• Norfolk Crowds Return to New Farmers Market

    By Andra Moss The crowd was large, loud and loving it at July’s Northwest Farm to Fork farmers market, held under the pavilion at Norbrook Farm Brewery. “We were very pleased with the turnout, with approximately 230 customers coming through and 16 food and farm vendors,” says Lisa Auclair, a co-founder, with Devin Grosso and […]

  • Friday Night on the Green Celebrates America’s 250th

    July 3 was a picture-perfect night for the community-wide event cel-ebrating America’s Independence. Following a quick parade, picnickers enjoyed burgers and ice cream while judges dug into the entries in the pie baking contest. First Selectman Hen-ry Tirrell moved seamlessly from his welcome speech to the dunk tank, and a few folks, like Pete Sanders […]

  • NORFOLK REMEMBERS Laurene Mary Wallace

    Laurene Mary Wallace, 77, of Colebrook passed peacefully at home surrounded by her family on Friday, July 10, 2026. Laurene was born on April 28, 1949, in Bridgeport, the last of four children born to the late Lawrence and Irene (Misencik) Firmender of Stratford. A retired registered nurse, Laurene’s career in nursing and cardiac rehabilitation […]

  • Norfolk Remembers Sally Sterling Ellis Quale

    Sally Sterling Ellis Quale, of Norfolk and St. Petersburg, Fla., formerly of Bronxville, N.Y., died unexpectedly of heart failure on July 7 at the age of 87. Sally will be remembered for her deep commitment to her family and communities and for her warmth, kindness, intelligence, creativity … and, of course, for her beautiful smile […]

  • Norfolk Then…

    This charming house, still standing on the west side of Litchfield Rd., was built in 1905 for Richmond Paine, the newly appointed conductor of the Litchfield County Choral Union (LCCU). Carl and Ellen Battell Stoeckel engaged the architect Ehrick Rossiter to design the house for Paine as well as the Music Shed for performances by […]

  • Norfolk’s Newest Neighborhood Puts Down Roots

    Haystack Woods lauded as a “model for the state” By Joe Kelly Norfolk’s newest neighborhood, the Haystack Woods affordable housing development, has officially come to life. A year ago, the 39-acre location—a former gravel pit off Old Colony Road—was little more than a muddy building site. Now construction of the 10, two- and three-bedroom homes […]

  • Winsted Church Auctions Tiffany Window for $1.25 Million

    Sale highlights women’s role in Tiffany designs By Joe Kelly When medieval architects found ways to build taller cathedrals, the techniques they developed also made possible the enormous stained-glass windows that we so enjoy today, such as at Chartres and Sainte-Chapelle in France and Canterbury Cathedral in England. American-made stained glass is more recent, dating […]

  • A Revolutionary Year

    1776 Norfolk explored in summer exhibition By Andra Moss Communities across the country are looking back with wonder at 1776, the year that 13 British colonies initiated a revolution that, against astonishing odds, led to the birth of an independent republic. In Norfolk, two curators have combed the Norfolk Historical Society’s (NHS) collection for colonial-era […]

  • SUMMER MUSIC: Familiar Quartets, New Composers at Yale Chamber Festival

    By Patricia Platt The Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, running from July 3 until Aug. 22, will present an exciting season of classical, innovative and international music. This summer, the Brentano Quartet, Shanghai Quartet, Ying Quartet and the Horszowski Trio are among those who will perform during weekend concerts and serve as artist-in-residence mentors to the […]

  • Botelle Students Move Up

    By Avice Meehan Four sixth graders bid farewell to Botelle Elementary School at a laughter-filled, but occasionally serious, ceremony on June 16 that was attended by family, friends and town officials. First Selectmen Henry Tirrell, a Botelle graduate whose mother and aunt taught at the school for many years, reminded the students that they would […]

  • Norfolk Rail-Trail Project Pedals Forward

    By Jude Mead After more than a decade of planning, permiting and redesign work, Norfolk’s long-await-ed Rails-to-Trails initiative has reached a major milestone, bringing the community closer to the creation of a new multi-use recreational trail along a historic railroad corridor. The project is the North Brook Trail, a planned three-quarter-mile ADA-accessi-ble pathway that will […]

  • LEGISLATIVE UPDATE: Budgets, Beetles, Nips and More

    By Avice Meehan State Rep. Maria Horn came prepared to share details about the Connecticut budget (she is co-chair of the legislature’s Joint Finance Committee) and the progress that has been made toward paying down the state’s unfunded pension liability, increasing the rainy day fund (now up to $18 billion) and allocating more state funds […]

Articles

All Kinds of Hoopla Going on at the Library — and Kanopy, Too

EMedia services offer relief from stresses of social distancing By Kelly Kandra Hughes Even though the Norfolk Library is closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, your Norfolk Library card can still give you access to thousands of eBooks, movies, television shows, and more. This access is thanks to the library’s recent addition of two new media […]

Boards of Education and Finance Join Forces on Botelle Committee

Goal is to improve quality of education by improving communication by Ruth Melville After years of wrangling over the annual budget for Botelle School, Michael Sconyers, chairman of the Board of Finance, felt it was time to try something new. “It’s no secret,” he says, “that there’s been a lot of tension between the Board […]

Maple Syrup Makers Experience Unusually Early Sap Season

Text by Jude MeadPhoto by Winter Mead The Farmer’s Almanac, a periodical that has provided long-range weather predictions since 1818, was right again. It predicted above normal temperatures in our area this winter, and most maple syrup producers agree that it was spot on. Many producers took advantage of the warm weather. I was one […]

Addressing Norfolk’s Diverse Housing Needs

Creating a mix of rental units to grow the community by Allysia Ruggiero On Monday Feb. 3 at 6 p.m., over 30 people weathered the cold evening air so that they could be in attendance at the Norfolk Hub to hear Jocelyn Ayer, community and economic development director of the Northwest Hills Council of Governments […]

Inn Owner Withdraws Zoning Request for Bakery and Cafe

Bows to neighbors’ objections Text and Photo by Colleen Gundlach The Gilded Age home located just south of the Norfolk’s Village Green has been a local landmark, where patrons have been served food for more than 60 years. When Felix and Clara Klauer purchased it from Erastus Johnson in 1951, the Mountain View Inn welcomed […]

Tree Cutting at Haystack Mountain State Park

Text and Photo by David Beers A century ago, the Stoeckel family’s generosity provided to the state both the land and the tower that now make Haystack Mountain State Park the icon of Norfolk. Back then, most of the forest on the lower slopes of the mountain was young saplings. That fledgling forest is now […]

Making a Safe Space for Lakota Children in South Dakota

Text by Tina OlsenPhoto by Erick Olsen In the summer of 2021, a group from Norfolk’s Church of Christ UCC will travel to the Cheyenne River Reservation to spend a week with the Lakota Sioux tribe in South Dakota. From June 20 to 26, participants will work with the organization Simply Smiles to serve the […]

French Choir Joins Salisbury Sinfonietta for Norfolk Performance

by Marie-Christine Perry The weekend of April 26 will see the return of what might well become a tradition, the joint concert of a Parisian choir with the regional Salisbury Sinfonietta Festival Choir. Two years ago, the collaboration of Jack Bowman, the Salisbury choir director, and Dominique Fanal, the conductor of the Sinfonietta de Paris, […]

Turning Garbage Into Electricity Gets More Expensive

State reaches a decision point on funding MIRA by Wiley Wood “Shipping our garbage out to Pennsylvania, Ohio, or West Virginia is not an option,” says Matt Riiska, Norfolk’s first selectman. “It’s our problem, we should be taking care of it.” Right now, Norfolk’s garbage, about 800 tons of it a year, is hauled by […]

Photos From Winter Weekend in Norfolk 2020

A Knack for Finding Family

Text and Photo by Kelly Kandra Hughes Imagine finding out you’re related to a witch who was accused at the time of the Salem witch trials. Or that your family heritage links back to Benjamin Franklin. Both discoveries happened during research by genealogy expert and history enthusiast Laurie Foulke-Green. In the former instance, Foulke-Green discovered […]

Beaver and Humans, Can We All Just Get Along?

Beaver Liberation Text by Dave BeersPhoto by Roger Johnson On Saturday, Dec. 28, at around 4 p.m., Roger Johnson and Katka Hannelova were walking their dog on top of the southerly Wood Creek dry dam when they noticed splashing and thrashing in the dam outlet plunge pool. They headed down to investigate and found a […]