In a small community like Hampton, there is always the need for a place where we can connect with one another.  Clearly, that place has been, and continues to be, the Hampton General Store.  Though the present version is not one where you can pick up a fresh doughnut, a newspaper, or a quart of milk or oil, it is one where residents can sit for a spell and enjoy a cup of coffee and one another’s company.

Proprietors Randy and Rowan Saylor have re-named the place “The Hampton Café” and serve sandwiches, grinders and pizza. This winter, there were also daily specials, hearty meals like shepherd’s pie, lasagna, and soups.  And though that grinder or pizza can easily be boxed or wrapped for home, it can also be enjoyed in the store at one of the tables set there for customers.  “A respectable, pleasant atmosphere where people can sit and eat, or meet up with a friend for lunch, or just sit and catch up to local gossip,” Diane Gagnon recommends, adding,  “Good gossip only!”

There’s something nostalgic about sitting in a place where neighbors for a century have taken a few moments to simply slow down and relax at the pace of small town life. “It is wonderful to have a family business in the heart of Hampton. Seeing friends sitting at the counter, everyone is happy to see you. I stop in for a coffee and to see who is there,” says Renee Cuprak.  “And the homemade food is good, too.”

At the Hampton Café, one can sit and respond to the comings and goings of friends and neighbors with cheerful exchanges.  One can catch up on the news of the town, discuss the budget, learn of upcoming happenings. Or ask about the health of a community member, or how one’s son or daughter is doing. Conversations are always spontaneous; we all have something in common: our town and its people. “The heart of Hampton! Every time I go, I run into friends and neighbors. The atmosphere is cozy,” Marissa Bozza appraises. “It always feels just like visiting a good friend at home.”

It is the intimacy of this place that makes it so pleasant. It’s a warm place. A welcoming place. It invites you to sit for a minute, or the entire afternoon.  “I’ve never quite felt ‘at home’ in any establishment as I have in The Hampton Café”, Linda Navin shares. “This is very important to me, as I’m a bit of a ‘wallflower’. Randy, Rowan and Diane, quite literally, welcome you with open arms.”

“When you stop in you’re sure to be greeted and run into someone you hadn’t seen in a while. It’s a great gathering place,” says Lisa Grady.  “And, oh yeah, there is food. You can’t go wrong with that!”

Oh, yeah, there’s the food!  And it’s delicious. My wife’s favorite – their roast beef grinder with horseradish sauce.  Other customers have referred to it as “the best roast beef in the northeast.” My favorite – a grinder stuffed with ham, capicola, salami and jalapeno peppers. The sandwiches are custom made.

Postings lavish praise. “Great food, good service, and a friendly atmosphere…Love the small town hospitality…Fantastic family owned Café…Great people and yummy food…Excellent fresh food, served up by friendly welcoming folks…Great food! Great people! Great neighborhood feeling!”

“My sister and I stopped by to support the opening of Hampton Cafe. We both ordered a sausage, egg and cheese breakfast sandwich and it’s absolutely delicious,” Kathy Brand wrote. “Please stop by even if it’s to say hello.”

+“Friendly service. Nice sandwiches, hot coffee and tea,” Kathleen Carpenter recommended, “and very reasonable prices! This is a great addition to town!”

“Doner kebab (lots of spice/condiment options) and sausage, pepper, & onion grinder were both tasty,” Preston Britner wrote. “Very reasonably priced.”

“Good food, great coffee and free WiFi,” Andrea Kaye noted. “Several lunch specials to choose from.”

Customers agree – there is something here for everyone. While waiting for your meal, you can wander around the café and absorb the ambience. There are musical instruments and antiques from Jamie Boss to admire. There are jams and jellies, courtesy of Renee Cuprak, you can purchase to enjoy with your morning toast. There are maple products – candy, brittle, almonds – from Dragonfly Farm. There are also books to read, or to take home, or bring to a friend.

This is what makes the Hampton Café so special. One can never quite tell who, or what, you might find here. You won’t know until you venture inside where there’s one certainty waiting for you: you’ll love it!

Juan Arriola

The very first front page of the Hampton Gazette reported on our town’s agricultural roots. Pearl Scarpino’s “Under All Is the Land” also chronicled the slow demise of the family farm. Like so many towns in New England, the Industrial Revolution beckoned residents to the mills established in neighboring communities such as Willimantic and Danielson, while Hampton’s population, and its farms, dwindled. During the Depression, our dairy farms numbered thirty. The 1957 Grand List named 21, and by 1978, the year the article was published, there were only four left. Now there is only one.

Unlike many other Connecticut towns, however, Hampton has escaped suburban sprawl and the encroachment of commercial enterprises, and in terms of agriculture, we seem to have reinvented ourselves with the times. Chickens — so many chickens! — have replaced all those cows, and vegetables have replaced larger grain crops.

In 2010, the Gazette featured all the farmers who were starting to sell vegetables from their gardens: Bird Song Farm offering 35 varieties of vegetables, Turtle Ledge Farm selling weekly to subscribers, Indian Ledge Farm, which piled its daily produce into a wagon parked in front of the General Store, Full Moon Farm operating a market Saturdays in an old barn, Christadore’s Corn Crib, and the Farmer’s Market at Chapel’s Greenhouse, where local vendors gathered with  tailgates full of whatever was growing for the hundred or so customers who spent  Friday afternoons there to socialize and to shop.

Along with the eggs and vegetables, products sold here are also derived from our pastures and orchards, our maple trees and our honey bees. This was most recently evidenced in the Fletcher Memorial Library’s “Homegrown” event.  We expected to stop in for a few minutes and instead, spent three hours visiting with vendors and sampling their items.  Farmers were represented by well-known establishments and new neighbors alike.

Dragon Fly Farm’s display was filled with maple products – candy, candied nuts and brittle, River Valley Farm with honey and goat’s milk soap, and Full Moon Farm with freshly picked asparagus. Pebble Brook Farm produced maple cotton candy, along with jugs of maple syrup and jars of maple cream. Cuprak’s Cupboard featured an assortment of jams, common selections such as strawberry, raspberry and blueberry, and unusual varieties such as “Peach Rosemary” and “Razzy Rhubarb”. At the Barton Farms table, one could purchase pots of parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, along with cilantro and basil, and a roasted root vegetable hot sauce – “Dragon’s Blood Elixir — Guaranteed to Cure Bland Food”.

Alongside these familiar farms and faces were new neighbors. Mennonite families were offering fresh bread and fresh eggs, pear butter and apple butter, and an absolutely beautiful bouquet of flowers attracted visitors to a table advertising whole chickens.

“Community Exchange” was the way Charity Stoltzfus of Riverstone Farm described the Mennonite’s philosophy, explaining with the example, “we planted someone’s potatoes this week, and roofed another family’s home”.  This tradition was the cornerstone of our town’s past.

“Hampton Remembers”, Alison Davis’ chronicle of “A Small Town in New England, 1885 – 1950”, describes, “In those days Hampton was quite self-sufficient with nearly everything a family needed available right here in town. From ‘cradle to grave’ you were cared for by your fellow townspeople.”  From barn-raising to husking bees, many of the town’s agricultural efforts were communal. And while the Hampton farm was largely independent, with families raising their own cows, chickens, goats, sheep and crops, most farms were dependent on someone else’s “specialty” as well, which in turn generated revenue for individual families. This custom is also recorded in “Hampton Remembers”.

When I was first married I made butter, put the cream in an old-fashioned churn, with a crank you turned ‘round, then you had to mold it in pound molds. Then I hitched up the horse, took the wagon and went up to the store on Hampton Hill. One day in particular I took thirty-three pounds and got thirty cents a pound for it so I had 9.90. I bought all the food I needed and had some left to put in my pocket.

Lucy Lewis

My father used to do market gardening and raise cucumbers for pickles. He put them up in jars – they were called Valley View Pickles. He took all his vegetables in crates and his pickles to Willimantic to be sold in the grocery stores there.

Vera Hoffman

We had five or six cows and we sold milk to the neighbors. All around us was summer folks, you might say. That was my job, I used to run around to the neighbors and deliver the milk on my bicycle, the bottles of milk in the basket on the handlebars.

Robert Fitts

We brought the coal from Hampton Station and delivered it to homes and we cut ice at Bigelow Pond and filled Hampton icehouses.

Bertha Burnham

On our farm we had a large sugar maple grove and produced about a hundred gallons of maple syrup every spring that we sold locally for $4.00 a gallon. The syrup along with the apples and huckleberries and cranberries that we picked and sold brought in a nice little extra income for our big family.

Arthur Kimball

We used to pick huckleberries in the summertime and Mr. Clapp at Elliot Store would give us ten cents a quart the first week, nine the

next and when it got down so’s he was giving us three cents a quart then we picked to preserve for our own use… We used to get our firewood, we used to sell wood and I remember it was four dollars a cord, sawed and delivered.

Harold Stone

Not many made cheese but my mother made cheese. She had to have a lot of fresh milk and she put it in a big tub made of tin. She put the rennet into it at the beginning. Then she let it stand and it curdled or set, like custard, and then she cut that up a little bit so it would be easier to handle and the idea was that she must have all the sweetness, the drippings out of the cheese and have just the custard part left. So it was put in a cheese box of 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 pounds and in a cheesecloth and put in big presses that would do 2, 3,4 cheeses at a time. Each press had a cover screwed down which pressed out the whey and after a few more days no more whey came out. But my mother looked at the cheese each day and covered it with oil to keep it from getting too dry right on top. She trimmed the curd that squeezed out around the edges (and I was always standing with my mouth open waiting for a little bite). It took probably a matter of two or three months of her pressing it a little every day to get all the moisture out of it. When it was done she sold the cheese.

Helen Mathews

In my lifetime I’ve seen so many things change. When Grampa used to do the delivery for Annah Burnham’s Inn he used to go down to New London and pick up her customers and bring them up – and then regulations came in that you had to have a special license so he gave it up. And the same thing happened about his dressing off the beef to take it to Gallup’s store – the regulations came through and you could only do it for your own family consumption but not for sale. And my father couldn’t sell chickens anymore because of regulations. Of course the raw milk couldn’t be sold – you had all the inspections. All these regulations changed everyone’s lives.  I’m not disagreeing with it but I’m just mentioning it to show how much our lives have changed.

Ethel Jaworski

In the fall of 2017, I saw a Mennonite family at the Hampton Fall Harvest Festival.  I went up to the woman and introduced myself.  She told me her family was buying a home in Hampton.  I told her I looked forward to getting to know her.  In the spring of 2018, I was in my flower garden and looked up the driveway to see a woman in a dress that went to the ground and a small white hat that tied under the chin. She was walking a Jack Russell terrier. I ran up to her and asked if she would let me show her my garden.  She assented and came down the driveway.  When I asked her what her husband did, she said construction, but he used to do landscaping.  I asked if I could hire him to edge my garden and put mulch on it, since I had just had shoulder surgery. She said she would speak to him. Later I contacted him, and we set a date. Lo and behold, not only did he show up, but his wife did too, and her parents who were visiting from out of state.  When lunch time came, I suggested that they come in for lunch. The men kept working, but the women went home and came back with cookies (Mennonite cookies are yummy), carrot sticks, and peanut butter dip (healthy and yummy).  I asked the women to strip my left-over chicken for me so we could have chicken sandwiches, because it hurt my shoulder too much to do that.  They cheerfully did that, and we all ate, and the men went back to work.

Eight Mennonite families have moved to Hampton.  Two more are committed to come here. The Mennonites rent the basement of the Hampton Town Hall to hold church services on Sunday morning and to hold school for their children during the week. One married couple and one single lady teach children in the school. Mennonites are Anabaptists, which means they do not practice infant or young child baptism.  To them the act of baptism requires someone mature enough to understand the difference between good and bad and old enough to have self-knowledge that he has sinned and wants God to forgive him.  He is repenting. You cannot join the Mennonite church until you are baptized.  A Bible passage supporting this comes from Mark 1: 4-8.

Many of us have seen Amish families. There are Amish colonies in many states.  My grandparents raised me, and my early years were in a suburb of Philadelphia.  On weekends we drove to Lancaster and went to Amish food stands.  My grandparents bought, directly from Amish farms, fresh vegetables, fruit, homemade egg noodles and pies (pies are good for you!).  The Amish and the Mennonites differ in dress and habits.  In getting ready to do this first article on Mennonites I discovered that there is an entire spectrum of different types of Amish and different types of Mennonites.  Of the eight Mennonite families that are here in Hampton, some of the heads of household were born and raised Amish, and some were born and raised Mennonites.  This Hampton Mennonite Church is the type known as Beachy, after Moses Beachy.

The old order Amish use a horse to plow.  No tractor, no electricity, no cars are allowed to members, although if you want to hire old order Amish to build you a barn, they are allowed to hire someone to drive them in a car to a bus station or train station to get to where you live. The new order Amish allow tractors.  Old order Mennonites use tractors with steel wheels, electricity, and horse and buggy (no cars).  The Hampton Mennonites use cars, computers, phones, cameras, tractors, but no television and no radio because TV and radio are seen as showing a way of living that is sinful and inappropriate for believers (the conflict between Jesus’ kingdom and the kingdom of this world).  Amish and Mennonites are non-resistant.

The current minister of the Hampton Mennonite Church is Jonas Lapp.  He explained that ministers do not get paid, do not go to a seminary.  Mennonites study Scripture and get chosen for ordination by a combined method of the congregation voting, then the use of lot. Both men and women vote, but only a man can be minister.  The vote is by lot. Candidates who receive a pre-determined minimum number of votes choose a book, and the one who chooses the book that has a slip of paper in it is ordained.  The one chosen by lot is then ordained by prayer while laying on of hands by other leaders.  The use of the lot is found in the book of Acts.  While there are no term limits, someone from within the congregation will eventually succeed him as a minister. They plan to ordain another minister within a year to form a leadership team.  They will eventually have a team of three or more ministers.

Four churches in Lancaster, Pennsylvania are helping support the Hampton Mennonite school and Choice Books up here.  Stop and Shop in Willimantic have some Choice Books, and the congregation is renting book storage for Choice Books in Pomfret.  Choice Books are inspirational, wholesome reading materials. To learn more about Beachy Mennonites see beachyam.org on your computer.

The Hampton Mennonite Church has services every Sunday at 10 AM.  The services last two hours.  On most Sundays the service is followed with lunch to which people bring food from home.  I have attended some services and found them meaningful (and the food yummy!).  The feeling of fellowship is excellent, and the services have non-members attending plus visitors from other Mennonite congregations.  A recent service I attended had a Mennonite family from Wisconsin, one from Massachusetts, and one from Pennsylvania.

Angela Hawkins Fichter

The Gazette extends a warm welcome to the Mennonite community. How good it is to hear children’s laughter again in the building which schooled some of us, to see the baseball fields utilized as they once were, to have the Congregational Church fill with the spiritual music of their concerts, and our community events fill with our new neighbors and their gentle, and generous, presence.

“It’s that time again you guys,” I said to my chickens while tucking them in that night. “Tomorrow, we will be beekeepers once again!” All six clucked at me as if they understood. What they were really saying was, ‘Why didn’t you bring any snacks to give out!?’

“Close your eyes now and go to sleep, my babies. I’ll see you all in the morning”. We had been waiting quite a while for this day… seven months to be exact. The hive we’d started the summer before didn’t make it past October.  I learned that many beekeepers had experienced the same loss and that no one had a clear understanding of why. So those of us with only one hive put our order in for new bees and looked forward to spring.

There were chores to be done in preparation for their arrival: the frames containing honey were spun and emptied and honey jarred, the empty frames packaged and put in a safe place, the hive boxes were spruced up with a fresh coat of paint, protective gear laundered, and finally, all bee equipment was cleaned and properly stored for winter. “The yard looks empty without the hive there,” I sulked to my husband. “We’ll try again in the spring,” he comforted.

Winter began and we set about our cold weather routine. Our flock frequently joins us when we are outside. We open the gate that separates our area from theirs. They run out and run everywhere like excited kids at an amusement park. “Stick together!” I yell after them as they scatter across the yard. We let them explore for a bit while we split more logs for the wood stove and refill the bird feeders. One by one they all wander over when they hear my husband start up the garden tiller. “Juicy bugs!” Porridge clucks eagerly. Brownie just about runs the gang over to get to the rich soil and feverishly digs in. We have a short window of time left before the ground freezes and we take advantage of it by adding compost and manure to both gardens for better dirt in the spring. After Doug and his ladies have had their fill, I scoot all of them back over to the coop and latch the gate behind them. “There. You can play on your side until it’s time for bed”.

“One more month!” I called to my husband.  It was March already and our bees were due to arrive mid-April. This year, I decided to try Saskatraz bees. They are hybrids from California and are said to have good overwinter ability, good mite resistance, and the queens are supposed to be great layers. As we all know, Connecticut can get ridiculously cold, especially when the wind blows, so the good reports of overwintering appealed to me. And who doesn’t want a queen bee known to lay lots of baby bees?  Mite resistance is a great quality in bees as is regular mite treatments by the beekeeper.  It would be irresponsible to not pause here and take a moment to elaborate on the importance of treating your hive for mites.

“Varroa destructor (Varroa mite) is an external parasitic mite that attacks the honey bees. The disease caused by the mites is called varroosis. The Varroa mite can only reproduce in a honey bee colony. It attaches to the body of the bee and weakens the bee by sucking fat bodies. In this process, RNA viruses such as the deformed wing virus spread to bees. A significant mite infestation will lead to the death of a honey bee colony, usually in the late autumn through early spring. The Varroa mite is the parasite with possibly the most pronounced economic impact on the beekeeping industry. Varroa is considered to be one of multiple stress factors contributing to the higher levels of bee losses around the world.”

-Wikipedia

I look at mite treatments for bees the same way I look at flea treatments for our boys. We can’t see the fleas on either cat, but stop treating and see what happens. You may never see a mite on your hive (they are very tiny and red) but every hive has them and you need to treat. Be sure to read up on which product is best for your hive. Too strong a treatment could do much damage, and too weak a treatment will do nothing.

So, the day finally arrives! “We’ll be back soon!” I call to our chickens.

“I hear bees are very tasty,” Lily cackles.

“There will be no eating of the honey bees!” I sternly call back to her. “Remind me to put a fence around the hive when we get back,” I say to my husband as we drive off, full of hope and promise. In anticipation of this very day, I had brushed up on my reading, reviewed notes from the previous year, and watched many ‘how to’ videos. I stumbled across a renowned Apiary nearby and was impressed with their genuine care for both bee and beekeeper. And I found the videos to be extremely informative and helpful.

We arrive at the Apiary along with dozens of other excited, anxious, soon-to-be beekeepers. The bees are delivered in ‘packages’ – wood or plastic boxes about the size of a shoebox. There is a hole in the top. An upside-down can of sugar water plugs the hole, preventing bees from getting out while feeding them at the same time. The queen is in the box too, but she is in her own very tiny box called the queen cage. Keeping her separated for a week or so allows the other bees to get to know her so they don’t attack her once she is released. Out to the hive we went, new bees and equipment in hand.

“Well, that looked nothing like the video and did not go according to plan,” my husband and I said to each other as we return to the house, now soaking wet. According to the instructional video, one simply removes the feeder can, then gently removes the queen cage, which gets attached to one of the frames with a rubber band, and lastly one simply shakes the bees from the box and into the hive. Done. My experience was a tad different: the can did not wiggle out as easily as it should’ve and the queen cage was stubbornly wedged and would not come out. Bees were flying around everywhere and it started to sprinkle. I ended up sticking my hand into the box, yanking the queen cage out, and dumping the bees into the hive. I managed to get the queen cage under the rubber band that was on the frame just before it started to pour. “Hurry up! Put the lids on!” my husband encouraged. “I know!” I grumbled back. Once back inside the house, I watched the ‘how to’ video again, said a little prayer that our new colony would survive the ‘dump and run’, and called it a day.

I’m happy to announce it’s been almost two weeks and the bees look great! There are eggs and babies galore in the hive and I thought I saw our queen today! I found out from the Apiary that the supplier had changed the packaging this year which caught all the beekeepers off guard. I was also reassured that bees are hardier than we think, and to not give up.

Our chickens wander along the short perimeter of the hive’s fence. “I have my eyes on you Miss Lily,” I chuckle as she looks up at me with that innocent little face. They don’t understand why they can’t go in there. They don’t like it when I’m paying attention to the bees and not them.  I’m convinced they are licking their chops as they hover around the hive. “Here you go,” I coo as I toss handfuls of grapes and spinach out for our gang to munch on. “You know I think you guys are so very cute. And you know that I love each one of you very much! There are things I’ll need to do to help our bees, but I’ll always be here for all of you!” I console, making Doug, Brownie, Porridge, Checkers, Gert and Lily very happy chickens indeed.

Cindy Bezanson

We associate the word “geranium” with the prominent splash of red globular blossoms that are the standard in window boxes on city balconies and in baskets on country porches. These annuals are actually members of the genus Pelargonium which has grown to produce myriad varieties in shades of red, orange, purple, pink, and white, along with multi-colored flowers, and cultivars grown primarily for their foliage with leaves variegated, veined, bronzed, marbled, rimmed, striped and frosted. Seasonal displays at any nursery attest to their continued popularity planted singularly and in container gardens.

The true Geranium, derived from the Greek meaning “crane”, is the perennial often referred to as “cranesbills” for the appearance of their seed casings. They grow heartily in our gardens and along our roadsides in spring. The five petals of pale pink or lavender to nearly white, or dark pink to purplish and almost blue, form the small saucers of the delicate New England wildflowers which wave above clumps of palmate leaves and resemble many of our garden varieties. Cultivars, however, are more floriferous.

Of the hundreds of varieties, several are pink.  Geranium endressii ‘Wargrave’, the most commonly grown, produces silvery pink petals that float over foliage with a similar sheen, complimenting artemesia ‘Silver Mound’ and softening the intense hue of the Lychnis “mullein pink”.  The vibrant cultivar ‘Patricia’ is perfect for the rock garden, forming small hills of magenta blossoms to invigorate foliar alpines from late spring through summer. Pale pink flowers veined in crimson smother geranium sanguineum ‘Striatum’, its tendrils spreading to swirl around other spring pastels, such as spires of lavender salvia and clouds of pale blue catmint. A darker variety, ‘Pink Penny’, blooms later in the season to partner with the darker pastels of balloon flowers and phloxes. Along the garden edge, where geraniums are always welcome, Cantabrigiense ‘Crystal Rose’ bears deep pink blossoms mid-summer, while ‘Karmina’ produces purplish pink flowers in early summer and colorful foliage in fall.

White geraniums are necessary components of the moon garden. ‘Album’ is the purest, compact mounds which spread to create a ground cover of finely serrated leaves speckled with clear white flowers in late spring.  ‘Kashmir White’ sparkles, its translucent petals larger than those of most geraniums, rising over clumps of deeply dissected foliage to put forth a spectacular glow in early summer with repeat blossoms till fall. Cultivars of the mostly white variety are quite exotic, requiring closer inspection than the distant splashes ‘Album and ‘Kashmir White’ that draw the eye. ‘Double Jewel’ is a diminutive gem with multiple layers of starry white petals with purple centers, perfect spilling over a wall, and  the award winning ‘Mrs. Kendall Clarke’ bears spring blossoms of  the most delicate lavender imaginable veined in white.

‘Johnson’s Blue’ was the first of the blue geraniums to garner attention and an award, and it remains a garden standard.  Taller than most, its nodding habit doesn’t distract from its brilliant blooms which flower most of the season with the vibrancy of peacock feathers. ‘Rozanne’, a Plant of the Year recipient, is a tidier version, flowering longer and more prolifically, its indigo blossoms bearing starry white centers which open profusely in early summer and continue sporadically till frost. While many geraniums’ foliage colors in fall, the leaves of ‘Havana Blues’ are golden in spring, prior to the emergence of its flowers, pale periwinkle with violet streaks. The two inch blossoms are attractive to butterflies and hummingbirds and large for geraniums and for this plant, an eight inch dwarf.  ‘Summer Skies’ bears delicate violet ruffles of double blossoms throughout the summer, and ‘Delft Blue’ has the appearance of violet paint splashed across its white flowers.

There are a few perennial geraniums as flamboyant as the bright red annual. Geranium ‘Sanguine’, or “Bloody Cranesbill” for the red coloration of its autumn leaves, is the strongest geranium in color and stature. In late spring, the solid rounded mounds forming in the rock garden are smothered with fluorescent magenta petals to complement violet carpets of woolly thyme, to invigorate the soft lavender mist of catmint, or to create striking contrasts with the chartreuse froth of lady’s mantle. Sparser blossoms repeat all summer. The magenta petals with black centers of the more recent cultivars, ‘Splendens’ and ‘Dragon Hearts’, are also arresting in the rock garden.

On the opposite spectrum are the very subtle cultivars grown primarily for their scent, though their attributes are several, starting with a tolerance of dry shady which makes them wonderful candidates for ground covers underneath shrubs.  In our garden Geranium macrorrhizum ‘Ingwersen’s Variety’ skirts Viburnum sargentii ‘Onodaga’ to perfection.  The geranium’s soft pink tubular petals circling the blossoms’ rose throats mirror the shrub’s inflorescence of pale pink florets surrounding sterile raspberry blooms. The geranium’s spreading tendrils form a dense carpet to anchor the columnar shrub, its foliage emerging maroon along with its blossoms before maturing to summer’s dark green. Both the foliage of the shrub and the geranium ignite in the fall with orange and red flames. Yet it’s the scent of the geranium’s aromatic leaves, a heavenly perfume, which is especially prized.  Geranium cantabrigiense ‘Biokovo’, a Plant of the Year recipient, is an exceptional scented specimen with dainty white petals flushed pink.

There are a few geraniums which one must view up close to appreciate. These include “Ballerina”, a small clump of fine foliage in the rock garden, or among other ethereal plants, lifting its soft pink flowers veined in wine to float beneath airborne umbels of heliotrope and the fluff of filipendula. “Espresso”, so named for its large bronze, sharply divided leaves, has pale lavender, darkly veined petals, eventually maturing to white, providing a spectacular contrast of foliage and flower. “Raven” bears broad, plum colored blooms in May, with repeat flowering throughout the summer and into early fall. It’s glossy, almost black blossoms require pale companions, such as “Moonbeam” coreopsis, to show. ‘Midnight Cloud’ deserves a prominent place on the garden edge.  A magical plant, its white flowers flushed palest pink sprinkle themselves over the velvety purple foliage like a gossamer veil, hence the name.

From the rock garden, through broad ribbons across the rims of perennial borders, to intimate niches, there’s always room for geraniums. And there’s always room for the annual commonly called “geranium”, too, particularly where expanses of greenery require a splash of color. In a garden where chartreuse bamboo became rampant to the point of eliminating everything except the trees and shrubs that provide seasonal displays there, a single red geranium hanging in the center from the limb of a willow supplies the garden with sufficient vibrancy all summer. And, of course, they’re always welcome on the porch.

Dayna McDermott

Just like in the days of film photography, when we used to save our negatives in either plastic or paper film sleeves, and slides in boxes, in this digital age of recording images, many people save their photos on their computers, camera storage cards, flash drives and also external hard drives. If we take the trouble to record images in the first place, doesn’t it make sense to save those images for later use? We use camera to capture or record moments in time, moments that have special meaning to us. As for myself, I’ve been recording images for over forty-five years and very often want to look back into my seemingly endless photo files.

Right from the beginning of working with film cameras, I used to keep three-ring binders filled with pages of film sleeves. On each page the date, film type, and any other pertinent information could be scribed. It had to be organized for easy searching later on. Many photographers used to also make contact sheets (8” X 10” photo paper with negatives placed on them and then exposed to light) and when developed, would render a tiny copy of each image. In this digital age, our cameras record all the data captured from the camera sensor for all images recorded. This is called metadata. So, when working with photo-editing software in a computer, all the information the camera sensor captured can be seen. And now we can see the date and time, ISO setting, f/stop, shutter speed, etc.

At present, I am using five separate external hard drives. Four of them are clones of each other. Just one external hard drive isn’t enough to safely store my images since I’ve got well over forty-thousand of them. I also prefer not to keep too many photos in my computer in case it someday crashes. For the person that takes their camera out for a spin from time to time, perhaps one external hard drive will suffice, and one copy stored on the computer, providing the computer hard drive has plenty of storage space.

Perhaps at this time the reader will be thinking about purchasing an external hard drive so not to lose all of their treasured photos. I hope that’s the case. Recently I purchased a small external hard drive that holds one terabyte of files. The cost of that drive was around fifty dollars. And there are many options on the market that cost even less. Think about what you need and search the Internet for the best deal. Good luck!

Pete Vertefeuille

Again the Board of Selectmen is challenged with crafting a Town Government Budget to administer Hampton to our high standards during uncertain State of Connecticut times.

On the plus side, we have enjoyed modest growth on personal property of 5% to generate an additional $105,000 in revenue.  Our student assessment toward Regional District#11 has dropped to 23% of the school’s total student population and budget responsibility. On the negative end, the State is proposing additional cuts in Educational Cost Sharing (ECS) and low Local Capital Improvement Program (LoCIP) funds, with possible contributions to the Teacher Retirement Board.

The largest increase to the Town budget is towards maintaining public safety.  I propose an additional $20,000 to remove diseased, dead and dying trees within the Department of Public Work’s budget. The cost of running the transfer station will rise 10% as the market rises upwards to ship recyclables and garbage. The total volunteer ambulance coverage that we have been privileged with for decades is no longer sustainable.  This year, over $60,000 is budgeted to provide day time emergency medical coverage.  A 2% cost of living adjustment is proposed for town employees.

The Board of Selectmen has added and restored funding of $15,000 to building capital accounts (CNR) to continue improving town properties in support of our 5-Year Plan.  Hampton will still maintain shared services with Scotland for the transfer station, and 15 other towns via Northeastern Connecticut Council of Governments (NECCOG), pursuing cost savings and revaluation, animal control, veteran support, Geographic Information System services, and the Northeast transit district.

The Board of Selectmen has made cuts and adjustments wherever possible with the goal of maintaining tax rates, property value and the quality of life in Hampton.

Allan Cahill, First Selectman

The Regional District #11 Board of Education has approved a 2019-2020 budget of $6,480,579, a 0.90% increase in the total cost of educating students at Parish Hill. This RD #11 budget reflects continued fiscal responsibility, consistent with past budgets that were also very fiscally prudent. This responsible approach has led to an average increase of less than 1% per year during the last eight fiscal years. The Superintendent and Board of Education were able to adopt a 0.90% budget increase by controlling spending, concentrating on efficiencies and economies of scale, and through efficient assignment of certified and non-certified personnel. As in past years, we have closely examined “actual” expenditures in all FY18-19 budgetary line items, leading to some notable line item reductions.  We have also effectively used federal and state grants to maximize efficiencies and to reduce the strain on our operating budget. Furthermore, I am pleased to report that this budget has been kept at a 0.90% increase despite budgetary constraints due to staff contractual increases, magnet school tuition and magnet school special education costs, and significant costs for outplaced students.  I am also particularly proud that we have continued to provide a high quality education for all of our students while maintaining sound fiscal practices and fiscal constraints.

The 0.90% budget also comes at a time when overall student outcomes have been impressive. The New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) recently gave Parish Hill a glowing Two Year Follow-Up Report, based upon their assessment during a previous site visit. Furthermore, during the past three years, standardized test scores have shown overall average increases, we offer eleven AP courses to our students, and our Class of 2018 has earned a graduation rate of 100%.  In addition, our annual and four year dropout rates are consistently well below the state average.  On another note, our school maintenance operations and school facilities continue to show vast improvement.  We welcome residents to view for themselves these facility improvements.

The annual tri-town budget hearing will be held on Monday, May 6, at 6PM in the Parish Hill Middle/High School library. The RD #11 2019-2020 Budget of $6,480,579 will be voted on from noon to 8PM at each of the three towns’ respective polling places on Tuesday, May 7.

   Kenneth Henrici, Superintendent

The Hampton Elementary School Administration did not respond to the Gazette’s repeated requests for information on the budget the Board of Education adopted in March. Because taxpayers anticipate this information, even, as was the case last year as well, if it is less than complete due to uncertainties with State funding, we have generated an article based on information the school board recently provided to the Board of Finance.

The elementary school’s FY2019-2020 budget proposal is level with the current year’s spending plan at $2,136,234. Line item increases on the two pages the school board distributed to the finance board include an 8% raise for the Principal, an additional 30 days per year for the Director of Special Education, an upgrade to the fire panel, student tuition, and increases in technology, books for classroom libraries, and instructional supplies to equip a second half day pre-school classroom if necessary.

The Board of Education also presented information on the need to replace the school’s generator and to repair the school’s parking lot and the playground. The Board of Education is requesting an additional $200,000 from the Town’s General Fund to pave the parking lot and to replace the generator, and the use of the school’s Capital Non-Recurring Account for repair of the playground.

During a subsequent meeting of the Board of Finance, members discussed anticipated cuts in Education Cost Sharing (ECS) amounting to approximately $175,000 for this year and $160,000 in the next.  Members also discussed proposed legislation unanimously approved by the General Assembly’s Education Committee regarding the Minimum Budget Requirement (MBR) which would allow school districts to reduce their budgets in accordance with decreases in student populations of the last five years.

Members of the Board of Finance discussed postponing a vote on the school budget until the ECS funding and the MBR legislation is finalized. Last year, after voters defeated a school budget with a 0% increase at a referendum, taxpayers at an October Town Meeting approved the school budget with approximately $40,000 less than the original proposal when the State confirmed that the school could reduce its budget by that amount.

The Gazette’s major accomplishment this last year was the celebration of our 40^th anniversary, beginning with the April, 2018 edition that reprinted the April, 1978 front page and included a collage of notable headlines, a salute to the xx members who have served on the editorial board, and a ‘Time Capsule’ listing important events of the last four decades on the national and local level, a column we continued monthly throughout the anniversary year. We also dedicated ink every month to the history of our town institutions and our coverage of them, with articles on the Fire Department, the Seniors’ organization, Fletcher Memorial Library, the Historical Society, our schools, our churches, Goodwin Forest, Trail Wood, the Little River Grange and the Community Center. We also summarized our articles on nature and Christmas and politics, and the letters of opinion we published, with a two page spread of memorable words of wisdom. A review of historical articles correlated with Jean Wierzbinski’s contribution on Governor Cleveland, a survey of family vacations featured our trip to Florida last summer, and a chronicle of Memorial Day Addresses complemented this year’s, delivered by Mike Costillo.  An article on the ways our newspaper has welcomed neighbors was accompanied by Diane Gagnon’s account of “Coming to Hampton”, and Anne Flammang was interviewed for “Those Who Serve” when we reported on the ways we’ve honored our veterans.  For the final celebration of our anniversary year we paid tribute to the humorous articles we’ve published and the humorous people we’ve met,  delivering something we’ve discussed for at least a decade – a special April Fools issue — and facing the (either definition of) hysterical reaction.

We also reviewed the residents we’ve recognized as Citizens of the Year and their contributions of the last forty when we honored this year’s citizen, Michael Chapel, the first to hold the title posthumously. We suffered several difficult good-byes this year, published 22 obituaries including life-long residents, a Gazette founder, Goodwin Forest’s first Director, and the last of our iconic “characters”, with seventeen neighbors remembering “Paulisms” on August’s front page.

Continuing the series “Our Rural Heritage” which began last year with the Burell, Freiman, Halbach and Burdick barns, we published articles on the “Historic Barns” of the Browns’, the Yanouzas’, the Fullers’ and the Hoffmans’, and the farms remembered by the Jaworski, Edwards, and Schmeelk families, as well as the one which was once at Trail Wood. The Johnson’s barn on Main Street is featured this month. Artistic renderings of historic barns by Hampton artists, through paintings and photographs and fabric, comprised our 2019 Calendar.

In the August and September issues we recorded the memories of students who attended our one room schoolhouses and some of their teachers, a subject we’ll revisit this year. We reported on our current schools, announcing special happenings at Hampton Elementary and Parish Hill and acknowledging student accomplishments. We also recognized graduates from other area high schools who earned distinction on the stage and on the basketball court, in film and in masonry.

As is our tradition, the chief officials of the schools and the town detailed their respective budgets on the front page of the May edition. We also reported on the Fire Department’s addition to the building, taxpayer approval of its funding, the Zoning Board of Appeals’ consent for its required variances, and concern over the single source procurement for its construction, which prompted the Board of Finance to develop an ordinance on bidding procedures.   Our schools, as well, experienced some scrutiny.  After receiving what was considered an insufficient response from school officials, a parent reported multiple complaints alleged against elementary school staff; and an ethics violation was confirmed when an anonymous letter sent to the Gazette asked us to investigate whether or not a member of the Regional District #11 Board of Education was compensated for a coaching position at Parish Hill.  We subsequently reported on the member’s statutorily required removal from — and subsequent reappointment to — the school board, as well as Freedom of Information complaints lodged against the board’s conduct in the matter.

We also reported on the community debate over the need for a security guard at the high school in the wake of school violence across the country. We published matters of national importance only a few times, with a fictional story submitted in response to the opioid crisis, an article titled “Traveling While Brown” on the unfortunate reaction to an unfamiliar person in town, and an editorial on the lessons the Covington High School students could learn from their experience in Washington D.C.  We also covered the discussion among Main Street residents on the protection, or the development of, the village, and reported on the demise of its old oak tree, one of the seedlings given to delegates of the State’s 1902 Constitutional Convention which served as a landmark for 116 years until a family of raccoons living in its hollow trunk revealed the necessity of its removal.

The Gazette was pleased to announce the community festivals — with various organizations providing a variety of activities – that are on the rise with this year’s successful initiation of “Winter Fest”, captured in words and photographs on our pages. We also participated in the annual “Fall Festival” with another poll which asked residents their favorite place in Hampton (with “home” the overwhelming response), their favorite restaurant in Connecticut (yielding an assortment of suggestions), and to the question – how are you informed of national news? – residents named television, newspapers, the internet and radio, in that order, with a few citing “the grapevine,” “smoke signals” and “tea leaves”.  This year’s community poem asked participants to complete “I dream of…” with youthful responses such as “becoming a pro-athlete” to the more common response of older residents, “times past”.

We published all of the poems and letters to the editor submitted by residents. Pete Vertefeuille’s photography accompanied many articles and elevated the newspaper’s artistry. Angela Fichter and Auntie Mac supplied us with plenty of laughter, “Green Thumbs” and “In the Garden”, with plenty of horticultural advice. Fletcher Memorial Library and our sanctuaries, Goodwin Forest and Trail Wood, notified us of monthly events, the Historical Society and the Recreation Commission kept us apprised of special happenings, the Seniors published the monthly luncheon menus, and the First Selectman reported monthly on the important news of the Town.

We thank everyone for their contributions of news, announcements, columns, stories, histories, opinions, poems, humor and art, all of which have, for the last 40 years, comprised our community newspaper. We promise to continue to report on news and happenings, accomplishments and losses, in this, the first year of the next forty of The Hampton Gazette.

Juan Arriola