By Susan D. Harris
When you walk into the Vermont Country Store, you’re stepping back in time. Whether you’re visiting the flagship store in Weston, Vermont, or exploring the Rockingham location—with its mill pond, gristmill, and water wheel—it’s more than a nostalgia trip. It’s nothing short of a spiritual reset.
In Weston, the creak of wooden floorboards, the sweet smell of candy, and the jingle of the shopkeeper’s bell transport you back to an early-1900s general store. Both stores offer a combination of sights, sounds and smells that evoke happy memories of simpler times—a feeling Americans can’t get enough of.
A Legacy Rooted in Vermont Heritage
In 1946, Vrest and Mildred Orton opened The Vermont Country Store in the picturesque village of Weston. Drawing inspiration from his father’s general store in North Calais, Vermont, Vrest restored the building to recreate the rural general store of his youth. The National Register of Historic Places lists it as “the first restored rural general store in the nation.”
“I can still recall my father’s store, where most of the men came in the evenings to wait for the horse-drawn stage that brought the mail from Montpelier, 13 miles away,” Vrest recalled.
A pivotal moment in the store’s history came in 1952 when it was featured in the Saturday Evening Post. The article, accompanied by full-color photographs, showcased Vrest as “The Happy Storekeeper of the Green Mountains.” With their newfound fame and an influx of new customers, they made their first expansion to the building.
Shoppers from across the country began making the pilgrimage to Vermont to immerse themselves in the total New England experience.
Purveyors of the Practical and Hard-to-Find
Today, the store is owned by Vrest’s son Lyman, and his sons Cabot, Gardner, and Eliot. According to their website, like their father and grandfather Vrest, they still “take pride in being the Purveyors of the Practical and Hard-to-Find.”
And they aren’t kidding. One of the most exciting and noteworthy aspects of the store is how they’ve saved cherished brands from obsolescence.
Three blast-from-the-past brands the store has saved from extinction include Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific, Lemon Up and Tangee. The first two are shampoo’s introduced in the 1970’s and the last is a lipstick that reached peak popularity around 1940. Now all three brands are owned and manufactured by Vermont Country Store because they listened to consumer requests.
In 2019, Vermont Country Store purchased Mountain Weaver’s, a Vermont-based company that produces traditional country-style tablecloths and napkins. The Orton’s had been selling them for decades, but when the owner of Mountain Weaver’s decided to retire and sell his store, The Vermont Country Store stepped in to help. The Heritage Weave at Mountain Weaver’s is now exclusive to The Vermont Country Store. They bought the business intact and kept employees who still weave the cotton in the traditional way of early settlers. The cotton is grown in America and “woven on 150-year-old traditional looms by master weavers in New England,” with each piece individually cut and hand-fringed in Vermont.
Sweet Treats and Wholegrains
The store imports an array of European food favorites for the holidays. One customer favorite is stollen—a rich, dense loaf packed with dried fruits such as raisins, currants, or citrus peel, nuts (usually almonds), and spices (think cinnamon or cardamom), and laced with marzipan for a sweet, almondy core.
Traditional German Christmas stollen and the original Dresdner Stollen Tin keep folks coming back every season.
And while fruitcake jokes may have become common in recent years, it’s no laughing matter at The Vermont Country Store. The 2 lb. Triple Liquor Fruitcake Tin is wildly popular on their website, and Mildred’s Fruitcake Cookies are loved by everyone. The cookies are part of Mildred’s® Baked Goods, a food line based on Mildred Orton’s own recipes.
Mildred (Wilcox) Orton was born and raised on the Wilcox dairy family, makers of Vermont’s own Wilcox Ice Cream. Her 1947 cookbook, “Cooking with Wholegrains” has been a hit since it’s release. Highly sought after, it’s currently listed as “sold out” on the store’s website. And it’s no wonder—Mildred’s recipe’s appeal to those looking for an escape from the over-processed American diet. Cabot Orton said his grandmother was “way ahead of her time…She didn’t use any white flour or processed foods.” The book’s synopsis describes how Mildred “takes the wholegrain approach to French brioche, offers up regional classics such as Southern Johnnycake and Vermont Indian Pudding, and includes a recipe for Cornmeal Gingerbread.”
One book that’s still available is “The Vermont Country Store Cookbook.” If you want to please your palate and take a fun romp through history at the same time, this book is for you. A compilation of Mildred’s recipe collection, it spans generations, encompassing both Orton and Wilcox family favorites. The best part is it takes those recipes—most of which you can’t find anywhere else—and shares the stories behind them.
Compiled and written with Orton family input, it’s a collection of “farm-to-table recipes emphasizing fresh, all-natural ingredients and traditional methods” and features “110 mouthwatering photos, plus a wealth of history and Vermont wisdom.”
Ogden told a local magazine that “the Orton family archives are well preserved, but most of the recipes consisted of lists of ingredients with no instructions.” Lyman Orton explained that “These handwritten recipes, scribbled on the back of canceled envelopes and sheets of defunct stationery or collected in food-stained journals, form the foundation and inspiration for the recipes in this book.” According to the magazine, in the old days, learning to cook and bake was on-the-job training—something mother’s actively taught daughters in the kitchen, so there was no need to write it down.
The Orton Brother’s Branch Out
While the store primarily appeals to women, it’s also been called ‘the humble menswear mecca you never knew you needed.”
In recent years, the Orton Brothers launched a line of men’s clothing focusing on traditional, hearty, northeastern winter wear. Men love their midweight flannel shirts, but there’s a wide range of items and styles to pick from. You can tell they take their clothing seriously when they talk about “soft flannel, woven cotton, denim, twill, seersucker, cotton knit, and corduroy.”
The brothers also have their own brand of snacks known as “cookie buttons.” They come in a flavors like pumpkin pie, apple, ginger, and of course—maple. The boxes feature a photo of the three brothers when they were young. Years ago, Cabot, Gardner, and Eliot appeared on “The Martha Stewart Show,” teaching her how to make a Maple Mountain Crunch Cake, topped with their signature maple cookie buttons.
The Catalog You Can’t Put Down
In truth, it all started as a catalog. Vrest and Mildred used a 19th Century printing press in their garage to print their first catalog— “The Voice of the Mountains”—mailing it to about 1,000 customers, including everyone on their Christmas card list. Word soon spread, and folks began inquiring where the store was located so they could shop in-person. That’s when Vrest and Mildred decided to buy the 2-story building in Weston; the rest is history.
Today, The Vermont Country Store catalog reaches between 30–50 million people every year. One writer described the catalog as having a “cult following” because of the wide array of items you just can’t find anywhere else. Just flipping through its pages makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Whether flipping through their iconic catalog, or absorbing the nostalgia in-person, The Vermont Country Store wraps you in the timeless charm of America’s past, reminding us that memories are treasures to be passed to future generations.
Published in The Epoch Times
The Vermont Country Store: Nostalgia in the Green Mountains | The Epoch Times\
