Everyone who grows up in a small
rural Vermont town has early exposure to farms. Kindergarten classes take trips
to the local turkey farm and second graders learn how to make butter in a jelly
jar. In third grade you hatch baby chicks in an incubator and learn why you
must draw on the eggs with a pencil, not a pen. Fifth and sixth grades often
include a long unit on early Vermont life, where you discover how much easier
farming is now than the homesteading of the 1800’s. My family lived on a dirt road, and like many
children, I grew up walking balance beam across the beaver dam in my back yard
and making fairy tea parties in the balsam stand just up the hill. It was only
natural that when I was ready to have a job, my parents paid me to weed the
garden or feed the chickens. My mom and I canned everything we could get our
hands on, especially peaches, and the entire family ate canned sunshine all
winter long. I am the child of hippies
who found a welcoming safe haven in the tight knit community Cabot offers. I
grew up with kids from all different backgrounds and since there were so few of
us, we managed to muddle along just fine. What we had in common was this tiny
farming community that we were inherently a part of. This was our world.
