It’s summer in Jeffersonville, and the woodlands along the Brewster River are buzzing with cicadas. Children splash in the gorge below Vermont’s historic Grist Mill Covered Bridge. Visitors flock to the trails beyond, seeking shade and the chance to socialize, from a distance.
Wondering what we’ve been up to? The pandemic may have slowed some things down and halted others, but here at VLT we’ve been busy!
On a mid-summer morning Fred Pratt sat on his cabin’s front porch, high on a Duxbury hillside, listening to birdsong from the surrounding forest. “There’s a yellowthroat down there,” he said. “And there’s a catbird, and robins of course, and another warbler, maybe a chestnut-sided.”
111 acres of forestland were protected last month in the Shutesville Hill Wildlife Corridor, which lies between the Green Mountains and Worcester Range and serves as one of the most important wildlife regions in Vermont.
A gorgeous stretch of open fields with long-range views in Barre has been conserved for farming into the future, honoring the area’s farming heritage. Beloved in the community, Gordon Booth had long wanted to see it protected; his children fulfilled this vision.