Date Visited: July 25, 2015
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If you are fortunate enough to live in Shelburne, it would seem you have a lot to be happy about. You’re about 7 miles from Vermont’s largest city, you have vibrant town center, you have beautifully manicured suburban neighborhoods to the East and Lake Champlain to the West. You have one of the most visited and highly regarded museums in the Shelburne Museum and a wonderful destination attraction for all ages at Shelburne Farms. Perhaps one of your few complaints might be the fairly constant flow of heavy traffic going through the town center carrying people on their way to Burlington.
For all the years we have been traveling through Shelburne we have barely thought of stopping there to look around so this visit was a treat. Actually there was that once that we ventured just off the beaten path of Route 7 to eat at Rustic Roots. That was definitely worth the detour.
On this particular day we found our way to Shelburne Farms where they were celebrating Open Farm Week. The farm was once a vast estate covering 3800 acres that included I think several miles of shoreline on Lake Champlain. Reduced to a mere 1700 acres today, it still speaks of the Vanderbilt wealth it once represented. Much of Frederick Law Olmstead’s architecture still remains on this working farm with a mission to advance the cause of sustainable agricultural practices and education outreach.
We arrived in time to watch beautiful draft horses pull a haying machine through a field of wheat. I never get tired of watching these magnificent animals. From there, we took a tractor powered passenger wagon to the Main Barn hoping to see a talk on raptors. We were given directions and walked through an awe inspiring old growth forest up a very long hill, but never found the raptor seminar. We did, however, find at the very top of the hill the most breathtaking view of Lake Champlain I have ever seen in all my 43 years in Vermont.
Back at the Barn we stopped to admire the both the flower and vegetable gardens, before chowing down on some locally sourced lamb sausage and Shelburne Farms aged prize winning cheddar. What fun! Can’t wait to go back and spend more time there and visit the Museum as well.
We toured the back roads on the Lake side of Route 7 and saw more examples of the classic farm landscape that Vermont is famous for and which we have seen in our travels along it’s Eastern shoreline. Crossing over “the route” we stopped first in the center of town to walk in the neighborhood and admire the stone churches. Traveling the back streets is a trip through Vermont suburban life at its best.
