Q. Talk about your homestead in Cabot, Vermont. You are quite the Vermont’repreneur.

A. I run the kind of farm that used to form the backbone of our agricultural landscape and economy, a small-scale diversified family farm rooted in self-sufficiency and subsistence agriculture. It’s a busy and often messy 65 acres that my wife, Carrie, our two children and I call home and work. If we were to go back in time a century and a half, I don’t think my farm would be anything out of the ordinary. I pasture-raise livestock for meat, I sugar in the springtime, I cut firewood and mill lumber, I press cider from my orchard in the fall, I sell eggs to my neighbors, I grow corn, oats and rye to feed my animals, and most importantly I make whisky from that grain in my farm’s distillery. Pretty ordinary stuff for Vermont in 1850. What makes my farm unique is that it’s 2017, and this style of agriculture nearly died during the 20th century.

Unlike the commodity farming model that dominates contemporary agriculture both in Vermont and beyond which views farms as raw food producing factories, I use an ecosystem model where farms are land-based systems that foster life and productivity. And this is exactly the reason why I do so many different things on my farm. They’re all intertwined and the parts feed off of one another. At the heart of my farm is my distillery. That’s where I transform the grains, fruit, herbs, maple sugar, wood and water from my land into small-batch whiskies, literally a condensation of the best flavors my farm has to offer in a beautifully packaged bottle. But the distillery is simply a hub with many spokes connected to the rest of the farm. My spent grains and distilling wastes go straight to feeding my pigs and chickens, and since opening my distillery I’ve cut the feed bill for my livestock by over 60%. The pigs, along with my cows provide ample amounts of manure that get spread on my grain fields each spring along with all my wood ashes saved up from the winter. This in turn provides much of the fertility my grain crops need to produce corn, oats and rye for the distillery. And this grain-whisky-pork positive feedback loop is just one example of many.
Q. What’s most satisfying and most challenging about your life and work currently?
A. The most satisfying thing for me lately has been watching my five-year-old son grow up here. There’s just something about a boy and a farm that’s really magical. I love watching him interact with everything especially when we give him a little space and freedom to explore. He’ll spend an hour sitting and talking with our milking goats. Just today, our neighbors were walking by and he took their daughter over to see our new litter of week-old piglets without any prompting on my part. Maybe it’s because I had a very different childhood sheltered from much agricultural interaction, but I just love watching him turn into a little hayseed before my eyes.
The most difficult part of my life now is the balancing act of having so many balls in the air. When you’re homesteading, farming, doing value added agricultural products and raising two young children, there are never enough hours in the day. My wife and I sometimes say that our life is constant triage, deciding who needs attention the most at any given moment. But I think that’s the life of the small farmer, so we try not to sweat it too much. The trick is to find satisfaction with whatever you can accomplish. One of my favorite sayings is “happiness is reality minus expectations” So I try not to expect too much from anything or anybody especially myself, just do the best I can and take things one step at a time.

Q. What drew you to the idea of Vermont independence? What’s most attractive and most challenging?

A. I’ve always felt that northern New England, and more specifically Vermont is a place apart from the rest of the country. I’m someone that’s always self-identified as a yankee, and Vermont is where you’ll find the purest cultural heart of yankeeness still remaining. That’s what drew me to this state 15 years ago, and I think the cultural divide between here and the rest of the nation is only increasing. We’re an interesting mix of characteristics, this yankee spirit we have. We’re fiercely independent and individualistic, yet surprisingly compassionate and giving to those in need. We have a strong “live and let live” attitude that allows for a great diversity of actions and opinions between folks and I think it is key to the blossoming of creativity you see in our people. We’re exceedingly frugal and hardworking, and we take great pleasure in life’s simple pursuits. No where else in the country will you see so many backyard vegetable gardens as in Vermont, yet we have some of the longest winters in the US. In sum, we’re already a different kind of people that live in a different kind of place, and the cultural characteristics we share are exactly those needed by a free and truly independent people, and it’s time we change and localize our system of democratic governance to reflect that.

Q. How do to see yourself working on a more independent Vermont and a 2nd Vermont Republic?

A. Life in contemporary America is littered with dying institutions too massive and bloated to change and adapt, too corrupted by monied interests to achieve any positive outcomes for people ensnarled in them. And Vermont is no exception to this. Look at our educational system here in the state. It’s sucking the lifeblood out of our communities by driving property taxes to unsustainable levels, threatening to make the dream of property ownership unaffordable for the very children it’s supposed to be educating, while delivering poor quality educational results for the mountains of cash we shovel down it’s throat every year. In essence, public education in this state has become a racket. The narrative of declining student enrollment makes us believe our communities are shrinking, but could it be that parents have simply had enough of this failing institution and are finding alternatives to traditional public school? I think so. That’s why my wife and I homeschool our children. We don’t want them to participate in a system we think is failing its students, and one that amounts to little more than taxpayer funded daycare with a healthy dash of indoctrination.
We need to work on achieving our own independence first and then our collective independence will follow. Don’t like the corrupt systems that define modern American life? Simple, opt out. Our food system delivers poisonous, highly-addictive “food” products that damage the consumer and our environment, so don’t buy it and grow your own. My wife and I eat what we grow and can barter for and are basically down to buying flour, coffee and condiments at the store. This summer we’re planning to cut out the flour. My family has basically seceded from the food-industrial complex, and so can you. Most institutions we engage with, we can disengage with if we chose. That path is almost always harder and more challenging than the path of least resistance and false comfort offered up by the grifters that run modern life, but in return you get real purpose to your actions, real control over your decisions and security that comes from your own working hands and head. Everyone of us can start working on and implementing our own secession plan today and together our collective actions can become a revolution.

Q. What do you see for the future – of Vermont, the U.S., and the world?

A. The United States is an overburdened garbage barge leaking toxic waste that’s about to run aground on the rocky shoals of reality. Vermont would do good to jump ship now and make a swim for it, before we get roped into pulling this sucker up onto the beach where the scavengers are waiting to strip it for scrap. As for the world, Trump is right about one thing, globalism is dead, the end of cheap oil is killing it swiftly. Right now, a draft horse and a sharp axe is a better investment than any four-year degree. It’s time to re-localize, re-skill and re-volutionize our way into the future by learning from the past. We did it before and sooner or later (but probably sooner than most people think) we’ll do it again, and that’s how we become an independent Vermont.
February 28, 2017

2nd Republic Whiskey! An Interview with Vermont’repreneur Kempton Randolph

Q. Talk about your homestead in Cabot, Vermont. You are quite the Vermont’repreneur. A. I run the kind of farm that used to form the backbone […]
February 8, 2017

RING OF FIRE: One Vermonter’s Lessons Learned in the Middle East

Q. Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran – what do these 7 countries have in common (other than the BAN)? A. The BOMB. The […]
February 6, 2017

#Resistance2017: Make America Ungovernable (TRUTH DIG)

Donald Trump’s regime is rapidly reconfiguring the United States into an authoritarian state. All forms of dissent will soon be criminalized. Civil liberties will no longer […]
January 21, 2017

Mr. Trump’s Inaugural Address – January 20, 2017 (FASCISM IS U.S.)

Plus, NINE of the most important indy news stories of 2016. With links. How the DNC and the Clintonistas Stole the Democratic Nomination from Bernie Sanders. […]
January 14, 2017

JANUARY: Celebrating Vermont INDEPENDENCE Month! (LEGISLATION)

In 1777, Vermonters established Vermont as an independent and sovereign republic – “the only state of 50 that self-constituted itself as an independent republic,” according to […]
January 14, 2017

Plan V: A 2017 Vermont Interdependence Program

In honor of January 2017 – Vermont Independence Month (as declared by the Vermont State Legislature) AND the 240th anniversary of the 1777 founding of the […]
January 11, 2017

If at First You Don’t Secede: Trump Could Revitalize Vermont Movement (SEVEN DAYS)

Watch our full interview – uncut and uninterrupted – with SEVEN DAYS feature journalist Kevin Kelley on Plan V-TV – now streaming weekly via Vermont VMX […]
January 10, 2017

The Governor of Vermont Is An Idiot (FAKE NEWS)

Publisher’s Note: We didn’t author the title of this post. Veteran federal policy maker, journalist, and independent political critic Paul Craig Roberts did, and his column […]
September 20, 2016

Elect Jake! An interview with Vermont House candidate Jake Sallerson

Publisher’s Note: We conducted this interview with Jake Sallerson in Vermont’s Mad River Valley. Q. You are a 27-year-old Vermont native who grew up here in […]
August 31, 2016

NewGrassRoots: “Small D” Digital Democracy Now Planted in Vermont

  Publisher’s Note: Benjamin Brown, Vermont’trepeneur and founder of Rutland-based NewGrassRoots, has a compelling vision for harnessing digital technology. Namely, to make our local and state/republican […]
August 10, 2016

Why Zombie? Part Four

Not long after Joseph McCarthy whipped Americans into a frenzied fear of communist subversion, Ayn Rand’s works became a sensation. Similarly, Rand once again ascended to the best-seller list in the 2000s as Glenn Beck and the pundits of Fox News began a McCarthyesque revival of anti-communist hysteria.[1] The zombie – as the subject of popular culture – follows a similar sales trajectory and, it is my contention, for the same reasons.
August 7, 2016

FORTUNE magazine covers Vermont Independence

High summer in the 2nd Vermont Republic, and we’re taking August off – more or less – to enjoy all that summer in the Green Mountain […]