Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
In the heart of the heart of the fall arrives a month that is, somehow, out of its time. By October, the tenth month, the year is old. The golden light of the afternoon partakes of age, and of a certain honest weariness and well-earned rest.
But the curious thing about this long month is that it evokes not only the repose of age but also its devotion to memory, to the past. In October, as in no other month, the years - the decades - fall away.
Nowhere is this more true than in the foothills and narrow valleys of Vermont.
For 200 years, Vermont was mostly a farm state, and its landscape was an agricultural landscape: open, well-tended, domesticated.
The foothills of southeastern Vermont were once dairy country, although by the time I arrived, 20 years ago, dairying was mostly finished. One farm in the neighborhood still kept a few milkers, though, and it was there that I became acquainted with a particular local custom that is, I...
