7/23. Marlborough to Vermont

(7/23 Friday)

Emily's Sugar House

  
Getting ready to drive from Marlborough to Vermont to visit Shelburne Farms, we packed our bags, loaded the Prius, set the GPS for Emily's house in Essex Junction. Emily and her niece Colleen  were to be our local guides for the day. Soon we were on our way up scenic I-91 towards White River Junction, Vermont. The route follows the course of the Connecticut River as it separates Vermont from New Hampshire and really deserves to be called 'scenic'.

  
Just before White River Junction we took the exit for I-89 westward. We would stop at the famous Vietnam Memorial rest stop in Sharon, Vt. where we will eat lunch. The rest stop, a $6.3 million complex that opened in September 2005 offers complimentary brewed Green Mountain coffee, flush toilets, a greenhouse, Vermont tourism brochures and, of course, the Vietnam memorial . On a more personal note, it is also the site of the 2009 demise of my Macbook due to a spilled flood of Green Mountain coffee that found its way directly onto the hot computer motherboard.

Interior of Greenhouse
Vermont Roadside Rest Area

  
The greenhouse at the rest stop is open to visitors through a covered walkway. Inside are the plants and filtering system that are the core of a waste water recycling system called a Living Machine, which grows bacteria and plants that clean and filter the waste water for the site. This innovative system allows the rest stop to be self sufficient in an otherwise dry environment and to stay open when other less efficient rest stops are being closed to save money. Give Vermont a big hand for being environmentally conscious and generous enough to share with travelers.

Schematic of
Clean-up Process

  
For news related to the Living Machine visit the developer's web site:
  

http://www.worrellwater.com/news/

   

Photo of Sugaring House, Vermont

We left the rest stop and headed to pick up Emily and then proceeded to Shelburne Farms situated on 3,000 acres along Lake Champlain near Shelburne Museum. The impressive farm buildings were designed in 1902 by Frederic Law Olmstead, Sr. who also designed Central Park in NYC. But, more importantly, Shelburne is a working farm and an education center where a wide range of classes and workshops are offered.

We had an especially good introduction to the education program when the cheese maker gave us the "long" version of how they make Cheddar cheese. The "short" version: 5000 lbs. of milk from the farm's herd of purebred Brown Swiss cows is reduced to 500 lbs. of Cheddar cheese in a single day's processing. The whey from the processing drains into a large tank under the lawn; later it is mixed with liquid manure and used as fertilizer on the farm.

More on the Shelburne Farms can be found on-line at:

http://www.shelburnefarms.org/

After several hours hiking about the farm, visiting the largest horse barn I've ever seen and touring the Inn, which was the former home of the Webb-Vanderbilt families, we took our tired bodies to The Euro restaurant in Essex Junction for Bosnian food.

We stayed at the La Quinta in S. Burlington, which is convenient to downtown Burlington. What a busy day.
   

###