Local Words: Farming and Writing in Vermont

Julia Shipley, a writer and farmer, has been the co-organizer of our Local Author Reads event for the past two years. Julia is a 2010-2011 recipient of the Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant and is completing a "manuscript of braided essays about small scale agriculture". 


Her essay below, originally appeared in the Fall 2011 issue of Local Banquet. Samples of her work as well as information about her writing retreats and classes, can be found on her website, Writing on the Farm.


Having Both Lives: Farming and Writing in Vermont before 1972
by Julia Shipley


“Why anybody would want to be either a farmer or a poet when there were spools turning in factories was beyond the grasp of the old man. That his grandson should desire to be both was almost enough to bring on a stroke.”


According to the grandson’s biographer, “Determined in his course, Robert laid the whole matter before his grandfather. He would have a farm, live on it, produce his food with his own labor, and write poetry.” 


And although the grandfather eventually purchased a farm for his grandson, he turned it over to the young Robert Frost with no real encouragement. “You’ve made a failure out of everything else you’ve tried. Now go up to the farm and die there.” 


As we know, Frost exceeded his grandfather’s expectations. And many more have succeeded in this stroke-inducing thing—being both farmer and writer—and particularly here, in Vermont. And because of these dual efforts, we have a cultural harvest of literature. All of the farmer-writers mentioned in this article had firmly established their books and crops by the time I came into the world in 1972 (hence the title of this article), and all of them have inspired me since I moved to Vermont in 1997 with foolishness and feistiness, endeavoring to cultivate a farming and writing life of my own. 


Five years prior to this move, I had accosted a farmer-writer, Scott Chaskey, at a sustainable agriculture conference. He had just retrieved a notebook from his car and was heading back inside when I ran up to him and asked the author of This Common Ground: Seasons on an Organic Farm and head farmer of Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett, New York, my burning question: “Which comes first, which are you more of—a writer or a farmer?” He sighed and gazed across the lot, then back at me, and said, “Well, I’m a writer. I’m a writer first.” 

READ MORE HERE... Originally published in Local Banquet, Fall 2011

Fall 2011

SAVE THE DATE: SpringFest 2012 in Hardwick

The long standing SpringFest in Hardwick is an annual spring tradition for generations of Hardwickians. Coordinated by Kiwanis and many other supporting organiziations, join us for a 5K Run at 9am, parade on Main St., vendors/exhibitors, crafts, music, food, rides and games at Atkins Field starting at noon and ending at 4pm.

So, mark your calendars and come enjoy spring in Vermont - Hardwick style.

When: Saturday, May 26th; 9am to 4pm
Where: In and Around Hardwick

Main St. Parade
Photo courtesy of 

Local Words: Living and Working in the NEK

Here's a blog post by a young lady who moved to the area last year, after working both in NYC and on small, northeast farms. A fine cook, a good farmer and an excellent writer, Annie Myers shares her love for food and soil on her blog, Thoughts On the Table. 


This story is an affectionate reflection on the people she's met this past year, while working at Pete's Greens and living in Craftsbury. Enjoy!


More People Than You Know
June 26, 2011

The other night I was introduced to a poetry professor from MIT and a photographer from NPR, after working all day with a 60-year-old woman who is stronger than many men half her age, and a 30-year-old man whose obsession with old Volkswagens leads him to sell the vegetables from our farm like a good car salesman sells lemons.

The next night I had dinner on the porch of the lodge in the next town over, with a mother of three beautiful children, who lives on the same street as her ex-husband’s mother and brother and sister-in-law. We ate together with a collared-shirt-wearing boy in his late 20s, who is building a house in the Common where he hopes to live forever, and a friend of his, who is deaf, who communicates wonderfully with hand motions and scribbled scraps of paper that pile up on the tables where we’ve spent time.

Every day, I’m surrounded by the people on the farm, who have their own stories. There’s the 80-year-old man who has helped build the new facility, who I see eating out by himself in Hardwick. There’s the guy who fixes all the equipment, and does much of the tractor work in the fields, who lives down the road with his family, and sugars every early spring. He’s been married since he was nineteen to a girl he’d met three weeks before he proposed. There’s a couple in their 30s – he runs the construction of the new facility, she helps with crop planning and farm regulations- who spent the last two years in the Peace Corps in Panama. He grew up here, and his parents and sisters live nearby, while her family visits occasionally from Virginia, where she (incidentally) went to high school with the Volkswagen vegetable man. There’s the woman who used to work for Phish, and the boy who got hit by lightning (or so I hear), and the man who once crashed Pete’s truck and gave up his motorcycle in exchange. There are all the previous men and women, girlfriends, boyfriends, sisters, brothers, neighbors, friends, who worked on the farm in the past, whose presence remains in stories and habits referred to every day.

Read the rest of Annie's post, "More People Than You Know" on her blog, Thoughts On the Table.

photo from Thoughts on the Table

Food and Farms: Stories, Essays, Poems and more

Living in Vermont, you can't help but come across a good story now and again. Or for that matter, a poem, an essay, a random blog post...

The rural and agrarian culture of our State has given up a beautifully rich harvest (pun intended) of written words that celebrates the joy, tragedy, sweat and satisfaction of agriculture. In our little area, in our little corner of this little State, we have so many good people who write and we'd like to celebrate their talents and stories.

Every Thursday, in this forum, we will post a story, blog post, poem, song or essay by a local writer, blogger, poet, songwriter, farmer, eater...Written words that make us laugh or cry, give us pause and inspire us.

They don't have to be well written, wordy tomes on farming, food and agriculture, they just have to be genuine.

If you live in Hardwick, Greensboro, Cabot, Woodbury, Walden, Craftsbury, Wolcott or Elmore (and if you don't live in these towns, we'll consider it anyway!) , send it to us, via email along with your contact information. Our staff will choose their favorites and we'll post them each week through the spring.

And here's a little something to get you tickled and ready.

It Takes a Village
Ben Hewitt

On Saturday, we kill the pigs. It goes well; one shot each followed by a quick probe of the knife to loose the blood and as always, the shock of the sheer quantity of it, spreading across the frozen ground like unfurling sheets. Ryan and Jocelyn show up, and we spend the next two hours skinning and gutting and sawing and hoisting the halves to hang overnight so they’ll stiffen for cutting the next day. We have lunch. We skin and gut and saw and hoist some more. We are tired and the job is done.


On Sunday, Michael and Kelly arrive at 9:00 and Michael and I carry the halves in one-by-one, dropping them across the big maple butcher block our friend Brian made for us back when we were building the house, ten years ago or more. They are nice pigs; the largest halves are pushing 150-pounds, and carry a good 3-inches of backfat, which we’ll render on the wood stove and use to fry doughnuts (or “dog nuts” as the boys have inevitably taken to calling them), chicken, eggs, and more. The six of us cut for three hours, reducing the halves to manageable bits – chops and roasts, sausage trim and slabs of bacon. We have lunch. We cut for two hours more. We are tired and the job is done.


Read the rest of Ben's blog, It Takes a Village, on his website.

photo courtesy of BenHewitt.net

Welcome Paige!

We are excited to welcome Paige Wierikko as our Program Intern from Sterling College!

Paige is originally from Sheboygan, Wisconsin but has done an extensive amount of traveling and nonprofit work while she served with AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC), which is based out of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Some of her work included working with Habitat for Humanity Mississippi Gulf Coast, the Great Smokey Mountains National Park in Tennessee, the St. Bernard Project in Chalmette, Louisiana and St. Johns River Water Management District in Central Florida. She moved to Vermont in July 2011 to attend Sterling College and currently works for a local store in Craftsbury as well as Bonnieview Farm, milking sheep and making cheese, all the while mentoring students at the local school. Yes, she is a busy person!

Paige plans to graduate with a bachelor's degree in Fall of 2012 with a degree in Non Profit Management and Sustainable Development Education, but in the meantime, we are very glad to have her on our team here at the Center for an Agricultural Economy!

Paige and a box of "stuff" to clip. Oh the life of an intern!