Sara here, to share some ruminations.

I was in the barn this morning feeding the goats, chickens, and kittens. (We keep these animals for our household- not as part of the farm business.) As I often do in the barn, I think about the animals and farmers who were here before us. While feeding our handful of critters, I envision the space full of cows heavy with milk. It isn't hard- we still have the breeding charts, shelves of old medicine, and some of the tie stalls.

I think about James' grandparents making the same trip between the house and the barn, tens of times a day, like we do. I wonder if they shared some of my recurring thoughts: "who could use a little extra milk/eggs/cheese this week?" or "why don't the goats/cows like this bale of hay?" or "what do I absolutely need to get done today?" I imagine they did have many similar thoughts, and probably some that were very different.

Walking back towards the house, and looking up at the two old maples that frame the driveway, I figured those trees could tell me exactly how things have changed in the last 200 years if only they could talk. The maples are failing, and chunks of them often fall on our parked cars- but they are our old friends- and so they persist. One tree sits on our neighbor's lawn- the other in our driveway- it's roots growing under part of our house. Our neighbors are the grandchildren of the previous owners, just like us. And so we do know a lot of the history that has taken place here, and we all do our part to steward this place.

Suddenly, a tractor trailer truck's hydraulics brought me out of my bucolic wonderings. Framed by the trees was a TRULY Hard Seltzer truck making loud grumblings on Route 116. I immediately thought, "this is the actual world we live in, where big food companies rule and small farms can't compete. This is how things have changed. Capitalism. Industrial Ag. Convenience Food." And another recurring thought popped into my head, that was probably shared with our elders: "can we make a small farm work here?"

Then I thought about the ways in which we can compete with big ag. Our food tastes better. We care about the soil that grows it and the hands that tend it. We care about the community that eats it. And I thought about you. I thought about how you care for a farm that sits in the center of town, how you want to see Vermont's working landscape thrive, how you care about food being grown in a way that benefits our land. And so, I thought I'd reach out, and say: thank you for caring.

Love,

Sara

​www.trilliumhillfarm.com​