Big Picture Farm
So often, we don't really know who lives in our midst. In my personal passion project, "Americana: Know Thy Neighbor," I set out to introduce the inspiring folks around us who are quietly doing something real for the communities they call home.
I'm grateful to have made new friends in Louisa and Lucas, who don't just talk about community. They grew one, weaving together animals, land, and their own unfolding story at Big Picture Farm in southern Vermont.
Big Picture Farm
The economy of a small town is personal: what you put in, people feel. What you take out, they feel too.
Louisa and Lucas started Big Picture Farm on a hillside in Townshend, VT, in 2010, a small goat dairy and farmstead confectionery now running alongside their daughters, Maisie and Minna. The goats came first and stayed central: forty free-ranging animals whose milk becomes the award-winning caramels and farmstead cheeses the farm is known for. Animal welfare isn't a marketing line here. It's the organizing principle.
Yet the quieter story is in the choices you don't see on the label. Full-time jobs with benefits, in a part of Vermont where work can be seasonal and thin. Sourcing from other local makers deliberately, keeping dollars circling inside the community. Opening the farm for fundraisers and donating to local organizations. Not gestures. A commitment.
The name says it plainly: they're interested in the whole picture, and they take responsibility for every part of it. The animals, the place, the people, the work, the community. A small farm that turns out to be about something much bigger.
I can say these are 1000% out-of-this-world decadent and delicious, and they are truly the nicest family… bigpicturefarm.com
See more images in my gallery.
