Upper Valley Connections

• Billings Farm kicks off their season this Friday after the winter — their Season Kickoff runs all day
• VINS Nature Center has a packed weekend schedule: raptors, owls, songbirds, and more
• The mud is receding. Probably. Wear boots anyway.

Four New Shows Open at AVA Gallery

Four simultaneous exhibition openings make this a rare day at AVA: Jackie Brown's 3D-printed ceramic sculptures, Steve Budington's coastal paintings, Tom Ferrara's acrylics, and Maxwell Holden's portraits. The opening reception runs Friday 5–7 PM — free and open to all.

2026 Spring Soirée at Howe Library

Howe's annual Spring Soirée is back — an evening of food, drink, music, and conversation in one of Hanover's most beloved buildings. The library closes during the day to prepare, which tells you something about the level of effort that goes in. Donations benefit the library.

Billings Farm Season Kickoff 2026

After a quiet winter, Billings Farm throws open the gates for its 2026 Season Kickoff. Farm animals are back out, the exhibits are running, and the Caleb Kenna photography show Our Working Lands is on display. The Farm Friends Play Club runs 10 AM–2 PM on Saturday for younger visitors.

Our Working Lands: Photography by Caleb Kenna

Vermont photographer Caleb Kenna has spent years documenting the farms and farmers of this region. The result is a quiet, powerful portrait of agricultural life that feels both timely and timeless — work as work, landscape as landscape. On display all weekend at Billings Farm.

An Evening of Owls at VINS

VINS brings out its resident owls for an up-close evening program — a good one for kids and adults alike who want to get acquainted with the birds of the night. $10 for members and general public.

Robotics and Coding Day at Montshire

A full Saturday of robotics and coding activities for kids and families at Montshire. Hands-on, drop-in, and included with museum admission. One of those days where you might have to drag them out at closing.

Tea Chat with Maxwell Holden

The day after his opening, photographer Maxwell Holden sticks around for an informal conversation over tea. A good chance to hear the thinking behind You Know Me before the crowds settle in.

Community Chorus Spring Concert: Turn the World Around

UVMC's Community Chorus closes out their spring season with Turn the World Around — a concert worth catching if you haven't been to one of these before. A second performance follows at 5 PM at the same venue. Both free.

Shakespeare Unrehearsed: Much Ado About Nothing, Acts IV–V

The Shakespeare Unrehearsed series wraps up Much Ado About Nothing with the final two acts this Sunday at Howe. No prep required of the audience — just show up.

Percussion Workshop with Sunny Jain

Multi-percussionist Sunny Jain — known for bridging South Asian and jazz traditions — leads a workshop open to all. Free, with donations accepted at the door. Don't miss this one.

Light Pirate Discussion with Suzanne Brown

A community discussion of Waverly Fitzgerald's The Light Pirate, set in a near-future Florida as infrastructure crumbles and a girl comes of age in the wreckage. Worth a read before Tuesday — or show up anyway.

Learning to Look at AVA Gallery

A guided creative activity that slows you down in front of artwork. AVA calls it a way to deepen your connection to what you're seeing. Free and drop-in. Good for a Wednesday lunch break.

Courtney Floyd: Higher Magic at Howe Library

Author Courtney Floyd reads from and discusses Higher Magic — a new novel that's been generating local buzz. One of those Thursday evening events that Howe does quietly and well.

Conversations | Tom Ferrara at AVA Gallery

AVA's Conversations series puts artist Tom Ferrara in dialogue with visitors about his work in the new Dualities show. Free. A good Thursday evening if you caught the opening Friday.

The Working Lands: How Billings Farm Became the Valley's Agricultural Memory

Vermont has always asked something of its soil that other places don't. The hills here are steep, the seasons short, and the margin between a good year and a hard one is measured in weeks of weather. That's what makes the farms that have survived — not just survived but thrived and endured as working operations — something worth paying attention to. Billings Farm in Woodstock is one of them.

The farm traces its roots to Frederick Billings, a Royalton native, UVM graduate and a California lawyer who made his fortune in San Francisco during the Gold Rush era and then, like many wealthy Vermonters of his generation, came back to put money into the land. Billings purchased the farm in 1871 and set about transforming it into a model agricultural operation at a time when scientific farming was a genuinely radical idea. He imported Jersey cattle, planted thousands of trees to prevent erosion, and applied the conservation principles of his friend George Perkins Marsh — whose landmark 1864 book Man and Nature had argued, decades ahead of its time, that humans were degrading the land and needed to steward it deliberately. Billings took that seriously. The hillsides around Woodstock still reflect his reforestation work.

After Billings died in 1890, the farm passed to his family and eventually to his granddaughter Mary French, who married Laurance Rockefeller. The Rockefellers continued the conservation mission and ultimately donated the property to establish the Billings Farm & Museum, which opened to the public in 1983. What makes it unusual among agricultural museums is that it never stopped being a real farm. The Jersey herd still produces milk. The fields still get planted. The people working there aren't just interpreters in period costume — they're farmers.

That's the context for photographer Caleb Kenna's exhibition Our Working Lands, which is on display this weekend at the farm. Kenna has spent years documenting Vermont agriculture, and his images have a quality that resists both romanticization and despair — they show work as work, landscape as landscape, and the people doing the farming as people making choices under pressure. The farms he photographs are operating under real economic conditions, not preserved in amber. Many of them are struggling. Some are innovating. All of them are making a bet on the land.

The Upper Valley's agricultural identity runs deeper than most people realize. This was dairy country for more than a century, and the Connecticut River corridor supported dozens of farms that are now residential land or grown back to forest. The ones that remain are worth the attention. Season Kickoff at Billings Farm this Friday is as good an excuse as any to go see what a working farm looks like in spring, when the mud is receding and the animals are coming back out and the whole thing starts over again.

Farmers' Market Season is coming. Outdoor markets across the Upper Valley start up in May — we'll have a full guide to locations, days, and what's new this year in an upcoming issue.

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