Who We Are

A concerned group of civic leaders and farmers who have organized an annual event during the first weekend of June, which also is the beginning of National Dairy Month. The Strolling of the Heifers Parade & Festival was originally created to increase the public’s awareness of how family farms contribute to the local community, Vermont’s agricultural landscape and heritage, and society overall. The event has been named one of the Green Mountain State’s Top Ten Summer Events for the past five years.

Our Mission

To promote awareness of the importance of agriculture in our daily lives and to raise money to fund educationally oriented agricultural programs for youth.

The Need

If Vermont loses its family farms, it will lose its unique identity and agrarian landscape as well as its proud culture and heritage. The state also will lose the patronage of the tourists who financially contribute so significantly to Vermont’s economy.

Our Achievements

To date, in addition to capturing the national media’s imagination, our organization has made many noteworthy strides in fulfilling our educational mission. These include:

• Provided $100,000 dollars for educational programs to over 80 schools and other organizations in Windham County.
• Created and distributed a comprehensive guide that highlights Windham County area farms open for the public’s enjoyment.
• Launched a Buy Local Challenge to increase local residents purchases of food produced in the region.
• Produced a hands-on farmer-teacher workshop.
• Offered guidance on how visits to area farms can be used to give students real life learning experiences that can be used to help teach children basic math and science skills. These real life learning experiences also can be used to teach children about subjects such as food, society, work and history.
• Showed teachers how to teach students about agriculture in the classroom.