“I have a week’s vacation, use it or lose it,” said Son One from Costa Rica. “But getting to Lopez Island and back would take 2 days out of that. Wanna meet somewhere else?”
“Way too long since we’ve seen our New England cousins,” I mused.
Next thing you know…
NOT an actual cousin…but cousin-adjacent!
One branch of our family (on The Mate’s side) runs a sheep farm in southwestern Vermont. We love these people dearly. So after meeting Son One at Logan Airport in Boston, we headed over to Shaftsbury, and this:
Pasture picnic!
Cousins Jesse & Cally were deep in lambing season. Lots of triplets this year (sheep usually have twins), and Jesse was concerned about this lil’ brown one who needed help nursing.
“Pretty wobbly,” Jesse said. Meaning: Probably won’t make it.
After two days of sunshine, the weather slid sideways, and our youngest cousin got strep so we couldn’t hang out in a big group. But we helped out as much as possible (I was Lamb Camp Cook), in between soaking up the pure gorgeousness of that part of New England.
Not to mention the pure Vermontness! Like the neighbors’ sugar shack.
Spring’s later there than here on the North-wet Coast.
They still have trillium blooming!
On our last day, we walked up to Studio Hill, for which the farm is named…
You can see why.
…and stopped to say goodbye to the flock, now more than doubled in size, 130 lambs and counting. Our cousins were hosting a (literal) field trip for their son’s 5th grade class, so we listened in. You gotta love hearing 11 year-olds warning each other, “Look out, don’t step in the placenta.”
Oh, and I learned a neat trick about telling the gender of the lambs! Right ear tag = ram lamb. Left = ewe…
Like our lil’ brown gal! She made it after all!!!!
Next up: Gloucester, MA, the home of Cousin Cally’s parents–or more specifically, the village of Annisquam. This place was a second home to me as a college student, back in the early 80s.
I used to sunbathe on Lighthouse Beach. But not today!
I don’t know if “Annis” or “Squam” means Big Honkin’ Rocks, but it should.
Son One and I deciding we’re fine with posing at the bottom instead of the top.
Rocks define the place. Even in the middle of the woods, giant boulders rise like whales, casually, like they own the place.
which they do
Coastal Massachusetts spring was a little farther along than in Vermont: no more trillium, just this cute lil’ Jack-in-the-pulpit:
Preach on, Jack!
Annisquam is also defined by its AGE. Here’s the (former) home of the Mate’s Aunt Erma (really a cousin, but REALLY more like his adopted mom), built around 1700:
Many’s the bowl of fish chowder served in that blessed kitchen!
Walking around the neighborhood, I couldn’t help but capture the “official” oldest dwelling:
1690, the sign says. But I still love Erma’s house best.
Son One had to get on back to his beloved jungle, but after dropping him at the airport, we took a last visit of Lobster Cove…
…remembering various leaps off that bridge from the past. Not today, thanks!
Speaking of cold water: from Massachusetts, the Mate & I hopped an eastward-bound plane for Nova Scotia. Call it a bucket list thing. Which I’ll save for the next post.
Visiting with our Vermont cousins is an enormous highlight of our road trips, mostly because it isn’t often feasible. What I mean is, this lovely farm is so much easier to visit when it looks like this:
Look! Green!
…instead of this (4 years ago):
Ewe cold?
True, spring means mud season here…
Still easier to bike on than snow!
…and the trails in the upper hills all had that flattened, emergent feeling.
Literally.
But Vermont is easy to love in any season–possibly the most calendar-ready state of the entire 50. On our bike ride along the Battenkill River in Arlington (just down the mountain and up the road from our cousins), I kept stopping to take pictures. (Pretty good workout, actually, as I have to ride twice as hard to catch up with The Mate.)
Can you get any more Vermonty than tapped maple trees???And here I’ve always thought the South had the best sycamore trees. My bad, Vermont!
Vermont houses and towns are so Norman Rockwell that Norman Rockwell himself actually lived and worked there.
It’s now an inn.
This was Norman’s front porch view:
Why yes, that IS a covered bridge. So…much…Americana!!
As for Vermont’s farmlands, their age is impossible to ignore, as a ramble in any woods reveals the mossy criss-crossings of ancient stone walls.
Whose woods these are I think I know…they’ve really outgrown that wall, though!
But something new is happening in these old hills. See, this beautiful farm…
…including everything, all the way up to Studio Hill in the back…
…once just a “gentleman farm” owned by our cousins’ New York grandparents, who patronized the arts…
(hence the Studio of Studio Hill)
…does not actually belong to our cousins, but to the family trust of which they are part. In fact, for decades it was a horse farm catering to, let’s face it, the upper crust. But when the younger generation took over the work, they decided to make it a REAL, working sheep farm, and in the past 10 years since we’ve been visiting regularly, their passion is making itself felt.
But every good sheep farm needs a sheep-guarding donkey like Ben (World’s 2nd Cutest).
First, they’ve made their focus regenerative agriculture. What does that mean? Let’s hear from Jesse & Cally’s Studio Hill Farm website:
On our farm, we practice holistic management. This ensures that our farming practices strengthen and enrich the environments in which they’re employed. Therefore, as we raise animals on our land, our fields grow more fertile and abundant—which then allows us to raise more even animals on the land…which then makes the fields even more fertile and abundant…and so on. With simple management changes supported by basic biological principles, all agriculture around the globe could achieve this ecological and economic positive-feedback loop. We hope Studio Hill will serve as one example among many.
Second, in order to fund their ambitions to restore the land, they’ve been farming a whole new crop: Air BnB clients, happy to pay to nestle themselves into the calendar picture for a few days at a time. Since our last visit, our cousins even bought the very non-traditional-farmhousey house their former neighbors inflicted upon the upper hill, and turned THAT into an Air BnB house.
Ahem…Mr./Ms. Architect? You’re in Vermont, remember?
They were going to house us there, as a matter of fact, but it was booked instead by a group of travel nurses—a win for everyone! Yay nurses! Instead we stayed in the old brick house pictured previously, which the Big House looks out on.
Ben, hard at work. Behind him, the new Big House plus the Schoolhouse Air BnB–the latter we can vouch for; it’s adorable.
They even put together a yurt, and a treehouse is still under construction.
Woods out front–Ben the Donkey out back.
All this property expansion was made possible by supporters of sustainable farming who invested in our cousins’ dream literally, thanks to a company called Steward, whose mission I’m copying here…just in case you want to pursue investment in a farmer’s dream yourself 🙂
Our mission is to promote environmental and economic stewardship through regenerative agriculture. We do this by providing flexible loans to human-scale farms, ranches, fisheries, and food producers looking to propel their operations forward.
But we don’t do it alone—Steward gives qualified lenders the opportunity to purchase loan participations, advancing our mission by helping to fund the growth of regenerative agriculture in their community or across the country.
I know, right? Interested? (Image from Steward’s website)
Hence the title of this post: our cousins, through borrowing from Steward, are able to make something new out of something old.
Oh, and that Carolina Blue part? I just had to throw in a shout-out to our Tarheels, who were busy taking down #1 seed/defending champs Baylor in overtime on our radio as we approached the farm. We had to stop the car and sit an agonizingly tense ten minutes out at the bottom of Trumbull Hill Rd, afraid we’d lose our signal if we drove any further. (I didn’t say the game was pretty—but they did win. Heels in the Sweet 16!)
Wing's World 