Seven Daysies Awards: Best Vermont day trip with the kids, 2022

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Best Vermont day trip with the kids 

Shelburne Farms

click to enlarge Shelburne Farms - COURTESY
  • Courtesy
  • Shelburne Farms

Shelburne Farms — Most children's farmyards are modest affairs, with a random assortment of barn-dwelling animals and perhaps a gumball machine that churns out food pellets. Not so at Shelburne Farms, designed by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. In addition to its 10-mile network of paths and postcard-worthy views of Lake Champlain, the 14,000-acre property boasts a majestic barn inhabited by dairy cows, Nubian goats, a pair of draft horses and a fluffy English Angora rabbit named Willow. Farm educators are on hand to provide children with information about the animals.

Families looking to get their blood pumping can follow the steep but short trail from the back of the Farm Barn to Lone Tree Hill, the highest point on the property. Budding food scientists, meanwhile, can take in the farm's impressive cheesemaking operation, where raw milk from Brown Swiss cows is turned into artisanal cheddar. Stop by the Farm Store & Welcome Center on your way out for a wax-wrapped block of that award-winning cheese or some cukes, green beans and herbs from the market garden.

Sooner or later, your kids will thank you.

Other Finalists

  • ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain
  • Montshire Museum of Science
  • Smugglers' Notch Resort
  • Vermont Institute of Natural Science

Previous Winners

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Location Details

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