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

Actually, the Quechee Times’ first edition was published 150 years ago in 1872. However, the ‘modern-day’ version began in November 1972. Please indulge me as I tell this full-circle tale.

L. John Davidson was the founding visionary of the Quechee Lakes development. He was on a quest to find the perfect setting to create a four season resort community where families could live, work and play in the beauty that only Mother Nature can provide, while still having access and relative proximity to high-level cultural amenities and city centers. Quechee was just that spot.

While it sounds nice in the movies, it’s not a given that ‘if you build it, they will come.’… Read More

Matt Pickell, food program associate at the Upper Valley Haven, succinctly sums up the work that the Haven does in five straightforward words: “Good deeds happen here daily.”

Completing its 40th year in service, the Haven has long been providing shelter and education to those experiencing homelessness and food and other assistance to those in need. “The work here is very tangible,” Pickell says, “People come here, they need groceries and they leave with groceries.”

The Haven began its work in 1980, founded officially in 1982 by a group of five Upper Valley citizens in an old farm building on Hartford Avenue, formerly Taft Avenue.… Read More

The Ottauquechee River is the connector that has flowed throughout VINS’ (Vermont Institute of Natural Science) 50 years of educating Vermonters on the environment, from its beginnings in Woodstock in 1972 to its current day campus in Quechee in 2022. “It just seems very fitting,” Mary Graham, VINS assistant executive director, says, “We’re here on the Ottauquechee River now when we were founded in 1972 to clean up the river, so there’s that wonderful connection from the beginning until now, over the last 50 years.”

The origin of the VINS lies in a case to clean up the Ottauquechee River.… Read More

For April Lawrence and Ben Pauly, opening and operating their Quechee-based doughnut business, Farmer and the Bell, has been a serendipitous endeavor.

Now about a year old, their bakery – which doubles as their shop – attracts a long line of customers waiting for fresh doughnuts before 8 am when they open on the weekends.

“Each weekend it’s just so much fun for us to go in, and waking up super early doesn’t even matter because we just meet smiling faces (on) every single customer,” Lawrence said.

Farmer and the Bell, a name inspired by the couple’s memory of growing up in families that used a dinner bell, was an idea conceived during the pandemic and the result of picking up a new hobby to help pass the time while at home, Lawrence said.… Read More

The Quechee Club recently announced the adoption of its campus-wide master plan to enhance the club’s lifestyle offerings for its member community, marking the beginning of the largest project in the Club’s 52-year history. The overwhelming approval of the proposed first phase of the renovation plans transforms the four-season residential community’s position to provide a variety of outdoor recreational pursuits, premier amenities, and an inviting social atmosphere, all centered around the enjoyment of the club’s Upper Valley Vermont location.

Long in planning stages, an iteration of the plan was first presented to membership in 2010, but was never approved in its entirety.… Read More

“I loved coming here for 33 years,” says Marty Banak, founder and former owner and operator of Wilderness Trails and the Vermont Fly Fishing School at the Quechee Inn at Marshland Farms. “This was my spot.”

Wilderness Trails was an all-season outdoor hub that rented outdoor equipment such as canoes, kayaks, and bikes, gave cross-country skiing lessons, and housed the Vermont Fly Fishing School where Banak taught fly-fishing to eager fishermen and women, young and old, visiting or staying year-round in Vermont.

Banak first started the Wilderness Trails business in 1981 at 28 years old alongside his childhood friend Larry Boymer.… Read More

Through outdoor learning, students at the Ottauquechee School experience benefits such as, safe opportunities for student-directed play, learning through discovery, and connecting with new peers. 

In the beginning of the pandemic, “all classes were spending as much time outdoors as possible for safety reasons and to allow for a mask break as learning continued, using outdoor spaces next to the school constructed by Paul Sadowski (garden organizer and longtime outdoor leader at Ottauquechee) and volunteers,” said first grade teacher Jodi Tierney. 

More recently, however, most teachers have shifted back to learning outdoors mainly when it makes most sense for them and their students.… Read More

Jim Cardenali, ski instructor at the Quechee Ski School says, “Passion is key. You really have to have passion,” Passion, and his mentors that have become lifelong friends are the keys that have guided him on his path as a ski instructor and coach – with many fascinating stops along the way. 

Cardenali, a native of Webster, MA currently living in Norwich with son Luca (daughter Sophie lives in Burlington), is regularly on his skis; he works as a private instructor, helps with the Hanover High Race Team, coaches the Coast Guard ski team, and runs race camps at number of locations throughout the year from Stratton to France.… Read More