3 ‘ '- - ; 9
kton
BY EUAN BEAR

You may have seen the stories in your local
paper — and at least one pan of it made the
CNN crawl: someone vandalized a year's pro-
duction of Orb Weaver Farm's cave-aged cheese
by poking holes in the rinds last November. Then
a month later the two women chcescmakers were
physically attacked on their farm in Monkton by
a man demanding "weed." nrrrijuana.

lt was a shocking story of desperate
self-defense. These two women did not freeze.
they fought back. Defying the attacker's order to
keep silent. Mar‘ rie yelled so her partner Marian
wouldn't come in the door unwamed and fought
to keep the man from tying her hands or trapping
her in the bathroom. Marian came through the
door armed with a garden mallet and got in one
good hit on the guy's head. even though he had a
gun and il knife. They called their neighbors. a
couple of retired state police officers. who alened
the police. Two men were arrested as they drove
nwny from farm on the edge of Monkton

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leaderspts

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toward Vergennes. one of them bleeding from a
head wound.

The gun turned out to be a paintball
gun (though neither of the women knew that at
the time). The knife was left quivering in the
doorjamb following a lunge at the mallet-wield-
ing Marian. ‘

But that's not the focus of this story.
This story is about the tremendous outpouring of
support that has floored Marjorie Susman and
Marian Pollock. It‘s about community. and how
even lives lived quietly can have a huge impact.
But even so. our conversation loops back more
than once to the two attacks.

Head Over Heels

Marjorie was a community college student when
she and Marian. who was then a family therapist.
met in Western Massachusetts during organizing
efforts to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. “We
fell almost immediately head over heels in lov "
says Marjorie. sitting at a table below clusters of
purple dried flowers hanging from the exposed
ceiling joists. It was I976.

The two women decided they wanted

5.) 8

heesemkers Don't Snd Aln if

to be farmers. Marjorie took classes at a school
of agriculture before they moved north. “We
were watching. Massachusetts dairy farms go out
of business. So we figured that if we wanted to
do dairy farming, we’d better go to where there
were lots of dairy farms. That meant Vermont,”

explains Marian.
They worked for the first six -months at
a farm in Morrisville, then moved to Addison
County and bought their first Jersey cow from a
woman farmer in Hinesburg. “We were the first
farmhouse cheesemakers in the state,” Marian

notes. adding, “Nobody knew what to do with us, 4"

how to inspect us. anythingfl‘

Fan-nets Make the Cheese

Their Orb Weaver Farm cheesemaking business
has beenin operation since 1982. Four years ago,
they had a stone-and—cement worker come and
make an artificial cave dug into the hillside ‘
below the house where they could naturally age
some of the cheese for up to a year. It’s a labor-
intensive process, involving hand-stirring to sep-
arate the curds. hand-

pressing the cheese into C0|'|t'd 00 Po 1 5

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