Hartland

Because this year, instead of just telling you that there are a million Vermont cheeses you've probably never heard of, I got to talk to three of the people actually making them.

So we're going to Hartland to meet Suzy Caplan of Fat Sheep Farm.

We'll go to Westfield to talk about Rebecca Velazquez and Barn First Creamery, and then we're going to Windsor for Good Hands Creamery, where Liz Bleakley is making tiny batches of raw milk cheese basically by herself.

And three very good reasons that the next time you think you know Vermont cheese, you can think again.

Although I will give a side note, and I've never had a piece of Cabot cheese as delicious as I did at the 2023 Vermont Cheesemakers Festival.

Let's start with Fat Sheep Farm in Hartland, Vermont, because this is almost comically Vermont in the best way.

Suzy Caplan and her family have been raising sheep, making cheese, and hosting people on the farm for about 10 years.

And when I asked her to give me the elevator pitch, it was basically, "We take really good care of our animals and we make really good cheese." Which honestly, say no more, Suzy.

And the place they left her? Told investigators something.

Advent Hill in winter is about the loneliest road in Heartland, Vermont.

The plow barely runs it.

For three or four miles, there's not a single house with anybody living in it.

And then it got murkier.

Barbara Agnew's body was found about five miles from a spot where, a few years before, another body turned up.

A 16-year-old girl from Heartland named Heidi Martin also stabbed.

And in Heidi Martin's case, there was a confession.