Posts by Martha Herbert Izzi
Vermont holds the brass ring as the premier state hosting the most artisan and farmstead cheese makers per capita in the country. Not bad for a little place with a lot of rocky hillside farms and barely 650,000 people. As the cheesemakers expand and improve, the prizes keep coming, the sales keep mounting and…
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Vermont’s red barn, once the hallmark of the small family dairy farm, is now the centerpiece of a changing agricultural landscape. It is being reframed and reformed for new, often unusual enterprises. While dairy production still tops the agricultural economic scale in Vermont, the actual number of dairy farms is declining due to new technologies,…
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We are pleased to introduce the community supported fisheries model in this edition and to feature two of the producers and one distributor who are creating the roadmap for direct consumer access to fresh, healthy fish from local waters. In subsequent issues we will feature more ‘boat to fork’ stories. They are inspiring examples of…
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It is difficult to be objective when you’re in love. And I confess to have fallen in love with the Tunis sheep breed nearly twenty-five years ago. A time when few people could identify those beautiful copper red-faced, red legged, creamy wool creatures with pendulous ears in our barn who gave new meaning to good…
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If passion on the part of a few dedicated champions is the key ingredient to saving a “critically endangered” heritage cattle breed then the Randall Lineback (aka Randall) has a future. This venerable landrace breed, once common in New England, dates back to the 1600s when it likely originated from an amalgam of English,…
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A net increase in farms? Nationwide? Who would have thought? But it’s true. For so long we have been treated to the demise of farms and farming while the advent of the “fifteen hundred mile tomato” became the norm. The book Farms of Tomorrow written in 1990 and revisited in 1997, envisaged what surely…
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