Daybreak Monday 10/27/25

Cool, getting sunnier at some point. A mix of sun and clouds today, with highs maybe reaching 50 as we’re caught between high pressure to the west and an area of low pressure away off to east. There’s snow on the summits and temps will remain below freezing up there, so it’ll be around at least for another day. Some freezing fog overnight, lows somewhere around 30.

Red mountains at morning… This was the view of the Greens from Randolph Center at sunrise the other day, from John Graham. It’s a tad blurry, but no less dramatic.

A section of Route 135 just north of Woodsville will close starting today. NHDOT is closing the road in Bath, 0.65 miles north of the Route 302 intersection, “for the repair and replacement of curbing and guardrail at ‘the narrows.’” The construction’s due to last two weeks, until Nov. 7, and though local traffic will be allowed on both sides, there’ll be no getting through. The detour will use Route 302 to take drivers over to Route 5 on the VT side. 

In Claremont, Bluff Elementary closes: “It was rushed. It was stressful. It was a lot of tears.” That quote’s from Tammy Yates, who taught at Bluff for 23 years, and in the Valley News, Marion Umpleby details the rush and the stress and the emotions as, earlier this month, teachers moved their classrooms from Bluff to either Disnard or Maple Avenue elementary schools—a move set off by the school district’s financial struggles. Teachers were given a week to relocate their classrooms—and told that they were on their own for any furniture or materials they’d bought themselves, including one teacher who’s eight months pregnant and another facing shoulder surgery.

Got $2.6 million? Woodstock’s Gilbert Hill is for sale. You may not recognize the name, but you should: It’s “recognized as the site of America’s first rope tow for skiing, installed in 1934,” writes the Standard’s Tom Ayres. Conservationists Howard Krum and Mary Margaret Sloan bought it in 2016 from the VT Land Trust—the land is conserved and the four buildings on the property are under a historic preservation easement—but they’re moving to Maine. One change Sloan made during their years of ownership: the addition of a 700-vine vineyard that produces “a range of winter-hardy wine varietals,” Ayers writes. He talks to Sloan and others about the property.

Arrest in Thetford gas theft. The VN’s Clare Shanahan reports that Thetford police have arrested a Swanton, VT man for drilling into a gas tank and stealing gas from a truck at the Peabody Library earlier this month. They’re also investigating whether he’s connected to gas thefts at the town Park & Ride and at a private home. And, Shanahan writes, Thetford Police Chief Michael Scruggs says it would be “reasonable to assume there could be some connection” between the suspect and a series of gas-tank-drilling incidents in Bradford, Wells River, and Hartford.

Jerk chicken comes to SoRo. On Saturday, Dave Celone writes in his Upper Valley VT/NH Musings newsletter, siblings Kyle Bailey and Akelia Robinson (who goes by Keelia) opened K & P Restaurant and Bar for dinner in downtown S. Royalton. And today, they’re fully open for business, with Jamaican fare on offer for breakfast (well, that one leans more toward coffee, eggs, and oatmeal), lunch, and dinner six days a week (closed Thursdays). If you’re there for lunch or dinner, you’ll find jerk chicken, stewed oxtail, curried goat, and more. “‘Mi Bless,’ as they say in Jamaica,” Dave writes. “It feels good to celebrate the opening of a new restaurant here.”

With Barre milk processing plant to close, dairy farmers look to NH. As Maryellen Apelquist writes in The Herald, “The logistics of transporting milk are complex, and costs, of course, increase with distance.” So it wasn’t good news for Brookfield dairy farmer Keith Sprague and his partners when Hood announced earlier this year that its Booth Bros. plant—just 14 miles up the road—will close next spring. Sprague is looking at a range of options, including joining a cooperative, but Hood wants him to stick with them and ship to Concord. He tells Apelquist, “I think the state of Vermont needs to take a step back and look [and ask], are we pleased with this?”

“A lot of things didn’t go as hoped.” That’s VT’s ag secretary, Anson Tebbetts, talking to VTDigger’s Austyn Gaffney about Norwich Farm Creamery and the years-long saga—Gaffney calls it a “debacle”—of how the creamery and its operators, Chris Gray and Laura Brown, came to face foreclosure and potential bankruptcy and eviction from the house they live in on Norwich’s Turnpike Road. Many of the key events occurred years ago, and Gaffney recounts the whole story of how an effort that began with sunny optimism in the wake of the late Andy Sigler’s gift of the land to what was then Vermont Tech devolved into lawsuits and bitter feelings among a host of players.

“I knew how to photograph Fred. Fred didn’t always photograph good.” That’s veteran VT photographer Jack Rowell talking about the subject of two spreads he had in People mag: Fred Tuttle, the plainspoken Tunbridge dairy farmer who became a national figure thanks to his US Senate campaign and a documentary on which Rowell served as associate producer (“I had a light meter and the director didn’t,” he tells WCAX’s Joe Carroll). It’s fair to say that Rowell knew how to photographer a lot of things, and some of the results are collected in a new 144-page coffee-table book that launches next month. Carroll talks to Rowell about the book and his photography.

Mt. Washington’s Cog Railway rescues 20 unprepared hikers. “Summits at or certainly above 4000 feet have full winter conditions. This should come as a surprise to no one,” the Cog’s Andy Vilaine posted on Facebook on Saturday. But it did come as a surprise to a crowd of hikers this weekend: Many were hypothermic, Vilaine reported, “and without gear even near suitable for the conditions. Most had no idea that Summit services would be unavailable and that the state park was closed for the season.” One group of Canadian hikers dressed in sweatpants and sneakers “tried to get into the Summit Building, which is now closed to the public for the season,” WMUR reports. You know this, but the Mt. Washington Observatory posts daily summit conditions.

Body found late last week was missing Middlebury College student. A Friday autopsy, the VT State Police say in a terse press release, confirmed that the body found by searchers near the college’s organic farm in Cornwall was that of Lia Smith, who’d been missing since the Friday before. She had died by suicide. “No additional details are available about this case,” the VSP writes in its release. If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Counselors are on hand anytime, day or night.

Feds sidestep VT for disaster aid. Last week, reports VTDigger’s Alice Finno, President Trump denied a request by Gov. Phil Scott for disaster aid to towns in Caledonia and Essex counties following last July’s catastrophic flooding: In all, they saw some $1.8 million in damage, above the $1.2 million threshold for a federal disaster declaration. Other “blue” states also had requests denied. A Dept. of Homeland Security spokesperson, responding to Finno, writes, “the damage from the event was not of such severity and magnitude as to be beyond the capabilities of the state and affected local governments to recover.”

As a hunter, “You have a second or two to make a life and death decision and then you’ve got to live with the weight of that.” In a new post on the Vermont Almanac’s ongoing “Dispatches” blog, Dave Mance III considers the decisions hunters make—in this case a friend’s shooting of a 70-pound bear and his own split-second decision recently to lay down his gun and instead photograph a female bear. In a way, the column is his response to an imagined critic: “Why tell your family that you’re going out to try to get bear meat, wake up at 4 a.m., walk several miles up a mountain with a gun, and then sit there with your phone in your hand when the time comes to deliver?”

The Monday Jigsaw: Rutland’s Halloween Parade. It’s the Marvel Comics version, with The Avengers making their appearance in the Green Mountain State. On his Curioustorian blog, the Norwich Historical Society’s Cam Cross gives more detail about the superhero-themed parade’s origins in 1960 and how Marvel got involved.

Today's Wordbreak. With a word from Friday’s Daybreak.

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HEADS UP

Dartmouth’s Dickey Center hosts “Defense and National Security Threats in the Indo-Pacific”. Ian Easton, a prof in the Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute, will talk with Dartmouth government prof Stephen G. Brooks about how China’s growing assertiveness, “rising military tensions, shifting alliances, and contested territorial boundaries” are reshaping the region’s power balance. 5 pm in Haldeman 41, tix required.

And for today...

When he was younger, Andrew Collins spent several years living as a ski bum in British Columbia. He didn’t pick up a mandolin until he was 23, but in a few short years, became one of Canada’s master mandolinists. For the last several years he and his Toronto-based trio—James McEleny on bass and Adam Shier on guitar—have been plowing new ground at the edge of instrumental bluegrass. Anything they do is worth listening to, which is why it’s astounding that this two-week old video has only 149 views.

And when you’re done with that, check this duo mandolin piece out, too.

See you tomorrow.

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