Category: Vermont Folklife Center

Young parents document their lives in a new exhibit

Posted on May 9, 2013 |

• Addison County
• Addison County
• Featured
• Vermont Folklife Center

By John Flowers

MIDDLEBURY — Krista Sargent had lost part of her soul.

She reclaimed it with the help of others — and through a special poem that came from her heart.

“I am from the smell of Nana’s cookies baked all the time, hugs from Nana, whose long-gone porcelain dolls I remember as if they were mine,” the Vergennes resident writes.

“I am from being raped three times and living homeless in California, from doing drugs and learning better.”

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Sap beer makes a Vt. comeback

Posted on May 7, 2012 |

• Middlebury
• drink
• food
• Vermont Folklife Center

By Andrea Suozzo

MIDDLEBURY — In the early 20th century, no resource was left unused on a Vermont farm. The very end of a year’s sap run, when the maple flavor is the strongest, was no different. That sap was boiled down halfway, then tossed into a barrel with other ingredients to make sap beer.

“I doubt if there’s a barrel of sap beer in the state today, but I must say, it was a pretty good drink for haying,” said Edgar Dodge on a Vermont Folklife Center recording from the 1990s. (Hear Edgar Dodge's interview below)

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Migrant farm workers tell their stories with art at Folklife Center

Posted on February 9, 2012 |

• Middlebury
• agriculture
• immigration
• Vermont Folklife Center

By Andrea Suozzo

MIDDLEBURY — For “A.B.,” the artist behind one of the dioramas on display at the Vermont Folklife Center, the family with blank faces near the back of the box represents her own experience as an undocumented migrant worker in Vermont.

“The majority of people here don’t see us. You see our work, but not our faces,” she said, gesturing to the cow barns made of brightly colored paper and the backdrop of cows in a field within the diorama.

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