Guests of a Different Sort

For nine days before Thanksgiving:
SHF (Savage Hart Farm) became…
SHCC (Savage Hart Conference Center).

A few weeks ago, we got a call from Jennifer asking if we’d make the apartment available for about nine days, no nights and could she come up and check the place out. She arrived at the same time as the Dartmouth Women’s Cross Country team was taking turns feeding grain to the sheep who were in temporary fencing just a few feet from the apartment door. “Want to feed a sheep?” I asked.  Of course. Who doesn’t?

Jennifer was scouting locations for a team of marketing folks from Ibex, an upscale outdoor clothing company, who wanted to find an inspiring offsite setting for what would be very intense long days of strategizing. We learned about Ibex shortly after we moved to the area because every October they hold a giant, wildly popular tent sale that draws locals and tourists to the Quechee town green, just across the river from us. Known for their ultra fine, soft washable wool clothing in hip styles, hip colors, you feel more athletic, more youthful and more beautiful the moment you pull on any of their products. Encamping at Savage Hart Farm to figure out how to make the products even better seemed to make complete sense to us.

They arrived last week, turned the apartment into a War Room of work tables, laptops, panels, and sticky posts, and came early each morning and left in the dark. Sometimes there were four cars, sometimes seven. Once I shook hands with someone who said he was the Boss, but it wasn’t until the last morning when a team of four young ladies knocked on the door and asked if they could meet the sheep that we actually laid eyes on all of them.  As they scooped grain into their hands and fed the lambs who are ensconced in the barn yard, they told me about waving to the sheep each morning, loving the views, and feeling that the time away from the office was well spent.

Next year when I get in line for the tent sale, because I’m way too cheap to pay full price, I plan to tell anyone who’ll listen that the clothes they are about to fight over and covet were inspired by a farm on a hill with views to die for and sheep to love.

Peggy