When In Vermont: Cheddar Cheese Tour

Vermont loves it’s cheddar, and luckily our visit to Shelburne meant a visit to the cheese making facility. Shelburne Farms is home to an organic closed-loop cheese making operation.

125 Brown Swiss cows call the farm home where they are fed and rotated quickly on sections of pasture. This not only means that the cows are grass fed, but allow the farm to eliminate pesticides and herbicides and reduce fuel for machinery and crops. The cows are milked twice a day at the dairy and that milk is used that day in the cheese.

The calves were awesome. I felt bad fooling them into thinking my hands were vessels for milk.

The whey, a bi-product, drained during production is used to help fertilize the grass that the cows feed on. In addition to the use of the manure, creates the continuous replenishing loop.

Shelburne Farms

Shelburne Farms is an intentionally holistic farm experience. Designed not only to be operational and functional as a farm but also be a place for relaxing and connecting with nature. What once comprised of 32 farms, the 1,400 acres was acquired by William Seward Lila Vanderbilt Webb in late 1880’s who set out to design a model agricultural estate.

The land currently operates as a nonprofit environmental education center, with miles of trails, Brown Swiss dairly herd, cheesemaking facility, bakery, inn, woodworking shop, and educational facilities for children.Architect Federick Law Olmstead and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead can be credited for the work on the estate’s buildings and surrounding landscape planning. Olmstad designed the land to have three types of space: farm, forest and parkland. Trees were planted strategically to create “rooms” of large expanses and roads were strategically laid out to reveal different vistas and obscure others.

A farm this old, we were bound to see old things:

Prior to the invention of the automobile, horses were the main source of transportation and monile power (er, workhorse.) This breeding barn, was the largest of its kind to not only breed horse, but also showcase horses for sale and hold horse related events. Once the auto came into existence, the need for this barn quickly declined. The barn is currently in major repair and undergoing massive reconstruction. In the future, the barn will hold community and agricultural events.

Quadruple Pot of Gold

“Check That Off the List” Cards

As a dependent list maker, I know the satisfaction of checking a box off. For my friends who graduated this past weekend at Bainbridge Graduate Institute, I wanted a big box to be checked off for competing their MBA.On the inside are three smaller boxes which personal new items will be listed such as: spending time with significant others, traveling, gardening, etc. Congrats friends!

Burning Boxes

Often at garage sales you can find treasures if you look beyond the tables. That is where you find the old and broken stuff that sellers never think someone would want. This is where I saw these rough tobacco boxes and I think the seller would have taken any offer I gave him. $2 total felt right for wood perfect for wood burnings.

This was my first time doing wood burnings since middle school. The graphics were part originals and part inspired by some prints I had seen earlier. I wish I left more time to make a few more because by the last one I started to figure out how to shade and play with the pressure of the burner to get different effects.

Happo Dammo Explained

This past weekend I played disc golf at Okemo Mt in Ludlow. Disc golf inevitably reminds me of Gifford Pinchot III, the founder and president of BGI, who taught me the game a couple years ago at orientation. He also coined the Happo-Dammo Ratio, which measures the happiness of an activity in relation to the damage that the activity does (environmently or socially). In our golf lesson, he explained this further. (Pinchot's explaination and golf assessment can be read here.)

To illustrate, the Happo-Dammo Ratio can be used to compare disc golf and traditional golf. For sake of the explaination, the happiness rating will be a do-nut and the damage will be the dead gopher. Now, it is debatable whether an individual enjoys disc golf more than traditional golf or vice versa, it depends on personal preference. Personally I like disc golf more…no silly dress code, its cheap, easier to find equipment, and I feel less desire to throw innocent objects. Now, for this argument, lets just say they are equal in happiness. They both get 5 do-nuts.

There is, however, no argument whether which activity causes more damage to the environment. One golf course can use up to 30,000 gallons a day, not to mention the pesticides and chemicals in making the grass bright green. So, golf gets 5 dead gophers. Disc golf with its minimal landscape gets one dead gopher.

Traditional golf:



Disc golf:

The Happo-Dammo Ratio shows us that disc golf provides higher happiness per damage to the environment! Apply this ratio liberally!