On Sunday afternoon, cheese artisans and enthusiasts gathered at the Highland Center for the Arts in Greensboro for the annual Vermont Cheesemakers Festival.
But it wasn’t quite the idyllic day many anticipated. Spotty Wi-Fi forced some vendors to cede sales, a late-morning deluge turned the parking lot into a mud bath, miring cars, and police and an ambulance were called in when a car struck a flagger who was directing traffic, as well as another vehicle.
The beloved food event had been on hiatus during the Covid-19 pandemic, and last year’s festival was open only to members of the industry.
This year, organizers at the Vermont Cheese Council promised to bring visitors from across the country to celebrate “Vermont’s agricultural abundance and the value added foods produced within the state,” according to a sponsorship brochure on the festival website.
In a change from the previous 11 festivals, the venue was moved from the Coach Barn at Shelburne Farms in Shelburne to the slightly smaller, more rural Highland Center in Greensboro, an area that’s been hit hard by summer floods.
“We traditionally hold the festival in bucolic spots to bring attendees into farming regions of the state to truly experience those areas,” Marty Mundy, executive director of the Vermont Cheese Council, explained in an email.
Two outdoor tents were erected to accommodate the estimated 75 vendors, 200 industry members and 900 public attendees.
Mundy said festival organizers had emailed ticket purchasers in advance, advising them “to expect muddy and wet conditions, that our parking was limited, and that our vendors took credit cards and that we would have an ATM on site, though we did highly recommend bringing cash to the event.”
‘Sales just petered off’
Problems with Wi-Fi connectivity started early in the day, said Anne Doe, the owner of Boston Post Dairy in Enosburg Falls and former secretary of the Vermont Cheese Council.
Doe said she and other vendors in the field tent, situated farthest from the arts center’s building, learned that the password they had been given ahead of the event was incorrect, or had been changed. (Keisha Luce, director of the Highland Center, said the password had been changed so that only vendors could access it, and vendors had been notified.)
As the day went on, word spread that, because of spotty Wi-Fi and a lack of cell service, vendors were only accepting cash.
“People said they didn’t have cash and I think they were heading to the ATM, but I never saw them again,” Doe said. “I’m estimating that we lost at least six (sales). One lady happened to have a checkbook and I took a huge chance.”
Another vendor, Alissa Shethar of Fairy Tale Farm in Bridport, said she had taken payments through Venmo, only to find out later that the payments had not gone through. “At least one person realized afterwards and contacted me,” Shethar said. “But that was only one person.”
“We give away a lot of cheese samples all day long — and that’s kind of our gift to the (Vermont Cheese Council) as we see it, and a way of representing our company,” Shethar added. “But we do like to actually make sales when we can.”
Some of the other 75 or so vendors fared better. Mundy said she had heard from several cheesemakers who had been able to get around the Wi-Fi issues and successfully met their sales targets.
Many, including Rebecca Velazquez, owner of Barn First Creamery in Westfield, were able to process sales online, and wondered why vendors with connection problems did not process sales in offline mode. Still, her sales did not meet what she had been told to expect by fellow cheesemakers, she said.
“I had been given a number by a friend of mine of what the sales would be and mine fell way below that,” she said. “I think people weren’t even really attempting to buy something because they had already been kind of turned down by other vendors saying they couldn’t process” digital payments.
Just before noon, rain began to pour.
In the field tent, Doe said she ended up standing in an inch of water and “sales petered off,” as people avoided the slushy ground. She also overheard a group of people saying they were leaving because they were afraid their cars would get stuck in the field.
Doe, who began attending the event in 2011, said her sales were usually around $1,000 for the day. This year’s numbers didn’t come close.
“Everything that we did and to come back with $250?” Doe said. “I honestly would have to consider very hard whether or not I would go next year.”
‘Mush after mush’
People attending the festival said they largely enjoyed themselves — until they went to leave.
They had been instructed to park in a farm field, which had one entry and exit point. From there, they were shuttled to and from the Highland Center.
But when it began to rain, the field — which was not yet hayed and was already saturated from previous days of rain — devolved into a muddy mess, said Mieko Ozeki, the former market director of the Burlington Farmers Market who was attending the festival.
“People got stuck, so (others) had to wait in the grass while they tried to get out of it. Some cars had to be pulled by tractor,” Ozeki said. “The people they hired for security tried their best. They took a lot of crap.”
Luce said her team at the Highland Center was impressed by the council’s planning.
“There were so many Vermont cheesemakers that were showcased,” Luce said. “But I think what was also showcased is that, with a changing climate, there are going to be difficulties.”
At around 1:50 p.m., police officers and an ambulance responded to a 911 call from the parking lot. A car had struck another vehicle, driven away, and then “made contact with a flagger, (who) was not seriously injured,” said Orleans County Sheriff Jennifer Harlow. Harlow said police are investigating the incident, and a muddy field “does not mean somebody has the right to behave badly.”
“Busloads” of people left the Highland Center for the parking lot shortly after, according to Ozeki. The shuttle dropped them off on the roadside, rather than inside the parking lot, because of concern that someone might be struck by a vehicle trying to exit through the mud. Some cars were not equipped to drive through mud, she said, and some drivers didn’t know how to navigate the conditions.
The parking fiasco launched a dedicated Reddit thread where attendees have shared horror stories and cheese puns, determining that “the field wasn’t Gouda ’nuff.”
Several drivers, including Ozeki, were able to make it to the main road by avoiding the sludgy exit entirely and rerouting through a neighboring field, where Circus Smirkus was holding a camp. Toward the end of the event, there was an attempt to improve conditions by spreading gravel on the field.
“This was the director’s first public (festival),” Ozeki noted. “It’s a totally different scale and different crowd when you’re dealing with lots and lots of tourists and visitors coming from all over the country to visit.”
In her statement, Mundy wrote, “Our partners at Jasper Hill Farm, who own the hay field in which we parked, checked the field multiple times in the days prior to the event to confirm it was acceptable for parking.” She acknowledged that unexpected rains had “led to significant mud issues,” and said that “our priority was to help everyone exit the parking lot as safely as possible, and this resulted in longer than anticipated parking lot exit timelines.”
Despite the issues, Ozeki said, the Highland Center exposed people to a beautiful and different part of Vermont. “It’s just that, in this rainy season, everything is not great.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Rebecca Velazquez’s name, and mischaracterized her remarks about online sales processing.
