Tom Burr’s Latest Project Is Inspired by Iconic Building in New Haven

  A public homecoming for a local artist By Courtney Maum Conceptual artist and Norfolk resident Tom Burr has a magnetic pull toward structures that have preceded him, and the Marcel Breuer-designed Pirelli building in New Haven is no exception. Burr was born in New Haven only a few years before the building’s construction, so […]

Thorncrest Farm Magically Turns Milk into Chocolates

By Chris Sinclair When rare ability is married with a singular passion, the results can transcend the exceptional and wander into the realm of magic. Such a marriage is on vivid display at Thorncrest Farm, in Goshen, where Clint and Kim Thorn, along with their crew and beloved “girls,” make some of the finest chocolates […]

Piping in the Curlers

  To celebrate the last day of this year’s afterschool curling program, bagpiper Daniel Ward led the students across the ice. This is the second year of the Botelle program, which the school hopes to offer every year. Dave Beers, Jon Barbagallo and Bill Brodnitzki share the instruction duties. With young students learning the sport, […]

Northwest Connecticut Regional Food Hub Starts up this Spring

New Venture to Help Farmers Connect with Wholesale Market By Ruth Melville After over two years of research and planning, an innovative approach to supporting local farmers is about to get underway. The Northwest Connecticut Regional Food Hub is scheduled to launch in the 2017 growing season. What is a “food hub”? The U.S. Department […]

Foundation Offers Local Students Scholarships in the Arts

Every year, the Battell Arts Foundation awards scholarships to students who want to pursue a dream in the arts. The next deadline for scholarships is Monday, April 3, 2017. Applicants must be residents of Norfolk or Colebrook and in grades 3 through 12. They must be currently engaged in an artistic endeavor. For application requirements […]

Working Toward a Low Salt Diet

  By Susannah Wood As winter started up in earnest in late fall, drivers around town began to see scatterings of greenish chunks on the roads before any bad weather had actually arrived. Was this something new? Why was it being applied before the snow and not after? Turns out, there’s a good reason, a […]

Creating a Comprehensive Support Net

  By Wiley Wood The village green in Norfolk, shaded by trees, its grass well tended, is a gracious space. Yet recent economic data puts the town’s poverty level at nearly 10 percent. Responding to this, a group of town leaders gathered at Battell Chapel recently, forming a loose coalition known as Norfolk NET, to […]

Multiage Classrooms Are Coming to Botelle School

  By Lindsey Pizzica Rotolo If public school teachers are often wary of innovation after recent waves of federally mandated programs, that is not the case at Botelle School. Kindergarten teacher Deb Tallon and first-grade teacher Bea Tirrell have enthusiastically embraced plans for the first multiage classrooms in the fall. Tallon and Tirrell will be splitting […]

A Third-Generation North Canaan Dairy Adopts Cutting-Edge Technology

Freund’s Farm is first in state to install robotic milking machines   By Colleen Gundlach Driving through East Canaan, one can’t help noticing the bank of 500 solar panels alongside Route 44. These are impressive, but only a tip of the iceberg of the advanced technology actually at work at Freund’s Farm and the three […]

After Devastating Fire, Lone Oak Campsites Begins Reconstruction

East Canaan’s Brown family has invincible optimism   By Colleen Gundlach “In the midst of winter, I found there was within me an invincible summer.” So said French philosopher Albert Camus, but it could also have been said about the Brown family of East Canaan. Less than a month after a fire completely destroyed their […]