MAPLE GROVE BAKERY
Doug Gorman and Philip French have opened the Maple Grove Bakery & Café at what is known as the Fat Hat Corner, at the corner of Route 4 and Quechee Main Street in Quechee. The Maple Grove Bakery has products available for retail sales at the location, which includes a small dining area, while the majority of their business is selling baked goods wholesale to resellers scattered from Burlington to Brattleboro.

Located in a building of its own, down the driveway from the Fat Hat Clothing Company, the Maple Grove Bakery has been busy since its opening day, according to Gorman. Gorman, who does the majority of the baking on the premises, says that extensive planning and preparation preceded the opening of the bakery. The owners did research for suitable retail outlets, especially either small general grocery stores or co-ops that were located close to either I-89 or I-91. Because travel time impacts the ability of the bakery personnel to deliver fresh products to their customers in an efficient way, only locations adjacent to interstates were considered.

Products made in the bakery include individual pastries such as turnovers, sticky buns, and scones. Candies from Maple Grove Bakery include butter crunch toffee and peanut brittle, and cookie varieties offered are chocolate chip, molasses ginger, oatmeal with apricot and raisin, lemon butter wafers, a special cookie called the Vermont Cow Pie, and others. Eight varieties of bread are made daily, and coconut, apple, blueberry, cherry and pecan pies, as well as a series of cakes such as apple, banana, and lemon are also baked there, as are several types of granola. Gorman and French take pride in fastidious individual packaging of their baked goods, making it easy and neat for visitors to pick up and carry off a bakery snack to enjoy later. Products are baked in special Bake-and-Serve containers made in Italy. A focus on ingredients that are locally sourced and fresh also makes it possible for the bakers to offer seasonal specialties.

Sandwich offerings on the lunch menu, include Vermont Maple Cured Ham with Jarlesberg Cheese; Turkey, Granny Smith Apple, and Sharp Cheddar, served with chutney on sourdough bread; Baby Spinach, Caramelized Onion, Tomato and Jarlesberg Cheese on a baguette, and others. A variety of coffees and teas are also offered.

As word has been spreading around the area, and commuters who pass by the Maple Grove Bakery & Café on Route 4 daily are discovering it, the retail business is growing swiftly. There is seating for only about one dozen people inside, but when warmer weather arrives in the spring and summer, Gorman says that there will be chairs and tables set up outdoors, too.

Christina Gorman, wife of Doug, is assisting long-time Norwich residents Gorman and French in the bakery/café. While French has a background in the hospitality industry, for Gorman, baking has been a passionate hobby that he decided to elevate to full-time work soon after his retirement from a career as an investment banker. While Gorman does the baking, French takes care of the deliveries to wholesale customers, and Mrs. Gorman assists retail customers and serves diners in the café.

Maple Grove Bakery & Café is open Tuesday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and on Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

The new business has a physical address of 1 Quechee Main Street, Quechee, VT 05059, and a telephone number of (802) 296-0011.

MCDONOUGH’S HOME HEATING OIL

A new business, McDonough’s Home Heating Oil, has joined the existing McDonough’s Fuel & Service at the latter’s 43 Conant Square/Route 7 service station in Brandon.

The service station, operated by Michael McDonough, has been there for three years. Now Michael McDonough has been joined by his father John McDonough and John’s business partner Michelle Alger, whose heating oil, kerosene and off-road business diesel company began operating January 1.

John McDonough, a lifelong Brandon resident, said that his past business experience has included managing an apple orchard on Sugar Hollow Road and working as a delivery man for other fuel dealerships. He said he worked with Alger at two of those businesses, where she was playing a major role in running the office.

“She and I worked together for several years,” he said. “We talked it over and decided we would go on our own,” he said, since their combined experience covered both the field and office sides of operating a heating fuel company.

The sale of the formerly locally owned Fuels by Keith to Ultramar helped motivate them to offer a locally based alternative, John McDonough said. The service station in which they have an office, run by his son, is likewise an independent, unbranded seller, he said.

The business had a nucleus of customers soon after opening because many of those who had known John McDonough before decided to go with him as a supplier, he said.

The heating oil company’s service area presently includes Brandon, Leicester, Pittsford, Florence, Proctor, and parts of Sudbury, John McDonough said. As time goes on and they continue to gain more customers, they may be able to organize supply routes that lead farther out, he said, the price of fuel being a consideration for the business itself as well as for customers.

Their scheduled office hours are Monday through Saturday, from 7:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

The telephone number is (802) 247-3900, and the fax line is (802) 247-3977.However, both he and Alger can be reached at other times by calling them at home, McDonough said. His home number is (802) 247-6602, and hers is (802) 247-4223. Postal deliveries go to 43 Conant Square, Brandon, VT 05733.



ROCHE INTERNET MARKETING

Barry Roche of West Rutland has established a new business called Roche Internet Marketing. Roche is known in the area for starting Vermont Hydroponic Tomatoes in 1993 in West Rutland on the Whipple Hollow Road, but he is in the process of transferring ownership of that business so he could “do something that is a little less physically demanding and a little more relaxing,” he said. Thus he founded his Internet Marketing business, which essentially creates Websites dedicated to one specific product line.

Roche primarily designs Websites for items for the home, as in tableware and home furnishings, and works in conjunction with Stores Online.com, a hosting company. The first of such Websites that Roche developed is glassware and accessories for wine called glasswareforwine.com. Roche selected a line of Romanian-produced glassware and hand-painted decanters that are featured for purchase on the Website.

Other Websites that Roche has in the works include one for porcelain products, one for home décor, and one for outdoor goods such as patio furniture. Once a customer places an order, the actual warehousing and distribution is conducted through a firm in Atlanta, GA.

The phone number for Roche Internet Marketing is (802) 438-5263 and the mailing address is 104 Sheldon Avenue, West Rutland, VT 05777.



B. FARNUM PHOTOGRAPHY

As a professional photographer in the Rutland area, Brian Farnum made his official debut only recently. However, at age 25 he is already a veteran, having begun shooting and developing black-and-white film 10 years ago in the photo lab at Mill River Union High School in Clarendon, his home town. “I took the photos for the school yearbook,” Farnum notes. “I’ve always loved art: painting and drawing,” but since taking teacher Allon Wildgust’s course at Mill River, photography has been his main artistic medium.

While employed at the Party Store in Rutland selling wedding decorations, he developed enough customer contacts to start taking candid wedding pictures in color. From there he moved to portraits of people in studio and outdoor settings, and from there to outdoor portraits of objects in nature. “I have the indoor lighting but I like the natural outdoor light for fine art portraits of people and nature.”

For example, he considers as fine art his portrait of a leafless tree draped in snow. Landscapes reveal his penchant for shooting in the rain. A brook winding through a meadow from out of mist-shrouded woods is one example.

To sharpen his eye for composition, Farnum took a course at Mill River and another at Community College of Vermont in Rutland. “Now,” he declares, “I’ll take anything. I’ve just finished taking pictures of rentals in Killington and Belmont for Wise Vacation Homes.”

With his Canon 5-D digital camera, a set of L-Series lenses, and a computer program, Farnum recently produced a DVD slide show with background music. Using his advanced equipment, “I can pan across still photos and fade in and out; it gives you the sensation of motion.”

Farnum likes the Canon 5-D for advertisements and other graphic purposes. Among his recent projects are the layout of the Vermont State Fair brochure and of customers’ ads in radio station WSYB’s Sports Guide, which features high school sports.

A couple of years ago, while working part-time for the Catamount Radio studios, he met Tim Sink, then the account manager in the advertising department. Farnum recalls that Sink encouraged him to further develop his design skills. “Tim pushed me in that direction. Now I’m doing it full time.”

For Farnum, one good thing often leads to another. When Tim Sink and Cassie Horner prepared to launch their new, four-color quarterly named Rutland Magazine last fall, they called on him for photographs to accompany Horner’s article on the Sugar & Spice restaurant. He produced ads for WSYB and Z97.1 radio stations and several others in the magazine’s winter issue, including one for his own business, B. Farnum Photography. He’s also designing his Web pages for the Internet.

Farnum still likes working with black-and- white film, which, before making a finished print, he can manipulate in his own darkroom to intensify contrasts or soften backgrounds.

The mailing address of B. Farnum Photography is PO Box 274, North Clarendon, VT 05759. The phone number is (802) 770-0047. The e-mail address is bfarnumphoto@mac.com. The Web address will be www.bfarnumphotography.com.

BRAD KEITH SERVICES

Brad Keith is a high school senior who hasn’t waited to graduate before going into business for himself. Although he started caring for a few people’s lawns about four years ago, the Pittsford native formally entered the small business market last October when he registered the company name, Brad Keith Services, with the Vermont Secretary of State.

By last fall Keith’s customer list had expanded and services had diversified to include lawn care, rubbish removal, and plowing snow from driveways. The territory he now covers year-round has expanded from Pittsford to Proctor, Rutland Town, and Brandon, including Forest Dale. Although he and his family are well-known business owners in the Pittsford area, he notes that his customers are both old-timers and new residents.

The Otter Valley Union High School student will graduate this year. Meanwhile, his daily course schedule is light enough to let him work business activities in between classes as well as on weekends. He also helps out at Keith’s Country Store on occasion.

At present, Keith provides yard care for 20 home owners, which includes mowing, trimming, and raking lawns, pruning shrubbery, and cleaning up. This is his second winter of plowing snow from residential driveways with his one-ton dump truck for 30 to 35 customers in the same towns as above.

Keith was fortunate to take over an established rubbish removal business last year from Tracy Wyman of Brandon, who is now logging. “He let me know it was available. It has grown a lot in four months,” says the new owner. Once a week Keith now picks up trash from approximately 120 households throughout the four towns.

Keith takes just about anything but hazardous materials and large appliances. Trash doesn’t need to be sorted but must be bagged. By special arrangement, he can handle other pick-up times and types of rubbish.

Brad Keith Services welcomes new customers and will provide references upon request. For prices and schedules, one should call (802) 483-6563 to leave a message, or call (802) 483-2887 in the daytime Monday through Friday. The mailing address is PO Box 342, Pittsford, VT 05763.


VERMONT NATION

James Kelly of Weybridge has launched Vermont Nation at www.vermontnation.com. The site is a vehicle to help attract visitors to Vermont and assist them once they arrive.

Vermont Nation isn’t setting itself up in competition with Vermont’s regional marketing organizations, which in most cases are tied in with existing chambers of commerce. For Rutland County, the site includes links to the Killington and Rutland Region chambers, and the latter has a link on its first page to extensive lists of events and attractions.

As a self-described “Air Force brat,” Kelly grew up learning the differences between regions and how to start feeling at home in different places. He’s never entirely left those experiences behind.

After successfully developing the Tour Clare information portal while living for eight years in County Clare, Ireland, he’s now seeking to attract and assist visitors with the online “magazine” Vermont Nation.

Internet “visitors” will discover a source of assistance that as of mid-January was still a work-in-progress, but which already was providing some less-easily-found information. For instance, there is an extensive listing of “Green Hotels,” eco-tourism being a growing field in the state.

The Vermont Business Environmental Partnership now recognizes lodgings as Environmental Partners or Green Hotels, Kelly said. Environmentally conscious European countries are rapidly becoming important to Vermont tourism, Kelly said, particularly with the falling value of the dollar. The same currency changes that have made a London meal at a fast food restaurant cost $100 have made New England, a favorite European destination, a bargain for international travelers.

“Eighty percent of our (Internet) visitors are from Ireland and the United Kingdom, not the United States,” he said.

Personally, Kelly went from Ireland to Southern California, and recently moved from there to Vermont. Looking for what to do next, he decided to try replicating the success of Tour Clare, which had become “a very well-respected site in Ireland.”

Stimulating eco-tourism to the Green Mountain State appears to be “the right thing to do. So far so good,” Kelly said. In the first month and half, there have been a million and a half Web page views for Vermont Nation.

Anyone wishing to contact Kelly can e-mail him via Jim@VermontNation.com or Jim@TourClare.com.

NJVT PROPERTY MANAGEMENT

Rutland area Realtor Rich Egizi has started providing management services for residential rental properties as NJVT Property Management. “There are a lot of property owners out there, but a lot of them can’t be on top of everything. That’s where a property manager makes the difference,” says Egizi, who currently provides services for about 60 apartment units in the Rutland and Fair Haven areas.

A Realtor in the Rutland area for the past three years, Egizi moved to Vermont 14 years ago after working in the construction business in New Jersey and New York City. “I also owned and managed some of my own buildings,” he says. “I know how to work with State and local housing agencies, building inspectors and with private contractors. You could say that I can talk to anybody. I feel you have to have that in this business.”

In addition to a construction and real estate background, Egizi also studied business and accounting at the Community College of Vermont and the College of St. Joseph.

A full-service property management company, NJVT provides tenant screening, maintenance service, rent and security collections, lease execution and ’round-the-clock management coordination. “I can provide a range of services depending upon the needs of the owner and the property,” Egizi explains. “Most importantly, I communicate with the tenants. Sometimes that means just checking in on someone who doesn’t have the ability to leave their apartment. I may spend a little more time but it‘s worth it.”

NJVT also uses a computerized database for record and bookkeeping and offers a comprehensive forms library. “With some housing there are different requirements for leases or other necessary forms. I work with the Vermont Apartment Owners Association as well as other organizations to be able to provide property owners with what is required,” says Egizi.

NJVT Property Management is a home- based business that can be reached at (802) 345-5914.


WORKING BIRDS STUDIO

David Montgomery, an artist in Springfield, recently branched out into a new venture opening Working Birds Studio, a name for his shadow box creations or dioramas featuring birds.

Montgomery calls these three-dimensional miniatures “little theaters.” His limited one-of-kind shadowboxes take many forms. Some portray interiors, others exteriors; some feature an interior window looking out to an exterior. Most feature birds for visual interest. Montgomery originally thought of incorporating other creatures such as fish or mice but realized “fish don’t go as many places as birds and people are more romantic about birds than mice,” he explained.

Montgomery calls his shadowboxes an amalgam of the many things he has done before this. An art major in college specializing on painting and sculpture, Montgomery went on to work in theater designing props and scenery. He eventually worked in Hollywood making special effects and miniatures for film and television. Then while living in Minnesota, he was contacted by a company that needed a model maker. This turned into a career that he continues to pursue today.

In addition to his new arts venture, Montgomery is also an industrial model maker, creating scale models of large machines for high-tech industries. “They get shipped around the world to trade shows in Taiwan, Shanghai, Geneva and San Jose,” he said.

Montgomery began making his shadow boxes while working with his wife Karen Krieger, a successful jeweler and metal artist. “I had been assisting her, loading the van, helping set up her booth at trade shows and building prototypes of her larger pieces. We started thinking about what I could make that was my own that I might be able to sell at the same venues as her,” he said of his new endeavor.

This led Montgomery to his shadow box creations. He started to exhibit them and has received favorable notices. “They are expensive so they don’t fly off the shelves,” he said. “But we had this good show in Philadelphia and for some reason some pieces that had been on the wall without much interest just started to sell,” he said.

Once this happened, he decided to put his energy into creating more and really dedicating himself to this aspect of his business. Montgomery will be exhibiting at a wholesale show this month and he hopes to attract the interest of some galleries that will help him to connect with a higher level of clientele.

Although most of Montgomery’s one-of-a-kind dioramas sell for $500 to $1,000 he does sell a few mass-produced smaller items like wastebaskets that are less expensive, selling for $150. Montgomery said the time it takes to make his creations can vary from four days to a couple of weeks.

His shadow boxes may be viewed at www.workingbirds.com while examples of his models are available at www.modelmaking.casaforge.com.

Montgomery’s mailing address is 154 Main Street, Springfield, VT 05156. His phone number is (802) 885-8777.

CARBON NEUTRAL LIVING

Jeem Peterson is ramping up plans to expand the impact of his new business Carbon Neutral Living throughout the Upper Valley, and beyond. Peterson feels that the time is right to spread the word about the importance of getting people to change their thinking, and their habits, when it comes to the energy that they consume in their everyday lives.

Peterson says that Carbon Neutral Living is a combination of a think tank and an educational training center.

“We are developing strategies to spread the word of the importance of conservation, and especially to train those who will train others, multiplying the speed with which positive change can be made,” Peterson says.

Carbon Neutral Living will help spread its important message through a Website, and the development of training tools, as well as giving presentations to community groups, businesses, and in other ways. Peterson believes that the energy crisis in the 1970s gave many people a false sense that the current alarm may be just a passing fad, but he says that the implications of the environmental concern being expressed today elevates the problem to a far more serious scenario.

“I think a lot of fast-buck operators appeared during the ’70s oil crisis selling products of questionable value to those who were desperate for a quick-fix, but dealing with the reality of what we are facing globally today, with climate change and other intimidating prospects, will require education and helping to identify the many small ways in which everyone can make an important difference,” says Peterson of his service.

“At Carbon Neutral Living, I believe that we can help to jump-start the process for a lot of people through both education and preparation of instructors to quickly spread the message widely enough to help deal with the challenge.”

Peterson says that many homeowners and business operators are becoming more careful about leaving lights on, or changing to lower wattages, or going to compact fluorescents for lighting.

Peterson says that fewer have learned the less obvious but more consequential strategies they could employ. One example Peterson cites is that an investment in a new energy-efficient refrigerator could not only save so much more electricity to make a difference in the short-term, that over the long-term such a move could more than pay for itself. Peterson intends for Carbon Neutral Living to become an important conduit for the dissemination of educational opportunities on the subject of energy conservation and reduced carbon “footprints” for area homes and businesses.

Carbon Neutral Living has a mailing address of 19B Linden Road, Hartland, VT, 05048 and a telephone number of (802) 436-1630.