Coming Home

There’s nothing like going home, especially when the semester is starting to get a little too stressful and you just need a break from the surreal existence that is college. But when home is Vermont, you appreciate even more the value of returning. Life makes more sense in Vermont. We’ve got farms up the whazoo and we don’t think twice about it. The comforting realization that everything on your plate is local, without having spent an extra dime: that’s Vermont for you.

I’m sitting in the passenger seat of my dad’s sedan when we cross the line into Vermont, and it feels like a weight has been lifted off my chest. I can already see and sense the difference: there are fewer leaves on the trees, and the air feels crisper, cleaner. Farms dot the corners of my eyes, each one inhabiting a different growing niche, contributing something unique to the community. It’s never long before a farm stand pops into view, usually a simple outfit with a wooden sign saying something like “Rose’s Vegetables.” Rose Silloway runs my town’s local farm stand; she lives along the winding road between Strafford and South Strafford that gets just enough local traffic to sustain her business, which is essentially selling the overflow from her enormous garden. She and her husband Earl, who raises work horses, are long respected members of the community, and farming is their way of life. Over the years, I’ve known about Rose, and my family has bought vegetables from her during the summer, when our own garden isn’t quite enough. Most notably, Rose is our source for good roasting corn, and late-season berry pies. In recent years I’ve seen her outfit scale up a bit; instead of just selling at a table outside her house, she converted her garage into a shop and now has an official cash register. It’s the little details like this that give me great hope.

While Rose and Earl represent an old, traditional farming spirit, there is a thriving farm community among the younger generation as well. I am I part of this, having worked on an organic farm since I was fifteen. Getting a job on a farm is simple in Vermont: you just know someone who already works on a farm, or you know someone who knows someone. I was hooked at fifteen, picking strawberries and peas, and at eighteen I was entrusted with taking our produce to the three farmer’s markets that my farm attends. It’s likely that I will never go too long in my life without working on a farm. It’s my way of life now. I know that because as soon as I get home, the first thing I want to do is visit my farm family. I found them cleaning out one of our hoop houses, tearing down old, wilted tomato plants in the brisk October air, smiling and joking while clipping and ripping mercilessly at the lifeless plants. I felt a jerk of nostalgia as I remembered how therapeutic it is to kill things that are ready to die, just as therapeutic as planting them anew will be in the spring. I had seeded, watered, transplanted, weeded, and harvested from those plants, and then I’d left them, gone away to college, and come back only just in time to witness their final departure from this earth. I wish I could say that they’d be composted and their little carbon molecules would to go work once again, but sadly the tomato plants can’t be composted because they get infected with too many fungi, so they are heaped in a pile and left to decompose on their own.

After this brief reunion with farm life, I left once again, the backseat of my car stuffed with storage vegetables to help my family make it through the cold winter months: potatoes, onions, garlic, squash, parsnips, rutabagas, carrots, and beets. But I was back again the next morning at 7:30, as I helped load up for the last farmer’s market of the year. It was a lovely, typical market; we were all freezing, bundled in wool and Carhart apparel, and waiting in drawn anticipation for the coming blizzard, but camaraderie was high and there was a steady stream of loyal customers. Gary the apple guy brought us hot cider to warm our hands with, and two generous customers even took pity at the sight of our shivering (which was not meant to entice charity) and bought us hot chocolate. At the end of the market, even though our van got stuck in the mud and we barely made a profit, my morale was soaring, as I realized I’d never be completely at home anywhere but Vermont.

A typical fall scene in Vermont, when the piglets are so cute you have to stop on the side of the road to take photos:

Wiping off tomatoes in the summertime: