Home Grown

In Vermont's Upper Valley, new farm stays, general stores, and restaurants are putting a fresh spin on small-town life. 

- Tom Vanderbilt

IT WAS A FRIDAY night in Hartland, Vermont, and I was out behind the barn at Fat Sheep Farm & Cabins (fatsheepfarmvermont.com; cabins from $195), sitting by a blazing firepit carved out of drifts of snow. A biting March wind whipped down the mountain while a tapestry of stars glittered overhead. I was drinking an IPA from River Roost Brewery and talking to Todd Heyman, who, together with his wife, Suzy Kaplan, runs what has become one of the state's most popular farm stays.

Hosting guests is challenging enough, but try adding livestock to the mix. "We basically haven't slept for the last two weeks," Heyman told me. March is lambing season, and Fat Sheep had had a bumper crop. "We would come out every three or four hours during the night," Heyman said; often he and Kaplan would hand-feed the animals if they didn't seem strong enough. (The ewes, in keeping with the farm's mission to keep things local, are fed spent grain from River Roost.) March in Vermont is also mud season, when the thaw begins to trickle onto dirt roads, challenging even the most stalwart Subaru.

A former lawyer, Heyman worked on various farms before buying the property that would become Fat Sheep. I found the place accidentally. Its five fully equipped private cabins, with their Scandinavia-meets-Vermont décor, felt like the perfect blend of hotel and house rental. There are fresh eggs and scones to greet you on your first morning, hiking trails on the grounds, and workshops on sourdough baking and cheese making. For a state rich in sheep, the farm is one of the few producers of sheep-milk cheese, and Kaplan proudly showed me the humidity- and temperature-controlled cave where chalky rounds of aging Manchego were arranged on wooden shelves.