Talk with Black farmer Earl Ransom, owner of Rockbottom Farm in Strafford, about farming in Vermont and you know right away his success is unique and underlines a bigger issue that local Windham County farm initiatives for BIPOC people are trying to address.
“I was born here and raised here, but the people who seem most alarmed by the fact of me tend to be from not here,” says Ransom.
The 48-year-old Ransom, co-owner of Rockbottom Farm with his wife Amy Huyffer, manage their land organically and tend a herd of about 70 Guernsey cows on 600 acres in Strafford. They also own Strafford Organic Creamery.
Ransom's father had moved to Vermont in 1963 and bought an old, 100-acre farm “for cheap,” hoping, his son says, “to be an artist and a poet.” He founded a commune called Bryn Athyn. Several different types of communes and intentional communities followed.
Landmark College conferred an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters degree to Jim Baucom during a ceremony for retiring faculty and staff on May 22. Baucom was a full professor in the School of Education when he retired from teaching at the close of the spring 2020 semester. He was...
Windham Southeast offers free meals this summerBRATTLEBORO - The Windham Southeast School District will again offer free meals this summer for anyone 18 years and younger, from June 21 to Aug. 20. Pick up breakfast and lunch Monday through Friday at Dummerston Town Office (10:30 to 11 a.m.), Guilford...
The DeWitt Block, a long-empty piece of history downtown, is about to be given a new life - 19 mixed-income housing units and a ground floor co-working space that will look out onto Flat Street and across the Whetstone Brook. Standing next to the Brattleboro Transportation Center, the former Sanel Auto Parts store was constructed more than 100 years ago as a wholesale grocery warehouse. “This building has been vacant for a long time,” Skye Morse, a partner and investment...
For people of color, one impediment to farming is lack of access to farmland. It cannot be overlooked that a generational wealth gap exists and has only grown for people of color, preventing them from owning land and other assets that can accrue value over time. By being marginalized for so many generations, people of color have not had the wealth - including farmland - passed down over time that white people have. And, over those generations, the gap has...
The Soubrettes will present a concert on Sunday, June 13, at 4 p.m. on a popular meeting platform (un-named here to deter “bombing”) and Facebook Live. Based at the Vermont Jazz Center, the singing ensemble, directed by Anna Patton, specializes in close-harmony arrangements of swing, jazz, blues, and songs by contemporary songwriters. “Soubrette” is a musical theater term for the non-leading lady who is usually funnier, more worldly, and more instrumental to plot intrigue than the lead. “The choir seeks...
The COVID-19 pandemic forced Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, and other health care providers in Vermont, to come up with a new way of delivering health care. BMH had been dabbling with tele-health - doing online health screenings and consultations - before the pandemic hit. With the hospital and its associated primary care practices all but shut down to incoming patients during the early months of the pandemic, the learning curve was steep and fast. According to the hospital's data, BMH went...
On June 18, I will be graduating from Brattleboro Union High School, and, as most of my classmates will understand, the spring of senior year mandates internal reflection. As is annual tradition, teachers will require us to provide several 400-word reflections on our academic experience. These reflections will, ostensibly, provide closure to 10 months of mental and emotional onslaught, brought not only by the standard turbulence of high school, but multiplied by the isolation and existential horror of the COVID-19...
The Townshend Highway Department finished installing interpretive signboards at each of Townshend's seven historic bridges this past week. The new signage was funded by a $16,640 USDA Rural Business Development Enterprise grant to the Townshend Historical Society. The signage project is being done in conjunction with development of an enhanced historic bridges resource page on the Historical Society website and digital advertising. The society says the effort “is designed to attract cultural tourists to Townshend, stimulate the economy, and ultimately...
Surreal living and grieving when no more than a few years ago I would have said I have not experienced much death in my inner family or circles slowly, about three years ago that began to change but when those friends died we gathered we saw pictures with their eyes and smiles looking back we held each other we sat in established places together no one wondered where to meet and who to hold and now I lose count of...
Today, Vermonters who are struggling with opioid use disorder (OUD) were given a long-awaited additional tool for survival. As of now there are no longer criminal penalties for possession of up to 224 milligrams of buprenorphine, a life-saving medication for folks with OUD. Today, Vermont made history as the first state in the nation to enact a bill of this nature and through legislative process. As Sen. Dick Sears Jr., D–North Bennington, said, “This is an example of the legislative...
The Windham Regional Career Center (WRCC) held its Award Honors Evening on June 2 in the Brattleboro Union High School auditorium, the first in-person school event for in more than a year. WRCC Director Nancy Wiese led the ceremony. Fourteen students were nominated and inducted into the National Technical Honor Society. Maribeth Cornell, NTHS advisor and instructor of WRCC's business classes, introduced each student and offered highlights about their skills and accomplishments. These students submitted an essay based application process,
A reduction in staff has led interim Brattleboro Police Chief Mark Carignan to reduce coverage from three shifts to two. In practice, the schedule is a little more nuanced. According to Carignan, the goal for the change - which took effect May 23 - is to ensure that remaining officers no longer work multiple overtime shifts or more than 16 hours a day. Consequently, the department will reorganize its foot patrols to align with when the town requires the most...
A number of Brattleboro folks are at work on developing a collaboration of essays for the book From the Boroughs to Brattleboro and Beyond, by the flatlanders who made the move from New York City. A dozen essays have been submitted. I would like to extend that number to an additional dozen and to include flatlanders who have come to Vermont during the pandemic. At this point, there is no stringent deadline. For those suffering from writer's block or who...
There was plenty of jubilation after the May 27 news that a family-owned Canadian baker is buying the recently closed Koffee Kup Bakery of Burlington and its subsidiaries, Vermont Bread Company of Brattleboro and Superior Baking in North Grosvenor Dale, Conn. But that jubilation, and the hope of a quick reopening of the bakeries, turned out to be short-lived. On June 7, during a hearing in Chittenden Superior Court regarding a lawsuit brought against the bakery by its chief creditor,
Latchis Arts announces the relaunch of its monthly Spotlight Film Series with a focus during the first month on Black Voices. Spotlight is a curated series, featuring films on a different theme each month which shine a spotlight on different voices in filmmaking. Films are shown on Thursdays at 7 p.m. at the Latchis Theatre; admission is by donation ($10 suggested), but no one will be turned away. This month features four films, widely regarded as insightful and engaging, that...
Leland & Gray Union High School has been chosen as one of five schools in Vermont - and the only one in Windham County - to be part of CFES (College for Every Student) Brilliant Pathways' newly launched North Country Brilliant Pathways program. “It's really exciting,” says Leland & Gray Multiple Pathways Coordinator Terry Davison Berger. “This is going to give us the opportunity to put into place some ideas we've had for a long time but haven't had the...
Today, only about 17 of Vermont's 6,000 farms are owned by persons of color. Fifty years ago, approximately 50 Black-owned farms operated in the state. A grassroots effort has been growing here to help heal a history of racism and disparity - in Vermont and in the overall U.S. - and soon, it's hoped, a 37-acre community farm will be a vibrant part of the solution. “Part of what we really believe is that food should be seen as a...
Births • State Rep. Mollie Burke and Peter Gould of Brattleboro are pleased to announce the birth of a granddaughter, Skyler Egret Burke Gould, on May 24 at Greenwich (Conn.) Hospital. Skyler weighed 6 pounds, 10 ounces and was 19.5 inches long. Her parents, Lindy Smalt Gould and William Orlando Burke Gould, reside in Rye, N.Y. Willie is a 2002 graduate of Brattleboro Union High School. College news • Angel Baikakedi of Putney earned academic distinction for the most recent...
In Division I high school baseball, southern Vermont teams get looked down upon by the powerhouse programs in Chittenden County such as Essex, Colchester, Champlain Valley, and South Burlington. For Brattleboro, from Little League to Babe Ruth to American Legion baseball, they have to battle the players from these programs to win state championships in the summer, and to win high school championships in the spring. But this particular bunch of Brattleboro Colonels varsity baseball players knows what it is...
Yellow Barn's summer music festival will take place this year from Friday, July 9 to Saturday, Aug. 7, when audience members will be invited to return to the Big Barn in person. Proof of COVID-19 vaccination will be required for entrance. But the planning for the annual festival is part of a neverending process, executive director Catherine Stephan said in a recent interview. “That's the invisible side of Yellow Barn that people don't know,” she said. In January and February,
Five new exhibits open at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) on Saturday, June 19. They include group shows featuring paintings inspired by the idea of “expedition” and artworks reflecting the legacy of famed photographer Minor White, as well as solo exhibitions by Delano Dunn, Erick Johnson, and Bellows Falls painter Charlie Hunter. BMAC will be closed from Monday, June 14 to Friday, June 18 to install the new exhibits. All five new exhibits will remain on view through...
The story of Windham County's response to the COVID-19 pandemic has one of collaboration, improvisation, and cooperation. That story was told to U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., during a June 4 visit to Brattleboro Memorial Hospital. It was told, in the room where BMH has vaccinated more than 20,000 people since last December, by some of the people who led the response, such as Josh Davis, executive director of Groundworks Collaborative; Drew Hazelton, chief of operations at Rescue Inc.; Brattleboro...
Around the world, as our nations attempt to get out from under this pandemic, a question looms: How can we pay for recovery? One increasingly popular idea globally: Tax the billionaires who've profited tremendously during the pandemic. And here in the U.S., nearly two-thirds of us now say we support a tax on extreme wealth, including the proposal introduced in Congress by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Pramila Jayapal. Critics, like billionaire investor Leon Cooperman, counter that if a wealth...
Whoever painted this graffiti on a rock in the West River estuary, please desist. Haven't we already done enough to the Abenaki lands?