If Brad Pirkey isn’t a familiar face or name to you around the Hartford/Quechee area, maybe you recognize his brightly colored food bus. Chef Brad’s CrazySide has been around the area since 2012, and it’s hard to miss. Most recently you’ve probably noticed the colorful addition to Fat Hat Corner where Quechee Main Street meets Route 4. Chef Brad’s bus has moved into the corner, and it sounds like the CrazySide may have found a home.

Pirkey grew up in the Woodstock and Killington, Vermont, areas graduating from Woodstock High in 1980 where he claims his only ‘A’ was for a quiche cooked up for French class.… Read More

From my interview with Kristen Coats, I have no doubt that the Upper Valley Haven in White River Junction is incredibly lucky to have her. The Walden University graduate in public health spent almost six years working for Dartmouth-Hitchcock where she coordinated the Upper Valley Heal program. It was at Dartmouth-Hitchcock that Coats says she developed a true appreciation for the fact that people are healthy if their environments are healthy.

Having been at the Haven for only a year, it’s easy to see that Coats infuses her work with that same passion today. As leader of the nutrition program, she has no problem talking effortlessly about all the different areas in which the program has grown.… Read More

Politics aside, January’s Women’s Marches were incredibly inspiring to me and to hundreds of thousands of others across the world. It was truly a global initiative.

The scene in Boston was overwhelmingly surreal, as I am sure many in our community witnessed firsthand. January 21st wasn’t about negativity or one side versus another, but about the human spirit and our ability to unite as one people. While many are uncertain and apprehensive about the future, fear was cast aside and instead replaced with an energizing and positive feeling of hope. The marches were not merely about Trump, any political figure or initiative but about all of us.… Read More

Juanita Zerda, Tony Carlin, and their two boys, Liam, 11, and Juan, 9, have their home base in Winchester, MA, but own a second home here in Quechee. Like many Quechee homeowners, they were drawn here after visiting with a friend and seeing all that Quechee has to offer.

Although this time it was not a friend who owned a house up here, which is often the story, but instead a friend who had been here for a corporate retreat and remembered how much they liked it here. After visiting a few times, Juanita and Tony rented a house the following winter and decided to purchase a home.… Read More

As any Quechee resident or frequent visitor knows, a lot can change in thirteen years. Rickety two-person chairlifts give way to faster, sleeker, more flashy-named quads. Sometimes roadside alpacas appear. Restaurants come and go, as do people. But since she first stepped foot in Quechee over fifteen years ago, Taylor McKenna has been a witness to all these changes. Taylor, a resident of Sudbury, Massachusetts, has been a Quechee mainstay in the winter and the summer, on the slopes and off.

In the winter of 2000, Taylor first put on tiny ski boots and clicked them into tiny skis at Ascutney Mountain in Brownsville, VT.… Read More