Vermont Craft and Cuisine – Day 3

Wednesday was set to be the longest day of our trip, with a bunch of driving and a selection of stops sure to please a whole variety of people. We all got a lot of knitting done on Wednesday, and my post is shorter than for other days because we spent more of our time driving than on other days, but we still managed to fit in multiple interesting destinations.

Our first stop was at the home and studio of fiber artist Linda Veilleux (be sure to check out the gallery on her site – it’s absolutely amazing).  Originally a seamstress by trade, Linda also makes beautiful and original pieces of seamless wearable art by felting garments directly from fiber and silk.  She walked us through her process, showed us some of the finished pieces (including two incredible wool felted wedding gowns and a really innovatively designed backpack), and served us delicious coffee cake while we admired her work and her two dogs.  I wasn’t sure what to think of this stop before we got there, being unfamiliar with her work, but left feeling very inspired!

Next we visited the Green Mountain Coffee center.  This turned out not to be the place beans are roasted, but we learned a bit about the company and the town history while we were there (and found out that our guide’s son had moved to Somerville, and was practically a neighbor).

saying on the wall at Green Mountain Coffee

We also got to sample the iced tea k-cups for Keurig brewing machines (I brought back boxes of iced tea and iced coffee k-cups for my office) and order a green mountain coffee drink at the cafe. The cafe also sold handcrafts from artisans in the various regions their coffees are grown, so we had a good time exploring the variety of textiles and other pieces that were for sale.

I had an iced latte, Matt had an iced chai

After we had finished with the coffee shop, we trundled off to Stowe, Vermont where we were able to stretch our legs and choose a restaurant for lunch. Matt and I went to the dining room of the Green Mountain Inn, where we were seated in a cozy corner table that afforded us a nice view of the restaurant. After a few days of togetherness with our touring group, we enjoyed the solitary side trip and chatted over a meal of a half BLT and a cup of corn chowder (me) and a flatbread pizza (Matt). The desserts did look good, but we decided to save room for later and skipped them in favor of a bit more walking around town after lunch.

Meeting up with the group at the van, we drove to the more rural parts of Stowe to visit the Von Trapp Family Lodge. As with the tour of the Webb family home, our guide for this part of the trip decided that our small polite group could probably manage a quick walk through the interior of the lodge as long as we were quiet and didn’t take photos.

Trapp Family Lodge

In addition to the interior tour, we also toured the gardens and the small family cemetery where Maria and The Captain are buried, along with other family members.

I even found this interesting succulent growing along the path

After our quick stop at the lodge, we drove next to Hyde Park, Vermont. There, we were visiting the Applecheek Farm to meet the animals, learn about their organic farming process, and have a farm-to-table dinner at picnic tables right in the middle of the farm.

Applecheek Farm

To be honest, at first I wasn’t as impressed by the farm as I might have been. Being from Texas, I’ve been to a lot of farm field trips, and didn’t really see a lot of sense in standing around in the heat looking at hay when I could have been in the air conditioning knitting. Still, I warmed up to the animals pretty quickly once we were introduced to all of the farm’s youngest inhabitants.

The piglets provided some entertainment when they escaped from where they were supposed to be to come watch us.

3 month old Emu

Emu sit very strangely.

baby guinea fowl (there were roughly 125 of them in this shed!)

We also met some of the older residents of the farm. The llamas were rather bored by us, while the adult emu were mildly interested but continue to be one of the spookiest looking animals I have ever met.

Why, hello there!

Nice to meet you!

Why yes, some of my closest relatives ARE dinosaurs! Why do you ask?

After meeting the animals, we sat down to a dinner prepared by one of the family members who had gone into a different part of the culinary process, and operates Just Delicious Catering. The company is founded on the idea that local foods are tastier and more nutritious. With this in mind, our dinner was about as local as it could get, ranging from beef directly from Applecheek Farm, to a delicious tofu made with Vermont soybeans and even fresh greens and strawberries. I think Matt approves.

strawberry shortcake for dessert

While we ate dinner, we looked out over the fields and watched farm crews bringing in hay (it did feel a little strange to be sitting around idly enjoying strawberry shortcakes while people were hard at work, but what else are vacations for?).

After dinner, we packed up and headed back towards the hotel. We decided to take a more scenic route that involved some twisting and turning on a few steep roads, so while we were on the steep grades we turned off the AC in the van and rolled down the windows to keep the car engine happy on the steepest parts of the road (note to Mom: as far as I could tell, these “mountain roads” had nothing on Colorado).

This was all well and good until suddenly I was pulled away from my knitting by shouts and thrashing from the front of the van. It took a few minutes to get the full story, but evidently a large bee had accidentally found himself sucked in the open window, bounced heavily off the chest of our compatriot in the front seat and caused quite the stir. The passenger whose chest had served as a bee trampoline was frantically looking for the softball sized bug he was certain had just attacked him, while his wife calmly called from the next seat back, “Ok, it’s a bee. It’s under your butt. It’s dead. ” I was glad she had taken charge because I was pretty sure I’d have either been sitting by looking on in shock or laughing too hard to give useful advice were I in the same position in the car. The rest of the drive passed uneventfully, and upon our arrival back at the hotel we examined the offending insect. He wasn’t quite softball sized, but he was a pretty healthy looking bee – aside from the fact that he was dead, anyway.

After the heat and excitement of the day, we were pleased to be arriving back at the hotel early enough to find our suits and head to the pool before bed. Matt and I found the hot tub empty, and soaked for awhile to relieve the stiffness from riding around in the car all day, and then wandered over to the regular pool where we found most of the rest of our tour group congregated with similar intent. After we felt sufficiently cooled and refreshed, and when the pool was close to closing for the evening and the mosquitos were starting to appear in droves, we decided that a cocktail would round the evening out nicely and agreed to meet shortly in the bar. Matt ran back to the locker rooms to grab our room key while I loitered on the path to our room with an agreeable looking frog who happened to be going my direction. (Don’t tell the frog, but I almost stepped on him in the dark, thinking he was a rock!)

Wednesday evening wrapped up with me nearing the end of the first knitting project I’d brought along on the trip, light conversation and drinks in the bar, and a peaceful feeling settling in. We found that conversation often found its way back to our careers (all admitted to checking in with work email once or twice a day), but somehow office problems still seemed far away as we finished our drinks and headed back to our rooms for the evening. It always takes a few days to really relax into a vacation, but by Wednesday evening many of us had found that sweet spot and while we wondered occasionally how the office was getting on without us found that it didn’t much matter at that moment in time!