to grow.

The Long Crossing captures the spirit of the north

reviewed by Bethany Merrick Dunbar, the Chronicle, July 15,1992

The Long Crossing and Other Labrador Stories, by Elliott Merrick, published by the University of Maine Press in Orono, paperback, 136 pages.

For most people, the ’20s “roared” with activity in the cities.  For my uncle, the author of The Long Crossing and Other Labrador Stories, the ’20s roared with the sound of the rapids on the great rivers in Labrador.

Elliott Merrick left an advertising job in the city in the ’20s to volunteer at the Grenfell Mission on the Labrador Coast.  From this experience came much of his writing.  This collection is his eighth book, many of which are set in Labrador and thereabouts.

His best-known book locally is Green Mountain Farm, set in Craftsbury where he and his wife, Kate Austen Merrick, lived during the Depression.

Mr. Merrick met my Aunt Kay, as we knew her, at the Grenfell Mission.  She was the inspiration for Northern Nurse, another of his books and certainly one of his best works.  She is sketched also in a story called “Passing the Time” in this new book.  The story is written in the first person as Nurse Austen describes how she spends her time at the mission:

“I packed my clothes bag with spare socks and mittens in case we should get wet, and I took my sealskin boots on the chance of a thaw.  You never know what will happen on a trip.”

The trip is a long dogsled ride in bitter, below-zero weather, and Mr. Merrick describes it beautifully in his understated style.

“We hopped on again, tingling and excited, and all of a sudden a great joy flooded me.  It had been impossible to start, it was so cold and grim and miserable.  But here we were, miles from home already in the sunshine.  Already the hills of home were blue behind us, the sun warm, the dogs galloping, the komatik surging.  The daily miracle had engulfed us again, and I was ashamed that only an hour ago existence had been a burden and oblivion in my bed the only joy.”

She arrives at her destination, a cabin in the woods, to find a sickly family struggling to survive.  The mother has sores all over her face and body, having contracted a disease called septicemia.  The 11-year-old daughter has a badly scalded and infected leg, and a new baby is squalling constantly from hunger, a discharging umbilical cord, and diaper rash.

In the course of the story, Nurse Austen also treats an Indian girl with convulsions, a baby with snow blindness, and, among other patients, an 18-month-old boy with a swollen bean in his nose.

The title of the story comes from a letter Nurse Austen finally gets a chance to sit and read after everyone else is tended to, late one night.  She has a stack of letters.

“I was so sleepy I read only one.  It was summertime in Australia now, and the jacaranda trees were in flower.  My dear Aunt Myrna wanted to know, ‘How ever do you pass the time in that godforsaken place?’ “

Although some of this book is fiction and other parts true, it seems impossible and unnecessary to separate the two.  The book is certainly truer to the feeling of that time and place than a flat, factual account would be.  Reading it, you can feel what it would be like to spend months away from home on a trap line.  You can understand the relationship between a trapper and an Indian who makes off with some of the trapper’s grub, and how they might come to terms, as the title of this story describes, “Without Words.”

The focus of the book comes at the end, a novella called the Long Crossing.  It describes a journey attempted by three men in 1903 from the Northwest River village, up the Naskaupi and George Rivers to Ungava Bay.  The trip failed because the men took the wrong river, and winter set in before they could get back to civilization.

One of the men, Leonidas Hubbard, an editor of Outing magazine from New York, died in the attempt.  Two years later, his wife, Mina, made the trip herself and was the first to complete the long trek.

Another of the original travelers, Dillon Wallace, also made the trip separately the same summer as Mrs. Hubbard in 1905.  He arrived at Ungava Bay considerably later than Mrs. Hubbard.

Three separate books had already been published by the individuals when Mr. Merrick decided to tie the accounts together in one book.  Since there were hard feelings between the groups, this had not been done before.  The result is a fascinating tale of hardship and courage, egotism and generosity.

In a foreword, Mr. Merrick notes that the land and people of Labrador are much different today:

“Dogteams are rare or nonexistent.  Indians no longer fashion canoes by hand.  The upper flow of the Naskaupi River has been diverted.  The Grand Falls have been harnessed, and the Smallwood and Ossokmanuan reservoirs now cover land where many of the events recounted here took place.  However, much of that vast wilderness remains lonely and untouched.”

The book seems particularly timely in light of debate over Hydro-Quebec and the importance of creating more hydro power versus keeping that wilderness natural.  It captures the flavor of the north in a way that a slide show would fail.

Since I am a relative of Mr. Merrick’s, I probably have a biased view of his writing ability.  You can take my praise for what it’s worth, but I truly believe (as other family members have put it) that the guy really can “sling the lingo.”

For those who remember my Uncle Bud, he is now retired and living in Asheville, North Carolina, with his second wife, Pat.  My Aunt Kay died in 1989, the year my daughter, Katie, was born.  Bud still sails and writes, including a letter to his niece in Vermont once in a while.

Cruising at Last is an adventure to experience

reviewed by Bethany Merrick Dunbar, the Chronicle, October 20, 2003

Cruising at Last by Elliott Merrick; published in 2003 by The Lyons Press in Guilford, Connecticut; 250 pages; hardcover; $22.95.

When I think about sailing, I get a romantic notion of riding the wind and waves, searching for lost treasure — pieces of eight or doubloons or some such.

Cruising at Last makes me slow down, take a deep breath, and remember that the experience itself is the treasure.

I should admit my bias right here at the beginning.  Elliott Merrick, who died in 1997, was my uncle.  We shared more than the name.  We shared a value system that demands as much time as possible spent outdoors, and we shared a passion for writing.

He was so much older than my father, Addison, that he was almost like a grandfather to me.  But despite the age difference and the fact he lived in North Carolina, we also shared a few precious great times together.  One of those was when I was about six years old.  We had a sailing adventure in the thick fog that only confirmed for me the belief that my uncle was magic, a wizard of sorts.  How else could he figure out where the heck we were supposed to go in that stuff and get us there safely without even seeming the slightest bit perturbed.  We could see about two feet of cold gray water around the boat.  Everything else in the world was just dense white fog.

The boat itself was like magic.  Everything fit and worked.  The little bunks were so cozy, and the kitchen (I should say galley) was incredibly efficient.  My aunt Kay could make any meal in it.  The rocking of the sea was like a physical lullaby, and the craft itself was beautiful.  It was an extension of my uncle, who had built it himself.

This book was compiled after his death.  “Bud” (the nickname everyone in the family called him) gave his daughter, my cousin Susan Merrick Hoover, the manuscript before he died.  She was the driving force behind editing and publishing his last book.

The older generation in Craftsbury will remember Elliott Merrick for the ten years he lived there, part of it during the Great Depression.  He taught at Craftsbury Academy and at the University of Vermont, and he wrote a book about living here, called Green Mountain Farm.  He is the author of several books, including Northern Nurse, about my aunt Kay’s experience nursing in the wilds of Labrador where dog sled was the main form of transportation.

Readers who are familiar with Elliott Merrick’s writing will know that they can believe me — despite my bias — when I say that Cruising at Last is a book well worth reading.  The rest of you should take a chance.

Mr. Merrick’s writing is simple and clear, amusing and evocative of the moment.  Reading this book is the next best thing to cruising up the East Coast from Georgia to Maine and back.  It’s based on his real experiences and includes a description of building his 20-foot sloop, the Sunrise.

This is how the book is dedicated:

A boat is not just a boat, you know.  It is a winged Pegasus, or a Magic Carpet, taking you to new places, new friends, and new thoughts.

Millions of people would like to go cruising in their own sailboats.  If my wife and I at sixty and seventy could do it, so can they.  This book is for them.

Here is a description of sailing in Annapolis Harbor:

Three big tankers lay at anchor out in the bay, one half empty, the other two loaded.  It seems to be a favorite place where they wait for a dock or a cargo in Baltimore.  Something about tankers seen from a small boat is so monstrous, so uncompromisingly, unutterably ugly you’d have to rise early in the morning to even think up anything so hideous.

We galloped and surfed, leaping, pitching, surging, slowing between waves and gathering ourselves for another and another toboggan down the backs of hurrying combers.  First the stern kicks up and the bow is depressed as we fly in a whirlwind of speed that sings; then the stern sinks and the bow rises as we slow in the trough.  The sails are engines hurling us through the world, strong, light, so fragile and yet so successfully coping with nature’s savage forces they resemble a bird’s wings riding the gale; I kept jumping in my mind from birds to horses, our motion like riding some fleeting steed hour after hour, pursued and among the white horses of the sea.  We cannot quite plane as we used to in some of the centerboarders we have owned.  That is because of our keel, with its bulb on the bottom of the fin; also the weight of cruising gear.  But we feel as though we are soaring faster than the speed of sound, and we take joy in the knowledge that our keel boat stands up to very strong winds in a way no racing centerboarder can possibly equal.

Mr. Merrick did a lot of writing about the natural world, but his love of human nature shines through here as well.  A good share of the adventure of journeys like these is meeting other sailing and boat people.

After managing to get through two nasty thunderstorms in New York, not long after tacking by the Statue of Liberty, the Merricks found a spot to anchor.  While warming up with a cup of tea, Mrs. Merrick noticed a boy in a little plastic-foam sailboat.  His sail was ripped, and he had no oars.  He was trying to paddle with his rudder but making little progress:

“We couldn’t let that go on, so I quickly buoyed the anchor, cranked the outboard, and went over to him in handy little Sunrise. ‘You want some help?’ I asked.

“‘Yes please.’

“I tied a line to his bow and he came aboard.  He didn’t have a line of his own.  His sail was torn clean in half from leach to luff.  After taking it down, we motored back to our anchor.

“His name was Harold.  But that’s all we could learn.  We couldn’t get him to say anything except his name.  He wouldn’t take a cup of tea or a cookie.  He just sat on the stern deck clasping his knees, shivering occasionally, and looking a picture of misery.”

The Merricks delivered Harold to another boat headed to shore.

“Just before stepping across, Harold surprised us by putting out his hand, giving us a big smile, and saying, ‘Thanks a lot.’

“As the harbor chop rocked me in my bunk that night, I was thinking that odd things occur when you’re cruising, living a sort of catch-as-catch-can life, never knowing what will happen next.  It was a blessed relief for us, of course, to have made a safe passage through menacing New York City, but the event of the day was Harold…

“I decided New York City is big, but the return of Harold’s confidence was big, too.  I wondered if he’d grow up to be a sailor, often scared, sometimes brave, always trying to be more of the latter.”

A transformation occurs during the book as the Merricks become more knowledgeable and confident.  They find they can worry less and enjoy the experience all the more.

“So what is it, this cruising racket?” Mr. Merrick writes in the last chapter of the book.  “Just self-indulgence, just the luxury yachting has always implied?  No sir!  It is storms and calms, lonely beaches, rivers, harbors, clouds, the wind…

“Work, sweat, pain, exhaustion, strength, peace, and exhilaration go into it!  Like love, it is dangerous, for you can get hurt in your innermost being — as when you fail yourself and flunk out.  But — also like love — it’s ultimate ecstasy and joy in the world, the natural, unashamed, primitive, naked, lovely world.”

These words were written some time ago — maybe 25 years ago.  But they are possibly more relevant now than they were at the time of writing.  Not everyone can have the experience of building a boat and sailing up and back on the East Coast for as long as it takes.  But anyone can appreciate the feeling of freedom and opportunity such a journey would bring.  In times when it’s harder and harder to step out of the rat race to actually have such a wonderful adventure, Cruising at Last offers the next best thing — a well-written description of how it all feels and the hope that it’s not out of reach.

The other night at Parker Pie…

by Bethany M. Dunbar, June 25, 2010

The other night at Parker Pie…  That phrase is becoming much more common in my daily life.  Why not?  It’s right down the road from where I live.  The food is incredible — made with fresh local ingredients — I get to try a variety of microbrews, and every Thursday there is some kind of interesting live music.

Last night we heard Evan Crandell and the Too Hot to Handle.  This is an amazing group of college-aged jazz musicians.  The place was rocking out.  So much fun.

My sweetheart, Jim Bowes, works with Chris Crandell, Evan’s father.  The first time we saw them at the Langdon Street Café in Montpelier I realized I was looking at some familiar young faces — some of these guys had been coming to the blues jam at the Grange Hall in Greensboro for years each summer.

Sadly the blues jam has come to an end, but the music lives on and we heard it at Parker Pie last night.

About a week earlier we heard Mark Greenberg playing the banjo, and I thought, isn’t that the same musician who created the kitchen tunks CD I reviewed a few years ago?  Sure enough.  I’m posting that story below.

Thanks for the music everybody.  Keep it coming.

Take time out for a little kitchen tunk

by Bethany M. Dunbar, the Chronicle, 12-17-03

“Oh, those golden slippers, oh, those golden slippers.”

It is a familiar tune and has been heard in a million renditions in kitchens and town halls, church basements, school gyms, and fiddlers’ contests in pastures, in the rain, under makeshift wooden stages.

But if you think you’ve heard every version imaginable, think again.  A new compact disc called Vermont Kitchen Tunks and Parlor Songs includes a version of “Golden Slippers” done by Harold Luce who plays the fiddle, harmonica and piano all at the same time.  The listing in the pamphlet includes a parenthetical note explaining the situation:  “(foot operated rig).”  Apparently he plays the piano with the foot-operated rig while playing the fiddle with his hands and the harmonica with his mouth.

As I work on a review of this CD I find myself playing this song over and over again.  It’s not the quality of the music that is so astonishing.  It’s the idea that one guy could play those three instruments all at the same time.

A note in the pamphlet on Mr. Luce, who lives in Chelsea, explains that he started playing the fiddle at age 14 and in the early 1930s played with Ed Larkin’s Old Time Contra Dancers.

“While still in his teens, Harold devised an ‘outfit’ from wooden slats, rubber bands, an old harness, and sewing machine parts that allowed him to use his feet to play banjo accompaniments to his fiddling.”

This has to be quite a guy — not just a musician but an entertainer.  My bet is he was pretty popular with the ladies in those days.  He probably still is.

Of course if Mr. Luce was just getting started as a musician today he could do the same thing electronically by recording each instrument separately and blending them together into one recording.  But what a pale imitation that version would seem compared to the incredible talent involved in playing all three instruments at once.

This CD, compiled for a series called Music of the Earth, is all about pure, unadulterated music.  Raw music, we might say.  There is nothing pale about this stuff.  Its colors are rich and strong and deep.

Notice I did not say polished.  Kitchen music should not be polished, it should be spontaneous.  The only thing that really should be polished in the kitchen is the silverware and then only for Christmas.

The man who compiled this CD, Mark Greenberg, has a lengthy essay in the pamphlet.  He quotes Newton Brown of Hyde Park:

“If only the best birds in the woods did the singing it would be a pretty quiet world.”

This rough, wild music is as familiar to me as a comfortable chair or the woods where I ski.  I grew up in Craftsbury selling buttered ears of corn at banjo contests to raise money for our high school class trips.  The CD is like a reference for me — so many songs I knew so well but never knew their names.

I remember these tunes from kitchen tunks at the home of my high school buddy Poodie Griggs, whose whole family would get involved.  I remember Wilfred Guillette of Newport as a sort of unofficial patriarch of the fiddlers’ contests that eventually got too rowdy for Craftsbury Common and had to move to Hardwick.

Mr. Guillette is featured on this CD as is Ozzie Proof of Newport and Mariella Squire-Hakey of Glover.  Ms. Squire Hakey sings a sweet ballad, “Froggy Would a-Wooing Go,” unaccompanied.

We also find here La Famille Beaudoin doing French-Canadian classics, and the less-famous La Famille Maille who play “St. Anne’s Reel” and “The Road to Batach.”  The latter is one of those I know by ear but never knew the name of until now.

My only complaint about this CD is a silly one.  There are 49 songs (many are quite short) and only 24 musicians.  I am wondering about the absence of Bill Clark, Burt Porter and Friends, Tony Washburn and Dave Rowell and the Radio Rangers, Floyd Brown and his Country Buddies (he is mentioned in the pamphlet) and the regulars at the Wednesday morning tunks at the restaurant in Westfield like 92-year-old Evelyn Warner who still plays a mean harmonica.

Possibly these folks are, with a couple of exceptions, too young or contemporary to qualify as first-generation “Old Timers.”  If so, it’s just proof that the tradition is alive and well — at least in Westfield where the once-a-month coffeehouses still draw a crowd.  This leads me to suggest that Mr. Greenberg ought to get to work on another CD called Vermont Kitchen Tunks and Parlor Songs part two.  For short we could call it Son of Tunks.

Meanwhile I’ll be dancing around my kitchen while I do the dishes and listen to the first one.  Thanks to Mr. Greenberg and Multicultural Media for a fine, fine piece of work.

From the archives — the day of the auction

by Bethany M. Dunbar, June 11, 2010

New mown hay. Photo by Bethany M. Dunbar

In case anyone out there reading this is wondering why I write so much about agriculture and particularly dairy farming, I thought this article from the Chronicle archives might help explain my impulse.

I wrote this a short 19 years ago.  I am no longer married to Harvey Dunbar but still a part of his warm and wonderful extended family (or as one friend has called it, post-nuclear family).  The kids are all grown up and doing great things.  Time goes by.  Things change.

For 11 years I covered agriculture from inside of it.  I went to St. Louis to cover the farmer congress arranged by Willie Nelson back in the 1980s and met garlic farmers from far-flung states and all kinds of other farmers.  We had some basic things in common.  We had more in common than not in common.

For a year or two after our auction I did not do a very good job covering dairy farming or agriculture.  I guess I had to give myself a break.  I went to meetings still and wrote articles, but, well, it wasn’t the same.

In recent times I’ve had more enthusiasm for this beat as I see the organic movement growing and providing farmers more immediate control of their price and market, and energy farming options growing including methane digesters.  Consumers are becoming so much more aware of what they are eating and where it came from.  They want local food, healthy food.  This movement is exciting and promising for Vermont farmers, consumers, and everyone who likes to drive by a beautiful hay field.

Things are still wicked tough for the dairy farmers, especially farmers who ship to the conventional market, who have no control over the price they are paid.  That price is controlled by an antiquated federal system that must be changed.

We only have about 1,000 dairy farms left in Vermont and many more will go out of business this year.

I continue to write these stories in hopes that people will better understand these struggles and support the farmers both politically and economically as consumers.

Here’s the story I wrote on the day of our farm auction.

The day of the auction

by Bethany M. Dunbar, the Chronicle, May 8, 1991

I don’t remember the first glass of milk from our own cows that I drank, but I’m sure I’ll remember the last.

Jersey milk is extra rich in butterfat and protein.  Raw Jersey milk takes some getting used to at first — it’s almost as thick, creamy and rich as a milkshake, only not sweet.  But once you develop a taste, the store-bought stuff is a little like eating canned tuna fish when you’re used to lobster.

The last glass was on the day of our auction, last Monday.

• • •

April 29.  I didn’t sleep much last night, but apparently enough to dream.  I dreamed that along with the cows, my five-year-old son’s cross-stitch sewing kit that his grandmother gave him was up on the block.

I know why I had this dream.  It’s because Tristan considers a couple of these cows his, and he doesn’t think we should be selling something that belongs to him.  He’s right, so I have a hard time explaining to him why we are doing this.

Tristan is not here today.  It was his own decision not to be.  I’m sure he was right about this, too.  Tristan’s first sentence was, “Help Daddy milk cows.”

It’s easier for two-year-old Katie Ann.  She doesn’t really know what’s going on, and she’ll get to see more of her father now, after all.

My last glass of milk is as the sale begins.  I have to get away for a minute, it’s too emotional.  I go to the house and have a glass of milk.

In a minute I head back to the barn.  My husband Harvey is nervous.  He’s sitting on the side of the bank surrounded by friends — Bryan, Lowell, Ben, others.  Some of them may buy something, others are here just to see how he’s doing, and how the auction goes.  They are sitting on the bank watching while across the road, the auction starts with the machinery.

That stuff goes quick.  Generally, machinery isn’t bringing much these days with the price of milk as low as it is.  There are so many farm auctions, people can pick up equipment anywhere.  It’s definitely a buyer’s market.

Ours goes okay though.  Harvey seems to be relaxing.  Now for the cows.  This is the hard part to watch.  He goes in the barn, where he won’t have to watch it happen head-on.  He milks each cow as she comes in from being sold.  He had to wait until 10 p.m. to milk last night in order to have them full of milk for the sale.  They look better that way.

He stayed up almost all night, anyway, drinking coffee and sitting in the barn with his cows.  He had hired a man, Tim, to help us over the last week, and the two of them took shifts in the barn, keeping the cows clean.

Over the last few days, it’s been hard to tell whether our farm had the air of a wedding or a funeral.  The crew of Northeast Kingdom Sales came Saturday to set up the bright blue and white tent in case of rain.  As it turned out, it wasn’t needed and the sides are left off.  Anyway it certainly adds a festive air.

Under the tent is a plywood platform with a podium on it.  All this is at one end of our barn.  Sunday, the crew came with a pressurized spray cow-washing machine and hosed the girls off with Wisk detergent, one at a time.  They shivered in their tie-stalls, wondering what this was all about.  It’s not every day they get a bath and their tails combed.

It was only two weeks ago that Harvey made his final decision.  This came after months of wrangling and rassling with various options.  Expanding the herd size, then when that didn’t work making it smaller.  Nothing worked.  Our cost of production is still higher than what we make.

We figured over the summer we would lose about $2,000 a month.  I know this sounds like a lot, but others are losing more.  At the meetings, the unending meetings, farmers consistently say they are losing $3,000 to $8,000 a month.

These meetings, ostensibly to meet with politicians or advocates or other people who promise they have the power to do something, wind up being helpful in the way of support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous.  People stand up and tell about their situation, and a murmur of sympathy runs through the crowd.  We all feel better afterwards, knowing we’re not alone.  Farmers Anonymous, these should be called.

A few of the lucky ones are breaking even right now and will hang on.  I say lucky, but it’s not luck.  It’s men and women who are in their sixties or seventies and have farmed since they were old enough to carry a milk pail and have finally paid off their debt.  If you have no debt, you might be able to make it at the current price of milk.  But so few have no debt.

Others will hang on because they simply have no other choice.  The whole economy is bad, there are no jobs.  The price of milk has to go up again sometime, right?  They will try to weather this.

Some have no choice because they’ve already sold their development rights, so they have no chance to get money out of the farm.  Others can find nobody to buy the farm in the flat economy.

What will happen is the economy will pick up in southern New England long before here, so those people will have money to snatch up bargain properties in northern Vermont.  Ten-acre lots, their dream come true.  Vermont’s nightmare.  Vermont will start looking more and more like suburban Massachusetts.

Meanwhile, the farmers try to hang on.

The people to whom they owe money understand.  We had a call not long ago from one guy who breeds cows.  If we could send $44, we would be caught up to within 150 days, he said, sounding apologetic for even asking.  I said I would ask Harvey, I thought we could come up with the money.

But when the milk check comes, you have to pay the electricity or they’ll shut that off.  You have to pay certain bills, or other services will get shut off.  The nice guys are the ones you don’t pay, because they’re the ones that don’t take you to court.   Then you feel like shit when you walk into their stores to charge something else, or when you run into them in town.

Harvey and I and our two children have an option.  We will move in with his parents, become an example of how the extended family is coming back into fashion by sheer economic necessity.  He will work for our present landlords putting up feed, and in the winter make some income boarding heifers in our heifer barn.  We’ll also continue raising sheep on the side, and I have my job at the newspaper.

With that heifer barn, one day, if the price ever got better he could build on to it a little, raise some heifers and get back into dairy farming.

At the auction, Jeff, another farmer, tells me Harvey will be farming again in a month.  He means Harvey has farming in his blood.

That’s the trouble, farming does get in your blood and then what can you do?  The reason farmers don’t get any money is that they’re willing to work 18 hours a day, seven days a week with very rare vacations or even an entire day off, if only they can break even.

It’s like an addiction, and that’s why we need Farmers Anonymous.

Of course the milk dealers take advantage of us in this situation.  And you don’t see the price of milk for consumers dropping in the stores.  The middle-men, Kraft cheese and everybody else, are making out like bandits.  Long live Corporate America.

By the time I’m talking to Jeff about how long Harvey’s likely to stay out of farming, I’m a little more relaxed, too.  The third or fourth cow that sold brought $2,600, which is much more than we expected.

I start looking around at the crowd and find people looking at me with a certain expression.  How is she handling this, they wonder.  I alternate between relief that it’s going well and sadness at not wanting to see this part of our lives over.

I’m holding up pretty well until I start talking to Liz, Jeff’s wife, in the milkhouse.  Jeff wouldn’t even be able to go to his own auction, she says.  Things shouldn’t be like this.  I start to cry, and then she quickly changes the subject to a funny sign on the wall so I can think about something else.

It works, and I go to look for Harvey to see how he’s doing.  Farming is his dream more than mine, and I expected him to be heartsick today.  But he’s mainly relieved and gratified that it’s going so well.  A lot of important people in the Jersey breed in the state, and even some from New Hampshire and New York, are here today.

He’s pleased to see that 11 years of work, breeding our cows to the best bulls, raising the best heifer calves, has paid off.  Despite the low milk price, the price of cattle is still good.  One couple from Burke who bought 17 of our cows is just going into farming.  I hope they have good luck.

Our landlords, Al and Joan, bought a few.  So those will stay here, including some of Tristan’s pets.

As the auction rolls along, I am starting to get excited.  I see the subtle battles fought with slight tips of the head as auctioneer Reg Lussier rattles on about this or that cow.

The sad part comes at the tail end of the sale when our older cows go for $700 or so.  Eve is like one of the family.  She was named Eve because she was the first calf we had born to one of our own cows, 11 years ago.  She was the beginning of our beautiful herd.

Over the years, she gave us almost all heifer calves, and that cow family is one of our best.   She is a lovely cow, mostly black and dark brown with a funny white marking on her flank.  Her face is so wise.  I’ll miss her.

At about 3 in the afternoon, it’s all over.  We have done well.  The cows brought a lot of money.  It will all go to our main creditor — the check is even made out to them — but that will get us caught up to a reasonable level on that debt.

Harvey has saved out his round baling equipment, and that will be his way of making some income this summer.

By the end of the summer we should have the leftover day-to-day bills paid off.   We should be able to go into the stores in town without getting that sinking feeling.

The auction started at 11.  So much riding on so few hours.  But it went okay, and we’ll sleep better tonight.

Keep Current Use

by Bethany M. Dunbar, June 6, 2010

The Governor has vetoed a bill that would change the current use program.  And the Legislature has decided not to go back to try to override the veto.  This is good news for farmers, forest land owners, and anyone who cares about keeping the working landscape working — at least for now.

The Vermont Farm Bureau worked on the bill that the Governor vetoed.  The Farm Bureau supported it, with the idea that it would be better to have some reasonable fee increases than to have the whole thing cut even more — which is quite possible next year.

Current use is expensive.  But it works, and it’s the one thing that Vermont can really do to keep its remaining farms.  Dairy price policy is set nationally, and Vermont can’t change it by itself.  But property tax policy is a different matter.

The current use program allows landowners to pay a lower property tax based on “use value” instead of fair market value.  In other words, the land is taxed at a rate more in keeping with its working value than what it might sell for if it happens to be near a lake or mountain views.  Those views can really increase the real estate prices but don’t make the cows’ milk or vegetables or logs or firewood worth more.

In exchange for the lower taxes, the landowners agree to keep the land open and undeveloped.  If they take some of the property out of the program, it can be developed, but the landowner pays a penalty.

When money gets tight, current use is always looked at.  But this is the most important time to keep the program if we want to keep Vermont as a working landscape.  A recent poll shows that 97 percent of Vermonters have that goal.

One of the criticisms of the current use program has come from folks who point out that wealthy landowners or people who have recently moved to Vermont are taking advantage of it.

This view makes current use into a welfare program — which it’s not.  It’s about land use.

What frequently happens is the landowner allows a farmer neighbor to use that land for hay or pasture, sometimes for nothing.  So the landowner is gaining the tax advantage and so is the farmer.

If some land stays in farming, the benefit is not only to the landowner and the farmer.  It’s also to every business in town that has anything to do with agriculture or tourism.  What do you think the tourists come here to see?  Shopping malls?  Condominiums?  That’s what we will all get to look at if that farm and forest land gets developed.

In some towns in the Northeast Kingdom the businesses that happen to depend on agriculture or tourism might be every single business in that town.  No joke.

So thanks to Governor Jim Douglas for vetoing the legislation that would have increased fees.  From an economic point of view, current use should be absolutely the last program that gets cut in state government.  It’s basic to this state.  We just plain need it.

Not that I have a strong opinion about this or anything.  What do you think?

Hear, hear for local beer

A growler of Abner for later. Photo by Bethany M. Dunbar

by Bethany M. Dunbar, May 30, 2010

Congratulations to Shaun Hill and the rest of the folks at Hill Farmstead Brewery in Greensboro for a wonderful grand opening party yesterday.

We tried Edward and Abner and got our T-shirts, glasses and even took home a growler for later.

The live jazz music was great, and we had a good time visiting with all kinds of people who turned out to give the new brewery a try.

It definitely felt like the start of something good.  Waiting in line for a glass of this beer reminded me of waiting in a line in college back at the University of Vermont in the late 70s when a couple of guys were making ice cream.  Okay, I know, it’s making me sound old, but those two guys were Ben and Jerry.  The ice cream was worth the wait and everyone knew it.  Everyone in those lines was happy to be there it felt the same way yesterday.

The food at the Hill Farmstead Brewery, made by Laura Thompson of Parker Pie, was incredible.  I have never had a trout cake before, but I sure hope I get a chance to have another one someday.  That was just plain amazing.

Parker Pie is another great local phenomenon, and if you haven’t been there yet, what are you waiting for?

The Chronicle’s story about Hill Farmstead Brewery is up on our web site, so I hope you will check that out.

Memorial Day weekend is the first long weekend of the summer.  For news reporters it’s a long work weekend, but I got kind of lucky this year and did not have to work Saturday or Sunday, just Monday.  And Monday’s work will be really enjoyable — covering Memorial Day ceremonies in Barton and working on processing all the photos everyone else takes.  The weather is pretty great.  I’m hoping everyone is having a wonderful long weekend.

Are you putting in a garden?  Having some kind of awesome local food?  Kayaking, hiking, riding bikes?  How are you spending your first long weekend of the summer in this wonderful weather?  I hope you are having a great one.  The summer feels full of potential right now.

Thanks for reading.

It’s a small world in offbeat animal news

by Bethany M. Dunbar, May 21, 2010

This is the osprey Tanya Sousa rescued in Coventry. It only lived about a month. Photo courtesy of Tanya Sousa

The osprey died.  The moose wandering around in Barton was killed by a Fish and Wildlife warden because it seemed to have something wrong with it.

But there is some good news to report in Mutual of Barton’s Wild Kingdom (as Roland Lajoie of WLVB radio called it lately — thanks Roland).

Peter Lowry got his giant tortoise back.  And Pete the moose is going to get a pardon of sorts.

More on Pete the Moose later.

As for the tortoise, it turns out the person who had taken it had left it with someone else, and that person saw all the news stories and realized the creature was stolen.  She called Peter, and as a result the tortoise is home, safe and sound.

That’s a happy ending.

Not so for the moose wandering around in Barton Village.  I saw it (photos are posted elsewhere on this blog) trying to get into Dan McMaster’s garage and walk onto the front porch of his house.  So I knew the moose, which seemed to be a young female, was not thinking straight.  Still it did not look skinny, its fur was shiny and thick, it did not look sick.  When it did not go back to the woods for a number of days, a Fish and Wildlife warden decided, based on his experience, it was not healthy and shot it.  No tests were done.  It doesn’t seem right.

The other animal story I have written lately ended sadly as well.  Tanya Sousa rescued a stranded osprey that had been shot by some yahoo near her home in Coventry.

The bird lived for about a month after that, thanks to her action and the efforts of a rehabilitator named Craig Newman whose nonprofit organization took the bird in and tried to rehabilitate it.

His best efforts failed, and the bird died.

Tanya is trying to make something good out of something really sad right now.  She’s working on fund-raising to help Mr. Newman’s organization continue to do its good work rehabilitating birds when possible and releasing them back to the wild.  The organization, called Outreach for Earth Stewardship, cares for 13 birds at Shelburne Farms, including an American kestrel and owls.  Birds that can’t be released are kept for educational purposes, in hopes kids who see them close-up will grow up to be people who won’t shoot them.

I am very much a supporter of hunting, but good hunters don’t use a magnificent creature like an osprey for target practice.  Good hunters don’t shoot a bird like that by accident, either, because good hunters know what they are shooting at — always.  It is a federal crime to shoot an osprey, and if anyone knows who did it, they should report that person.

Here’s where the small world part comes in.  My daughter, Katie, a student at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine, is studying bobolinks and other grassland birds this summer as part of her education in the major of psychobiology.

Her study takes her to Shelburne Farms — where the birds Mr. Newman cares for are housed.  Hopefully she will get to meet him and see the birds he’s taking care of there.

Back home at the Chronicle’s web site, we are starting to post some of the current week’s news stories, in an ongoing effort to collaborate with VTDigger.

This week we are featuring the news about the Town Meeting in Albany about the Lowell wind project, and a new brewery in Greensboro, Hill Farmstead. We got a chance to try it, and boy is it nice!

Hear, hear for great beer!

What blogs do you read?

by Bethany M. Dunbar, May 14, 2010

Every so often I look through the Word Press blogs kind of randomly to see what’s out there.  It’s interesting to look, and I always wonder what else is out there that I’m probably missing.  Some of the photography blogs in particular are pretty fascinating.  So dear readers, I am hoping you will post comments here to tell me about your favorite blogs because I’d like to check them out.

One blog I like is written by a friend of mine, Bethany Knight.  It is called Tender Loving Calling. She posted a blog recently that included a link to something called the Five Tibetan Rites, and holy cow, this thing is changing my life.  It’s five simple exercises (notice I said simple not easy).  I’m finding that if I can do them each morning I do not have back pain.  They involve spinning, stretching and a sort of reverse push up.  It’s amazing.

For the past couple of years I always seem to wake up with a stiff or sore lower back.  Over the course of the day it often loosens up, or sometimes it doesn’t.  But the first time I did these exercises it felt fine right away and felt fine all day.

More and more in life I realize that different things work for different people.  As I get older I am more willing to try this and that, except not drugs so much.  But changes in diet, exercises, new blogs to read.  Sure, why not.

I am running again this spring at least a few mornings a week to try to lose weight.  Plus it makes my dog really happy.

Featured on the Chronicle’s web site this week are stories about diversity, the junior chef competition, and how local foods can help the local economy.  Plus we are putting up more bonus photos of events we have covered.  Pretty soon you will see some extras of the Orleans Central Supervisory Union and Lake Region Union High School spring concerts taken by Peter Cocoros.  He sells prints, so if your child is in there and you want a nice 8×10, give him a call.  He lives in Barton and he’s in the phone book.

Pete took some of the first photos the Chronicle published 30 years ago.  He is a veteran, a talented photographer and trumpet player.  I have to give him credit for making the switch to digital.  Like most of the other photographers I know, once he made the switch he found he loves what the digital cameras can do.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to give me some blog suggestions.

Mother’s Day

by Bethany M. Dunbar May 9, 2010

My mother, Helen Ellis Merrick of Craftsbury, will be 90 years old in July.  I am still learning from her.

Hi Mom! Helen Ellis Merrick. Photo by Bethany Merrick Dunbar

She has an enviable appreciation for moment-to-moment life — the beauty of the clouds, going for a ride to get ice cream, the neighbors’ kids, her family.

For Mother’s Day today, we all went out to brunch, and I gave my Mom and my sister little mother’s day cards sealed with sealing wax.

I tried to express on it my thanks for everything she has done.

Here are some of the things I said and I remember:

Mom always drove the neighborhood kids to the basketball games.  In junior high, there was no money for a bus, so Mom was the bus.  She went to all those games and never acted bored, but she must have been.  The kids in the group thanked her by pitching in to buy her a little salt and pepper set shaped like squirrels hanging on tree branches.

We spent our summers in Tamworth, New Hampshire, and in those days Mom was the one taking us kids for ice cream.  She took us to go swimming, to drive-in movies and to horseback riding lessons.  She didn’t come hiking with us, but once when we went backpacking and camped out on the river there was a thunderstorm.  My sister and our friend Lynne and I were soaking wet but still having a great time, lying there in wet sleeping bags reading out loud from My Side of the Mountain.

Pretty soon we heard, “Hello!!”

Mom was worried that we got struck by lightning.  I still to this day don’t know how she found us but she did.  Once she could see that we were okay, she left us until we were ready to come home and get dry inside.

Mom told me to wash my apples before I eat them, and to eat my spinach and don’t take medicine unless I really, really need to, and be careful with my money.

Mom grew up in Montclair, New Jersey, the daughter of an architect.  She was a Smith College graduate like her mother.  During World War II she worked on quality control at the airplane factory called Wright Aeronautical.

After my parents moved to Vermont my mother worked for the state of Vermont, Health Department, in the Women, Infants, and Children program.  She always said it was a really good experience because she got to know what life was like for the people in the program who were struggling to make ends meet every day.

My mother is an artist.  She used to make some income from selling house portraits — she painted people’s houses from photographs.  She also made a map of the whole town of Craftsbury with the names of everyone who lived in each house at the time of the map.

Mom taught me that it’s okay to express your emotions.  If you cry when you are happy, you’re kind of crying and kind of laughing.  She named that craphing, and that’s okay too.

We do it a lot in our family.

It always makes me feel very, very lucky.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms and kids out there.  How did you spend your day?

A new play by David Budbill

The cast of "A Song for my Father" at Lost Nation Theater. Photo by Francis Moran Photography

by Bethany M. Dunbar, April 29, 2010

When I was in junior high at Craftsbury Academy, a poet came to our school to get us started writing poetry and thinking about poetry in a different way.  The poet was David Budbill of Wolcott, and his poems were gritty tributes to real people — our neighbors in fact.

These poems were so real and raw that they freaked people out.  There was a poem about a pissing contest between two boys trying to hit the highest branch on the tree.  There was a poem about the two mentally disabled guys who walked on the side of the road together every day.

They were poems about survival and chain saws and neon beer lights in the window of the store.

Parents objected.

Pretty soon we had a whole downright town fight about it.  I’m proud to say that my dad, Addison Merrick, himself a poet who taught English at Johnson State College, stood up for David, the program and the poems.

The whole thing certainly made an impression on me, and I have been a friend and fan of David’s ever since.  So I was pretty excited to hear that he had a new play out.  It’s at Lost Nation Theater in Montpelier, and it’s called, “A Song for my Father.”

It’s real and raw.  It’s about struggles and guilt and hope and disappointment and resentment.

It’s wicked powerful, and I highly recommend that you go see it.  I am posting my review here along with an interview I did with David.

If you have seen it, I’d love to hear what you thought — post me a comment here if you are in the mood.

New on the Chronicle’s web site are bonus photos of events we have covered that we can’t fit in the paper.  We’re going to start running these each week.  I hope you’ll take a look.  Thanks.

“A Song for my Father” is brilliant, powerful and uncomfortable

by Bethany M. Dunbar, the Chronicle, April 28, 2010

MONTPELIER, Vt. — Don’t go to see “A Song for my Father” if you are looking for an evening of light or mindless entertainment.

You will leave the theater emotionally drained and yet weirdly hopeful and wanting to talk to your father, or your son, or anyone else in your life remotely resembling a family member.

David Budbill’s new play is brilliant and powerful and explores areas within difficult relationships that people often don’t want to explore.

The play is a tribute in a way, but it’s not a comfortable thing to watch.  It’s about a father and son who try to connect but have trouble despite their best intentions and the fact that they love each other deeply.

Randy Wolf, the son, has a refrain he seems to keep using.  He was trapped by circumstance.

His father is too.  Aren’t we all?

And yet the circumstances that trap Randy are less severe than those his father, Frank, endured.

Frank is a streetcar driver in Cleveland, Ohio, who gave his son a better life than he had for himself.  He made sure his son got a high school and college education.  A tea-totaller, Frank spared his son from the rampages of an alcoholic father that he suffered as a child.  Young Frank quit school in seventh grade to support his mother and three sisters.

And while Frank is proud of his son, he doesn’t understand him and resents him.

“All that pride and self-esteem floated on a sea of rage,” says Randy.

The most intense scene in the play comes when Randy challenges his father to do some role-playing.  He suggests that Frank play the part of his own father, and Randy will play the role of Frank as a child.  Frank’s father is coming home from a three-day bender.  His mother tells young Frank not to say anything, but even so, his father sees the look in his wife’s eyes and loses it, taking out his own unhappiness with himself on his wife and son, beating his wife.  Young Frank attacks his father, and the two end up on the ground, wrestling.  Frank (playing his father) is screaming and crying.

Randy tries to call it off, but it’s too late.

“I need to hurt somebody.  Why do I always have to be the good guy?”

Frank does hurt somebody, but not by attacking him physically.  He insults his son’s decisions in his life.  He doesn’t like his clothes, wonders what kind of a trade is poetry and what kind of a place to live is Vermont?

Precious, smug, clean, and self-righteous, he says.

“You know philosophy and poetry, but you don’t know a sheet metal screw from a wood screw,” he says.

“I keep telling you, I’m no suit,” is Randy’s reply.

“A Song for my Father” tackles these serious questions not only with dramatic intensity but with humor as well.

Frank is a flirt, and his attempts to get his nurse into bed with him at the end of his life are classic.

“Flirting and squirting are not the same thing,” he tells his son.

When Randy’s mother dies, Frank remarries, a woman named Ivy.  Ivy is played by Ruth Wallman, the same actress who played his mother.

When Randy first meets her, he is astonished and remarks that she looks just like his mother.

Photographs of Cleveland in the 1940s are projected in the background.  Frank reveres the industries there and challenges Randy’s idea of the meaning of the word pollution.

The cast of this show is spot-on.

Robert Nuner as Frank is perfectly prickly, proud and classy, even when he is suffering dementia.  He makes a cheap cigar and a lawn chair look better than a golden throne and caviar.

John Alexander plays Randy and doesn’t even seem to be playing a part.  He seems to be telling a story from his own point of view, including his respect of his father, his frustration, his desire to understand and appreciate his father, and his wish that his father would understand him.

Tara Lee Downs is just right as Nurse Betty, putting up with Frank and even becoming his friend.  You have the idea Nurse Betty might have been rooting for Frank a little when he peed on the bushes at the nursing home.

Ruth Wallman is great as Ruth, Randy’s dead mother, and as Ivy, the new wife.  Her performance of the scene when we are introduced to Ivy as she telephones a friend describing how the Lord took the steering wheel to guide her through the fog one evening is just fantastic.

Congratulations to David Budbill and Lost Nation Theater.  This show runs through May 9.

Budbill discusses “A Song for my Father.”

by Bethany M. Dunbar, the Chronicle, April 28, 2010

WOLCOTT, Vt. — The father character in David Budbill’s new play, “A Song for my Father,” is based on the author’s own father, who died more than ten years ago.

The play explores the tension between a working class father who drove a streetcar in Cleveland, Ohio, and a college-educated poet son who lives in Vermont.

In an interview Monday, Mr. Budbill said he did not actually grow up in Cleveland.  He left when he was ten years old.  And his father did not actually hate Vermont, but many aspects of their relationship are reflections of his own.

Asked if he could have written this play while his father was still alive, he said no.

“I wouldn’t know enough.  I wouldn’t feel enough.”

He said it’s not that he would not feel free to express all that, but he needed more time to understand it.

Mr. Budbill said so far, feedback from people who have seen the play has been all good, without exception.  He is surprised at how many people who see it tell him about their own relationships with their fathers or similar experiences.

Asked how he managed to write something so universal, he said, “I had no idea it was as universal as it is.  I was just telling my story.”

He said it’s a good example of the fact that, as a writer, in order to be universal you have to be specific.

Mr. Budbill said after four nights, the play is already changing.

“Plays are like kids.  They grow up,” he said.  “As they get older, they get more mature, and they understand themselves better.”

The play will be on the Lost Nation Theater stage through May 9.

Mr. Budbill said he is famous for driving actors crazy by tinkering with the play and rewriting it after they have already memorized their lines.  This time he promised not to do that, but he’s got ideas for changes that might be made at some point.  He’s working on four monologues by Randy, the son.

Andrew Doe is the director, and Mr. Budbill said he and Mr. Doe knew who they wanted to play each of the five main characters, and they were lucky enough to get these exact actors and actresses to take it on.  One is from Burlington and one is from Grand Isle, so the time commitment on their part is huge.

“I’m delighted with the production,” he said, and he considers the intimacy of the setting at Lost Nation Theater exactly right for this show.

Asked if he would be the same kind of poet if he had stayed in Cleveland, he said he has wondered about that for a long time.

“I think I would have been a poet similar to the kind I am now, but I don’t know,” he said.  One thing would be the same.  “I certainly think I would have been a poet of the working class if I lived in Cleveland.”

Mr. Budbill said his own father wanted to live in the country and dreamed of having a chicken farm.  He used to visit his son in Wolcott fairly often and would sit on the front porch, look out at the view, and say, “You’ve got it, Bud.  You’ve really got it.”

That scene shows up in one of Mr. Budbill’s poems.

“In a very serious way, my life is a fulfillment of his dream,” he said.

Love your broccoli

by Bethany M. Dunbar, April 24, 2010

How do we get children to eat better food?  Have them grow it.  Our First Lady Michelle Obama is making a great example with her garden at the White House.  Here in Vermont there is a program that is spreading rapidly throughout Vermont called Farm to School.  It’s getting children involved and guess what?  They love their vegetables when they grow them themselves.

If only George H. W. Bush had gone to school in Vermont.  He might have been a broccoli lover after all.  Then he could have set a better example.

Posted here is my story about this program which, in my opinion, every single school in the country should join — or start their own.  It not only means better nutrition for children, it connects local farmers with the schools.  In this case, the program is connecting with senior meal sites as well.

My only complaint?  They haven’t published a cookbook.  But you can get many of the recipes from their annual calendars.

Great work, kids.  Oh, and great work by the adults running this program too!

Green Mountain Farm to School program is growing — in more ways than one

Eli Petit enjoys a quiet moment of reflection in the sunflower house in the Coventry Village School Garden of Life. Photo courtesy of Green Mountain Farm to School.

by Bethany M. Dunbar, the Chronicle, April 7, 2010

NEWPORT — Five more schools are joining the Green Mountain Farm to School program this growing season.  So the chances are good children in those schools will soon be clamoring for more rutabagas.

Katherine Sims, the executive director of the program, collects comments from children, hot lunch cooks, teachers, parents and anyone else involved in farm-to-school programs.  One of her favorites is from Becky Koennicke, food service director at Glover School, who said:

“Can you grow me more rutabaga?  The rutabaga we had last year was really well received.”

Another cook commented that if any particular food is from the school garden, the kids will eat it.  It’s that simple.

The culture of growing your own food is not foreign to many kids in Northeastern Vermont schools.  If their parents don’t do it, their grandparents probably did.  Ms. Sims is just trying to bring that culture back so that local schools serve food that comes from the neighborhood, children learn about that food and grow some themselves, and the grandparents share recipes and advice for cooking and preserving it.

“We have really, small, strong, close-knit communities,” she said, and the local agricultural heritage means the Northeast Kingdom can lead the way.

“It feels like an issue whose time has really come,” she added — and not just here.  Michelle Obama is planting a garden with local children at the White House, and all over Vermont there is a ten-year strategic Farm to Plate planning process going on to make more connections between local farmers and consumers.

Green Mountain Farm-to-School is working with schools from Hyde Park to Holland and at least 24 farms in Northeastern Vermont.

New schools this year will be elementary schools in Newport Center, Brighton, Morgan, Charleston and Craftsbury.  So far the program has focused on elementary schools, but Ms. Sims said they will soon be working with Lyndon Institute and have been talking with North Country Union High School and the junior high.  At that level, the students in marketing, horticulture, and culinary arts classes could get involved.

Working with high schools is a bigger job, and it’s a chance to get much more local food into school systems.  Farm-to-school coordinator Joanna Dillan said Lyndon Institute uses three bushels of apples a week and 200 pounds of ground beef.

Sometimes these ingredients cost a bit more, but often they don’t because shipping is less expensive.  Local apples turn out to be cheaper than apples shipped from Washington state.

Local ground beef might cost a bit more, but Ms. Sims believes the extra cost is worth it.

“It’s an investment in the health of our kids and our economy,” she said.

The program started in 2006 at the Jay-Westfield School.  It is funded one-third from individual and corporate donations, one-third from grants, and one-third from program fees.  Total revenues were $106,748 in the fiscal year ending on June 30, 2009.

Terry Lumbra of the Holland Elementary School prepares roasted roots for a taste test.

Originally Ms. Sims was the one staff member, but at this point there are six people working for the program.  Besides school gardens, the program arranges farm field trips for students and recently started making connections with four senior meal sites as well.

“What’s neat about working with seniors is they have so much they can share with us,” said Ms. Sims.

She said one senior told her that the corn bread recipe they were taste-testing one day tasted just like her grandfather’s old recipe.  The recipe has maple syrup and yogurt in it, so the corn bread is quite moist.

As the program has grown, more ideas have come out for improvements and expansions.

Farm-to-school has typically been part of the after-school program in schools that have an after-school program.  But Ms. Sims is happy to coordinate with the curriculum.  Students who were studying Native American culture could grow a “three sisters garden.”  That is a garden with winter squash, beans and corn all in one spot — not in rows.  That way, the squash leaves provide shade to keep the weeds out.  The corn stalks provide a place for the bean vines to grow, and the beans help fix nitrogen in the soil which the corn plants need.

At Albany Community School last year, there were not enough students in the after-school program to get the garden planted.  So Ms. Sims said they decided to recruit some helpers from each grade.  Each class identified a vegetable they would like to plant, and they were responsible for that particular row on planting day.

This accident worked out so well that the coordinators will incorporate it into other schools in the future as a way to get everyone involved.

Ms. Sims said the school gardens are planted with crops that will mostly be ready after school starts in the fall, but there is work to be done in the school gardens in the summer too.

If the school already has a summer program, students in that program can help with the school garden.

“This year we’re looking at a week-long garden camp,” she said.

Ms. Sims hopes to get the Agency of Agriculture’s mobile freezing unit up to the area to help with processing some of the vegetables.  She mentioned the possibility of a big “processing party.”

Here are some comments from students, who were answering a question about what they learned:

“I have learned that fruit is good for your body,” said Shane Craig, who is in second grade in Holland Elementary School.

“I learned how to make pretzels,” said Nick Winters, in grade four at Lowell Graded School.

“I learned about the germ, bran, endospem and stalk,” said Kylie Wright, in fourth grade in Coventry Village School.

“I learned, ‘Don’t yuck my yum,’” said Sam Austin, who is in second grade in Troy Elementary School.

Ms. Sims explained that students are asked not to say that a food they don’t like is awful or nasty because someone else might really like it.  Instead, students are asked to just say they don’t care for it.

Lowell Graded School is soon going to do a taste test of a fruit and oatmeal bar recipe to see if it would be a good recipe to add to the school lunch menu.  The recipe was provided by Amy Masi, who is a parent:

¾ cup firmly packed brown sugar

½ cup granulated sugar

8 oz. vanilla or plain yogurt

2 eggs, lightly beaten

2 tsp. vanilla

2 Tbsp. milk

1 cup all purpose flour

½ cup whole wheat flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. cinnamon

½ tsp. sat

3 cups old fashioned oats

1 cup diced fruit

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In a large bowl, combine sugars, yogurt, eggs, milk and vanilla; mix well.  In a medium bowl combine flour, baking soda, cinnaomn and salt.  Mix well.  Combine wet and dry mixtures.  Stir in oats and fruit.  Spread dough onto bottom of ungreased 13 by 9 inch baking pan.  Bake 28 to 32 minutes or until light golden brown.  Cool completely on wire rack.  Cut into bars.  Store tightly covered.

To find out more about Green Mountain Farm-to-School, look at the program’s web site:  www.greenmountainfarmtoschool.org.

Salad taste tests ready to try. Photos courtesy of Green Mountain Farm to School.