Strafford Town House Storytelling: Voices of the Land

Subject: [Events-UV] Start August With this Event on Your Calendar!

Strafford Town House of Storytelling Event Sunday, August 16th!
FREE!
The Friends of the Morrill Homestead invite you to join us on Sunday, August 16th from 4pm-5pm at the Town House, to listen to the voices and experiences of those who love and work the land and celebrate the connection between community, stewardship, and learning that Justin Morrill made the bedrock of his legacy. Let us gather in the spirit of connection, gratitude, and growth, continuing the story that Morrill began in Strafford, and that lives on today. Local featured readers and storytellers include:
Suzanne Lupien - Harken Farm
Suzanne Lupien is a writer, farmer, artist. She farms with a team of horses growing vegetables on an old farm in Vershire and writes mostly about nature, farming, and living simply.
Amy Huyffer - Rockbottom Farm/Strafford Organic Creamery
Amy Huyffer graduated law school in 2000 and has been dairy farming ever since. Along with her husband, Earl Ransom, and son, Jackson, she runs the Strafford Organic Creamery and RockBottom Farm, milking 80 Guernsey cows and selling glass-bottled milk and super-premium ice cream throughout New England. She also coaches skiing, bakes bread, fixes washing machines, and grows tomatoes. Farming is a good match for her foul mouth and inability to sit still, but mostly she’s in it for the food. No one eats better than a farmer married to a man who can cook.
Marya Merriam - Woodfrog Flowers & Rockbottom Farm Employee
Marya Merriam grew up on a vegetable farm in Brookfield and moved to NYC for college, only to realize how much they missed community built around the ethics and taste of good food. They moved to Strafford in 2019 and split time between being a dairy farmworker and a vegetable and flower farmer. When not farming, you can find them at a potluck, enjoying the great outdoors, or just at the pond with a good book.
Alexis Lathem, Author/Homesteader
Alexis Lathem is the author of Lambs in Winter: Sketches of a Vermont Life Through Seasons of Change, the poetry collection Alphabet of Bones , and two chapbooks. Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Black Earth Institute, the Vermont Arts Council, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Marble House Project, the Chelsea Award for Poetry, and the Michael Steinberg Nonfiction Prize, and has appeared in dozens of literary journals. She has been a staff writer at Rural Vermont, organizer and steward of her faculty union, the coordinator of a First Nations support group, and has written on, and advocated for, numerous social justice and climate issues. She taught writing at CCV for twenty years and holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

This event is held in partnership with the Vermont Department of Historic Preservation and generously sponsored by EC Fiber.

Kumari Patricia, Director
Friends of The Morrill Homestead
214 Morrill Memorial Highway
Strafford, VT 05072
802-765-4288
director@morrillhomestead.org
www.morrillhomestead.org