The Quechee Scottish Games and Festival we all know and love have been entertaining attendees for 45 years here in Vermont, but their history goes back much farther than that – over 700 years ago! 

The Scottish Games themselves date back to 1314 when they were called Ceres Highland Games, held every year in the Scottish town of Ceres. These games were possibly founded by Scotland’s first king, Robert the Bruce, to reward the Ceres village men who fought with him in the battle for independence from England. Except for during the COVID-19 lockdown, these games have continued in Ceres without interruption since 1314. … Read More

“I’ve always been looking for this,” says Ben Lay, a local musician from the Quechee/West Hartford area 

who coordinates the efforts and activities of the Hartford Salamander Team. Since 2020, the Hartford Salamander Team has been engaging adventurous locals to identify hotspots of amphibian migration and help save frogs and salamanders from being hit by vehicles as they make their journeys on warm, rainy nights in spring. Though this remains its major focus, the Team has grown in diverse ways over the last three years as members share not only their knowledge, but their desire to learn more about the natural world around them. … Read More

Mel and Damaris Hall, the owners of the Quechee-based Global Village Foods, are a friendly, humorous, and hard-working husband-wife team with a passion for connecting with the community and affecting social change through their business. Recently partnering with Vital Communities on the New England Food Vision Prize, they are currently seeking to share their delicious variety of Pan-African foods with an even wider community while continuing to source many ingredients locally and offering great wages and working environment for employees.

Damaris began to learn about food production and hard work growing up on her family’s large farm in Kenya (which featured vegetables, tea, coffee, and more).… Read More

The Quechee Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Quechee Reads group recently read and discussed the book, Courageous Discomfort: How to Have Important, Brave, Life-Changing Conversations about Race and Racism, by Shanterra McBride and Rosalind Wiseman.

Wiseman is best known for her book, Queen Bees and Wannabes, which was the basis for the hit movie, Mean Girls. McBride is the founder of Marvelous University, a social enterprise that offers leadership development for girls and young women. It was their decades-long friendship and their shared interest in building the self-esteem of young women that give the foundation for their book on race and racism.… Read More

This past February, the Vermont Flames, a year-round youth hockey organization that includes players from throughout the state, participated in the Quebec International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament and skated away as the first Vermont team in the history of the 63-year-old event to win it all.

The Flames team is made up of some of the top players in the state including the two goalies, Isaac Tane and Kaleb Sanderson, who are both from Quechee.

The Tournament is the oldest and most prestigious youth hockey tournament in the world and unofficially serves as the Pee-Wee (13U) World Championships. Founded in 1960, the event is attended annually by more than 2,250 competitors from over 15 countries.… Read More

Much has been written about Quechee’s Whitman Brook, a lovingly restored orchard offering 143 varieties of heirloom apples originating in Europe and the United States. Now an award-winning documentary has been added to the orchard’s accolades. Whitman Brook and the Nature of Time by Norwich Writer/Director Ben Silberfarb beautifully captures the distinct seasons in the orchard and the moving story of its thoughtful founder and lead steward Terry Dorman and the people who work with him taking care of the land.

The poet Alexander Pope wrote a commonly used phrase in landscape and agricultural circles, ‘Consult the genius of a place in all.’… Read More

The Quechee community may be known for what is seen: beautiful golf courses and a lovely ski hill. However, there is more than meets the eye, as Ginny Stone can attest. Ginny is the wellness coordinator of the Quechee Club Health Center, and she presents a holistic approach to exercise that incorporates spirit and mind into the body experience.

Having graduated from Springfield College in Massachusetts with a degree in exercise physiology, health, and wellness, Ginny is imbued with the school’s holistic approach of the connection of spirit, mind, and body.

When I came to interview Ginny in her little office at the club, she immediately showed me a beautifully drawn thank you card from a young staff member who was leaving to attend graphic arts school.… Read More

Informed by books such as Differently Wired: A Parent’s Guide to Raising an Atypical Child with Confidence and Hope by Deborah Reber

This is a statement of gratitude and love, and a call for action for learning what is often difficult. My focus is to say thank you to my granddaughter and our family for helping me to continue my commitment to all human beings to fully learn from differences and embrace the possibilities we together must create. I know now that my intellectual training, my life experiences, and my love had not prepared me for what I needed to learn.… Read More

For New Englanders, spring is a much-anticipated season. These first warm, sunny days after a bitter winter bring purple crocuses, budding trees, and singing birds, as well as feelings of renewal and joyful anticipation of time spent outdoors. As May approaches, it seems like every corner of our landscape is home to beautiful vistas and diverse wildlife. In Vermont in particular, these treasures of a healthy ecosystem are part of our identity. 

“Vermonters are very proud of their state,” says Kate Alberghini, Executive Director of Green Up Vermont and herself a lifelong Vermonter, “they’re not too good to pick up a piece of trash.”… Read More

Ballet dancer. Lawyer. Writer. Three professions with wildly different levels of certainty, not often found in the same person, but Leigh Abramson, a Quechee writer whose first novel “A Likely Story” is coming out with Simon & Schuster this March, has already been all three.

Growing up the daughter of two creatives – an artist and children’s book writer – in downtown New York City, Abramson was always interested in writing.

However, her first major creative passion was dance; Abramson was a serious ballerina studying at the American Ballet School. But, at age 15, missing school and other typical teenage activities for dance while attending the Professional Children’s School, Abramson decided to make a change.… Read More