Connecticut

Connecticut Drive: Litchfield County

By Carol Cambo Get map of this trip. Yankee‘s driving tour of Litchfield County in the northwest corner of Connecticut follows a 56-mile tour in a counter-clockwise direction, beginning in the town of Litchfield and a visit to nearby Goshen to meet the animals of Action Wildlife.Get Our FREE Yankee Best New England Vacations Guide! […]

Maine

Washington, Maine: Medomak Family Camp

As dawn broke over the lake this morning, your daughter caught her first perch. A few hours later, your son paddled to Loon Island with a new friend while you read several chapters (in one sitting!) of a novel you’d been meaning to start for years. At dusk, after a gourmet lobster bake, you and […]

Magazine

Graduation Day | Mary’s Farm

The older I get, the more I crave good, strong help. In this quest, I’ve encountered some frustrations. I once hired a young man to help in the garden, and after an hour or so, I looked out the window and saw him sprawled on the ground. Thinking he had hurt himself or passed out, […]

Gardens

Koi Pond: Home Projects

Project: Indoor-outdoor koi pond When John and Charlotte Pratt relocated to Bethlehem, Connecticut, they transported the koi from their outdoor pond in a horse trough. Charlotte dreamed of having a place in their new house where she could enjoy the fish year-round. She now has a pond in the breakfast nook where she and her […]

History

New England By the Numbers | Stats on the Six States

$71,000 amount generated by traffic tickets last year in Brighton, Vermont (pop. 1,200). Can you say “speed trap”? 4,180 cows now enrolled in Vermont’s “Cow Power” program, producing enough methane to power 1,229 Vermont homes 250 works of art in the permanent collection of the Museum of Bad Art (MOBA), located in Dedham, MA 216 […]

Living

Red Sox Nation | Spring Training

Photo/Art by Boston Red Sox It’s hard to know the precise moment one falls in love. But in 1974, I spent seven glorious days with my best friend, Jeff, watching the Red Sox at spring training in Winter Haven, Florida. At dawn we hopped the fence of an orange orchard behind the right-field fence of […]

Magazine

Sneak Peek at the Spring Issue

Yankee‘s spring issue (March/April) leaves our Dublin, N.H., offices soon, on its way to the printing plant where in the next few weeks the intricate process of getting a magazine printed, bound, and on its way to readers takes place. This is a sneak peek. Of course I am close to the contents since I […]

History

Which of Our Six New England States Is the Most “Yankee”?

OF ALL THE theories as to the origin of the word Yankee, the one that makes the most sense to me is the so-called Dutch theory. It says that the early English settlers in Connecticut sold cheese to the early Dutch settlers in New York. So the New Yorkers began referring to the English as […]

History

It’s Fun to Believe in Ghosts

NEW ENGLANDERS WANT to believe in ghosts — and we have so many of them — but we’re often too practical and hardheaded to believe in anything we haven’t seen or heard. There’s the old story, for example, of the New Hampshire farmer who was cornered by a scholar researching New England religious history. The […]

History

Can New England Claim the First American Christmas Tree?

Not long ago, while watching from my office window the fireman putting up lights on the town Christmas tree here in Dublin, New Hampshire, I began wondering if perhaps New England might lay claim to the very first Christmas tree. Well, the first American Christmas tree. (It is well established that the use of the […]

History

Thoughts On Ups and Downs and Overs and Outs

The New England language is probably easier to learn than one of the numerous New England accents. But like English itself, there are few rules. As soon as you’ve identified a rule, you discover more exceptions than examples. For instance, you might hear a Maine man say he intends to go gunnin’ for partridge that […]