Another successful delivery.
No, not Margaret delivering a new calf...us delivering Margaret so she can deliver a new calf.
We drove to Vermont on Friday to "deliver" Margaret to MapleWood Farm, the 300+ acre organic farm in Highgate, VT where she'll be spending the summer and perhaps more.
We met her mentors/farmers, Eric and Hanna Noel and their parents (who actually own the property). We also me Gabe and Justin, the two fellows who will be "interning" alongside Marg for the summer. (Justin worked with Margaret at the Brooklyn ecology center where she taught this past year and got her interested in working on the farm; Gabe is Justin's friend and after his agricultural summer begins his masters in classical languages [Latin]).
There's lots of cattle on the farm (spread? ranch? What do they call a beef operations in VT?) Plus lots of organic veggies. They sell "shares" in the harvest before the season starts, then the shareholders reap the hard work of Eric, Hanna, and the interns throughout the growing season. On Sunday Marg harvested radishes, a couple of kinds of lettuce, rhubard, and arugula and then divided it all up into 27 or so shares.
We on the other hand took advantage of the cultural offerings and didn't miss a tourist trap on the way home.
The Shelbourne Museum is a collection of collections. Art, sculpture, folk art, a 180 ft. lake boat, a covered bridge, wildfowl decoys, and most everything in between; all housed in a collection of 18th and 19th century buildings collected from all over New England.
It's impossible to take in on a single tour. It's like the Met or Natural History Museum. Too much in not enough time. Gotta go back!
Then there was the the maple syrup store, the wildflower store, and the cheese store, all pretending not to be stores, but a sugar house, wildflower garden and dairy. Infact, they've got just enough cover to be more than stores, but it's pretty easy to see through the window dressing. The were "real, as in real, retail outlets. But if you want wildflower seeds ($33.00), maple products ($56.00), or Vermont chedder ($22.00) ya gotta get it somewhere. (And at least these places have a certain home-made quality, not the studied "part-the-visitors-from-their-money" science of Disney World.)
The Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, on the other hand, was the real, real thing. But it's so underfunded and tucked away so far off the beaten path, it has the aura of a place run as a private playground for the members of the board of directors, not for the public.
Lots of great stuff, the raw material of a spectacular explanation of the maritime history of a critical place in American history (Lake Champlain: the path between Canada and the Hudson River), at a couple of critical times (French & Indian War, the American Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution). But so poorly marked, so poorly explained, and so without the interpetation that puts the collection in perspective....that you wind up looking and saying, "Yep, another old boat." One's old boat meter soon gets into the red zone and it all becomes a blur.
We also stepped back in time to the farm where my family spent a couple of weeks for a couple of summers in the mid-fifties. Ken and Lilly Atwood ran a dairy farm near Bridgewater Corners, VT (which is near Woodstock, VT). They took in boarders. Ken ran the farm. Lilly did the cooking. She had the reputation as the worst cook in VT, if not all New England.
Not that it mattered to a six or seven year old. (Enough maple syrup can make amost anything, at least at breakfast, okay to eat.)
But the memory of the milking, the bull, swimming in a cold stream, the poverty of the surrounding area, pulling the trigger on a .30-06 rifle we kids were using in a "play" and sending a slug through the ceiling (honest, I didn't know it was loaded!), riding on a tractor, helping harvest the hay, and the time spent with my Uncle Ken, Aunt Sis and cousins Carol and Eileen is the bedrock of life. (Hmmm...wonder if there are any pictures from that time.)
Anyway, this is about the third time I've driven past the old place in the last 40+ years. Each time it gets more and more run down, more and more depressing looking, and smaller. We stopped at a garden store next to the old place, but it was closed. Besides, the house looks so run down on the outside, I was terrified to see what it would look like on the inside.
The poverty in Vermont is probably as bad as it ever was, at least in some places.
Burlington has the look and feel of a cross between a propserous mill town, a college/education mecca, tourist destination and rich suburb. Which is precisely what it is.
The area around the Killington ski area is nothing but condos, Marriotts, and upscale-looking restaurants.
Go a few miles down the road and it's cars on blocks, junk in the yard, rust-streaked single-wides, and women who are clearly eating way too many carbs while the men are clearly drinking way too many beers.
Now I've been around enough farms to distinguish between hardworking operations, which come with a certain organized disorder, and a rural slum. In the area Margaret is living the family farm is alive and prospering, albeit on the back of incredible dedication and unmeasurable amounts of hard work.
But some places, like the old Atwood farm, there's a look of defeat. Buildings collapsing, paint peeling, shades askew in the windows, yellowed lace curtains half hung, junk piled up where it shouldn't be. You can almost smell the mildew seeping out from under the door; hear the music from the kids getting their culture from the tv and parents too tired, too uneducated, or too poor of spirit if not of body, to do anything about it.
We asked the young high-school-age hostess at Chow Bella (one of St. Albans' most upscale eateries -- it was okay but not great) what brought people to the area. "The maple festival," she said. I observed the festival was in April and I doubted people stayed from then until June.
We tried again. "I don't know," she said. "I'm trying to leave." I surrendered and asked our waitress. "I'm from Plattsburg (across the lake)," she reported. I dropped the topic.
Home now, I'd love to go back. Soon.
Maybe the Rutland Herald will be interesed enough in my journalistic skills to invite me up for an interview. (Rutland, along with the newspapers in Couer d'Alene ID; Wenatchee, WA; and Helena, MT all got incisive, hard-hitting writing samples, a brilliant cover letter, and a can't-be-beat resume along with a job application. I'm not sure what I'd do if any replied, but it's fun to see how long it takes for them to acknowldege my existance. (So far, the only response in a month of mailing has been from the HR people at the Herald.)
Can't wait to start the work week. Wonder what new wonders will unfold in Brookhaven?
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