Let me start this site with a post about Town Meeting, a long standing  tradition.  Vermont still looks like a Norman Rockwell painting on Town Meeting day. School gyms and meeting houses come alive each year on the second Tuesday of March with residents voting on town matters. How much should we spend on our school? Should the town road crew buy a new truck? The beauty of Town Meeting is that these matters are discussed by the whole town and put to a voice or hand vote. Do you think the old truck is fine, then stand up and tell the crowd. If you disagree with the first person who spoke up, you get to tell them. Sometimes Town Meeting is short and everyone is agreeable, sometimes folks are long winded. But now matter how contentious things may get, the meeting stops for the noon meal sponsored by the Fire Department Auxiliary. In fact, I have seen matters settled just because folks want to move on to lunch! Most of our visitors are still on the ski slopes at this time of year but Town Meeting is one of  Vermont’s special secrets.

I have two secrets for you today!  Skiing in March is great.  We have our best snow and the temperature hovers around the 30’s.  Second, my ski area, Bolton Valley, has some great deals.   If you buy season passes for next year, you can begin using them this year.  Full passes for a family of four are only $1,199 – for the whole family! This mountain is about 30 minutes away from Burlington, has good snowmaking, and has over 40 trails.  Check them out!  Now I am going to end this post and go skiing myself!

If you’re in the Montpelier area between March 21st and March 30th, you will want to check out the Green Mountain Film Festival.  I was interviewing the festival’s managing director, Donald Rae, and found the festival has something for everyone.  Not only does the festival have films from around the world, it has a number of special events such as conversations with indie producer Christine Vachon and film critic Kathleen Carroll.  There will be a Vermont filmmakers showcase as well as a crankie festival (a form of moving picture akin to a movie on a paper scroll.  Click the link in this post for more information.  Ticket sales begin on March 17th and many films sell out so get your tickets early.  To hear an interview with Donald Rae, check back next week for the first episode of the My Secret Vermont podcast!

A new and regular feature of My Secret Vermont is ready.  I will be featuring a podcast every other week.  This week’s podcast gives a lot more information about the Green Mountain Film Festival.  Click the podcast link on the top right hand corner of this page to hear festival director Donald Ray in this podcast.  Enjoy!

If you like coffee, then you will be happy to know that lots of Vermont cities and even towns have their own coffee houses with great locally roasted beans.  In my home town of Montpelier, the place to go to is Capitol Grounds. This great little coffee house on State street is always lively with lots of regular customers.  The staff is friendly and the coffee is great.  To go along with your coffee they serve a nice assortment of sandwiches and pastries.  If you’re heading up to Burlington you have even more options on Church Street, the city’s open air marketplace. The Burlington Free Press just had a great article describing all of the local java joints.  But the secret I am going to share is about our biggest coffee seller in Vermont (and the whole North East),  Green Mountain Coffee Roasters in Waterbury.  I drive past Waterbury every day, and it you go by at the right time you can smell the coffee roasting.  If you drive down Coffee Lane off of Main Street in Waterbury you will find a little company retail outlet.  They often have sales on coffee.   Worth stopping by to stock up  if you are anywhere near on a weekday or Saturday morning!

It’s time to get some sugar on snow. This is a special Vermont treat that is only available this time of year.  I’m talking about maple syrup that is boiled until it is almost at the candy state, then poured on snow until it hardens. There are two classic side dishes to sugar on snow:  a home made cake donut and a pickle.  They say the donut is there to soak up the sweetness of the syrup and the pickle is there to “cleanse” the pallet.  I think it is there because eating a bunch of syrup can give you a pretty big sugar rush!  If you are in Vermont during March, there a number of sugar houses you can visit.  If you’d like to make your own sugar on snow (With real Vermont maple syrup, of course.) you can try this recipe.

I visited the Bragg Farm Sugar House in East Montpelier last week.  Listen to the podcast “Sugar Time” to hear how gallons of sap are turned into maple syrup!

I’ve been thinking about where you could visit Vermont and truly leave your car behind.  In fact, you could visit this place even if you didn’t have a car.  One such place would be Burlington, Vermont.  Burlington just happens to have two nice hotels right downtown within easy walking distance of the waterfront, Church Street Marketplace, and public transportation.  There is a new Marriott Hotel and a newly renovated Hilton right next door.  You could take a cab from the airport and then be all set for a short or long stay at one of these places.  There are shops and restaurants galore in downtown Burlington.  You could rent a bike and take a ride on the lakeside bike path.  You could even rent a canoe or kayak at the Burlington Boat House and explore Lake Champlain.  If you want a bigger adventure, you could take a Lake Champlain Ferry across to New York state to explore.

When you buy  Vermont maple syrup, you are guaranteed to get the real article.  Doug and Barbara Bragg told me last week, when I interviewed them for my podcast, that their syrup conformed to state law and specifications.  Syrup needs to have the correct density and be labeled with a uniform grade for color and flavor.  There was an article  in the Burlington Free Press this week about Henry Marckres, a maple syrup inspector.  His job is to inspect sugar houses to make sure their product is up to snuff.  He also keeps an eye out on products that claim to have real Vermont maple syrup in them just to make sure they’re telling the truth.  So…there are other things you can put on your pancakes, but there is only one kind of real  maple syrup from Vermont.

Watching paint dry is boring.  Watching ice melt is exciting!  At least at Joe’s Pond in West Danville where they don’t actually watch the ice melt, they bet on when it will melt.  Jules Chatot, who was the president of the Joe’s Pond Association back in 1988 took a guessing game among friends to the next level by starting a contest that has grown to having 9000 participants from around the world.  The ‘unofficial” web site of the Joe’s Pond Association explains how Jules and his friends started the contest – “They placed an old electric clock (now estimated to be at least 40 years old) on Homer and Elsie Fitts’ deck, tethered it to a cinder block wired to a wooden pallet placed 50 feet or more out on the ice just off the fishing access by the Fitts’ camp, and there it was—the perfect solution to inevitable arguments about when the ice was actually out of all the nooks and crannies and coves of the pond. When the block went down, the clock stopped, and that was it—the “official” ice-out time. Whoever guessed closest to the date and time the clock stopped won the contest.” You can buy tickets for this contest until April 1st.  This is spring time excitement in Vermont!