Before Your Time

Visitors who come to Vermont seeking artisanal alcohol may not realize that it used to be one of the driest states in the nation: Prohibition lasted longer here than almost any other part of the country. But some experts say that dry spell may have led to today's booming alcohol culture. On this episode, an old homemade grappa still leads us on a tour of taverns, lost apples, stone dust, boarding houses, and back-to-the-land homebrewers.

The 1970s are often remembered in Vermont as the decade that thousands of new transplants made the state their home. While the country grappled with scandals like Vietnam and Watergate, back-to-the-land communes offered settlers an alternative path.

The counterculture valued self-reliance over profit. And as the movement spread, Vermont finished its long transformation from one of the most conservative states in the country to one of the most liberal.

But the decade was also good for business. While back-to-the-landers worked to build sustainable cooperatives, profit-driven businesses thrived. Huge companies like Burton Snowboards and Ben & Jerry's got their start, while inventors and artisans found major markets for their goods.

In this podcast, hear from three entrepreneurs who found Vermont in the 1970s to be the right place at the right time. Hinda Miller, one of the inventors of the sports bra, turned a personal hunch into a product that changed sports forever. Duncan Syme, co-founder of Vermont Castings, built a wood stove business that served natives and newcomers alike. And Fred and Judi Danforth, of Danforth Pewter, managed a sought-after product line while working to preserve their artisan roots.

Decades before the advent of skiing, Vermont was a destination for outdoor recreation during warmer months. The ski resort industry filled the gap: it made Vermont a four-season state for travelers. On this podcast, we’ll hear about how it defined a certain era of our history, around the mid-20th century, when Vermont transformed the way it sold itself to outsiders. And how that shift in identity changed the state’s landscape, too.

In the late 1920s, a state panel called the Vermont Commission on Country Life asked Helen Hartness Flanders, a well-connected socialite from Springfield, to document Vermont's traditional music. Like an Alan Lomax for the Green Mountains, Flanders traveled the state with a Model T full of recording equipment, calling on everyday Vermonters to sing into her microphone.

Flanders accumulated a cache of one-of-a-kind recordings that mainly captured the sounds of European settlers and their descendants. But she's just one of a long line of Vermonters who have dedicated themselves to preserving the sound of our state, believing that Vermont music tells us something about who we are.

In this podcast, we talk to Middlebury College special collections curator Rebekah Irwin and performer Linda Radtke about Flanders' collection. Plus, documentarian Mark Greenberg and Big Heavy World founder James Lockridge show that there's more to the history of Vermont music than English ballads.

A rugbeater is a simple tool, made of wood and thick wire, that Vermonters once used to beat dust out of rugs hung on clotheslines. One rugbeater in the Vermont Historical Society's collection was used to clean up after a historic mess.

Ninety years ago, a rainstorm that swept across the eastern United States caused massive flooding in Vermont. The waters destroyed farmland across the state. Thousands of animals drowned. Eighty-four people lost their lives, including the state's lieutenant governor.

To this day, the 1927 flood is considered the biggest natural disaster in Vermont’s history.

But the flood was an even bigger turning point. The rebuilding process set in place some of the infrastructure that we still use today. And right before the Great Depression and the New Deal years of the 1930s, it focused the federal government’s attention – and some of its money – on a state that had never really asked for it.

A rugbeater is a simple tool, made of wood and thick wire, that Vermonters once used to beat dust out of rugs hung on clotheslines. One rugbeater in the Vermont Historical Society's collection was used to clean up after a historic mess.

Ninety years ago, a rainstorm that swept across the eastern United States caused massive flooding in Vermont. The waters destroyed farmland across the state. Thousands of animals drowned. Eighty-four people lost their lives, including the state's lieutenant governor.

To this day, the 1927 flood is considered the biggest natural disaster in Vermont’s history.

But the flood was an even bigger turning point. The rebuilding process set in place some of the infrastructure that we still use today. And right before the Great Depression and the New Deal years of the 1930s, it focused the federal government’s attention – and some of its money – on a state that had never really asked for it.