Staff Blog
Faith in Vermont: Love in the Poultry Yard
“I think those hens are about to start a #MeToo movement,” my husband said, coming in one night after tucking our chickens into their coop.
Yes, spring fever has struck our poultry. Watching the chickens and ducks act on...
Faith in Vermont: Watching My Daughters Climb
All four of our daughters love climbing, but one of them has elevated climbing to a lifestyle.
I’m not talking about “climbing” in any metaphorical sense; I’m talking about actual climbing, defined in Webster...
Faith in Vermont: Brooklyn, Take Me In
“I’m still thinking about that man who lied to us,” my daughter said as I tucked her into bed the night we returned from a family weekend in New York City.
My husband and I lived in Manhattan for seven years,...
Faith in Vermont: April Showers
During the last days of March, we fell asleep to the sound of rain on the roof for the first time in a very long time. I awoke in the morning to the sound of morning doves calling, filling a months-long silence.
It felt like the release of a...
Faith in Vermont: (Not) Wheeling and Dealing at Barter Day
When we began homeschooling our children about two years ago, it was a choice born of necessity: Our family would be spending five months in Berkeley, California while my husband was on sabbatical, and in order to have the flexibility to make...
Faith in Vermont: Curses!
“Mommy broke the compost bin and said a bad word!”
On the first Friday of March, my daughters broadcast this announcement to every person we saw: friends, family, neighbors, check-out clerks. It was BIG NEWS in our household,...
Faith in Vermont: Riding in the Death Star
“I bought us a truck,” my husband announced one night as he walked into the house after a day at the office.
My daughters reacted to the news as if we’d just announced a candy-only dinner, a week off of school, and a trip to...
Faith in Vermont: Oh, My Dog!
Of all the human and non-human species that make up our family, I’ve written the least about our dog, Gracie. My daughters always do nutty things, the ducks and chickens teach us about life and death, and my husband is the “straight...
Faith in Vermont: Safety
It was this year’s peculiar cocktail of sub-zero temperatures, accumulating snow, thaws with mixed precipitation followed by a return to freezing temperatures – combined with the heavy clay soil and topography of our property...
Faith in Vermont: Typewriters, and the Future of Vermont
Last Sunday afternoon, a friend invited me to accompany her to a screening of Doug Nichol’s new documentary film, “California Typewriter,” at Middlebury’s Town Hall Theater.
Sunday afternoons are usually times I set...