Upper Valley Connections

ISSUE NO. 17 - JULY 16, 2026

Happening Tonight

Larkin Poe plays the Lake Morey Summer Concert Series tonight -- free, gates at 6. King Arthur hosts another Community Pizza Night they provide the dough, sauce and cheese. You bring toppings to build-your-own pizza ($10) and once you pizza is ready enjoy live music in the courtyard, and the Lebanon Farmers Market has its own live music tonight from Pitchfork.

The Main Showcase

The Junction Dance Festival's centerpiece hits the Briggs Opera House this Saturday, July 18, with performances at 2 and 7pm. The lineup pulls dance artists from across Vermont and New England: Garet&Co, rhythm tap artist Michael Dascomb, UVM professor and choreographer Paul Besaw, Chloe A. Schafer, Ann Bosse, and Caitlin Morgan among them. A free community meal runs between the two shows. Tickets are $15 -- well worth building your Saturday around.

Still Time for a Workshop

Before the Showcase, the festival's free workshop series wraps up at two venues: Friday at the Hopkins Center (Beginning Tap at 1pm, Floor Work at 2:30, Whack/Punk/Pose at 4), and Saturday morning right at the Briggs Opera House (Morning Movement at 10, Intro to Traditional Indian Dance at 11:30). Every one of these is free and open to all levels. The festival closes out Sunday with Ruth Childs performing delicate people at Lyman Point Park, free by donation.

This weekend also brings free Junction Dance Festival workshops at the Hopkins Center Friday, family fun with Dinosaurs with Dinoman at Storrs Pond and WRJ Pride pottery painting at Tip Top on Saturday, plus a Moth Ball at VINS, Opera North in Cornish, and Rhiannon Giddens at the Hop on Sunday. Later in the week: Trampled by Turtles closes out another big run at Lake Morey.

Farmers' Markets

All eight markets are running this week -- Lebanon, Hartland, Norwich, Mt Tom, Canaan, the Monday Mini Market at Honey Field Farm, West Hartford Library, and Market on the Green in Woodstock.

This Week in the Upper Valley

Blueberries for Sal (and the Rest of Us)

Strawberry season is over, but don't fret -- the blueberries are ripening as you read this. My kids loved Blueberries for Sal when they were young, and it turned every picking trip into a small adventure, everybody keeping an eye out for a bear cub of their own. Robert McCloskey's classic -- a girl, her mother, and a bear cub, all picking blueberries on a Maine hillside -- has been getting kids excited about a berry bucket for over 75 years now. Norwich Bookstore has a few copies in stock (three paperback, one hardcover) -- check availability here -- plus two copies of a Blueberries for Sal cookbook if you want to take the theme further.

Kingland Farms in Lyme has all four varieties ripe and ready this week -- Jersey, Bluecrop, Patriots, and Dukes -- according to the farm's own report. Cedar Circle Farm in East Thetford opens its organic PYO patch for the season today, $5.25 a pint, with the farm's own Hello Cafe right there for an iced coffee before the drive home. Clay Hill Corners in Hartland has been open since July 12, a small ten-acre farm run by Carol Stedman and Marty Banak.

Willing to drive a bit further? Bartlett's Blueberry Farm in Newport goes back to Tom Calkin, who spent the 1970s patiently planting blueberry bushes on land near Mount Sunapee. About a decade later, Bill and Heidi Bartlett bought the farm, inheriting 5,000 mature bushes planted in rows 300 feet long, eight feet apart, 60 plants to a row. Pete Bartlett and Courtney Hazleton took over from Bill and Heidi in December 2023. Just down the road, Bascom Road Blueberry Farm started in 2011 with a chainsaw, a four-wheeler, and 64 bushes -- it's since grown into roughly 2,000 bushes across 14 varieties, many of them handicap accessible.

If picking isn't your speed, Edgewater Farm's blueberries are available at the farmstand and the Hanover Coop, no fieldwork required. And if you're patient, Riverview Farm's blueberries come in around the second weekend of August, followed by raspberries and elderberries in September.

Whatever you come home with, blueberries don't ask for much -- pancakes, a buckle, a pie, a spoonful of jam, or just dropped straight into yogurt, oatmeal, or a scoop of vanilla ice cream, which is a favorite in my house.

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